The Manchurian Candidate [HD DVD]
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Anthony Mackie, Dorian Missick, Jeffrey Wright, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Pablo SchreiberBrand: Paramount
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 129 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-08-01
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Paramount
Movie Reviews of The Manchurian Candidate [HD DVD]
Movie Review: If This Isn't "Engaging" Then What is?
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a riveting and provocative remake by a top-rate director in Jonathan Demme. The original with Frank Sinatra may very well have been controversial and its plot far-fetched, but the acting was so compelling and sincere that it effaced these objections and commanded even the most skeptical viewer's full attention. With its stellar cast -- the brilliant Meryl Streep and the always reliable Denzel Washington -- this film delivers precisely the same merits. Streep's performance as a smarmy, power-obsessed US senator bent on advancing her son's political career is so convincing as to induce chills, while Denzel never once flinches as a disturbingly paranoid victim of US intelligence abuses. Especially welcome is Demme's courageous decision not to make a stale carbon copy of the film's classic predecessor, but to reinvent it in a more contemporary setting: the post gulf-war/9-11 world. Fueled largely by the hysterical climate of fear and terror we now live in, his portrayal of contemporary American life is thoroughly convincing and lends credence to its premise: a government conspiracy to plant a privately-owned president in the white house. Besides, in our age of campaign finance disarray and the public interconnectedness between military operations and corporate profit (hence Eisenhower's prophetic farewell speech), the accusation seems less far-fetched than naive, for it certainly does not take some fantastic intelligence scheme to buy-out a politician. American history is rife with examples and the pattern continues to this day. Just take a look at some of the current allegations against Tom Delay.
But whether or not this conspiracy theory resonates, the human problems the film presents are as believable as they are engaging. There is nothing to believe or not believe about one man's tortured efforts to trust his instincts amid so much harrowing opposition, to maintain a sense of reality and truth amid a Pynchon-esque culture that favors images over substance, virtual existence over tangible reality, platitudes over discourse, advertizing over honesty. These are not conspiracies: all you have to do is look around on your morning commute through ten thousand billboards flanking the highway, keep up with a political campaign for a while, or simply try to get through a single hour without being hit up for money by a commercial, a print ad, a junk-email or a telemarketer. These are the situations Demme explores in his admirable attempt to endear a very jaded audience to the adventurous claims of a sci-fi political satire. Or is it satire? Gulf War Synrome is a widely documented phenomenon observed in tens of thousands of Desert Storm troops. The battlefield of Kuwait is known to be the most toxic in the history of modern warfare, with US planes detonating various chemical weapons sites in 1991 Iraq (and, according to well-censored reports, American missiles equipped with chemical agents), unleashing vast amounts of toxic poisons into the sky that were then blown about by the weather, infecting soldiers. Symptoms these people complain about are identical to those of victims of agent orange or chemical attacks in World War II, and the government itself has set up several hospitals exclusively for soldiers who exhibit symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome. Lastly, the theory of government efforts to hypnotize and program people is actually a well-founded possibility. Evidence of cold-war era hypnosis programs sponsored by US and Soviet intelligence agencies is real and, in that age of massive espionage and paranoia, hardly seems surprising. People are free to believe or disregard widely spread and often credible reports that Sirhan Sirhan, the alleged RFK assassin, was the product of just such a program. Neither he nor the security guard who is suspected to be the real killer, Thane Eugene Cesar, have been able to remember anything about that disgusting afternoon in California. While my mind's comfort depends on a denial of these possibilities, my gut gags over its inability to dismiss them. This nausea was just one among an array of emotional responses I experienced while watching The Manchurian Candidate. I think films capable of inducing such strong response are becoming rarer by the year, and that this one qualifies as just such a film ought to be reason enough to give it a chance.
Summary of The Manchurian Candidate [HD DVD]
Academy AwardŽ winners Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep, along with Golden Globe and Emmy nominee Liev Schreiber, mesmerize a whole new generation of audiences in Academy AwardŽ winner Jonathan Demme?s "The Manchurian Candidate." As the entire nation watches the presidential campaign hurtle towards Election Day, one soldier races to uncover the conspiracy behind it - a conspiracy that seeks to destroy democracy itself.The Manchurian Candidate, a classic of paranoid cinema from the 1960s, gets a cunning update, rife with hot-topic references to corporate war profiteering and electronic voting machines. Major Ben Marco (Denzel Washington, Training Day) has been haunted by nightmares ever since a firefight during the first Gulf War--a battle in which he believes he was saved by the heroism of Sgt. Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber, Kate & Leopold). But Marco's nightmares suggest otherwise and drive him to investigate what happened, which may threaten Shaw's candidacy for vice-president. Meryl Streep plays Shaw's mother, a senior senator who manipulates everyone around her with an iron will and a sharp tongue. The Manchurian Candidate loses steam towards the end, but up until then director Jonathan Demme keeps the movie rolling fluidly, crafting some creepy paranoia of his own while Streep tears into everything in her path. --Bret Fetzer
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