During a reconnaissance mission in Kuwait before the start of Desert Storm, a U.S. Army patrol was ambushed by Iraqi forces. Somehow, Sgt. Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber) managed to fight off the attackers — as well as their helicopter support — and then led his own men to safety. For this action, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Now, in the present day, Shaw is a Senator, nominated to be the Vice Presidential Candidate in the election on the basis of his war hero status, among other things.
Major Bennett Marcos (Denzel Washington) is having nightmares about the “lost patrol” on which he was the commanding officer. When a fellow soldier comes to see him, complaining of similar dreams, the soldier gives Marcos a notebook of sketches and notes about his dreams. Eeriely, they’re exactly what Marcos is dreaming. Marcos begins to investigate what could be behind dreams and how they’re connected to the truth about Senator Raymond Shaw, who is one step away from controlling the free world.
The Manchurian Candidate is a remake of a 1962 Frank Sinatra film of the same name. I can’t compare the two because I haven’t seen the original. However, the 2004 version is a taut and disturbingly realistic-feeling portrait of the unholy marriage of science and politics for personal gain.
Director Jonathan Demme coaxes a haunting performance out of Denzel Washington. As Marcos, Washington is a haunted man, who’s nights of trying to escape his dreams with No-Doz are beginning to catch up with him. Even in scenes where Washington doesn’t appear to be acting, it looks as if the years have taken a severe toll. Liev Schreiber evokes sympathy because he seems to be a genuinely good person trapped in a situation literally beyond his control. Meryl Streep hams it up — maybe a little too much — as his puppeteering mother, Senator Eleanor Shaw.
If you’ve been paying attention to world politics in the last four or five years, The Manchurian Candidate will definitely bite harder than if you haven’t. The strength is in the details and this film is packed with marvelous jabs at the real world. The scariest thing about the movie is how real it feels and how much less fictional it feels than I would imagine the original’s communist-themed plot would have felt in 1962.
It might not be a horror film, but The Manchurian Candidate scared and disturbed me more than all of the last few “scary” movies I’ve seen combined. Highly recommended.
4.5 out of 5.0 stars
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