Review of The Manchurian Candidate on Filmviews.net
Year2004 ReviewerChris Docker
Overlong remake - some good acting by veteran Meryl Streep but the attempts at sci-fi tension seem outdated. Would it work better for American audiences? The site of a group of US soldiers bonding raucously over a game of cards (opening intro) during the Gulf War doesn't create automatic empathy these days outside of the USA. When we discover that one of them is a brainwashed spy for a big corporation it doesn't really seem to matter very much - the good guys and bad guys are so similar, both giving lipservice to words like 'democracy' in a way that everyone outside of the USA is now pretty familiar with and frankly bored by. The election fever provides more yankee navel-gazing - the picture goes full circle of an inward looking nation that tries to run the rest of the world by remote control without ever understanding it.
Rating: 5/10;