Critics reviews

Although the film is much more conventionally shot and composed than Frankenheimer’s ironic and baroque The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Seven Days in May is nevertheless crafted with consummate skill... Given our present-day reality, Seven Days in May is a well-made thriller that remains contemporary in its political significance.

Conspiracy movies may have become more darkly complex in these post-Watergate days of Pakula and paranoia, but Frankenheimer's fascination with gadgetry (in his compositions, the ubiquitous helicopters, TV screens, hidden cameras and electronic devices literally edge the human characters into insignificance) is used to create a striking visual metaphor for control by the military machine. Highly enjoyable.

Seven Days in May was scripted by Twilight Zone creator and moralizing nag Rod Serling, which means the viewer must endure occasional scenes of cringe-inducing, self-righteous blather shoehorned into an otherwise exceptional political thriller. Thankfully, the movie’s strengths — a brilliant cast... director John Frankenheimer’s taut pacing and a scarily credible plot — far outweigh Serling’s chronic tendency to buttonhole and sermonize.

Parallel doves/hawks demonstrations (a peace sign becomes a bludgeoning weapon in the ensuing riot) set the stage for the Republic's "week of unadulterated nightmare," a choice Twilight Zone installment, Rod Serling screenplay and all. . . . Frankenheimer keeps an ominous tremor subtly coursing through evenly-lit, deep-focus compositions of corridors, chambers, conferences and meetings, a sharp edit hopscotches from the lunar desert of El Paso to a battleship off the coast of Gibraltar.

John Frankenheimer directed, too much in love with technique, though he ably taps the neuroticism of Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, and Fredric March.

Considered just as a piece of direction, [Seven Days in May] was considerably more confident [than Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate]. While seeing it, one could take pleasure in [the director's] smooth showmanship. But the material (Rod Serling out of Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II) was like a straight (i.e., square) version of The Manchurian Candidate. I have to chase around the corridors of memory to summon up images from Seven Days in May; despite the brilliant technique, all that is clear to mind is the touchingly, desperately anxious face of Ava Gardner.

Seven Days in May is an inoffensive lesson in civics with little merit and less subtlety... Except for a good performance in a thankless role by Martin Balsam, Hollywood's best character actor, a surprisingly competent bit of acting by Kirk Douglas, and some double-entry cinematics with television screens, [the film] is silly, preachy, and utterly humorless.

A real intellectual hair‐raiser... It is taut and exciting melodrama, as loaded as a Hitchcock mystery film and as seemingly documentary as Carol Reed's “The Third Man.” Everything looks authentic... And all of the actors in it... are assortedly superb.

[Seven Days in May] achieves a tingling speed and irresistible tension under John Frankenheimer's direction, which deftly lifts some of the tricks of pictorial and musical emphasis from the old Nazi "Blitzkrieg" films. It gathers a sense of actuality and plausibility... And it is expertly played... [It is] a brave and forceful film.

A strikingly dramatic, realistic and provocatively topical film... The performances are excellent down the line, under the taut and penetrating directorial guidance of John Frankenheimer.