Fox Movie Channel

Gregory Peck, Part 2: Still A Hero

Ready for more Gregory Peck? As though you could ever have enough. Make time to check out J. Lee Thompson's The Chairman, another intense - but of course, amusingly dated - political thriller. The international military political tangle of The Chairman is just as opaque and messy as the one in Night People, only set in a different part of the world. Still true: Commies are bad. Also still true: Gregory Peck is the man.

The Chinese have isolated a magic enzyme that allows them to grow wheat in the jungle and pineapple in the snow. This empowers Mao-dictated red China with the ability to strong arm the rest of the hungry world, but luckily we in the Western world have our own super weapon: Gregory Peck (of course). This time he happens to be a genius chemist, so America (with a little participation from Britain and the Soviet Union) sends him in to try to lift the magically delicious formula with some crafty, enzyme mapping, ping pong diplomacy.

What's changed in the fifteen years since Night People - notably - is that maybe, just maybe, America isn't quite as purely righteous. Or right. This interesting shift is demonstrated in that now instead of just relying on the true patriotism and natural heroism of GP, he gets sent in with a transmitter implanted in his head, so that all of his conversations can be monitored and his every move tracked. And nothing keeps a thriller riveting like some good old, dated technology. There's a whole room of military scientists devoted to listening to his activities and monitoring his vitals with dials and tickers and the like, which is particularly entertaining when the Reds try to compel Gregory Peck to be entertained by a bright young naked thing by the name of Ting Ling. And though Gregory Peck doesn't know it, beyond just their power of omnipresent observation, maybe the guys running this operation can detonate the little transmitter in his brain and blow him to pieces if he gets out of line. The American military man who is controlling this operation wears glasses with one tinted eye, so we know for sure that this situation is dubious.

Even armed as he is with his patented manliness, knowledge of Chinese, and a mastery of chemistry that turns out to have more than one application in these spy games, can Gregory Peck get the job done and overcome the Red Terror all around him? And what about the danger that may be in his own head, courtesy of the U. S. of A.? Can America be trusted anymore than China with the magic enzyme? This movie asks that question, and thereby presents an uncertain picture of America and of the security of our world. But one thing still remains true: we can always count on Gregory Peck.