The Manchurian Candidate

Liev Schreiber and Meryl Streep cope with a convoluted plot in The Manchurian Candidate.

Herald rating: * *

Frank Sinatra's 1962 Cold War chiller is updated for the Bush era by his daughter, Tina, who took over the family business when the Chairman of the Board vacated his seat. In the Sinatra version, a POW from the Korean War was brainwashed by the enemy and returned to the United States to become a political assassin. Sinatra played another POW who, in trying to sort out what had happened in Korea, figured out the truth and tried to stop the plot. It played perfectly for the paranoid audience of its times.

In the new version, directed by Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs), Denzel Washington takes the Sinatra role as Ben Marco, who has been having strange dreams for years after his patrol was ambushed in Kuwait just before the first Gulf War. He can't remember what really happened.

When Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber), his former comrade, becomes a vice-presidential candidate, Marco begins to investigate that long-ago nightmare, prompted by other vets telling him they have the same fears.

This time around, the threat to civilisation is gleaned from political and corporate themes in the US - the Bush dynasty, the global businesses that have supported them, such as Dick Cheney's Halliburton oil services operation, and those who have made obscene profits from the wars that the Bushes were generous enough to start on their behalf.

There's a paint-by-numbers feel about the script and characterisation. Schreiber plays Shaw as Dubya, wanting a "secure tomorrow" under his simple-minded, hardline leadership; Meryl Streep plays his senator mother, Eleanor Shaw, somewhere between Hillary Clinton and Cruella de Vil; Jon Voight is a cardboard cutout of the liberal Democratic senator. Washington is plausible and troubled as Marco, but even he seems to have trouble at times believing or following the contrived and confused plot.

The DVD commentary takes an interesting approach, with Demme and his scriptwriter, Daniel Pyne, talking to each other about their film and the original, rather than lecturing the viewer.

There's another parallel with the original in a short feature where Demme, Pyne, Tina Sinatra and their stars walk through scenes from both versions.

Other extras include five deleted scenes, two out-takes, Schreiber's screen test opposite Streep, and a somewhat superficial and superfluous political discussion that attempts to put the movie's themes into context.* DVD, video rental today