Taking full advantage of the charged political climate and frayed post-9/11 nerves, Demme’s remake is a political thriller crossed with a horror film. The original played along the fringes of outright satire, with a preposterous plot about brainwashing that was taken quite literally by shaken Cold War audiences. Demme’s film does something similar, although in a more visceral way. The stuff about brainwashing is still in there, and it’s still a silly gimmick even though it’s trussed up with serious-sounding scientific mumbo-jumbo about microprocessor implants and mood-altering drugs. Demme makes the surface of the film so horrifyingly slick that it’s hard not to buy into it, and it’s only afterwards that the extremism of its paranoia really settles in.

Denzel Washington steps into Frank Sinatra’s role as Ben Marco, an Army officer who is haunted by nightmares suggesting that his memory has been altered. Marco is a veteran of the Gulf War, where he commanded a platoon that included a well-known senator’s son, Raymond Prentiss Shaw (Liev Schreiber). According to Marco’s memory, his platoon was ambushed in the Kuwaiti desert and Shaw saved almost everyone by single-handedly taking on the attackers. For his efforts, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Fourteen years later, Shaw has become a popular young Senator who is on the brink of the Vice-Presidential nomination. Working behind this scenes is his ambitious Senator mother, Eleanor Shaw (Meryl Streep), whose maternal drive to protect and promote her son borders on the psychotic. Meanwhile, Marco becomes more and more convinced that his nightmares are telling him something and that Shaw is a similar pawn of memory erasing and mind manipulation--a puppet whose strings Marco must follow to the roots of control.

The Manchurian Candidate maintains a constantly anxious tone and pace, particularly when we are thrown into identifying with Marco, who always seems on the verge of mental collapse (all that No-Doze he ingests to avoid his nightmares isn’t doing his demeanor any good). Despite his typically authoritative screen presence, Denzel Washington manages to suggest a good man who is on the edge, barely managing to hang on. In this sense, the film might have worked better had it maintained some question about Marco’s sanity. Instead, it is made clear early on that bad things are afoot and Marco is in the right, even when his behavior seems irrational to everyone around him.

Although we don’t know her true intentions until the end of the film, Streep’s Eleanor Shaw emerges as the story’s true villain if only because her steely resolve seems so constantly misguided. She invokes patriotic rhetoric at every turn, but you never once believe that anything she does is out of true love of her country. Rather, it is to satiate her own ego-fueled conquest of the political arena, a major battle of which involves defining the future of the country. Streep gives Eleanor an icy intelligence that’s scary; she puts on a good front, but Streep makes sure we can always see just past the façade to her inner shiftiness. This is a woman who’s always out to gain something.

Jonathan Demme hasn’t exactly been living up to the expectations set for him when he won the 1991 Best Director Oscar (how long will he be known only as the director of The Silence of the Lambs?), particularly with The Truth About Charlie (2002), his botched remake of Stanley Donen’s comic thriller Charade (1963). Even though The Manchurian Candidate is another remake—on paper one that seems about as ill-advised as remaking Charade—Demme once again finds his stride, managing to juggle horror and satire and thriller elements without ever losing sight of the film’s relentless march to some kind of closure.

Demme seems particularly infatuated with satirizing the hypermediated overkill of today’s news media and its circus-like coverage of political events. The screen is frequently taken over by barely exaggerated CNN and Fox-style newscasts in which the only thing that isn’t computer-generated and in headache-inducing motion is whatever talking head happens to be intoning prefabricated politicaspeak at that moment--and just because that talking head isn’t made of pixels doesn’t mean it’s any more real. The whole thing is a perfect visualization of the world reduced to Jean Baudrillard’s simulacrum.

As an updated cautionary tale, The Manchurian Candidate’s central terror may lie in the very real threat of political assassination and multinational conglomerates assuming control over everything both overt and covert, but the underlying subtext is that nothing is real anymore--not even our own memories are to be trusted in a world where everything is force-fed to us on a screen.

The Manchurian Candidate DVD
Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
Anamorphic	Yes
Audio	English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Subtitles	English, Spanish
Supplements	Audio commentary by director Jonathan Demme and screenwriter Daniel Pyne “The Enemy Within: Inside The Manchurian Candidate” making-of featurette “The Cast of The Manchurian Candidate” featurette “Political Pundits” featurette Deleted scenes and outtakes (with optional commentary) Liev Schrieber’s screen test
Distributor	Paramount Home Entertainment
SRP	$29.99
Release Date	December 21, 2004
VIDEO
The Manchurian Candidate is presented in a good anamorphic widescreen transfer (a separate open-matte version is available, as well). The image is acceptably sharp and detailed throughout (check out all the junk in Marco’s apartment), with excellent colors, which are particularly well reproduced in the film’s many video screens. The film’s numerous darker scenes are also well rendered, maintaining good shadow detail and inky blacks.
AUDIO
The Dolby Digital 5.1 surround soundtrack is likewise very good. The surround channels are not heavily employed, but they are effective when used, particularly in the attack sequence in Kuwait and in the nightmarish flashback sequences.
SUPPLEMENTS
Director Jonathan Demme and co-screenwriter Daniel Pyne contribute a pleasant, informative audio commentary. They have an easy rapport and plenty to talk about, and while they sometimes get a little too happy glad-handing each other, the commentary mostly sticks to the point. Both Demme and Pyne are articulate men who have clearly thought through what they’re talking about, which is always a bonus. The disc also includes three featurettes: “The Enemy Within: Inside The Manchurian Candidate,” a well-done making-of featurette that addresses the film’s production and how it differs from the original; “The Cast of The Manchurian Candidate,” which is a more lightweight look at the cast and characters; and “Political Pundits,” which is footage of various pundits, artists, and comedians (most of whom you probably haven’t heart of) talking about political issues, some of which was used in the film. There are a number of deleted and extended scenes with optional commentary by Demme and Pyne, as well as two outtakes (all in nonanamorphic widescreen). The deleted scenes are quite good and add to the film’s narrative, but had to be cut to keep the running time down. Lastly, Liev Schreiber’s screen test is included.

Overall Rating: (3)

All images copyright © Paramount Home Entertainment