Review of The Manchurian Candidate (2004) by Rfichoke — 14 Jun 2021

This movie disturbed me—not because it was a tense thriller, but because it falls so flat. The acting is decent enough and the cinematography and direction is alright. Where it fails is the plot and writing. So much is left out that would have driven the plot or made us feel deep emotion: connection to the protagonists or hatred for the villains. But it’s just not there.

We see a lot of Streep as the frontline antagonist. But what exactly is her connection to the evil corporation behind the scenes? No idea. We barely see anything of them. And I don’t just mean on screen. There’s very little information to fill in any gaps at all. What exactly are they doing? Why are they so evil? They already completely control everything with money, so why would they need to have a brainwashed President anyway? There’s no risk here because there’s nothing to be gained.

The same goes for the scientist doing the implants. What drives him? What’s his relationship to Manchurian Global or Streep’s character? Again, no idea. He’s barely present in the film either. I can’t even remember his name. We’re told he’s “South African.” Are we just supposed to assume that South African = apartheid = terrible villain? I suppose so, but why not show us something that makes us truly fear and hate him?

And there’s a scientist helping The Good Guys too. Who is he? How did he become involved? What happens to him? We can guess, but we shouldn’t have to. If we guess, we’ll just come up with the same boring predictable cliches that the writers seem to have had in mind but were too lazy to bother showing us. That seems to be the intent: just insert your own cartoonish stock Bond-villains and side characters and watch the dumb movie.

And the ending! It comes out of nowhere, but not in a good way, like the climax of an episode of The Twilight Zone. It’s more like they ran out of time and couldn’t think of anything truly disturbing or thought-provoking, so they lazily slapped on an “and they all lived happily ever after” epilogue. And it’s so disjointed stylistically from what just happened previously that you’re sitting there for a minute trying to figure out if this is even the same movie.

Lazy is the only word for this movie. It doesn’t leave your head swimming with possibilities or fears or anything else. It just leaves you bored and annoyed.