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Manchurian Candidate (2004)

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  • Manchurian Candidate (2004)

    My wife and I love the deservingly popular original from 1962 with Frank Sinatra and Angela Langbury. We had mixed feelings about this year's remake with Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep. A day after seeing it yesterday, the haze of good filmmaking now faded, there's no doubt in my mind the original is better. But, I also really enjoyed Jonathan Demme's take. I'd recommend it, but only if you're renting the original the same weekend.

    As I mentioned above, I think Jonathan Demme made a great movie. Well paced, tense or frenetic or creepy at all the right moments, and both Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep shine. Even more enjoyable was seeing how the world in which the story is set was updated to bring us into the present day... terror alerts on TV, high security everywhere you go, the TV droning on about corporate power, civil liberties, and American losses in overseas conflicts.

    With Al Franken's more-than-a-cameo and the perfectly-recreated political speeches, it verged on a bit of overkill, but to me it's actually refreshing to see a movie that tries to at least acknowledge some of the way things have changed since 9/11. I always wonder how "classic movie" fans fifty years from now will see films of this decade, most pretending as if nothing happened at all.

    Is the Manchurian Candidate political? Everyone's connecting Meryl Streep's character to Hilary Clinton, and Manchurian Global to Halliburton, and yes there's a political convention and an election with a map of red and blue states... But folks who are trying to see a hidden message about Decision 2004 are ignoring the larger point. Tellingly, my wife and I disagreed on exactly what party Shaw and his mother are in. The point is, it's "a" political party. Perhaps the definitive political party.

    Basically, standing on its own, the new Manchurian Candidate is a great, taut, rewarding political conspiracy thriller. The problem is, it's hard to separate it from its namesake, its inspiration, and after you've had some time to think about it, you can't stop comparing the two versions.

    I say bite the bullet, see both, and then try and appreciate the commonalities as well, and what they're trying to say about extremism, fanaticism, and human nature.

  • #2
    Re: Manchurian Candidate (2004)

    I haven't seen the original, maybe I will someday but this movie got me wondering who was ordering who to kill who and for what reason.

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