Remake of 'Manchurian Candidate' as frightening as '62 version

By Jack Garner
Gannett News Service

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (R) Three-and-a-Half Stars (Good-to-Excellent) Denzel Washington stars in this intriguing political thriller that updates a '60s classic to the modern era. Meryl Streep and Liev Schreiber co-star for director Jonathan Demme. Paramount, 125 minutes.

The John Frankenheimer original envisioned an attempt by Communist China and U.S. traitors to take over the U.S. government, through hypnotism and assassination. It involves U.S soldiers (including Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey) who are kidnapped and brainwashed during the Korean War.

The new Jonathan Demme version puts a modern big-business spin on the plot, spotlighting a nefarious scheme to use brainwashed Persian Gulf War soldiers to help put into office, as one character puts it, "the first completely corporate-owned vice president of the United States." The company behind the scheme is a major wartime industry, fully involved in the battles in the Middle East.

Otherwise, the two films share a fascination with political maneuvering, emotional manipulations, paranoia and betrayal.

Washington is Ben Marco, an officer who fought in the Persian Gulf War in 1991. One of his squad — Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber) — received the Medal of Honor for saving his fellow soldiers during a firefight.

But now, years later, Marco and other members of the squad are experiencing nightmares. Interestingly, they're all the same nightmares. Marco begins to suspect his memories of the firefight may not be exactly as things occurred.

Shaw, meanwhile, has become a congressman and is in the race for the vice presidential nod at his party's upcoming political convention. Pushing hard for his nomination is his politician mother, a senator played by the fabulous Meryl Streep.

Angela Lansbury, who played the role in the original, set the standard for evil, manipulative motherhood. Streep, happily, is her equal.

Except for the corporate spin, the new "Candidate" remains loyal to the fascinating structure of the Frankenheimer original (and the Richard Condon novel upon which it is based).

The mean-spirited volatility of politics today is most like that of the 1960s, and, as in that era, today is a fertile time for conspiracy theories and the politics of paranoia. In other words, "The Manchurian Candidate" is as welcome and as frightening today as it was when Frank Sinatra played Washington's role in the '62 version.

Washington delivers his usual, capable lead, but the film belongs primarily to Schreiber's first-rate portrait of confusion and manipulation and to Streep's fearsome political witchcraft.

Rated R, violence, profanity.

Jack Garner of The Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle is chief film reviewer for Gannett News Service. An archive of his reviews can be found at democratandchronicle.com/goesout/mov/caps. He can be reached at jgarner@democratandchronicle.com.