The Manchurian Candidate (film)
From AwardAnnals
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| Director(s) | Jonathan Demme |
|---|---|
| Distributor | Paramount |
| Honors | |
| Serving together in the Persian Gulf War, Captain Bennett Marco and Sgt. Raymond Shaw were part of a platoon of soldiers kidnapped and brainwashed. Ten years later, Shaw gears up for his vice presidential campaign while Marco eventually remembers being kidnapped and discovers Shaw’s powerful mother played a big part in that scheme. Determined to reveal the truth behind everything, Marco must first convince Shaw that the brainwashing really happened. | |
Serving together in the Persian Gulf War, Captain Bennett Marco and Sgt. Raymond Shaw were part of a platoon of soldiers kidnapped and brainwashed. Ten years later, Shaw gears up for his vice presidential campaign while Marco eventually remembers being kidnapped and discovers Shaw’s powerful mother played a big part in that scheme. Determined to reveal the truth behind everything, Marco must first convince Shaw that the brainwashing really happened.
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
The Manchurian Candidate, a classic of paranoid cinema from the 1960s, gets a cunning update, rife with hot-topic references to corporate war profiteering and electronic voting machines. Major Ben Marco (Denzel Washington, Training Day) has been haunted by nightmares ever since a firefight during the first Gulf War—a battle in which he believes he was saved by the heroism of Sgt. Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber, Kate & Leopold). But Marco’s nightmares suggest otherwise and drive him to investigate what happened, which may threaten Shaw’s candidacy for vice-president. Meryl Streep plays Shaw’s mother, a senior senator who manipulates everyone around her with an iron will and a sharp tongue. The Manchurian Candidate loses steam towards the end, but up until then director Jonathan Demme keeps the movie rolling fluidly, crafting some creepy paranoia of his own while Streep tears into everything in her path. —Bret Fetzer
Barnes and Noble
Updating a Cold War thriller to reflect 21st-century geopolitics is tricky business, but director Jonathan Demme reworks Richard Condon’s pulpy page-turner rather neatly, owing to particularly deft scripting and some noteworthy performances. Top-billed Denzel Washington brings feverish intensity to his characterization of Major Ben Marco, a career officer haunted by dreams of his days as a captive during the Gulf War. Everybody knows that Marco was rescued by one of his sergeants, Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber), who parlayed his heroism into a distinguished political career that’s earned him his party’s nomination for vice president. Yes, everybody knows—but is that what really happened? Did Shaw really save his commanding officer, or was he just a pawn in a larger game? Tackling the role played by Frank Sinatra in John Frankenheimer’s 1962 version, Washington makes Marco a borderline paranoiac who risks his career and even his life in an obsessive quest for the truth, and the actor conveys that zeal so convincingly that he’ll give you goose bumps. Schreiber, a sensational actor who seems to have a particular affinity for tightly wound characters, brings maturity and affability to Shaw while at the same time suggesting the inner conflict that threatens to unhinge him. But the real acting honors go to Meryl Streep, whose bravura characterization of Raymond’s mother—herself a ruthless U.S. senator inflamed with the desire to see her son installed in the White House—is unlike anything she’s ever done on film. Her scenes crackle with near-demonic energy, and she constantly drags Momma Shaw right to the precipice of believability, only to pull back before going over the edge. Without Communists to pick on, Demme and his screenwriters assign the primary villainy to monstrously large multinational Manchurian Global, and one can easily draw correlations to the current administration’s ties to the corporate world. Ultimately, the story may be preposterous, but Demme keeps the tension ratcheted so that you won’t notice such things until after the credits roll. Ed Hulse
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Related works
The Manchurian Candidate: A Novel
Everybody knows the controversial 1962 film of The Manchurian Candidate starring Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury, even though it was taken out of circulation for twenty-five years after JFK’s assassination. Equally controversial on publication, and just as timely today, is Richard Condon’s original novel. First published in 1959, at the height of cold war paranoia, The Manchurian Candidate is a terrifying and suspenseful political thriller featuring Sergeant Raymond Shaw, ex-prisoner of war, Medal of Honor winner, American hero…and brainwashed assassin.…
