Movie Review
Original lingers in memory, but homage has pleasures

By Moira Macdonald
Seattle Times movie critic

KEN REGAN / AP Denzel Washington gives a vulnerable performance as Major Bennett Marco, and Meryl Streep is deliciously fierce as a senator in the remake of "The Manchurian Candidate."

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Life is full of frustrating tradeoffs, but here's one I'm willing to make: If, in exchange for yet another remake of a movie that didn't need remaking, we get performances like Meryl Streep's scene-stealing sashay through "The Manchurian Candidate" ... well, all right, roll the cameras.

John Frankenhiemer's 1962 original, written by George Axelrod from the novel by Richard Condon, was a wonderfully paranoid, off-the-wall thriller, full of juicy characters, preposterous mind-control schemes and vivid dream sequences. (No, alas, the garden-club ladies with their hydrangeas don't make it into the remake, more's the pity.)

Seen today — in a recently released special-edition DVD — its story still sizzles: Korean War hero Raymond Shaw, pushed by his powerful mother, makes a rapid political rise, while his commanding officer is troubled by strange dreams about what happened to them overseas. Just in case you haven't seen either film, it's best to say no more about where it goes; know only that you will be constantly surprised by the plot machinations and the swirling-camera freshness of the filmmaking.

Movie review Showtimes and trailer **½ "The Manchurian Candidate," with Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, Liev Schreiber, Jon Voight, Kimberly Elise, Jeffrey Wright, Ted Levine, Bruno Ganz. Directed by Jonathan Demme, from a screenplay by Daniel Pyne and Dean Georgaris, based on the 1962 screenplay by George Axelrod and the novel by Richard Condon. 135 minutes. Rated R for violence and some language. Several theaters.

You can see why Jonathan Demme, himself a fine director ("The Silence of the Lambs," "Philadelphia"), would want to get his hands on this material, bringing it to the kind of audience who won't watch black-and-white films — and smartly bringing a political cautionary tale to the multiplexes during election season. (He's placed the story in the present day, with the war flashbacks relocated to the Gulf War.) But if you've seen the 1962 film, the remake feels less vivid; what was original then feels expected now. And the story feels more heavy-handed this time around; the filmmakers are meticulously spelling things out, the actors playing to the back rows.

But those performances turn out to be the new movie's greatest pleasure. Denzel Washington, as the haunted commanding officer Bennett Marco, gives a quiet, nonshowy performance of great vulnerability; at times, he looks utterly lost, his desperate eyes ever-searching. Liev Schreiber, as Shaw, seems cut from a catalog; he's eerily smooth, a Stepford politician.

And Streep's performance is so over-the-top delicious that it's wrong to say she steals the movie — she owns it outright. As the powerful, scheming Sen. Eleanor Shaw, perfectly groomed and gleaming, she sweeps into every room as if it contained a podium. "Shoo," she says, with an airy wave of the hand, and her entourage disperses like flies in a powerful wind.

Shaw speaks in sound bites and gives her speeches the fervor of a Shakespearean monologue. Streep, that most uncannily precise and intelligent of actors, fills the characterization with rich detail. Watch Eleanor's ever-so-weary automatic smile to a waitress — it's the face of someone who's always "on," yet feels resentful about it — or hear her chomping on ice with such intensity, you fear for her co-stars. (The better to eat you with, my dear?)

In this year's sea of remakes, it's frustrating to see such talent being expended to re-create what's already been splendidly done. (Why not remake mediocre movies to make them better, instead of hoping lightning will strike twice?) But while Demme's "Manchurian Candidate" may be unnecessary, it's a worthy homage to the original; lacking the first film's spark but containing smarts of its own.
 
Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com