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Excellent but underrated film

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

THE CHAIRMAN is an acceptable spy thriller of the late '60s, chiefly of interest for featuring a Western look at Mao-dominated communist China of the era. The story is slim and sees Gregory Peck jetting off to China to capture the usual MacGuffin, which is the formula for an enzyme which can dramatically increase farming yields. It's rather long-winded, with too many cutbacks to the guys at base who commentate and slow down the action, but the depiction of China is engaging and the presence of Mao himself in the character list makes this fun. Peck is reliably good, as ever, and there are plenty of familiar faces in the forms of Keye Luke, Ric Young, Burt Kwouk, Zienia Merton, and a cameoing Anne Heywood.

An earlier review dismisses the "Cold War paranoia " reflected in this 1969 film. How ignorant. The Cold War was a product of the unremitting hostility of Soviet Russia and China against the U.S. Historical fact and anyone who thinks otherwise, like this commenter, merely reflects the moral equivalence and political correctness of our time, which doesn't believe in good and evil. Ironically it is these people who have the distorted view, not the earlier generation they patronize. Evidently this commenter never heard of the Korean War, in which we fought North Korea's and China's invasion of South Korea from 1950-53. Nor does he appear to have heard of the Quemoy- Martsu crises of the fifties, when the communists were threatening the nationalist regime on Taiwan, our ally. Nor the torrent of hostile propaganda against us. Again, look in the mirror before patronizing an earlier period of history.

***SPOILERS*** Cold War espionage drama with the US and USSR working as a team to prevent the Communist Chinese from developing this enzyme that would make crops in both cold and high altitude, like barren snow capped mountain ranges, weather resistant. This amazing discovery would give the Chinese Communists a monopoly in food-stuffs industry all over the world. They would also be able to use it to blackmail, or buy off, all of the free and third world nations by undercutting the food prices of the United States and Western Europe as well as the Soviet Union. The Chinese who developed this enzyme with the help of their top scientist Soing Li,Keye Luke,need just one more piece of this growth enzyme puzzle to really get their act on the road to world domination by controlling the worlds food supply: Mass Production. Both the US and USSR are very determined to get their hands on this enzyme and use the one person who can get into Communist China American Prof. John Hathway, Gregory Peck. Prof. Hathway is not only an expert in the field of growth enzymes but also a former associate of the imminent Prof. Soing Li. Only Prof. Hathaway can come up with the formula to mass produce this enzyme which is why the Chairman, Conrad Yama, of the Chinese Peoples Republic eagerly wants him to come to his country and help out Prof. Li with his experiment.Using the code name "Minitor" the US intelligence service, the CIA, implant a transmitter into Hathaway's head to pick up all the things that he sees and hears in China as well as all his conversations that he has with that country's high echelon governments officials like the Chairman. What Prof. Hathaway doesn't know is that besides a transmitter he also has an explosive device in his skull that can blow his head off as soon as the Chinese suspect that he's a spy for the US. Prof. Hathaway's main goal in his China visit is to get his hands on the secret enzyme formula but it's encased in the wall of Prof. Li's house and almost impossible for him to get at. Later Hathaway, by crawling under the floorboards and melting the encased steel-box with acid, did get into the hidden compartment where he thought that the film of the enzyme was. Prof. Hatawy is shocked to find that it's no longer there. Prof. Li had since been accused of being a traitor to the people and forced from his post, by the Red Guard, as a top Communist Chinese in the education and scientific departments. Hurt and humiliated Prof. Li, who was forced to be exhibited around town wearing a dunce cap, with signs calling him a traitor,later commits suicide leaving his daughter Ting Ling, Zienia Merton, his most precious possession: the little Red Book of quotes of Moa Tse-Tung. Unknown to Prof Hathaway is that in that book Prof. Li skillfully and in a code, that only he and Prof. Hathaway can decipher, is the secret enzyme formula. Unusual film made during the hight of the Cold as well as Vietnam War back in 1969 with Prof. Hathaway driving an armored car and then running for his life towards the Russian-Mongolian/Communist Chinese border with a bomb planted in his head that can go off at any given moment. With the bomb about to be detonated by those who sent him there into Communist China: His government the US as well as the USSR & UK. The Soviet Red Army who's job it was to get Prof. Hathaway across the border safely were also saddled with the order of not firing on the perusing Chinese Red Army troops. This in order to prevent a war from breaking out between the two Communist super-powers! Which made things in the movie even more complicated then they already were!

This movie is a relic of its day, reflecting the cold war paranoia that was already rather quaint by 1969. This sort of undercuts the film as anything to be taken seriously, but fortunately it's reasonably well-acted and directed so it still holds up as mildly entertaining -- if there's nothing better on TV to watch. Of historic note is that this film was produced by the same guys who made the much more memorable "Planet of the Apes" a year earlier (both films were scored by the great Jerry Goldsmith), and one of the sets is left over from "Fantastic Voyage."