The final part of Frankenheimer's paranoia trilogy. Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) is a middle aged banker who feels life has passed him by. He pays a shady organisation a huge sum for a second chance. He gets extensive cosmetic surgery, a phoney back story and the company provides a corpse to allow the Arthur to shed his old life. He becomes Tony Wilson (Rock Hudson!).
Hamilton was one of the generation born into the depression, sent to fight in WWII and who returned to the sexually and socially inhibited America of the fifties. In the sixties, young people reject those values, get the contraceptive pill and discover free love. Who wouldn't want another go around?
Only Arthur doesn't change. Tony is just a frightening, unknowable mask. In his new identity, he begins to question who he used to be. A lot of this feeling of paranoia is created visually with the distorting lenses, and by the gloomy progressive score.
It is a chilling story of a rapacious organisation whose mission, to provide a service to the rich, has been swallowed by its corporate objective, the obligation to create wealth. Anything can be justified in the pursuit of profit. Arthur's self doubt is exploited and he becomes paralysed in a terrifying web of ruthless, inexorable business ethics.