Movie Reviews - Three Days of the Condor, The Iron Lady, Cinderella Man

Three Days of the Condor (1975) - A smart ass young CIA analyst steps out to get lunch for  his office.  When he returns he finds everyone dead.  Now he's running for his life and unsure of who he can trust.  He will face decisions that he was never trained to make but will determine whether he lives or dies.

This is a classic mid-70s spy flick.  It focuses on the moral ambiguity that the nation was struggling with as we left an age when we believed in government for one where we had deep doubts about it all.  Condor (Robert Redford) makes morally ambiguous decisions while trying to figure out the logic of his agency and what they're doing.

Solid cast (Redford, Faye Dunaway,  Cliff Robertson, Max Von Sydow and John Houseman), good story (with just one large plot hole - Condor is a low level analyst with no field experience.  Logically he should have immediately "come in from the cold" but instead proceeds to keep veteran field agents guessing.) and well directed by Sidney Pollack.

Is it a great movie?  No, not really.  Is it a bad movie?  Not even close.

Rating - *** Worth A Look

The Iron Lady (2011) -  Another of last years Best Movie Oscar nominations I hadn't seen yet.  Not sure I see the Movie nomination.  Brilliant turn by  Meryl Streep as the legendary Conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (an Oscar winner for Streep).  The rest of the movie strikes me as awkward, lurching and ponderous.

The movie begins Thatcher had begun to show the signs of dementia.  She sees and converses with her dead husband Denis while flashing back through her life.  For me the net effect was to diminish her legacy.  Lady Thatcher and my politics will never agree but she is a pivotal figure in modern English politics.  The constant return to her declining mental state just made me uncomfortable.  Additionally director Phyllida Lloyd occasionally slips in some odd shots that apparently are playing on the altered perceptions of Thatcher but they don't strike me as being a consistent motif and therefore feel awkward and out of place.  The movie felt longer than it's 105 minutes.

A brilliant lead actress supported by a wonderful support cast and a powerful story.  Somehow that adds up to only a middling movie.

Rating - *** Worth A Look

Cinderella Man (2005) - Ever wonder if there could have been a real life "Rocky"?  Well there was back in the '20s and '30s.  His name was James Braddock.  An up and coming light heavy/heavyweight the combination of the Great Depression and a broken hand that he couldn't allow to heal properly took him from the top of his profession to the bottom.  Astoundingly he would eventually get the chance to fight in the big time again and became heavyweight champion of the world.  It was Damon Runyon who named Braddock as the "Cinderella Man".  He became the hero of everyone in that time who had to scrabble to find enough money to feed their family.

The really astounding thing about this movie is that virtually no one went to see it.  With a budget around 80 million dollars the worldwide box office was only 108 million.  This despite the fact that Russell Crowe was the star with recognizable faces and names in Renee Zellweger, Bruce McGill and Paul Giamatti.  I assume that folks saw "boxing movie" and decided they weren't interested.  It's too bad they miss a great story of love, determination and faithfulness in a time of great hardship.

Actually it makes an especially appealing movie for today.

Rating - **** Recommended