The Manchurian Candidate Movie Information

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Movie Information

Overall Rank: 3313

Average Rating: 2.7/4

# of Ratings: 137

Theatrical Release Date: 07/30/2004

Language: English

Genre: Thriller, Drama

MPAA Rating: R

Director: Jonathan Demme

Actors: Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber, Jeffrey Wright, Dorian Missick, Pablo Schreiber, Meryl Streep

Plot: The remake to the 1960's classic, this one focuses on the gulf war and how soldiers are brainwashed to think different and do wrong things.

Indyfreak - wrote on 02/18/2020

This remake of the classic thriller has a big cast and looks expensive. There are changes made to update the plot from a Cold War setting to the present day War on Terror. It does add some new elements to enhance the paranoia like mass surveillance or tracking devices. Meryl Streep is perfectly cast as the power hungry Eleanor Iselin. Denzel Washington is decent as Bennett Marco but not as good as Frank Sinatra. The corporate espionage angle is simply not as juicy a subject matter as Communist brainwashing. I credit it for trying to change the ending. Between this and the first movie, I’d certainly recommend the original instead of this.

Logan D. McCoy - wrote on 06/07/2019

This modernization of the Cold War-era political thriller resembles the original, while managing to still be tense and shocking.

Unknown - wrote on 03/25/2012

I've never seen the original. That being said, I only felt this was a decent effort. The film had a menacing tone, the story intrigued me to a point, and I thought the payoff was rewarding. Everything else was decent.

Yojimbo
Movie God

"The Manchurian Candidate" by Yojimbo

Yojimbo - wrote on 02/27/2012

The captain of a recon patrol which went missing for three days in the deserts of Kuwait begins to question his own memories after a disturbing visit from one of his men. "Remake" is inevitably a dirty word in cinema but Jonathan "Silence Of The Lambs" Demme is no stranger to suspense, which along with a promising cast made this film a rather more interesting propostion than most Hollywood cash cows. In fact Demme's skillful build up of tension combined with Denzel's believable performance as a man who is hallucinating, possibly delusional and questioning his sanity makes for a very intriguing foundation to the story. It also chooses to avoid the usual laziness of most Hollywood thrillers by not including irrelevant gun battles and car chases, and has enough twists and turns to the plot …

Snake Sugarbaker
Producer

Remake ambush

Snake Sugarbaker - wrote on 12/11/2009

War sucks, dude. There's no Ricki Lake, never enough peanut butter, and your dick can get shot off. Even worse, the enemy might capture you and brainwash you into thinking that the unpopular coward in your platoon saved your life.

This seems to be the case for Capt. Ben Marco (Denzel Washington) in The Manchurian Candidate. Having recommended Sgt. Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber) for a medal of honor because of his supposed heroics during the first Gulf War, Marco even lectures to Boy Scouts that Shaw is "the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being" he's ever known. Marco says nothing however, of his frequent nightmares, which portray Shaw in a much different light--one in which Shaw ain't no hero.

Dismissed until now as effects of Gulf War Syndrome, these nightmares …