Seconds

REVIEW
Hudson stars, in arguably his best screen performance, as the "after" part of a bizarre transformational experiment. A middle-aged businessman, tired of his life, job and wife, goes to a mysterious organization which promises to remake him, to give him a second chance. After extensive surgery, he wakes up with a new face and identity, that of an artist. Settling into his new life, he eventually realizes that he will never find the happiness which he thought was waiting around the corner. So he returns to the organization for another try, with unfortunate results. This bizarre but simple story is itself transformed into a masterpiece of paranoia and horror by Frankenheimer's taut direction and James Wong Howe's dazzling, canted-angled, black-and-white cinematography. Disturbing but brilliant, Seconds always remains plausible, its proposition desirable enough to make it seem very real.