Product Details

• Actors: Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber, Meryl Streep, Kimberly Elise, Jeffrey Wright
• Directors: Jonathan Demme
• Writers: Daniel Pyne, Dean Georgaris, George Axelrod, Richard Condon
• Producers: Jonathan Demme, Ilona Herzberg, Peter Kohn
• Format: Collector's Edition, Color, Dolby, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Paramount
• DVD Release Date: December 21, 2004
• Run Time: 129 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (222 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0006210ZG
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #54,712 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "The Manchurian Candidate (Widescreen Edition)" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The Manchurian Candidate, a classic of paranoid cinema from the 1960s, gets a cunning update, rife with hot-topic references to corporate war profiteering and electronic voting machines. Major Ben Marco (Denzel Washington, Training Day) has been haunted by nightmares ever since a firefight during the first Gulf War--a battle in which he believes he was saved by the heroism of Sgt. Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber, Kate & Leopold). But Marco's nightmares suggest otherwise and drive him to investigate what happened, which may threaten Shaw's candidacy for vice-president. Meryl Streep plays Shaw's mother, a senior senator who manipulates everyone around her with an iron will and a sharp tongue. The Manchurian Candidate loses steam towards the end, but up until then director Jonathan Demme keeps the movie rolling fluidly, crafting some creepy paranoia of his own while Streep tears into everything in her path. --Bret Fetzer

Product Description

Serving together in the Persian Gulf War, Captain Bennett Marco and Sgt. Raymond Shaw were part of a platoon of soldiers kidnapped and brainwashed. Ten years later, Shaw gears up for his vice presidential campaign while Marco eventually remembers being kidnapped and discovers Shaw's powerful mother played a big part in that scheme. Determined to reveal the truth behind everything, Marco must first convince Shaw that the brainwashing really happened.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 68 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Use this and the original in a film class March 5, 2006

By Wayne A. VINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

I'd held off for a bit on seeing this; the original Manchurian Candidate is an all-time favorite movie, and, well, you know...

At the end of this film I scooted over to my bookshelf and grabbed the DVD case of the original. My guess was the remake was no more than 90 minutes and the original must have been at least two and 1/2 hours in duration. Good Lord! They were both exactly 129 minutes long!

There's a profound lesson here. The first film, in that wonderful 129 managed to tell a great story, travel a lot, freak me out repeatedly, stun me with novelty (the playing cards, the whole Republican/McCarthy/Lincoln shtick, the "flower show' interrogation, the "jump in a lake", getting drunk with Shaw, and on and on) work in a great love story, work in a tragic love story, work in a pathological love story, and develop a host of intriguing characters, and thrill me with what seemed to be an unending sequence of marvelous performances. The equally lengthy remake stirred little sympathies and seldom got off the ground. As storytelling, the film spun its wheels. You'd think if you remake a movie, ignore character development, ignore any relationship development, ignore any complex and intelligent commentary on modern goings-on (it was just terrorism and corporate involvement in war handled in the most superficial way)--ignore a whale of a lot--you could bring the thing in at about 48 minutes, maybe 60 with commercials. If I watch it again (not likely) I'll have a stop-watch handy and I'll take notes. It was like some magic trick.

So what happened in that 129 minutes anyway? I'm honestly not sure--Denzel Washington sweats a lot and communicated none of the subtlety and complexity that Sinatra managed, Meryl Streep brought on the heretical thought that maybe she's overrated and maybe Angela Lansbury was underrated, I missed Janet Leigh who delivered the same lines splendidly, I missed the black humor and irony and ambiguity, and who the heck was that bad Lawrence Harvey impressionist? Motivations were lost, the WHOLE POINT that everyone hated this guy but parroted their adoration for him wasn't presented clearly, and the motivation for the entire brainwashing venture was muddled up by the script after first stating that it was all about control. What a mess. Every time the film tried to echo the original, it'd already gone so far off track that it just confused matters even worse.

My serious suggestion is that some professor (and not necessarily a film professor) have a class watch both versions, note what went right in 129 minutes in the original, and what went horribly wrong in the 129 minutes of the remake and then have the students try to explain why. My guess is the answers will be fascinating.

It's a one-star movie but I give it two because it was up against impossible-to-beat competition.

29 of 37 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb Remake Of the 1960s B&W Classic! July 28, 2004

By Barron Laycock HALL OF FAME

Shades of Fahrenheit 911! This superbly crafted and well acted re-make of the 1960s political thriller, "The Manchurian Candidate" bears little resemblance to the original, a taut but relatively conventional psychological drama based on the premise of the selective brainwashing of a platoon of American soldiers during the Korean War by the North Koreans. In the original, the storyline revolves around the nightmare ruminations of a military officer (played by Frank Sinatra) who comes to realize all hinges on a fellow prisoner, the scion of a wealthy, influential, and politically ambitious family becoming a sleeper assassin who will be activated to act out his part in a diabolical plot to stage a deft and ostensibly peaceful coup-d'etat of the American government.

Here Denzel Washington underplays the part of the officer to the point of perfection, yet the story-line is much more of a postmodern twist, involving corporate geopolitical ambitions for a Halliburton-like firm who tries to use the brainwashing during the Gulf War of 1991 to ensnare and brainwash the sleeper agent (played well here by Liev Schreiber, once again the scion of a wealthy, influential, and politically star-crossed family). Meryl Streep plays against type as a brash and arrogant neoconservative senator who uses her bully pulpit to spew imperialistic venom. There are many contemporary touches and twists to the script and the plot that make this a quite artful, albeit obviously fictional, philosophical diatribe on the state of current American politics seen through the eyes of Hollywood intellectuals (or is that a contradiction in terms?).

All that said, there is indeed much beyond these blatant attempts to examine the current state of the American polity to recommend the film for your entertainment. It is a forceful and mind-expanding whirlwind ride through the threats we face both within and without our borders, and it offers a number of interesting and diverting scenes of people swept up by and then caught helplessly within the crosshairs of circumstances way out of his or her control, and in that sense is a timeless statement of how much the particulars describing each of our lives depend in the unique set of historical circumstances we find ourselves enmeshed within. This is quite a rollercoaster ride, and one I highly recommend for your viewing entertainment. Enjoy!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Tough to Rate This One January 21, 2005

By B. Merritt VINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

I was getting tugged on multiple sides when I decided to rate and review this film. First, and most obviously, was that I loved the original with Frank Sinatra. I think it was probably his defining role as an actor and was my personal favorite Sinatra movie. Second, I was worried that I might try and draw too many comparisons between this new film and its predecessor and thus end up hating this one. Third, I like Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep, and PRAYED that they didn't put these two excellent actors into roles that they either weren't made for or couldn't live up to.

So basically I stressed out over nothing. The movie was good. Not great, not the best of the year, but good enough to hold my attention and keep me up later than I normally would be.

The film: Denzel Washington takes on the role of Major Ben Marco (Sinatra's old Captain role), a desert storm officer who's come back from the war with terrible headaches, undecipherable dreams, and a member of his team who won the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Liev Schriber plays Raymond Shaw, the powerfully connected Sergeant who wins The Medal. He comes back to the States and is swept into politics. And he's being primed for the vice presidency.

Meryl Streep plays Senator Eleanor Shaw, Raymond's hard-nosed mother who NEEDS to have her son in a position of power. The family name MUST be upheld and put into the history books. Mrs. Streep plays probably her most creepy role to date; I loved it. Her character infuriated me one moment, and then made my stomach turn the next. A perfect performance.

Instead of Manchuria being involved, this time we have something known as Manchurian Global, a company that wants to rule the most powerful nation on Earth by controlling one of its most powerful leaders. But who's behind this global corporation? Does the military know? IS it the military?

Denzel pulls off a decent performance as the conflicted soldier who wants to do the right thing, but is hampered by what's "inside his head". His decline into near insanity is more like a landslide (i.e., felt rushed), and those around him can't hold a candle to his more adept acting abilities (with the exception of Mrs. Streep who practically stole the show).

Will I watch it again? Probably not.