The Manchurian Candidate: review

The prospect of a remake of "The Manchurian Candidate" filled me with dread, quite frankly. I've reviewed and/or seen an increasing number of remakes over the past few years, and I usually come to the same conclusion — ultimately, they're just not as powerful as the original.

I'm not biased against remakes, per se; I'd even say the '56 version of "The Man Who Knew Too Much" is better than the original '34 version (of course, they shared the same director, Alfred Hitchcock). And Peter Jackson, discussing his upcoming remake of "King Kong," pointed out that most people today wouldn't bother seeing the 1933 original (sad but true; if you're not a film buff, it might as well have come out in 1833). And while I would only have seen "The Ladykillers" remake if you held a gun to my head (the original 1955 version is too dear to my heart), I didn't have quite that level of devotion to the original "Manchurian Candidate" (1962). So I decided to give the new version a chance.

The original film boasted an excellent cast of Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury, and Laurence Harvey (and, in the largely thankless role of "The Girlfriend," Janet Leigh). The plot concerns a squad of US soldiers kidnapped during the Korean War by a Communist cabal and subsequently brainwashed. Sgt. Raymond Shaw (Harvey) is the designated "star," brainwashed into becoming a killer assassin, ingeniously triggered into action by the Queen of Diamonds in a deck of cards, giving the line "Why don"t you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?" a sinister ring. Major Ben Marco (Sinatra), also a member of the squad, is sufficiently troubled by his mysterious dreams about what happened to monitor Shaw's actions, while Shaw's fiendish mother (Lansbury) manipulates both Raymond and her hapless senator husband (Raymond's stepfather).

It seemed a fantastic premise at the time (no one knew that the CIA had already been experimenting with mind control techniques throughout the '50s, culminating in the MKULTRA program). And the film was ultimately deemed so disturbing, especially in the wake of President Kennedy's assassination, that Sinatra, who owned the copyright, pulled the film from release, where it languished in the vaults until 1988. The aura of Cold War paranoia that permeates the film gives it a chilling edge, but some have suggested that since it so readily evokes the late '50s/early '60s, it's ripe for a remake. Accordingly, the new "Candidate" isn't just a remake, it's also an update. This time, the hapless soldiers are abducted during the first Gulf War in '91. But it's not the evil Commies or Iraqis who brainwash them; it's their fellow Americans working for Manchurian Global, a corporation with its own plans for world domination via getting a brainwashed stooge into the White House.

Further, Shaw's become a Vice Presidential candidate, egged on by his domineering mother — and now she's a senator. Liev Schreiber's Shaw is vaguely evil, but largely monotonous, while Meryl Streep (as Mommie Dearest) easily walks away with the film's best performance. It's the kind of thing she can do in her sleep, but that doesn't make it any less fun; in fact, during her first big moment, as she badgers the party higher-ups to put Raymond on the ticket, I thought "Hey, this might not be too bad after all." And the film has captured much of the political zeitgeist in a way that's a little creepy in these fraught times; the wheeling-dealing, the terrorism alerts, the frantic media ever turning up the heat on our paranoia.

Still, it doesn't take too long for things to start going seriously awry, especially once you start noticing those big ol' plot holes. Marco, played with studious sincerity by Denzel Washington, has been suffering from those pesky dreams and other related obsessions for a decade — and, frankly, you just aren't going to be that together if you've been plagued with such thoughts for so long. His flashbacks to the mysterious brainwashing are the least interesting of the film, even verging on the ridiculous, filled with visions of women in weird makeup and the gruesome strugglings of the tormented soldiers. Shaw's becoming a VP nominee heightens Marco�s interest in him, and he heads for NYC to track him down. It's here he notices — for the first time in 10 years? — an implant in his back, which he digs out with a knife. I won't tell you how he goes about trying to find Shaw's implant; that would ruin the surprise. Let's just say it made me laugh out loud.

There were a few other groan-worthy moments, largely due to the love interest they stick in with Rosie (Kimberly Elise), Marco's friendly local grocery clerk (or so she seems, wink wink), who, admittedly, gets a more complex role than poor Janet Leigh got stuck with. Basically, the plot gets messier and messier, the implausibilities stack up, and you end up having to take a lot of the plot twists on faith. Like a lot of modern movies, this "Candidate" starts out with an interesting concept, but the filmmakers run out of ideas on where to go with it well before the film's end.

Don't believe me? Well, Seattle area folks can check out the original "Candidate" this Friday, July 30, 10 pm, on PBS, when some wag's scheduled it to run the night following the end of the Democratic convention. Which brings me to the most unlikely aspect of the whole scenario behind the new "Candidate." A conglomeration hell bent on globalization wouldn't go to all the trouble of training killer assassins in order to gain control of the White House. They'd just make heftier campaign contributions.