Review of The Manchurian Candidate (2004) by Edith N — 02 May 2011

An Attempted Update That Falls Flat.

The thing is, this movie starts with an unnecessary cover of a classic song and launches into an unnecessary remake of a classic movie. It changes most of what made the original so powerful by trying to tap into modern fears instead, only I don't think it quite gets what we fear right. The kind of paranoid crazies who talk of various modern politicians as Manchurian Candidates--I suspect they haven't actually watched either movie--think the corporations already control the government anyway. The idea that you need mind control devices instead of fat sacks of cash money is laughable to those people. Though some of them think they're all reptilian shapeshifting aliens anyway. (I wish I were making that up.) The main reason the original worked was the Cold War. And, you know, character development, which is the other thing this movie tossed overboard. Because if we have Denzel Washington, we don't need character development, and Liev Schreiber and Meryl Streep are always kind of creepy anyway.

As with the original, we start with Captain Bennet Marco, who this time is Denzel Washington. Over ten years earlier, he was part of the famous Lost Patrol in Kuwait. He was knocked unconscious at the beginning of the action, and the lives of all but two of his men were saved by Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Schreiber), given the Medal of Honor for his bravery and so forth. And now, Shaw is a congressman from New York and Marco is having bad dreams. Al Melvin (Jeffrey Wright), who was also in that patrol, tells Shaw that he is having the dreams as well and then dies, I didn't quite catch how. This inspires Marco to dig deeper into what is happening with Shaw, whose mother (Streep) engineers for him to become the Vice Presidential nominee. Only, as with the original, Shaw has been engineered to run the country a certain way and for the benefit of shadowy people working behind the scenes. The difference being what people and for what purpose. And this time, Marco doesn't have the benefit of the US military on his side, and he and Shaw are the only two men of the Lost Patrol left alive.

It's all a little too confused this time. The rest of the men are dead because they'd take focus away from the main characters, I think, and no one seems to have considered the idea of maybe testing the Secret Mind Control Program in a less public way first. And we know it's their first test, because they don't know that it doesn't work perfectly. They don't know that it will leak through in dreams. But the scientist who is head of the project (Simon McBurney) worked in South Africa previously, and apparently no one knew he was doing this level of unsavoury work. No word of it leaked to anyone, apparently. I suppose it was easier to take the men while on combat missions in Kuwait, but I'd also say that the deaths of the two men murdered during the brainwashing procedure make less sense. The brainwashing as a whole comes across as pretty erratic--I assume the implants in the shoulders were decoys for the ones in the brains, but there are parts of that which don't make sense, either.

Possibly the aspect of the story which is most telling about the differences forty-plus years will make is that Bennett Marco goes from being well-connected, supported by the military, to being an outcast who's told to take his drugs. (I note that they call him bipolar at one point, while his behaviour would be more symptomatic of schizophrenia.) The woman (Kimberly Elise) goes from being a mystery figure to being an FBI agent. And Marco must fight against her at first, too. Those who know The Truth (TM) are thought crazy and must fight to get anyone to listen to them. No evidence which would convince anyone is brought forward, but we know Our Hero is right, because he is Our Hero and can't simply be crazy. Even though, if we looked at it from the outside and didn't know he was Denzel Washington, he really would look schizophrenic. They have converted one character, who was intelligent and resourceful in the original, into a raving lunatic who is unable to present anything coherent, merely ravings. Another is personable but ultimately appears crazy as well. But he must be right, because he stands up to The Man.

I did not, I must admit, go into this movie expecting to like it much. This is not just because I don't like Meryl Streep, though of course I don't. I quite like Liev Schreiber, for all he is persistently creepy even when I'm not sure he's supposed to be, and that balances out my dislike of her. But when I saw the original last week, I was blown away. I really think it was a masterpiece. There was, I thought, no need to remake the thing. I'll admit it could have been used to cast a new light on how the world has changed, but I didn't expect that would actually happen. And, indeed, it did try and fail. I think the problem is that Cold War paranoia was actually at least a little more rational. Oh, I said and maintain that Communism was a Red Herring in the original. However, I think it was at least a fear the average person had, and I think it was an obvious and rational fear to a certain extent. Whereas this? Conspiracy theories and no more or better.