But the bite found in the best recent political documentaries is missing. If you don’t care much about the first version, or what director Jonathan Demme’s name once meant, the cast does an OK job with Daniel Pyne and Dean Georgaris’s routine thriller script. Oddly, it does retain some of the original’s political murkiness - the right-wing villainess (Meryl Streep) resembles Hillary Clinton - but there’s no mythic or comic payoff. The story’s been updated to the first gulf war (Manchurian is now just the name of an evil conglomerate) and deprived of its major shocks (involving formal inventiveness, over-the-top dialogue, and the way the incest is presented). Any remake that scuttles both had better have something good to replace them with this offers only a vague retread of anticorporate thrillers from the 70s. It's just frustrating to see a potentially great and disturbing political satire sacrificing compelling character development.
To say that Jonathan Demme's 2004 version of The Manchurian Candidate lacks merit, however, would be unjust. As Dave Kehr has noted, the 1962 original was an audacious mix of cold war paranoia and twisted cabaret humor. The original version of Candidate works much better on this level, building to a much more disturbing climax. From its compelling premise that really hooks you in from the very beginning to the absolutely The Manchurian Candidate is a truly chilling look at. Though this remake is flawed, it has more than its fair share of positives. But in his heart, Shaw knows that it might explain everything.From the Chicago Reader (March 3, 2004). The Manchurian Candidate is a truly chilling look at the influence that both corporations and money can have in politics. What Marco is suggesting seems absurd, impossible. The 2004 Manchurian Candidate stands as of a piece with the Bourne films and the Christopher Nolan Batman films in trying to address the moral ambiguities. Shaw is at first glad to see him again, then sympathetic, then skeptical. It has been so long since I saw the original, that I was delighted to find that our local library just bought the original, recently reissued on VHS tape.
The senator purrs, seduces, and finally brutalizes a group of politicos into abandoning their choice for the VP spot and taking Raymond instead. The Manchurian Candidate (2004) For a remake, especially showing during this electioneering season, Jonathan Demme s film is pretty good. He resents it, but cannot seem to resist. His mother (Meryl Streep), a Senator, is pushing him very hard. Being a war hero helped him be elected to Congress and he's now a contender for the vice-presidential candidacy. Is it post-traumatic stress, or is it his brain fighting back from something it has been programmed to believe? Meanwhile, Shaw is struggling as well. Marco meets up with a member of the platoon who is badly damaged. Everyone who was there uses the same words to tell the story and especially to describe Raymond Shaw (Liev Shreiber), who got the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery. Marco knows the story of the incident that got him his medal.
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