The Manchurian Candidate

I saw The Manchurian Candidate (the 2004 version) the other night and, while I did enjoy it, I kept thinking how much better the original was. Denzel Washington as Captain Marco, the chief protagonist, who becomes increasingly suspicious of the Raymond Shaw, the candidate for vice-president with whom he served in the army, was fine, as usual, but the plot, with its origins in the Cold War, had been changed to accommodate the present day, and suffered accordingly. The baddies were a faceless corporate body instead of oriental Communists and it was far harder to feel the same level of paranoia. In 1962 the Cold War was still raging, whether justified or not, and the film's release coincided with the Cuban missile crisis to add an extra layer of fear and loathing. It featured one of Frank Sinatra's best performances as Marco, and Laurence Harvey was suitably sinister as Shaw.
Having said that, Liev Schrieber was an excellent substitute for Harvey in the new version, but was underused compared to Harvey - he simply didn't have enought to do. One of my favourites, Meryl Streep, played Shaw's mad mother, and was, as ever, superb, even though, really, she was in only second gear.
It wasn't bad for a remake, but, in the end, all it did, as is the case with so many remakes, was make me want to see the original as soon as possible, not just to compare it with the remake, but simply to enjoy a really great film. It's one of those movies that you never forget - it's so well put together and structured that it shows up so many of todays' films for the sprawling messes they are, and I spent most of the time waiting for the famous 'trigger line': 'Why don't you pass the time by playing a nice game of solitaire' but it never came. In fact I can't remember what was used as a substitute, it was so inconsequential. I felt the ending was a bit incoherent and messy, in fact the whole film lacked the blazing clarity of the original. As ever with remakes, I was left with the question - why? It was OK and the stroy is such a good one that it would be hard to make a bad film from it, but, in the end, the original remains the benchmark for paranoia films.