Movies
08:38 AM EDT on Friday, July 30, 2004
Unfortunately, that someone turned out to be Jonathan Demme, who two
summers ago sucked the thrills out of the classic Cary Grant-Audrey
Hepburn romantic thriller Charade with his dunderheaded remake, The
Truth About Charlie.
The Manchurian Candidate comes out a bit better, though it switches the
focus of the plot and messes up the ending of writer George Axelrod's
1962 original, which starred Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh
and, in an Oscar-nominated performance, a chilling Angela Lansbury. If
you haven't seen that film, or haven't seen it in a long long time,
you're more likely to accept this bait-and-switch remake, although the
ending may leave you not so much chilled as scratching your head.
Most of the basic ideas are intact, though enlarged and simplified. This
means the dread sense of paranoia that hung over the first film never
registers as strongly, and the original's breathtaking finale is more
ho-hum.
The 1962 movie was set during the Cold War, when those much-feared
Commies could be suspected of trying to meddle in American elections
through -- gasp! -- brainwashing. The film was a product of its
suspicious Red Scare era.
Forty-two years later the commies have been tamed, so now the enemy is a
huge multinational corporation with strong political clout whose largely
faceless leaders are behind the behind-the-scenes machinations of the
plot.
In 1962, Sinatra played a Korean war vet who comes to believe he and his
platoon had been brainwashed by the North Koreans and that one of them,
Harvey's Raymond Shaw, has been turned into an assassin poised for
murder during an American political convention. The final scenes, as
Harvey tries to take aim from the rafters of the old Madison Square
Garden on Eighth Avenue, are fraught with suspense.
In the new, not necessarily improved Manchurian Candidate, the concept
of brainwashing, which today's audiences might not buy so readily, has
been replaced by computer chips that have been inserted into some of the
characters to make them do Big Brother's bidding.
This Manchurian Candidate is not set near Manchuria in Asia nor during
the Korean War. The era is the Persian Gulf War, and the Manchuria of
the title is Manchurian Global, a worldwide corporation with close ties
to the U.S. government. One of their prime supporters in Congress is
Eleanor Prentiss Shaw (Meryl Streep), an influential senator who is
trying to position her war-hero congressman son, Raymond (Liev
Schreiber), into the vice-presidential spot on their party's ticket.
Cajoling, wheeling-dealing, demanding, she's a dragon lady. She also has
a wicked case of smother love for Raymond.
Denzel Washington has the Sinatra role, sort of. Rather than being a
straightforward hero, however, Washington's Major Bennett Marco is
complicated, especially as the secret purpose of the conspiracy falls
into play.
There is some suspense as Marco comes to realize that something is
desperately wrong and everyone he tries to warn treats him like a
madman. He finds some comfort from a friendly supermarket checkout gal
(Kimberly Elise) whose name is Susie, or Rosie, or something. As time
goes on, he begins to suspect she's more than just someone who rings up
his limburger cheese.
But Schreiber's Raymond is more mouse under his mother's thumb than the
potential time bomb that Harvey portrayed. When he gets coded messages
over the phone, a gentle smile creeps over his face and the room
brightens around him. At one point Raymond's hotel room wall falls away
to reveal an operating room and a sort of crazed scientist waiting to
insert a chip into his brain. What? And they thought you wouldn't buy
brainwashing?
Even harder to buy is the moment the seemingly mild-mannered Raymond
turns robotically haywire and does something very naughty. The scene is
supposed to come off as frightening, but it merely looks bizarre.
Streep seems to be channeling Lansbury in her role, although she's the
most successful of all in the cast, creating a woman you love to hate.
Frightening in her control-freak tone and in her misdirected patriotism,
she's the one character who seems to be the cautionary figure for our
time. And that's a good thing.
**1/2
The Manchurian Candidate
Starring: Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, Liev Schreiber, Jon Voight,
Kimberly Elise.
Rated: R, contains violence.
With politics and politicians clogging the TV news slots these days,
someone must have thought it a good time to remake the Cold War
political thriller The Manchurian Candidate.
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