Wednesday, December 20, 2017

The Chairman (1969)

There seems a bit of the old "yellow peril" in this film where Gregory Peck travels to China to try and find an experimental enzyme that could revolutionise agriculture and thus make Chairman Mao's China unstoppable of course...

What Peck doesn't know is that US, Soviet and UK intelligence have a rather nefarious double plan, they've implanted a bomb in his head and hope to kill Mao too. Although the film is named "The Chairman" Mao only has a single scene in the film.

It is a ridiculous film full of stereotypes though Communist China was a rather closed and mysterious society at the time so i guess we can cut them a little bit of slack of that score. As a spy though Peck sometimes makes Bond look realistic and the plot does rely on the "bad guys" being a bit stupid too much.

The worst thing to fault the movie about is that it is a little dull if we are to be honest though certainly worth watching for the cheese value. The late 60s computer technology was cool though.