In the original, when Raymond killed the Senator and his daughter, the daughter was Raymond's new wife, the woman he deeply loved, the only person in the world who might possibly save Raymond from the pre-programmed horror of his life. The biggest shock is how the emotion has been sucked out of the story, entirely. From the start, the new movie has no emotional resonance at all. It's 2004, kids, enough of that quiet emotional crap.įrom the start, the original had emotional resonance via its music and credit portraits of the pensive lead players alone.

So instead of beginning (after a brief prologue) with a brilliant credit-sequence and David Amram's deeply sad and aching score, the new one begins with a herky-jerky burst of loud rock music and a helter-skelter barrage of images of war. We're way in the future now, and the quiet, rather straightforward simplicity of the original could not be put on the screen today (Van Sant tried it with his shot-by-shot 'Psycho' and it didn't work.) Part of the problem, indeed, is that we can't make a 1962 movie today. Good cast, stylish direction by Jonathan Demme (though now in his trademark style: huge close-ups of people looking right at the camera), some nice suspense.īut everything and I mean everything that made the original 'Manchurian Candidate' an unforgettable classic has been forcibly removed or revamped into dumbed-down mediocrity for our sped-up, sound-bite-ridden, politicized times. This was not a bad movie on its own terms. (SPOILERS for both the original and the remake) Reviewed by ecarle 2 /10 A Mediocre Remake for Our Mediocre Political Times (SPOILERS)

The manchurian candidate torrent