Seven Days in May (1964, John Frankenheimer) (Patreon)

67/100

Second viewing, last seen at MoMA's Frankenheimer retro in 1996. And while I likewise need to revisit Fail-Safe, at the moment this strikes me as the more credibly chilling political what-if? scenario released in 1964, because it recognizes that the bad guys always genuinely believe themselves to be the good guys. Lancaster's treasonous Air Force general represents a worst-case Edwin Walker (who's actually mentioned in dialogue), but he also sounds exactly like Michael Flynn, minus a few brainworms; these guys are gung-ho to destroy the country in order to "save" it from some nebulous threat rooted in ostensible weakness (here, nuclear disarmament), and we should count ourselves lucky to have avoided a crisis of this potential magnitude 2½ years ago. What struck me most forcefully was the specific moment that inspires Jiggs to take his still-inchoate concerns to President Lyman. He picks up the phone and dials the White House in the middle of Scott's televised speech, immediately after hearing these words: 

"Ladies and gentlemen, members of the American Veterans Order, I would like to thank Mr. McPherson for his most laudatory comments. You're very generous, Harold.

Perhaps patriotism is old-fashioned. Perhaps love of country is outdated. Perhaps even a minute degree of sentiment to one's motherland is to be considered passé. But God help us, and God help our country, if the cynics, the one-worlders, the intellectual dilettantes ever persuade us that these things have passed us by. Because ladies and gentlemen, patriotism, loyalty, sentiment—they are the United States of America!"

As a cynic, one-worlder and intellectual dilettante, I find that passage's implicit whining about outmoded values mildly triggering, but there's nothing overtly authoritarian or sinister in what Scott says. So the film having Jiggs hear that and think "Uh-oh," strongly enough to risk being charged with insubordination, is a degree of subtlety that I wouldn't have expected from Rod Serling (who presumably followed the novel fairly closely). Having recently suffered through Moonfall, I was amused by how closely subsequent events follow the disaster-movie template, with authorities trying to decide whether certain apparent anomalies presented by an underling who stumbled onto Something Big are genuinely cause for alarm (there's even a designated tut-tutter); like so many of those films, Seven Days relies on a deus ex machina to restore order, with Girard's crucial piece of evidence found among the plane's wreckage and handed over to President Lyman literally seconds before all hell would have broken loose*. And while I was grateful for the presence of one (1) woman in this testosterone-fest, the whole blackmail subplot feels both superfluous (though I do like that Pres. Lyman opts not to use the letters) and kinda vaguely gross in a way that the movie doesn't seem to recognize (given that Douglas and Gardner are still flirting at the end). Otherwise consistently gripping, and second only to Gunfight at the O.K. Corral as Lancaster-Douglas studies in modes of masculinity go. 

Oh, one last quibble: Why is Mutt (apparently) the only soldier at the secret base who's unaware that a coup is in the works? Seems kinda foolhardy to have anyone around who's still in the dark. (This is likewise a problem with The Firm, both novel and movie.) 

A scene from so many amateur-theater productions I attended in which friends acted:

* The sole aspect of this film that feels somewhat dated is Scott and his co-conspirators getting ready to seize control of mass communication. That's arguably the most crucial element of their attempted coup d'état, and it just wouldn't be necessary today—the American people no longer get and trust information from a handful of monolithic sources. It's a terrifying free-for-all now, and would remain so if a military dictatorship took over. They might become Orwellian later, instituting state-run media à la North Korea, but they wouldn't have to bother with usurping, like, CNN at the outset. 

Actually, I take that back: The other aspect that feels dated is President Lyman's 29% approval rating. We'll likely never see a number below 35 or above 55 again.