What do you get when you combine a genius director of suspense films (John Frankenheimer), a quartet of Hollywood legends (Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Frederic March and Ava Gardner), and a platoon of great character actors (Edmond O'Brien, Martin Balsam and Andrew Duggan, just for starters)? Well, a surprisingly tepid political thriller, if you let TV-grade pseudo-intellectual Rod Serling write the script. All the elements are present for a worthy successor to Frankenheim's masterpiece "The Manchurian Candidate" -- credible intrigue, a charismatic villain, and shadowy, unsettling black-and-white cinematography. For about two-thirds of the movie, the filmic aspects of "Seven Days in May" are just gripping enough to overcome a script riddled with Serling's second-worst flaw as a writer -- the tendency to have all characters speak with the cadence and vocabulary of middlebrow magazine editorials ("you make me think that fruit salad on your chest is for neutrality, evasiveness, and fence-straddling"). But all the plot twists and jarring close-ups on Earth can't silence Serling's voice, which is a tragedy since the grandiloquent sermons he sticks in his characters' mouths -- his single greatest vice, here and in countless "Twilight Zone" scripts -- almost derail the movie towards the end. "Seven Days in May" turns the peculiar trick of being both suspenseful and boring, thanks to Rod the Modernist.
The plot, which hinges on a series of coincidences and fortunate accidents which a more clever writer could have avoided, concerns Kirk Douglas, a Marine colonel working as an administrator for the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, coming to suspect that his superior, jut-jawed Air Force commander Burt Lancaster, is conspiring with his fellow military leaders to take over of the United States. Kirk reports his suspicions to President March, who has incurred Burt's wrath by signing a nuclear disarmament treaty with the USSR, and the rest of the film is devoted to foiling the attempted coup d'état. Ava Gardner, not aging particularly well by 1964, shows up as Lancaster's ex-mistress who may harbor some embarrassing secrets about the General, not to mention a potential love interest for Kirk. Balsam, O'Brien et al portray all the President's men, loyal operatives and sympathetic senators who scheme to keep the world safe for democracy. All of the actors are fine, making Serling's flights of expository eloquence ("James Mattoon Scott hasn't the slightest interest in his own glorification, but he does have an abiding interest in the survival of his country!") listenable and almost plausible. Lancaster especially deserves a fifth star as the messianic four-star general, creating a credible and almost sympathetic character beneath all the bluster and bombast. But all of Burt's charisma and all of Kirk's agonizing can't knock Rod off his soapbox, nor can they induce him to make his larger-than-life archetypes as ruthless as Frankenheimer, at least, knew they should be, based on "The Manchurian Candidate." Good movie, blown opportunity.
The plot, which hinges on a series of coincidences and fortunate accidents which a more clever writer could have avoided, concerns Kirk Douglas, a Marine colonel working as an administrator for the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, coming to suspect that his superior, jut-jawed Air Force commander Burt Lancaster, is conspiring with his fellow military leaders to take over of the United States. Kirk reports his suspicions to President March, who has incurred Burt's wrath by signing a nuclear disarmament treaty with the USSR, and the rest of the film is devoted to foiling the attempted coup d'état. Ava Gardner, not aging particularly well by 1964, shows up as Lancaster's ex-mistress who may harbor some embarrassing secrets about the General, not to mention a potential love interest for Kirk. Balsam, O'Brien et al portray all the President's men, loyal operatives and sympathetic senators who scheme to keep the world safe for democracy. All of the actors are fine, making Serling's flights of expository eloquence ("James Mattoon Scott hasn't the slightest interest in his own glorification, but he does have an abiding interest in the survival of his country!") listenable and almost plausible. Lancaster especially deserves a fifth star as the messianic four-star general, creating a credible and almost sympathetic character beneath all the bluster and bombast. But all of Burt's charisma and all of Kirk's agonizing can't knock Rod off his soapbox, nor can they induce him to make his larger-than-life archetypes as ruthless as Frankenheimer, at least, knew they should be, based on "The Manchurian Candidate." Good movie, blown opportunity.