Film Planner Big movies on the small screen

9.30pm, Monday, TG4 The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

“The assassin always dies, baby: it’s necessary for the national healing”

Remakes are always a tricky proposition. Remaking a classic such as John Frankenheimer’s 1962 drama The Manchurian Candidate is about as tricky as it gets. That it succeeds so well is down to the skill of writer Daniel Pine in updating the scenario and a talent roster that includes Meryl Streep, Denzel Washington and Jon Voight.

Frankenheimer’s original concerned itself with soldiers returning from the Korean war brainwashed into carrying out nefarious activities on behalf of boo-hissable communists. Jonathan Demme’s movie is updated to the ( rst) Gulf War but the Manchurian element is retained since it’s not the communists, but a nasty global corporation called Manchurian Enterprises, who are orchestrating the badness.

Beautifully paced by Demme, the movie is blessed with a uniformly superb cast. Liev Schreiber takes on the Laurence Harvey role as the war hero turned presidential candidate. Denzel is handed the Frank Sinatra gig (sort of ), as the commanding o cer su ering from Gulf War Syndrome who begins to suspect that all is not well with Senator Schreiber. And Meryl Streep does justice to Angela Lansbury’s domineering career woman who will stop at nothing to see her son reach the highest political o ce. The original Manchurian Candidate featured some legendary plot twists. Jonathan Demme’s modern version, perhaps mindful of that legacy, o ers its own original ways of keeping the audience on their toes. As a result, it’s one of the most satisfying political thrillers to emerge from Hollywood since the 1970s.