Just a few days ago when I reviewed 1954's Night People (a movie light years ahead of this one), I mentioned the Cold War and the easy source for a villain, the Russians. This 1969 film basically pegs everyone as a villain, American, Chinese, Russian, no one is immune. The paranoia that ruled the Cold War years is understandable. There was this cloud hanging over the world that the entire population of Earth could be wiped out in a second by massive payloads of nuclear weapons. It seems like an easy transition to make a movie out of that. Instead, The Chairman is a movie that just doesn't know where it is going at all.
An American scientist who years before won the Nobel Prize, Dr. John Hathaway (Gregory Peck) is approached by a deep undercover, multi-national military group (with government backing) to undertake a dangerous mission. An old teacher and mentor of Hathaway's, Professor Soong Li (Keye Luke), has surfaced in China, writing a letter to the doctor that he would like to see him. Leading the government-financed operation, Colonel Shelby (Arthur Hill) wants Hathaway to use the visit as a pretext to perform a secret mission. It is believed the Chinese have created an enzyme usable in agriculture so crops can grow year-round regardless of climate or conditions. Hathaway agrees, even allowing a small microchip to be placed into his skull so he can be heard and monitored at all times. What he doesn't know is that Shelby has a back-up plan for the chip if the mission fails.
I'll start with what I thought to be the biggest flaw, the microchip implanted in Hathaway's skull just behind his right ear. Because of a satellite flying over China, Shelby and his subordinate officers (Alan Dobie as Benson and Ori Levy as Shertov, his Russian counterpart) and everyone at the secret base can hear everything Hathaway says and does. It's a cool little technique, whether it be in 1969 when this concept had to be ahead of its time in terms of movie-making or now in 2011 when all sorts of technology is available to us. As a plot device, it is great. Alone in a hotel room or standing at a window, Peck's Hathaway talks to his superiors as if they were in front of him, the officers anxiously awaiting what he has to report.
That of course is not the whole story. Implanting the chip in the doctor's skull, Shelby left out one essential tidbit of information. While the small device is a transmitter, it is also explosive. If the good doctor fails at his mission or is in danger of being captured, Shelby and Co. will push a button, detonate the device, and obviously kill Hathaway in the process. First, why would they need to kill him? What does he know that could hurt America? In a conversation with Chairman Mao (Conrad Yama), Hathaway freely admits that he's there to find the enzyme and bring it back, or at least it's molecular structure. The Chinese know what he's there to do. They've allowed him in, welcoming him into the country.
Piling on to what could have been a cool plot device is the premise that Hathaway -- an unknowing, walking bomb -- could be used on a suicide mission to kill the Chairman when he meets him. Dobie's Benson asks Shelby about exactly that idea, taking him out in one clean swoop. Shelby reacts stunned and disgusted, and then thinks about it, even checking with his superiors. Okay, let me get this right. Working for a shadow company funded by $5 billion American dollars, Shelby (an otherwise seemingly intelligent man) never thought once that Hathaway could be used in that fashion? We're just going to put a bomb in his head just to be careful. Right. The movie never makes it very clear what the intention is so the whole thing suffers.
Having said I disliked this movie, I can also say there was certainly potential to do something good here. Working with director J. Lee Thompson for the fourth time, Peck does his best with an odd character, a mix of not-so-good secret agent and intelligent doctor. The tone of the movie is odd, and that's the best way I can classify it. There's romance with girlfriend Anne Heywood, some out of place moments of humor, a story that doesn't have a sense of urgency until too late, and a final scene that could have been out of a Doris Day comedy. Hathaway -- having narrowly escaped China into Russia (that's a whole other story) -- walks away with Heywood, almost doomed to be "accidentally" murdered, but he's got a smile on his face, talking about how glorious it will be to take down the system. Yeah, right. The Chairman 2: Hathaway's Vengeance. I'll pass, and so should you on this dud.
The Chairman <---TCM trailer (1969): */****
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