The Manchurian Candidate

Never a big fan of the original, I give this remake neither credit nor demerit against the Frankenheimer/Sinatra version. They share flaws and have their separate virtues. Jonathan Demme is a more than competent director, but less that we hoped for in the pre-Silence of the Lambs era, when his filmmaking was infused with New Wave energy, no telling where he might go. Well, now he’s into remakes of studio product. He tries to insert some topicality, but it mostly comes across as lame. The narrative thrust is adequate but there are no scenes nearly as surreal as Frankenheimer’s ChiComm tea party. Though many did not, I enjoyed the Hillary-like Meryl Streep in the Angela Lansbury role. Denzel Washington can always hold his own against Frank Sinatra, and while Liev Schreiber is not as memorably weird as Laurence Harvey he does bring his own coloration to the role of the manipulated son, now the candidate instead of the assassin. The film was overpraised for its anti-Bush relevance, which is hardly more than a Maguffin (as Hitchcock always called the initiating megillah of his thrillers.) (2004, dvd, n.) *6* (MC-76, RT-80.)