Seven Days in May (1964)
Directed by John Frankenheimer
A U.S. Marine Corps colonel alerts the president of a planned military coup against him.
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What critics compared Seven Days in May to
This steely, apocalyptic tone owes something to John Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in May and Tony Scott’s Crimson Tide, though Bigelow’s approach is more clinical than those films were inventive.
“A House of Dynamite” yearns to be a contemporary “Fail Safe” or “Seven Days in May,” a speculative nail-biter for our times.
The 51-year-old film is very much of its time, along with Seven Days in May and Dr. Strangelove.
These generic bureaucratic faces seem vacant compared with those in Advise and Consent, Seven Days in May, Twilight’s Last Gleaming, and Thirteen Days…
…not unlike films such as Fail-Safe or Seven Days in May.
…it is in fact a familiar reformulation of the nuclear-thriller films of the early 1960s — "Fail Safe," "Seven Days in May," even Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove," which parodied the genre.
That might betray the director’s personal views, but it also reveals his deficiencies as a dramatist, one who can’t manufacture a compelling rationale for the actions of his villain – one is reminded of Burt Lancaster’s treasonous general in John Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in May , whose argument was so persuasive you found yourself rooting for the overthrow of the American government.
He keeps the viewer on their toes with sizzling dialogue reminiscent of 12 Angry Men or Seven Days in May and keeps the visual and audio razzle-dazzle to a surprising minimum.
Anyone who knows Seven Days in May will follow the plot, or perhaps simply recognize it.
George has since been elevated to Secretary of Defense (you know this is make-believe because the president is a liberal and his hawkish advisors have actually served time in combat) whose Seven Days in May ambitions unfold after a mystery raid on an NSA headquarters leaves top dog Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) on the run.
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With its grace and economy of narrative, "Apollo 13" resembles those grand old military exploits - "The Guns of Navarone," "The Dirty Dozen," "The Great Escape" and "Seven Days in May."
The first thing that you'll notice about Seconds, the concluding film in John Frankenheimer's thematic "paranoia trilogy" (following The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May), is the amazing cinematography by legendary cinematographer James Wong Howe (Hud, Picnic).
Part Rod Serling, part John Cheever, Seconds succeeds in combining two film styles and completes Frankenheimer�s paranoia trilogy after the brilliant The Manchurian Candidate and the under-rated Seven Days In May.
Frankenheimer is responsible for a proto-style with The Manchurian Candidate, in which Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) is occupied by Red China and the viewer in fear of such, and the anti-communist presidential coup of the Rod Serling-scripted Seven Days in May.
In 1964, Seven Days in May imagined a Pentagon plot to overthrow the presidency in order to wage war on the Soviets; vilifying the war-mongers in the military establishment years before popular anti-war sentiment made it chic.
A creepy sci-fi parable that is directed with much too much restraint by John Frankenheimer ("The Manchurian Candidate"/"Seven Days in May"--the other two films of this "paranoia trilogy") to make this the breakthrough film it could have been, though there's a sharpened edge to this bizarre story that gets under your skin like a nightmare and leaves you thinking about your own life.
But "Ronin" was directed by John Frankenheimer -- the genius hand behind "The Manchurian Candidate" and "Seven Days in May," two of the most intelligent films of the espionage ilk -- and features an international cast of exceptional, if not widely-recognized, actors.
He's brought us such classics as "The Manchurian Candidate," "All Fall Down," "Seven Days In May" and "The Birdman of Alcatraz."