While it may be unfair to criticize a movie for looking dated over 40 years after it came out, I have a feeling this movie looked outdated the day it hit the screens, which could explain its brief and unsuccessful run in theaters. The plot, centered around a rogue but "principled" ex-general and a few compadres seizing control of an ICBM site and threatening Armageddon if the government doesn't reveal the real origins of the Vietnam War, is not only absurd but rather offensive to service personnel who wouldn't be too keen on the supposed protagonists killing fellow servicemen in the process, not to mention threatening mass murder. Being released 6 years after the Pentagon Papers had become available, the movie seems to have missed the boat.
A good cast is largely wasted thanks to the insistence of Robert Aldrich and Burt Lancaster to use the film as a clumsy means to promote their politics. Charles Durning gives a solid performance as President, but otherwise the only really standout performance is that by Paul Winfield, whose character is far more believable and interesting as one of the supposed antagonists. The excessive use of multiple screens, an early-seventies fad that never really caught on, further gives the movie the look of a cinematic dinosaur and kills the suspense rather than building it.
Bottom line is that this movie was one of the last of several, mostly mediocre, films stoking images of a dark conspiratorial government in the post-Watergate era (The Parralax View, Executive Action, Capricorn One). It was quickly forgotten and, if you can sit through all 144 minutes, you'll understand why.
A good cast is largely wasted thanks to the insistence of Robert Aldrich and Burt Lancaster to use the film as a clumsy means to promote their politics. Charles Durning gives a solid performance as President, but otherwise the only really standout performance is that by Paul Winfield, whose character is far more believable and interesting as one of the supposed antagonists. The excessive use of multiple screens, an early-seventies fad that never really caught on, further gives the movie the look of a cinematic dinosaur and kills the suspense rather than building it.
Bottom line is that this movie was one of the last of several, mostly mediocre, films stoking images of a dark conspiratorial government in the post-Watergate era (The Parralax View, Executive Action, Capricorn One). It was quickly forgotten and, if you can sit through all 144 minutes, you'll understand why.