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.

"Guns of Navarone" director J. Lee Thompson and leading man Gregory Peck teamed up for the fourth time in the Cold War era thriller "The Chairman," but this preposterous spy thriller has little to distinguish it aside from its gimmick. When an agricultural enzyme enables the Red Chinese to grow crops despite adversarial climate conditions, the Americans dispatch an American scientist, Dr. John Hathaway (Gregory Peck of "MacKenna's Gold"), to go to China and confabulate with his old colleague from his Princeton days. Now, the gimmick is that the Americans have planted a small plastic receiver in the back of his head that allows him to talk to them about his progress without relying on any external device. Basically, aside from showing our well-dressed protagonist what he has in his head, this film doesn't have to worry about concealing some costly electronic device. Meantime, the suspicious Red Chinese cannot figure out how our hero is communicating with the Americans. After a long, tedious build up that includes a meeting with Chairman Mao during a ping-pong game, Hathaway has to make a desperate bid for the border. Thompson cuts back and forth between Hathaway and the American military who keep tabs on his progress. Gregory Peck wears his trench coat well, but he is no more convincing as a scientist than he is a spy. What a dreary mess with a last-minute revelation that develops little tension.

You have to ask yourself, what was Gregory Peck thinking when he signed on in this absolutely miserable film.Something is planted in Peck's head as he goes to China to retrieve some enzyme that the Chinese have that can alter food production. If Peck fails, the object will explode. The Americans have never bothered to tell him this. What was in Peck's head to make this mess of a 1hr. and 37 minutes of miserable boredom?Even Peck's escape from China is awfully staged. At the end, he will have to justify the story as the army seems to refuse to reveal what has really gone on. After viewing this film, you can't blame them.

The Chairman (GB title: The Most Dangerous Man In The World) is a typically twisty 60s spy thriller. It feels like a low-key James Bond adventure with a hint of The Man From UNCLE stirred in. Gregory Peck is the hero in this one, but in spite of his star charisma and the fact that the film has a fairly intriguing plot, it still emerges an overall disappointment. Something in the handling just doesn't quite add up – maybe it's the way the film twists itself into semi-confusion, maybe it's the clumsy post-production editing which sticks out like a sore thumb, or maybe it's the fact that the sillier aspects of the storyline never quite convince as fully as they're meant to. Whatever the reason, The Chairman falls short of its potential.Dr. John Hathaway (Gregory Peck) is recruited by the CIA for a tricky undercover assignment in Red China. It seems the Chinese have almost perfected an agricultural enzyme that could allow crops to grow in hostile environments like mountains and deserts. Such an enzyme would allow China to gain absolute control of the world's mass food production market. Hathaway is a close friend of the man who invented the enzyme, revered Chinese professor Soong Li (Keye Luke). He is also considered by the Chinese as the one man who can help them to add the finishing touches to the formula. This is great news for the CIA, who need someone they can send into China to get close to those involved in the production of the enzyme without arousing suspicion. Hathaway agrees to do the job for them, and a microchip transmitter is implanted into his head which is capable of visually and aurally relaying everything he witnesses during his time in China. What Marshal Shelby (Arthur Hill) of the CIA doesn't tell Hathaway is that the transmitter in his brain is also wired up to a small explosive device, so that if the mission looks destined to fail – or if it looks like he might fall into enemy hands – his head can be blown off at any time simply by pushing a button! The best thing about the film is Jerry Goldsmith's rousing music score, which adds excitement to scenes that actually, on most occasions, aren't very exciting. In spite of the fact that Peck is in continuous danger virtually every moment that he's in China, the film somehow slackens the suspense when it should be tightening it. Long periods of the film are tedious and uninvolving. Peck gives a passable performance as the unsuspecting "walking bomb", even though he's not really the right actor for the role, while Arthur Hill's eye-patched official overseeing the operation might have stepped right out of a book of spy movie clichés. In the finale, Hathaway flees for the border with the Chinese army in hot pursuit, while Shelby's finger hovers perilously over the all-important bomb button. It's a reasonably taut climax, but comes too late in the day to save the film as a whole. In summary, The Chairman has a few highlights but generally speaking it's one of those films that could have, and should have, been better!