One of the better (and more believable) D.C. thrillers was at least two decades ahead of its time, suggesting that the greatest threat to national security lay not behind the Iron Curtain but in our own back yard, where a covert network of ultra-Right Wing renegade Army officers stage a military coup to rescue the government from a liberal president hoping to dismantle their precious nuclear arsenal. Such an outspoken criticism of Cold War power politics was unusual for the time (not long after the Berlin Wall and the Cuban missile crisis), but if anything the message would become even more relevant twenty years later: Burt Lancaster's charismatic, fanatical General Scott is a ringer for super-patriot Oliver North. The secret agenda unfolds with cunning (and distressing) simplicity, but if the President (Frederic March) is less of a pushover than the Pentagon believes, and if Rod Serling's screenplay can't resist making one speech too many on behalf of the Constitution, it's only because the nation no doubt needed reassuring after JFK's assassination that the reins of State were still in able hands.
Review of Seven Days in May
