Demme serves the picture completely.
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08/28/04
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The Manchurian Candidate (2004)
76
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Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:42
Fresh:32
Rotten:10
Average Rating:7/10
Consensus: While not the classic its predecessor is, this update is well-acted and conjures a chilling resonance.
Theatrical Release:Jul 30, 2004 Wide
Box Office: $65,898,487
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... [More]
Starring: Liev Schreiber, Meryl Streep, Denzel Washington, Jon Voight
Director: Jonathan Demme
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Reviews for The Manchurian Candidate
Top CriticStrikes me as a very artful cover -- about the cleverest imaginable transliteration of the story from its historical moment to ours.
08/13/04
Top CriticFar from a disgrace, but it's not freewheeling enough, not strange enough to make sense of our gathering dread.
08/08/04
Top CriticFollowing a dozen years of docs, light comedy, and p.c. weepies, Candidate represents Demme's best dramatic filmmaking since The Silence of the Lambs.
08/03/04
Top CriticThe first version was acidulous and brazenly absurd; this one is doggedly, wretchedly earnest.
08/03/04
Top Critic[A] wild ride that never, never commits the crime of being dull.
08/02/04
Top CriticA picture that purports to have a galvanizing, liberal-minded theme (big business is taking over our country and our lives) but is really just ploddingly pedestrian.
07/30/04
Top CriticA stylish hoot: entertainingly edgy and ludicrous all at once.
07/30/04
Top CriticIt shunts through the material, doing some interesting synthesizing, some genetic recombining, but it all adds up to something less powerful and interesting than the original.
07/30/04
Top CriticA case of smart and talented people trying to jam a Cold War square into a Gulf War circle.
07/30/04
Top CriticThis one plays more like a contemporary techno-thriller with ultra-clammy '70s conspiracy thriller overtones, and Demme milks the atmosphere of pervasive, sleep-deprived dread beautifully.
07/30/04
Top CriticThe remake shakes down as a conventionally plotted thriller. It's the performances that make it exceptional.
07/30/04
Top CriticStill works as a scary thriller, and if this version no longer seems absurdly impossible -- well, that's scarier still.
07/30/04
Top CriticIn movie heaven, the original is still the one for all time. Still, this update is remarkable for its performances, resolve and timeliness, and could well revive the snoozing political-thriller genre.
07/30/04
Top CriticAn even more powerful comment on its time than the movie on which it's based.
07/30/04
Top CriticThe rare remake that takes on its own times and spirit. It's not better than the original -- in some areas it's weaker -- but it is its own movie.
07/30/04
Top CriticThis is an intelligent and detailed work, full of fine performances.
07/30/04
Top CriticLacks some of the heart and soul of the original, but it still manages to be entertaining thanks in large part to the talents of Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep and Liev Schreiber.
07/30/04
Top CriticDemme's film is more nuanced, less crazy-brilliant and, yes, probably less necessary, but it's still a confirmation of all the anxieties out there on the table and festering in our heads.
07/30/04
Top CriticAs literal-minded and dramatically flaccid as its predecessor was allusive and taut.
07/30/04
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