The Manchurian Candidate (Widescreen Edition)
by Jonathan Demme
List Price:
Our Price: $2.24
You Save: $6.75 (75%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, Kimberly Elise, Liev Schreiber, Meryl StreepDirector: Jonathan Demme
Brand: PARAMOUNT HOME VIDEO
Producer: Jonathan Demme
Producer: Ilona Herzberg
Producer: Peter Kohn
Writer: Daniel Pyne
Writer: Dean Georgaris
Writer: George Axelrod
Writer: Richard Condon
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Collector's Edition, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 129 minutes
Published: 2004-12-01
DVD Release Date: 2004-12-21
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Paramount
Movie Reviews of The Manchurian Candidate (Widescreen Edition)
Movie Review: A Brilliant, Scary Improvement on the Original Classic
Summary: 5 Stars
This is that rare remake of a classic movie which actually improves on the original. Jonathan Demme, a moderately famous but greatly underrated directing talent, weaves an unnerving and spidery tapestry that chillingly illustrates the enigmatic and duplicitous times we live in. Like in the original 1964 version, a dangerously ambitious and maniacal political matroness, Senator Eleanor Shaw (Meryl Streep in another brilliant acting interpretation), suffering delusions of grandeur but no less determined, has embroiled her son, Raymond (Liev Schreiber), now a U.S. Congressman, in a vast conspiracy to seize the reigns of American power for a devious corporation. Awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for saving his platoon during an ambush in the first Gulf War, Raymond's fellow soldiers have long had painful doubts about what it is that really happened. Raymond's former commanding officer Captain Ben Marco (Denzel Washington) tries to follow the Army's orders to continue his assigned public relations tours to promote Shaw as a war hero, but privately he is racked by a nagging recurrent dream of medical experimentations, torture and brainwashing. When confronted with his old platoon buddy's seemingly delusional notebook collages of their experiences and haunting memories, Marco finally cannot deny that something very strange and wrong transpired involving Raymond during the ambush. Marco sets out for New York to confront Raymond, who has been nominated as the Democratic Vice-Presidential Candidate, and is befriended on the train by a mysterious woman who recognizes him from their neighborhood supermarket shopping. When Marco arrives in New York and meets Raymond, it may be too late for the truth to help, because most everyone is not really who they seem. It took the genius of Demme's vision to mimic the sheer paranoia and underlying terror that grips Americans today in our post-9/11 collective misery. The Manchurian Group corporation of the film, which has implanted its victims with mind-controlling chips in clandestine medical safe-rooms, is as powerful and connected as present real life global goliaths such as The Carlyle Group or Bechtel may in fact be, and Streep's portrayal of Eleanor Shaw resembles a cross between the equally terrifying Hillary Clinton, Lenora Fulani and Eva Braun. But it's also the subtler details of the screenplay and especially the art direction and photography which mark this film as a quality achievement. From Marco's obsession with trying to figure out his alter-nightmare dream life, to his neurotic need for Cup 'O Noodles soups, red tomatoes and No-Doze tablets, the film also achieves an accurate, hallucinatorily-realistic portrayal of how people in today's propaganda-saturated media landscape are reduced to acting as brainwashed automatons and circus spectators, cheering lustily for Hollywood socialist political creations such as Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama. The entire nation has been reduced to a mass of mindless, public-schooled political groupies on one side, loyally allegiant to the 'Great National Cause' of 'Democracy', and the disaffected, disillusioned loners on the other who see through the hypes and the con-jobs of the fascist march to power but must suffer alone, shunned, rejected, and socially exiled because of their insight and clear understanding of the incredible lies and dishonesty behind the establishment's veneer. After all that, Demme shows us in the end that reality itself, or what we thought reality was, may be just another illusion, and what we think we know about the truth may just be implanted by unknown puppet masters, or else airbrushed onto digital video discs. We're left alone on an island finally, and the endless war goes on. We're each just another casualty, but watching Demme's great 2004 version of The Manchurian Candidate, we're able to glimpse the terrible puzzle we're trapped in for the briefest instant, through a mirror darkly, before our pieces will get reshuffled.
Summary of The Manchurian Candidate (Widescreen Edition)
Serving together in the Persian Gulf War, Captain Bennett Marco and Sgt. Raymond Shaw were part of a platoon of soldiers kidnapped and brainwashed. Ten years later, Shaw gears up for his vice presidential campaign while Marco eventually remembers being kidnapped and discovers Shaw's powerful mother played a big part in that scheme. Determined to reveal the truth behind everything, Marco must first convince Shaw that the brainwashing really happened.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
Similar DVD Movies
The SiegeRelease date: 1999-04-20; DVD
Best price: $4.78
Price in other shops:
Antwone Fisher (Widescreen Edition)Fox; Release date: 2003-05-20; DVD
Best price: $5.92
Price in other shops:
The Great DebatersWellspring Media INC; Release date: 2008-05-13; Published: 2008-05-01; DVD
Best price: $2.78
Price in other shops:
Fallen (Keep Case Packaging)TURNER HM ENTERTAINM; Release date: 2009-09-08; DVD
Best price: $3.07
Price in other shops:
Out of TimeWASHINGTON,DENZEL; Release date: 2004-01-06; DVD
Best price: $3.56
Price in other shops:
The Pelican Brief (Keepcase)by John Grisham
Warner Brothers; Release date: 2009-11-03; DVD
Best price: $2.19
Price in other shops:
John Q. (Infinifilm Edition)NEW Line Home Video; Release date: 2002-07-16; DVD
Best price: $3.10
Price in other shops:
Courage Under FireTCFHE; Release date: 2000-12-26; DVD
Best price: $3.00
Price in other shops:
Inside Man (Widescreen Edition)NBC Universal; Release date: 2006-08-08; DVD
Best price: $4.19
Price in other shops:
The Manchurian Candidate (Special Edition)Release date: 2004-07-13; DVD
Best price: $6.88
Price in other shops: