Word: sydow
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...movie trudges toward Hackman's climactic stand against the Arabs, its few substantial themes are left behind in the dunes like exhausted Legionnaires. Hackman is pitted in an early sequence against a scholar from the Louvre (Max von Sydow), who believes that the recovery of a few life-enriching shards of history and art is well worth the loss of hundreds of Legion and Arab lives. "We're both in the grave business," sneers Hackman. "You dig them up and I fill them in." Later, Von Sydow seems to lose the thread of the argument and takes...
From the Titanic through the Ship of Fools, the movies have seldom undertaken a more top-heavy displeasure cruise than this one. The passenger list for Voyage of the Damned is heavily booked with star types-Max Von Sydow, Oskar Werner, Malcolm McDowell, Faye Dunaway, Lee Grant, James Mason, Orson Welles, Ben Gazzara and Katharine Ross-along with an affecting newcomer, Lynne Frederick. All have been brought aboard to add glamour to the journey, but the effort is futile. The actors struggle, usually valiantly (Werner, Von Sydow, Mason), sometimes campily (Dunaway, Welles), but are ultimately undone...
...small man fighting the bureaucracy, only instead of the harried housewife trying to get the phone company to correct a billing error, this is blood 'n' guts stuff. It doesn't work. The C.I.A. is doing its job in this film, and ther heroes--Redford and Max von Sydow (the completely amoral killer-as-artist)--are hollow and unconvincing. Three Days of the Condor illustrates some of the dilemmas of liberalism faced with the need for a C.I.A.--the final appeal, the deus ex machina of the film, is The New York Times. The C.I.A. comes off as sane...
...fact that movies like Three Days of the Condor are not really worth making at all is a thought that occurs to no one. Neither Redford, Director Sydney Pollack (The Way We Were) nor any of the assortment of assembled co-stars (Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, Max von Sydow, John Houseman) can make material like this better than passable. No one could, and you wonder why anyone bothers. Redford and all his co-stars and all the elaborate production details are aimless embellishment, like putting neon lighting around a void...
...magnificent Max von Sydow plays Harry with more conviction than the movie can afford and more dignity than it allows. Even confronted with insights like "There is a life within-you have only to step out of your shadows to see it," Von Sydow bears up fearlessly and with something like grace...