08.07.04
Movie Review: The Manchurian Candidate

Well, they don’t come ripped from the headlines any faster than this.

The second cinematic bookend to the televised Democrat National Convention (the first being Fahrenheit 9/11), the remake of John Frankenheimer’s 1962 Cold War classic adds some updates to the technology, some topical touches, and a few character changes. This time Maj. Bennett Marco (Denzel Washington, in for Frank Sinatra) and Sgt. Raymond Shaw (Lawrence Harvey lookalike Liev Schreiber) are ’91 Gulf War vets who have been brainwashed, this time at the hands of the Carlyle Group-like conglomerate Manchurian Global, who pull the strings to install Shaw into the White House. Meryl Streep plays it even more evil than Angela Lansbury as Shaw’s mother, this time a senator in her own right.

Director Jonathan Demme makes good use of past and current iconography (pay attention and catch a glimmer of John Edwards, a hint of Colin Powell or a shadow of Al Sharpton.) Demme also uses a lot of subjective camera work- the characters keep addressing the camera directly, as if it was another character, which gets distracting.

Washington is, as usual, all squared-jawed respectability as the former military man who has come unhinged trying to piece together what really happened after his platoon goes missing for three days after being ambushed in Kuwait 13 years ago. Unfortunately, his character occasionally comes off as being more than a little dense. (He keeps approaching the government for help? How did he get through the 90’s without watching a single episode of "The X-Files"? The government is the last place you go…)

Oedipus Wrecks: Schreiber and Streep
© 2004 Paramount Pictures