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Remake of 'Manchurian Candidate' doesn't disappoint
Denzel Washington (left) and Liev Schreiber
Ken Regan/Paramount Pictures
Director: Jonathan Demme
Stars: Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber, Meryl Streep
MPAA rating: R for violence and some language
In that very durable version, adapted by George Axelrod from Richard Condon's novel and directed by John Frankenheimer, a squad of Americans returned from the Korean War with nightmares they couldn't sort out.
Nor could they account for their lockstep loyalty to the one despised American among them, whom none knew was programmed to turn assassin when triggered by a queen of diamonds and his own dementedly ambitious mother.
The first question about the new "Manchurian Candidate" remake by director Jonathan Demme ("Silence of the Lambs") is whether he has bungled it as badly as he did "The Truth About Charlie," his charmless, on-the-fly remake of the cherished "Charade" (1963).
No, he hasn't. The new "Candidate" lacks the urgency, tone and dread of the original; it's more like a Starving Artists variant on one of Van Gogh's sunflowers -- accomplished on the surface but lacking in vibrancy and nuance.
The updated remake by Daniel Pyne and Dean Georgaris substitutes the Gulf War's Operation Desert Storm of 1991 for the Korean War of the early 1950s. It also replaces the Cold War Commies with a South African scientist-mercenary named Atticus Noyle (Simon McBurney) and a vast wing of American conspirators. But no Middle Easterners.
The remake gives lip service to brainwashing, a topical worry in the mid-20th century, but replaces purely psychological programming with the implanting of computer chips in the brain or shoulder blade.
No more solitaire. No queens. No stylishness in the staging.
So how did Manchuria make its way to Kuwait in '91? It didn't. In the new take, a corporation called Manchurian Global is a private equity fund underwriting a conspiracy to win the White House.
U.S. Army Major Ben Marco (Denzel Washington in Frank Sinatra's old part) is trying to reconcile 13 years later the recurring nightmare he shares with several other veterans of his squad.
The nightmare somehow involves Raymond Prentiss Shaw (Liev Schreiber in the Laurence Harvey part), who was given the Congressional Medal of Honor after the war.
In this version, Raymond is a New York Congressman. His mother Eleanor (Meryl Streep in Angela Lansbury's role), who was the wife of a vice presidential contender in the original, is a widowed New York state senator.
The new dinosaur mom maneuvers her son onto her unidentified party's slate as vice presidential contender, elbowing out of the way the apparently honorable Sen. Thomas Jordan (Jon Voight in the John McGiver part).
On a train -- a curiously unrevised detail -- Ben meets Rosie (Kimberly Elise in the Janet Leigh part), who is the most significantly reconceived of the five leading characters.
Ben is less stable here, subject to mood disorders; he's regarded by superiors as a victim of Gulf War Syndrome and a loose cannon.
Demme seems to have lost his capacity to build a suspense scene or to ignite the imagination or paranoia. The production is glossy but diffident.
Will Demme's picture hold the audience? Very probably. The subject is sufficiently compelling, the treatment polished.
Can it hold a candle to Frankenheimer's vision? No. And even the Oscar-powered cast can't scratch matches fast enough to ignite it.
