The Manchurian Candidate vs Three Kings

I thought I'd rent the original Manchurian Candidate, to prepare for the release of the newer Jonathan Demme version. It's really good, as far as I know. I got a faulty DVD from Netflix, and it stopped with twenty minutes to go. I'm not sure how it ended. Up until then, though, it was good, and full of weird non-sequiturs that I'm not sure get resolved in that final twenty minutes. Janet Leigh, especially, plays a character that seems to be speaking in code, or perhaps is also being brainwashed. Or maybe she's just weird. In any case, Janet Leigh is cool in the original Manchurian Candidate. I had two other immediate reactions to the original: Angela Lansbury makes a great villain. And, the scenes of the brainwashing (set at a meeting of a local women's group, supposedly…) are so creepy and unsettling that they should ultimately be unintentionally funny, but somehow aren't.

I'm really gonna have to watch the end of that thing some day. In the meantime, I've seen the new release of Jonathan Demme's version of The Manchurian Candidate. Jonathan Demme directed The Silence of the Lambs, so he knows his way around a thriller. He also directed The Trouble With Charlie, however, so he may or may not know his way around a remake.

Well he got the casting right, that's for sure. The Manchurian Candidate stars Denzel Washington as Ben Marco, who should not be drinking caffeine. Seriously, not even some chocolate. And he probably shouldn't listen to any aggressive music, or watch any television shows with quick edits. Just a little warm herbal tea, maybe some Bob Ross painting, and then off to bed. Ben is having a hard time. He was a career soldier and served in the Gulf War. Another soldier, Raymond Shaw, is running, quite successfully, for Vice President. Ben and the other soldiers all praise him as a hero, but now Ben's memories are betraying him. He has nightmares about brainwashing, and murder, and Raymond Shaw pops up every time. He puts up a brave face in public; when another former soldier (Jeffrey Wright) confronts him in public and asks about the nightmares, Ben is compassionate, but pleads ignorance. At home though, he's obsessed, and makes it his mission to find Raymond Shaw and find out just what is going on.

The bulk of the movie is divided between Ben trying to contact (and stop) Raymond Shaw; flashbacks to the Gulf War battle that may or may not have made Raymond a hero; and Raymond's campaign, led by his mother, Eleanor, played by Meryl Streep. She's the best actor, isn't she? It takes me a while to catch on sometimes. It's pretty easy to take Meryl Streep for granted, but she's always good. In the last three movies I've seen her in (Adaptation, The Hours, Angels in America), she's been completely believable, and completely unique, without going over the top or looking bored. Who else can you say that about? When was the last time you were completely bowled over by three Anthony Hopkins roles in a row? Streep is great here too, and for a change, plays the villain. Eleanor Shaw is a cold, manipulative politician, lamenting the days when real men played the game for keeps. At one point, she crunches some ice to punctuate a statement, and she might as well have pulled out a switchblade.

As Raymond Shaw, Liev Schrieber is good too, and if anyone can play a believable brainwash victim, it's this guy. To say he's soft spoken is putting it mildly. Schrieber is sort of surprising casting, but it's smart. Here's hoping this role leads to more prominent roles for Schrieber, especially ones where he doesn't have to kiss his mom.

The true center of The Manchurian Candidate, of course, is Denzel Washington. In Ben Marco, we get a Denzel Washington we haven't seen much before: desperate, scared and panicked. Washington is one of those actors who always seems in control, so when he lets loose here, it's often pretty shocking. Ben finds a device implanted under his skin, and of course it falls down the drain, so how will he prove it existed? By finding out if Raymond Shaw has one. And how does he find out? By tackling Raymond, pinning him to a table, and biting the implant out of him. Moments like this keep Washington's performance electrified, and The Manchurian Candidate interesting. It's not as compelling as I expected though, and not as scary either. The trailer remains one of the best of the year, but the movie itself is never as completely thrilling. The Communists from the original have been replaced with Corporations, and while that stresses me out some, it's not much of a stretch of the imagination to believe they might be paying for candidates, and it doesn't necessarily help out a movie in which the clock is ticking.

In remaking The Manchurian Candidate, Jonathan Demme has made an intelligent political thriller. What he started with though, is much more of a conspiracy-laden movie, which at times is pretty twisted. There are genuine scares in the original, which promise to affect the entire country if revealed. Despite all the political intrigue and corporate bickering and campaign shenanigans in the remake, it still feels to me like a movie about individuals. For those of you concentrating on performances, there's plenty to like. If you're more into the big picture, you'll wanna find that original. Hopefully you'll get a copy that allows you to stick it out till the end.

A good companion for The Manchurian Candidate might be Courage Under Fire, which also deals with military conspiracies and mistaken memories. It has excellent performances all around (especially from Washington and an emaciated Matt Damon) and a more clever script than you'd expect. It's kind of hard to be in the mood for that one though. Three Kings is a better movie, and it's more fun.

Three Kings is one of most original and underappreciated movies of the 1990s. It was directed by David O. Russell, and is as exhilarating and unique as anything put out during the same time period by Scorsese or Tarantino.

The film is set in 1991, just after the Gulf War. A map is found (where it's found is so specific it must be meant as a surprise, so I'll leave it that way) detailing a massive amount of gold bullion hoarded by Sadaam Hussein's men. Three soldiers (Mark Wahlberg, Spike Jonze and Ice Cube) decide to find the gold and then are pretty much ordered to by Sgt. Maj. Archie Gates, played by George Clooney. He's being followed around by a CNN-type reporter, played by Nora Dunn, who isn't making things easy on the soldiers or herself, but is sticking it out for what appears to be as much about the camera time as the story.

What transpires is as exciting in its own way as Reservoir Dogs, and as visually original as Natural Born Killers (Three Kings is shot in a bleached out sepia tone, much like the fatigues the soldiers wear, and it's edited to the second.) That it also includes at least ten memorable performances is bonus. As the gold-hunters, Clooney, Ice Cube, and Jonze are all great, as is Nora Dunn as the reporter. My favorite performance in the movie is by Mark Wahlberg, who always confounds my expectations by being either brilliant or blander than a seat-filler at the People's Choice Awards. How does that happen? Regardless, he rocks in Three Kings. This is a movie that would seem to be all about style (at one point we follow a bullet into the human body to see exactly what happens), but at the center is a performance of surprising humanity. Wahlberg has a hostage scene that is heartbreaking, and a moment on a cell phone that is played exactly right.

Three Kings has been precisely positioned between satire, war movie, political commentary and action flick, and it excels at each. David O. Russell's script is biting and funny and emotional, but also plays as some kind of loopy conspiracy story, like some modern political myth passed along throughout the decade. That's pretty damn cool, especially if it's what you were hoping for from The Manchurian Candidate.

The Manchurian Candidate: B-
Three Kings: A