The just released techno-polemic (a new genre), "The Manchurian Candidate," isn't a remake in the sense that recent movies such as "The Italian Job," "The Thomas Crown Affair" or "Oceans Eleven" largely copy their predecessors (for better or worse). Loosely following Richard Condon's novel, on which the first movie was based, this version sacrifices the former flick's chilling story development to today's audience-demanded bizarre science experiments with a gloating mad doctor and the usual contemporary thriller's fast and frequent action scenes.
The original Manchurian Candidate came out when the Cold War threatened to become very hot, fear of the U.S.S.R. and its satellites was great and Americans still hadn't digested the reality of Korean War G.I. turncoats who had been brainwashed, a new, fearful threat in a rapidly changing human landscape.
The cast in the first film was superb and those who only know Angela Lansbury as a slightly dotty mystery-author sleuth on TV should become acquainted with her performance as a mom with a mission - to make her little boy President of the United States: by hook, crook or a sniper's rifle.
In the earlier film there is much evil but it emanates from warped souls supported by foreign enemies very familiar to that day's moviegoer. Like "Seven Days in May," a near contemporary of "The Manchurian Cndidate," some might evilly forsake the Constitution's strictures but in the end the system stands strong because it's inherently good.
In the pseudo-remake the American political system and its dependence on money from a vast industrial conglomerate clearly putting profit before patriotism is hoisted to the forefront and relentlessly indicted. The villainous octopus here is "Manchurian Global," an outfit having no small resemblance to...what's the name of the outfit where the current Veep made his millions? Halitosis, Halli...something.
Anyway we have a patriotic, tough but psychically wounded vet of the first Gulf War, Army MAJ Ben Marks who seems to have been off his meds for a while. A captain during the conflict, he's only one grade higher a dozen years later, sure proof that's he isn't a highly rated officer. He survived an attack on his unit which disappeared for three days before being found sans two men presumed KIA. An enlisted man with an impressive family pedigree, Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber, very effective here) supposedly saved the unit from utter destruction for which Marks submitted a Medal of Honor recommendation. Backed up by the surviving soldiers' stories, he gets the nation's highest heroism award.
Fast forward to the present when he's a New York congressman with a hell of a Mommy Dearest, Meryl Streep as Senator Eleanor Shaw. She's determined to see him as her party's vice-presidential candidate and she succeeds. Always a fine actress, in this role she's largely wasted, at least when compared to Angela Lansbury. Where Lansbury showed an incandescently cold determination, this Senator Shaw seems on the verge of offering her beloved son chicken soup or access to her bed or both.
Marks begins to vaguely remember things and as his recollection returns those helping him start disappearing while he becomes the object of, first, investigation and then attempted neutralization. Fortunately he has a Gal Friday, Rosie, played by the not especially talented Kimberly Elise. Anyone who can't figure out early how HER part is going to develop should be barred from movie theater concession stands for a year.
The ending isn't so different from the first movie but what is presented here is a continuing, raw indictment of the American political process. Marks never stops being angry once he suspects that the system isn't on the up and up and he tries to get the audience to share his simmering and, eventually, boiling over rage. Instead of a foreign enemy using an unrealistic model of an existing and rarely effective mind control approach, we have all kinds of diabolical inventions with, of course, an evil mastermind for audiences that need something less subtle than that found in the wonderful initial filmization of the novel.
Overall, Washington's strong performance notwithstanding, "The Manchurian Candidate" is a Message-Film Mess. Partisans of Bush, Kerry and even Nader will leave the theater...unchanged.
If you haven't seen the original (which was pulled from distribution following JFK's assassination), please rent or buy it.
6/10
The original Manchurian Candidate came out when the Cold War threatened to become very hot, fear of the U.S.S.R. and its satellites was great and Americans still hadn't digested the reality of Korean War G.I. turncoats who had been brainwashed, a new, fearful threat in a rapidly changing human landscape.
The cast in the first film was superb and those who only know Angela Lansbury as a slightly dotty mystery-author sleuth on TV should become acquainted with her performance as a mom with a mission - to make her little boy President of the United States: by hook, crook or a sniper's rifle.
In the earlier film there is much evil but it emanates from warped souls supported by foreign enemies very familiar to that day's moviegoer. Like "Seven Days in May," a near contemporary of "The Manchurian Cndidate," some might evilly forsake the Constitution's strictures but in the end the system stands strong because it's inherently good.
In the pseudo-remake the American political system and its dependence on money from a vast industrial conglomerate clearly putting profit before patriotism is hoisted to the forefront and relentlessly indicted. The villainous octopus here is "Manchurian Global," an outfit having no small resemblance to...what's the name of the outfit where the current Veep made his millions? Halitosis, Halli...something.
Anyway we have a patriotic, tough but psychically wounded vet of the first Gulf War, Army MAJ Ben Marks who seems to have been off his meds for a while. A captain during the conflict, he's only one grade higher a dozen years later, sure proof that's he isn't a highly rated officer. He survived an attack on his unit which disappeared for three days before being found sans two men presumed KIA. An enlisted man with an impressive family pedigree, Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber, very effective here) supposedly saved the unit from utter destruction for which Marks submitted a Medal of Honor recommendation. Backed up by the surviving soldiers' stories, he gets the nation's highest heroism award.
Fast forward to the present when he's a New York congressman with a hell of a Mommy Dearest, Meryl Streep as Senator Eleanor Shaw. She's determined to see him as her party's vice-presidential candidate and she succeeds. Always a fine actress, in this role she's largely wasted, at least when compared to Angela Lansbury. Where Lansbury showed an incandescently cold determination, this Senator Shaw seems on the verge of offering her beloved son chicken soup or access to her bed or both.
Marks begins to vaguely remember things and as his recollection returns those helping him start disappearing while he becomes the object of, first, investigation and then attempted neutralization. Fortunately he has a Gal Friday, Rosie, played by the not especially talented Kimberly Elise. Anyone who can't figure out early how HER part is going to develop should be barred from movie theater concession stands for a year.
The ending isn't so different from the first movie but what is presented here is a continuing, raw indictment of the American political process. Marks never stops being angry once he suspects that the system isn't on the up and up and he tries to get the audience to share his simmering and, eventually, boiling over rage. Instead of a foreign enemy using an unrealistic model of an existing and rarely effective mind control approach, we have all kinds of diabolical inventions with, of course, an evil mastermind for audiences that need something less subtle than that found in the wonderful initial filmization of the novel.
Overall, Washington's strong performance notwithstanding, "The Manchurian Candidate" is a Message-Film Mess. Partisans of Bush, Kerry and even Nader will leave the theater...unchanged.
If you haven't seen the original (which was pulled from distribution following JFK's assassination), please rent or buy it.
6/10