The one and only reason to see this new and much weaker Manchurian Candidate is Meryl Streep. The little space allocated to her character makes the film rise to undeserving levels. True, I would pay to see Meryl Streep do the weather but that's quite besides the point. Even so, the memory of Angela Lansbury's performance in the role towers over Meryl Streep's, mostly because the original Frankenheimer's Manchurian Candidte towers over Demme's. What a silly idea, really. To update the story doesn't contribute a thing to the results. No matter how many monitor screens and details about the experiment we're let into. We, quite simply, don't care. We care about the drama of that mother and son. Of the soldier's and their nightmares. But those elements are treated in a sketchy, sluggish way. Frank Sinatra gave a sterling performance in the original and we believed in his torment. Here Denzel Washington floats throughout the film without giving us the chance to connect the dots of his journey. Liev Schriver is a credible Raymond Shaw but the script doesn't help him to go where Laurence Harvey had ventured. After "The Truth About Charlie" I was fearful of what Jonathan Demme (the great man behind "Silence of the Lambs") would do with this classic black comedy but I went to see it anyway, because Meryl Streep was in it and because it was Demme again working with Dean Stockwell after that lovely romp they did together "Married to the Mob" but Stockell's work in Manchurian Candidate, how can I put it? If you blink you miss it. How strange. How disappointing. However, the scenes with Senator Meryl Streep are worth the price of admission.
Review of The Manchurian Candidate
