08:38 AM EDT on Friday, July 30, 2004

BY MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal Arts Writer

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.

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improved Manchurian Candidate, the concept of brainwashing, which today's audiences might not buy so readily, has been replaced by computer chips that have been inserted into some of the characters to make them do Big Brother's bidding.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.