Overall Rating
  Awesome: 19%
Worth A Look: 49%
Average: 18%
Pretty Bad: 13%
Total Crap: 1%
8 reviews, 52 user ratings
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| Manchurian Candidate, The (2004) |
by Elaine Perrone
"A Candidate well worth your consideration."

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In 1991, the battlefield was Kuwait, not Korea, and in 2004, the enemy is not Communism but The Corporation. In the vision of director Jonathan Demme and writers Daniel Pyne and Dean Georgaris, the titular "Manchurian" is not the Chinese government but a multi-national conglomerate called Manchurian Global. Here, their privately-owned vice presidential "Candidate" is ostensible war-hero, Medal of Honor recipient Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber), who has been painstakingly groomed for the Oval Office by Big Business and his ruthless mother, Senator Eleanor Prentiss Shaw (Meryl Streep). This time around, Ben Marco (Denzel Washington) is the delusional loner brainwashed as a trained assassin, the man intended to be the vehicle propelling Halliburton...er, Manchurian Global into the Shaw White House.Wisely opting not to simply remake and update John Frankenheimer's 1962 original, Demme, Pyne, and Georgaris, along with co-producers Scott Rudin, Scott Aversano, and Tina Sinatra, have delivered a sharply written, intelligent, thoroughly believable study of paranoia and conspiracy in the world of contemporary politics. While perhaps not quite as chilling, nor as witty, as Frankenheimer's masterpiece (or Richard Condon's novel, upon which it was based), which took aim at 1950s McCarthyism, Manchurian Candidate 2004 is a worthy political thriller in its own right, highly relevant and beautifully timed.
The three leads are terrific. Denzel Washington is totally convincing, and sympathetic, as Ben Marco, the soldier who is haunted by visions that he comes to learn are not only his own. Meryl Streep is chilling as Senator Eleanor Shaw, the woman who will stop at nothing to achieve the power she sees as her birthright, a prerogative denied her by her weak-willed husband. Best of all is Liev Schreiber, who has become one of the finest American actors working today. Raymond Shaw, as Schreiber portrays him, is a man of great depth and charisma, one with inherent principles who finds himself in moral, and mental, conflict.
Also fine in strong supporting roles are Jeffrey Wright (Angels in America) as the fellow soldier who confronts Marco, and the army, with the men's shared nightmares, and Jon Voight as a principled senator who is a threat to Manchurian Global's best laid plans.Perfectly poised to stand beside Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Corporation this election year, The Manchurian Candidate is a worthy companion piece to both.
del.icio.us
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=10268&reviewer=376 originally posted: 07/28/04 11:54:38
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USA 30-Jul-2004 (R) DVD: 21-Dec-2004
UK N/A
Australia 28-Oct-2004
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