The Manchurian Candidate

Arguably the best film of Frank Sinatra's career, The Manchurian Candidate (1962) ranks as a classic slice of Cold War paranoia. That the remake takes major liberties with the original's central premise and still manages to maintain a more than reasonable level of intrigue is the most remarkable thing about Jonathan Demme's film. Opening in 1991, The Manchurian Candidate sees a group of American soldiers, led by Ben Marco (Washington), engaged in a fierce firefight. One of Marco's soldiers, Raymond Shaw (Schreiber) saves the lives of his platoon members, leading him to be proclaimed as a war hero. A decade and a half later, and Shaw's senator mother, Eleanor Prentiss Shaw (Meryl Streep) is pushing him as the vice presidential candidate in the forthcoming election. Still wracked by nightmares and memories of the event in Iraq, Marco begins to suspect that all may not be quite as it seems...

Understandably released in the run up to the last American presidential election, The Manchurian Candidate is a strange film, primarily thanks to its eagerness to fluctuate between paranoid intelligence and outright foolishness. Dispensing with many of the ingredients of the original but mixing them up in a similarly multifaceted fashion, Demme, despite some narrative inconsistencies, has made a handsome film. The screenwriters mistake complexity for development and motivation in places, but The Manchurian Candidate's atmosphere is spot on. Warmly recommended.