Political Thriller

Seven Days in May is more farfetched than a campaign promise. But if the audience once accepts its patently fictional view of Washington--as a city teeming with traitorous Congressmen, TV commentators and four-star generals--there is plenty of excitement to be had in this political thriller based on the novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II.

A nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia has been signed, and a line of angry pickets moves in front of the White House, waving placards demanding: "DON'T BAN THE BOMB, BAN THE TREATY!" But supporters of the treaty are picketing the pickets. The demonstrators start to fight--and suddenly the nation is in crisis.

Inside the White House, President Fredric March wrestles with a labor dispute. He has just been told that his blood pressure is dangerously high, his Gallup rating dangerously low. "My diet for the next several days will be crow and bitters," growls March. He is a seasoned old liberal whose flabby exterior conceals a body of convictions carved in stone. He does not yet know that a group of right-wing extremists, led by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Burt Lancaster, is so violently opposed to his treaty that they are conspiring to overthrow the Government by military junta in just seven days.

Marine Colonel Kirk Douglas is the Pentagon aide who tumbles to the plot. Ominous coded messages refer to "bets" in an approaching Preakness pool. At a secret base, designated Site Y, thousands of Commando troops trained in the tactics of seizure are standing by for an airlift. Douglas confides his suspicions to the Commander in Chief, who calls in a handful of trusted advisers--and a minuscule task force sets out to save the Republic.

Director John Frankenheimer uses his camera as though it had been invented for the CIA. And his actors keep pace, particularly Edmond O'Brien, who contributes a nice dash of color as an amiable alcoholic Senator from Geor gia. Douglas looks more resolutely square-jawed than ever, even when duty sends him into the lair of Ava Gardner, a Washington playgirl with a packet of love letters. But Lancaster has a one-dimensional role. "Your course of action this past year has bordered on criminal negligence," he barks to the man whose job he means to take. "You're a weak sister, Mr. President."

The movie is least successful when it tries to sound significant--as when March, stiffening up beside the flag, intones, "The enemy is an age. A nuclear age. And out of this comes a sickness." Some of the dialogue in the final reels seems to have been cribbed from a prep school essay on "What Democracy Means to Me." But that seems fitting enough too, for Seven Days is the kind of fast-paced melodrama that is made to order for a rainy Saturday afternoon.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.