zardoz-13 "Guns of Navarone" director J. Lee Thompson and leading man Gregory Peck teamed up for the fourth time in the Cold War era thriller "The Chairman," but this preposterous spy thriller has little to distinguish it aside from its gimmick. When an agricultural enzyme enables the Red Chinese to grow crops despite adversarial climate conditions, the Americans dispatch an American scientist, Dr. John Hathaway (Gregory Peck of "MacKenna's Gold"), to go to China and confabulate with his old colleague from his Princeton days. Now, the gimmick is that the Americans have planted a small plastic receiver in the back of his head that allows him to talk to them about his progress without relying on any external device. Basically, aside from showing our well-dressed protagonist what he has in his head, this film doesn't have to worry about concealing some costly electronic device. Meantime, the suspicious Red Chinese cannot figure out how our hero is communicating with the Americans. After a long, tedious build up that includes a meeting with Chairman Mao during a ping-pong game, Hathaway has to make a desperate bid for the border. Thompson cuts back and forth between Hathaway and the American military who keep tabs on his progress. Gregory Peck wears his trench coat well, but he is no more convincing as a scientist than he is a spy. What a dreary mess with a last-minute revelation that develops little tension.

bkoganbing The Chairman is a film of its time, it was made when the Sino-Soviet split was just coming to the fore, when even the Russians were getting worried about their ally south of their Asian border. It's not hard to figure out, China is big, but very full, Siberia is big and very empty. Geography even trumps politics and ideology.Back in those days we still were not giving diplomatic recognition to the People's Republic of China. In fact you search the stories about China back in those days and it will inevitably be called Red China. You haven't heard that expression in a couple of decades now. So getting an American scientist for whatever reason in the country, was difficult if not impossible. Remember this was also the days when the godhead figure of their revolution Mao Tse-Tung was doing a little ideological house cleaning with those fired up young people, his Red Guards who were scaring the world back then and with good reason. A Chinese scientist colleague of Gregory Peck's back in the day played by Keye Luke sends a letter to Peck most cryptic as it would have to have passed through censors. That triggers a little sky espionage where it is discovered that the Chinese are growing agricultural produce in places it shouldn't happen. Luke has discovered an enzyme to make it possible and with it the Chinese can get starving third world nations to its side by the droves. It's got the US and the USSR worried.Peck's mission should he accept it is to get the formula for that enzyme out of China, not so easy for an Occidental, but he's the only guy with scientific qualifications for the job. The plot is somewhat similar in this respect to Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain.Oh, and they've got a real joker in the deck. Cold War Air Force general Arthur Hill who is running the show has implanted a listening device in Peck's skull so he can just talk and a spy satellite above China will pick it up and transmit. But they also have it rigged with an explosive device so Peck won't fall in enemy hands. And they don't tell him about that, cute.The Chairman is a good spy thriller with the action going along at a good clip. His race for the Soviet border will keep your adrenalin pumping the way Peck's character had to have been in the film. Best scene in the film is Peck's audience with Chairman Mao played by Conrad Yama. That was considerable license because Mao spoke no English.What I always found fascinating is that when Mao died in 1977 the revolution as he conceived it stopped with him. Today China, no longer called Red China, is your very typical oligarchic country that has restricted freedoms to be sure as the kids who were at Tiannamen Square will testify, but a country playing very typical power politics in the old fashioned way. My God they even have a stock exchange for capitalists. What would those idealistic young Red Guards think along with the man who inspired them?

ozthegreatat42330 When I first saw this movie in 1969 I was very intrigued by it. sending an American Scientist into Communist China to attempt the theft of a valuable enzyme that could help produce enough food to feed the whole world. Of course with the star power of the handsome Gergory Peck that also did not hurt the film. Arthur Hill was his usual efficient low keyed supporting performance, but the love interest was just not there and could have easily been left out of the plot altogether (an unthinkable idea by Hollywood standards.)Seeing the film now it seems as though there is simply not enough plot and it is all too ho-hum. He is always under the scrutiny of a transmitter implanted under the skin in his head, not knowing that there is also an explosive device included. Conrad Yama is a very believable Chairman Mao, but his appearance in the film is limited to one short scene, which does not serve the title. The best part of the movie is another memorable sound score from Jerry Goldsmith, who next to John Williams is one of the most prolific film composers there is.

Jonathon Dabell The Chairman (GB title: The Most Dangerous Man In The World) is a typically twisty 60s spy thriller. It feels like a low-key James Bond adventure with a hint of The Man From UNCLE stirred in. Gregory Peck is the hero in this one, but in spite of his star charisma and the fact that the film has a fairly intriguing plot, it still emerges an overall disappointment. Something in the handling just doesn't quite add up – maybe it's the way the film twists itself into semi-confusion, maybe it's the clumsy post-production editing which sticks out like a sore thumb, or maybe it's the fact that the sillier aspects of the storyline never quite convince as fully as they're meant to. Whatever the reason, The Chairman falls short of its potential.Dr. John Hathaway (Gregory Peck) is recruited by the CIA for a tricky undercover assignment in Red China. It seems the Chinese have almost perfected an agricultural enzyme that could allow crops to grow in hostile environments like mountains and deserts. Such an enzyme would allow China to gain absolute control of the world's mass food production market. Hathaway is a close friend of the man who invented the enzyme, revered Chinese professor Soong Li (Keye Luke). He is also considered by the Chinese as the one man who can help them to add the finishing touches to the formula. This is great news for the CIA, who need someone they can send into China to get close to those involved in the production of the enzyme without arousing suspicion. Hathaway agrees to do the job for them, and a microchip transmitter is implanted into his head which is capable of visually and aurally relaying everything he witnesses during his time in China. What Marshal Shelby (Arthur Hill) of the CIA doesn't tell Hathaway is that the transmitter in his brain is also wired up to a small explosive device, so that if the mission looks destined to fail – or if it looks like he might fall into enemy hands – his head can be blown off at any time simply by pushing a button! The best thing about the film is Jerry Goldsmith's rousing music score, which adds excitement to scenes that actually, on most occasions, aren't very exciting. In spite of the fact that Peck is in continuous danger virtually every moment that he's in China, the film somehow slackens the suspense when it should be tightening it. Long periods of the film are tedious and uninvolving. Peck gives a passable performance as the unsuspecting "walking bomb", even though he's not really the right actor for the role, while Arthur Hill's eye-patched official overseeing the operation might have stepped right out of a book of spy movie clichés. In the finale, Hathaway flees for the border with the Chinese army in hot pursuit, while Shelby's finger hovers perilously over the all-important bomb button. It's a reasonably taut climax, but comes too late in the day to save the film as a whole. In summary, The Chairman has a few highlights but generally speaking it's one of those films that could have, and should have, been better!