Brilliant film with an all star cast about the potential for a military coup in the US. Too bad Burt Lancaster was so much older. He could have played a great Ollie North, which is essentially who he plays in this 1950s movie.

Screenwriter Rod Serling's adaptation of Fletcher Knebel's and Charles W. Bailey's 1961 suspenseful novel becomes a contemporary (1964) reformulation of the 'duty vs. loyalty' conundrum that Caius Brutus faced in William Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar'. A politically principled but ineffectual President of the U.S. brings about distrust and unrest among the nation; consequently, an adjutant to the Joint Chiefs faces the decision to abide by the suspected illegal resolve of an immediate superior whom he admires or to uphold the institutional order and betray the confidence bestowed upon him. Director John Frankenheimer ('Seconds'; 'The Train'; 'The Manchurian Candidate', 1962), in fine mettle before his inexplicable decline, with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas and an exceptional cast, including Fredric March as the President and favorite George Macready - for once as one of the good guys - as Secretary of the Interior. A nice combo to experience alongside Lancaster's and Douglas' pairing in 'Gunfight at the O.K. Corral'. Jonathan Darby's 'The Enemy Within', the 1994 remake from the same script, is not nearly as compelling.