Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8394 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-04-04
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Dubbed, PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, Turkish
• Dubbed in: German
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 129 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
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

Special Features
Director’s Commentary with Jonathan Demme and Screenplay co-writer Daniel Pyne 2 Featurettes 7 deleted/extended scenes 2 Outtakes Live Schreiber screen test Political Pundits with Optional Director’s Commentary Theatrical trailer

Synopsis
Jonathan Demme updates the original 1962 John Frankenheimer classic with plenty of new paranoid twists: This time a sinister Halliburton-style corporation is behind the brainwashing of a Gulf War hero turned vice presidential nominee, Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber). Shaw's old unit commander Ben Marco (Denzel Washington) recommended him for the National Medal of Honor, though he can't remember exactly why, and his recurring nightmares drive him to uncover a massive conspiracy. Sinister forces at work include shifty-eyed bodyguards, a love interest with questionable motives (Kimberly Elise), and Raymond's domineering senator mother (Meryl Streep). Demme infuses the proceedings with enough paranoia and uncomfortable close-ups to rival his 1991 Oscar-winner, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Layered sound, overlapping dialogue, and creepy cinematography by Tak Fujimoto (who also worked on LAMBS) further heighten the uneasiness. Demme regulars Roger Corman, Charles Napier, Paul Lazar, and Tracey Walter show up in bit parts as usual. Comedian Al Franken is a welcome face as a TV correspondent, and quirky indie rocker Robyn Hitchcock plays one of the brainwashing specialists. Needless to say, Denzel is superb. Streep is terrifying and hilarious as the maniacal Mrs. Shaw. As with the original (which focused on communist instead of terrorist fear-mongering), the events depicted here are doubly unsettling considering their uncanny resemblance to real-life politics at the time of this film's theatrical release.

Customer Reviews

The Techno-Thriller Is Back!
Some years ago Robert Redford came out with two movies one after the other. The first was "The Last Castle" and the other was "Spygame". These both were brilliant.
Denzel Washington has joined a prestigious group of people able to pull off the same feat!
Hot on the heels of "Man On Fire" ( that was breathtaking! ) he follows up his performance with "The Manchurian Candidate". The tag line should have been "How do you trust?" The story is about a group of soldiers who return from the gulf war. One of them becomes a presidential candidate after having saved his unit during a firefight and receiving a medal for his heroism. Or did he? Denzel Washington is the unit leader who remembers events out of sequence but his fears are confirmed when the rest of his men experience a disconnection with the events of the firefight. How do you trust when you cannot even trust what you remember?
This is a must for the DVD collection. I look forward to his next movie with anticipation.

Quality film, quality cast.
The original Manchurian Candidate was released in 1962 and not only had I not seen it, I hadn't even heard of it.
So, unlike recent releases such as Dawn Of The Dead, The Italian Job and Assault On Precinct 13 I had very little idea what to expect on viewing this film.
What you do get is a fine blend of Jacobs Ladder style paranoia, conspiracy and US Goverment post 9/11 anti-terrorist propaganda.

The assembled cast is second to none, Denzil Washington, Jon Voight, Liev Shreiber are all superb but the star of the show is Meryl Streep as the powerecrazy, control freak mother/Senator Eleanor Shaw:
"Make no mistake, the American people are terrified, they know something's coming, they can feel it"
Remind you of anyone?

A top quality cast, fine performance's and a fairly rivetting plot make The Manchurian Candidate highly recommended viewing.

Average thriller that didn't need to be remade...
There really was no need to do a modern version of this film. The original Frank Sinatra starring vehicle was decent, quality in everything from acting to directing, and even had social reonances for the time. The same can't be said here.

My main gripe about the film was how bleakly depressive it all was. Everyone is SO serious and dull. A few lighthearted moments to break up the tedious, quite heavy going nature of the film would have been great. This is not friday night popcorn fare.

The other thing I didn't really like was the fact that it was trying to say something about the state of governments and politics today, but I feel it failed in this regard. It is not as politically cutting as it believes itself to be, and I felt that the almost sci-fi like nature of the plot lets down any notion of reflecting the politics of today.

But apart from that we get some fine performances, particularly Meryl Streep, and to a lesser extent, because he's quite dull in this outing, Denzel Washington. For those who havn't seen the film, it may hold some nice, unique plot twists, and it's a far from badly made film. It's a decent effort, but won't put you on the edge of your seat.

DVD wise, we get a few making ofs that together make a semi-decent documentary, and there's also a political pundit section, that I felt was a waste of space. It's nice to see the comparisons to the original film in the making of, though.