THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (2004)

UIP

RELEASED 19 November 2004

In the year of the 2004 American Presidential election and the continuing debacle in Iraq, ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ was certainly topical.

After the Gulf War, U.S. Army Major Bennett Marco (Denzel Washington) begins to have terrible nightmares about his platoon's ambush in the Kuwaiti desert and the heroics of Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber), who won the Medal of Honor for saving Marco's crew. Marco’s nighmares cast a different version of events with horrifying results. Is Major Marco suffering from Gulf War Syndrome, or is there some sinister truth buried deep within his memory? 

Meanwhile, Raymond Shaw is now the leading candidate for the vice president post, guided in everything he does by his controversial mother, Senator Eleanor Prentiss Shaw (Meryl Streep), who seems to have an unhealthy obsession with her son and his ambitions.

I enjoyed ‘The Manchurian Candidate’. It’s a gripping, scary thriller that is both a social satire and a grim warning of a nightmare scenario. The tension is ratcheted up from the opening five minutes and never relaxes it’s vice-like grip on your attention. The plot twists and turns right until the very end, and you’re never quite sure how it’s all going to end up.

Everyone involved is on top form, with Liev Shreiber probably the pick of the acting trio. Denzel is great but we’ve come to expect no less from his high standards, and it’s a pleasure to see Meryl Streep given a part she can really get her teeth into. Critics have suggested her portrayal of Senator Eleanor Prentiss Shaw is based on Senator Hilary Clinton, but Streep insists she actually had Margaret Thatcher more in mind. Whichever is closer to the truth, her portrayal has definite echoes of Angela Lansbury in the 1962 original.

Other delights are Tak Fujimoto's cinematography, an aggressive selection of music for the wartime scenes, and some great directing touches, especially when the camera drunkenly drifts around Liev Shreiber and Denzel Washington’s faces in their pivotal scene, and the room ‘lighting up’ when Raymond Shaw is 'activated' by phone, almost like the proverbial lightbulb above the head.

I also watched the 1962 original, and this remake beats John Frankenheimer’s effort in every department, although that’s not taking anything away from what is a very good Sinatra film.

‘The Manchurian Candidate’ is undoubtedly one of the best films of 2004, with never a dull moment. Winning stuff.

FOUR OUT OF FIVE