The Manchurian Candidate

Jonathan Demme works from both Richard Condon’s 1959 novel and the 1962 adaptation, but shifts what the word Manchurian points at. In the earlier version the soldier is captured in the Korean War and brainwashed in Manchuria; here the war is the Gulf War and Manchurian is the name of a multinational investment firm wired into politics. The threat moves from an enemy state to private capital. One of the producers is Tina Sinatra, whose father Frank Sinatra played Marco in the 1962 film and held that film’s distribution rights. The Gulf War sequences were shot in New Jersey, not Kuwait. Among the familiar faces in small parts, the director Sidney Lumet appears as a political pundit and the producer Roger Corman as the Secretary of State. The film grossed 96.1 million dollars worldwide against an 80 million dollar budget. For the senator mother, Meryl Streep was nominated as supporting actress at the 58th BAFTAs, the 62nd Golden Globes and the 31st Saturn Awards, and won none; those went to Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman and Daryl Hannah respectively. A good fit if you want a conspiracy built out of campaign management, lobbying and corporate ties rather than spycraft. Not for viewers after the sharp cold war pressure of the 1962 version; the menace here is looser and more institutional.