Jonathan Demme's re-make of The Manchurian Candidate (1962) faces an almost impossible challenge: measuring up to one of the greatest films of all time. While not quite as good as its groundbreaking predecessor, the new film, starring Hollywood luminaries Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep, is still an excellent film and a bright beacon of light in the otherwise dreary and dark fog that is the summer movie season.
The story revolves around the reprogramming of a group of U.S. Army soldiers after an ambush in Iraq during Desert Storm in 1991. Major Bennett Marco (Washington) and his men recall that terrible night --and swear to a man that Sgt. Raymond Prentiss Shaw (Liev Schreiber) not only heroically saved them but led them through the desert to safety during a harrowing three-day trek.
Shaw receives the Congressional Medal of Honor (on Marco's recommendation) and proceeds to enter a career in politics. Years pass, and in an election year, the United States, ravaged by incessant terrorist attacks, is looking for new leadership.
His mother, Sen. Eleanor Prentiss Shaw (Streep), is able to pull the strings necessary to get her son, now a congressman, onto the heavily favored presidential ticket of the challenging party as the vice-presidential candidate.
Marco, haunted by dreams that tell him that not everything is what it seems, discovers that he, Shaw and his unit were brainwashed by the sinister Manchurian Global Corp. A series of twists and turns brings the film to its shocking climax.
The strongest parts of the film involve not necessarily the major action but rather the incessant din of the America of the near-future. As Marco hunts for the truth, the audience is subjected to a media overload telling of economic misfortune and terrorist attacks. The overload serves to represent the conflicting voices swirling around in Shaw's and Marco's heads as they try to come to grips with being brainwashed.
Streep, arguably the finest actress in Hollywood's past 25 years, gives a stirring performance as the power-hungry Sen. Shaw, who planned the whole operation out nearly 20 years before to turn her son into a puppet she could manipulate in order to grab power. She claims to have pulled from the personalities of past and present Washington power players Karen Hughes and Peggy Noonan as the basis for her role; others argue that she must be based on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., (proof that anything can turn into a polarizing political debate these days).
Washington, playing the familiar role of a military man, is, just like in those past roles, very convincing as a man struggling to keep his sanity.
The movie has few flaws on its own -scenes featuring Jon Voight as the forgotten running mate feature some very unbelievable scenarios, and Demme's decision to use extreme close-ups gets old fast -but because it takes from the original film, it is impossible not to intensely compare the two films.
The original suffers from familiar flaws of earlier films -stiff acting in parts and a lack of nuanced dialogue. It nonetheless contains some landmark movie moments. An early scene where the group of soldiers, this time held captive by Chinese and Russian communists (hence the original Manchurian connection), think they are talking to an old lady's group when in reality they are demonstrating in front of their captors, is perfectly filmed and convincing; later, a Joseph McCarthy-wannabe pleads in front of a Senate committee while a television in the lower left-hand corner of the screen shows the action occurring live.
While the new film pays homage to the old by somewhat copying these scenes, the technical skill to pull them off some 42 years ago speaks to the brilliance of the original, especially in comparison to its contemporary competitors during the early 1960s. Also, and not to give it away, the ending twist in the original, where the audience is lured into believing one of two things can happen, and neither does, dwarfs a similar conclusion to the new film.
That said, the new Manchurian Candidate will probably be the best movie choice until the fall and represents money well spent. Just save a few bucks, so you can rent the original on the way home.
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Kyle Kondik
