Went and saw the remake of The Manchurian Candidate this weekend. It was . . . good. Not as good as the original, 1962 classic version of the film, but still quite good. Worth seeing. (Assuming that you can deal with an R-rated movie that has some violence and a small amount of cussing.)
They changed things around a bit, which they needed to do lest this be a shot-for-shot copy of the original (no pun intended). Since most of the audience knows the basic secret of the film (which I won’t reveal here, just in case you don’t), they reveal it sooner in this version, so the audience isn’t left sitting around going, “Why are they being so coy about this?”
Since we’re no longer in the Cold War, the villains in this version aren’t Communists. In fact, they’re capitalists, though more than that I won’t say.
For the most part, the changes they make are good ones that serve to keep fans of the original version of the film guessing as to what’s going to happen. Several are quite nice.
For example, in the original film there is a character named Rosie, who shows up, instantly falls in love with Frank Sinatra (who is a complete wreck at this point and not a likely prospect for someone to fall in love with), and says bizarrely unintelligible things in a scene with him.
When I first saw this scene, I immediately thought: “She’s working for someone. She’s got Frank Sinatra in some kind of altered mental state and the strangeoid things she’s saying to him are activating post-hypnotic suggestions or something.” Except that they’re not. The original version of the film never follows up on this, and Rosie seems to be just a woman who fell in love with Frank Sinatra. (Making the bizarro dialog scene a flaw in the original film.)
The new version of the film does pick up on this thread and develop it. In the new film the Rosie character is dramatically expanded. She is not activating post-hypnotic suggestions (she just comes across as kind of flighty). But she is working for someone (not who you might think), as Denzel Washington, playing the Frank Sinatra role, quickly finds out.
This is one good change among several in the film. One change in particular toward the end of the film spins things in a welcomely unexpected direction, though not all the changes are good. The climax of the film, and expecially the anticlimax, are not as clear as they should be, but this isn’t enough to ruin the film. It’s still a good thriller.
There are several really funny moments in the film. At one point Denzel Washington is telling some government agents that they need to have doctors examine a particular person to search for an “implant” he is carrying in his body. One of the agents begins to hum/chant the Twilight Zone theme, at which point–without skipping a beat–Denzel says: “They can hum that while searching for it if they want to.”
A concern that I had before the film was the fact that some are reporting it as a highly partisan film. “More partisan than Fahrenheit 9/11,” one reviewer said. That’s nonsense. There are some sly winks to contemporary politics in the film, but not more than that.
And that’s nothing new, anyway. There were sly winks in the original film, as well. In fact, the original film’s Johnny Iselin character was a knock-off of Joseph McCarthy, right down to the fact that he (like McCarthy) keeps changing the number of Communists thought to have infiltrated the government.
This film is not partisan propaganda. It’s a political thriller that draws on contemporary politics for some of its set dressing, just like the original version.
One thing I was interested to see was how Meryl Streep’s character came off. She plays a senator, and many people thought they detected resonances of Hillary Rodham Clinton in her performance. Streep denied this, but the truth is somewhere in the middle. When you see her on screen it is unmistakable that she is made to look like Hillary Clinton visually, and she is an aggressive, self-possessed person. But there the similarity ends. Streep may look like Rodham Clinton, but she doesn’t sound like Rodham Clinton.
The person she sounds like is someone completely different and completely unexpected.
She sounds like Majel Barrett-Roddenberry.
Yes! That’s right! If you imagine Hillary Rodham Clinton telepathically channelling Lwaxana Troi, you have a good idea of Meryl Streep’s character in this film.
And that in itself is a treat to see.
Manchuria is still under Communist occupation.
They could have had a Senator that had been captured by the North Vietnamese and held for sometime, running for President.
Animal porn.
Animal porn stories.