Tagline: Everything is under control.
The Manchurian Candidate movie storyline. When his army unit was ambushed during the first Gulf War, Sergeant Raymond Shaw saved his fellow soldiers just as his commanding officer, then-Captain Ben Marco, was knocked unconscious. Brokering the incident for political capital, Shaw eventually becomes a vice-presidential nominee, while Marco is haunted by dreams of what happened — or didn’t happen — in Kuwait.
As Marco (now a Major) investigates, the story begins to unravel, to the point where he questions if it happened at all. Is it possible the entire unit was kidnapped and brainwashed to believe Shaw is a war hero as part of a plot to seize the White House? Some very powerful people at Manchurian Global corporation appear desperate to stop him from finding out.
The Manchurian Candidate is a 2004 American science fiction political-thriller film directed by Jonathan Demme.[3] The film, based on Richard Condon’s 1959 novel of the same name and a re-imagining of the previous 1962 film, stars Denzel Washington as Bennett Marco, a tenacious, virtuous soldier; Liev Schreiber as Raymond Shaw, a U.S. Representative from New York, manipulated into becoming a vice-presidential candidate; Jon Voight as U.S. Senator Tom Jordan, a challenger for vice president; and Meryl Streep as Eleanor Prentiss Shaw, also a U.S. Senator and the manipulative, ruthless mother of Raymond Shaw.
Tina Sinatra was a co-producer of the film. Her father Frank Sinatra portrayed Marco in the original 1962 film and owned that film’s legal distribution rights into the late 1980s, never re-releasing it during that time. In the original, nationally released during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the premise was based on communists taking control; in this remake, big corporate influence serves as the “politically correct” evil, a twist to maintain the “Manchurian connection.” The remake does not follow the original film’s plot details on several occasions.
The film grossed $65,955,630 in North America and $30,150,334 in other territories, totaling $96,105,964 worldwide.
Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote of Streep: “No one can talk about the acting in The Manchurian Candidate without rhapsodizing about Streep (in the role originated by Angela Lansbury). She has the Hillary hair and the Karen Hughes attack-dog energy, but the charm, the inspiration and the constant invention are her own. She gives us a senator who’s a monomaniac, a mad mommy and master politician rolled into one, a woman firing on so many levels that no one can keep up – someone who loves being evil as much as Streep loves acting. She’s a pleasure to watch and to marvel at every second she’s onscreen.”
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The Manchurian Candidate (2004)
Directed by: Jonathan Demme
Starring: Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber, Meryl Streep, Kimberly Elise, Jon Voight, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Pablo Schreiber, Anthony Mackie, Jeffrey Wright
Screenplay by: Daniel Pyne, Dean Georgias
Production Design by: Kristi Zea
Cinematography by: Tak Fujimoto
Film Editing by: Carol Littleton, Craig McKay
Costume Design by: Albert Wolsky
Set Decoration by: Leslie E. Rollins
Art Direction by: Teresa Carriker-Thayer
Music by: Rachel Portman
MPAA Rating: R for violence and some language.
Distributed by: Paramount Pictures
Release Date: July 30, 2004
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