Movie review - "The President's Analyst" (1967) ***

No one quite encapsulates swinging 60s cinema more than James Coburn. His skinny frame, deep voice, and grey hair, coupled with cool assurance and suave cockiness. There are also all the movies he made after he became a star with the Flint pictures: Waterhole #3, Duffy, Dead Heat on a Merry Go Round, Hard Contract. You can hear the twang of guitars and see the groovy chicks just by virtues of the titles.

This is perhaps his best known groovy movie - I've never been able to confirm whether it was a hit or not (some writers say it was, others claim it wasn't), but it is a cult favourite. I'm guessing it wasn't a popular success - it's a bit too clever by half and up itself. It's also pure satire, as opposed to say the Flints which could be enjoyed as straight up spy films as well - although it does have an action finale with Coburn in a villains lair blasting away with a machine gun at henchman.

This has a brilliant idea - Coburn is an analyst who goes to work for the president and soon finds everyone out for him. Curiously, we don't see see many moments with Coburn and the president - act two begins with him going on the lam, which is probably too soon. It's like they skipped over a whole bunch of satirical situations to get him going on the run.

Act two consists of people trying to kidnap Coburn - it's a bit repetitive but I loved the Canadian Secret Service who are undercover as a boy band. That is truly brilliant. He winds up with hippies but gets taken by the KGB, who Coburn manages to talk around.

Everyone is sent up here, it's an equal opportunity movie: the FBI (they have a surrogate here), gun-loving liberals (personified by William Daniel), Canada, Britain (they want to kill Coburn), the KGB, media, hippies (though the movie goes softer on them). I loved how the biggest villain is the phone company who want legislation passed - this struck me as very true.

The female roles aren't much - they are all sex-objects, even Coburn's girlfriend (there's a hippy who wants to bonk him at the drop of hat). There are two juicy support roles, the KGB agent and Godfrey Cambridge's American agent. The script includes several monologues which are clever but at times seem shoe-horned into the script: Cambridge on how he discovered racism, Coburn's declaration of love to his girlfriend, William Daniel on guns.

It's bright, cheeky, anarchic and occasionally brilliant but I admit to not liking it as much as I thought I would. Maybe this is one of those movies better discovered than anticipated.