The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

***spoilers are almost inevitable, but i'll do my best to keep them at a minimum*** While Liev Schrieber is one of my favorite actors (consider Ray Donovan, for example), the task of remaking The Manchurian Candidate, a novella from Richard Condon about the paranoia that held a vicious grip on the U.S. during the McCarthy UnAmerican Activities Committee probes, it is best left respected, in honor of the work of the original brave actors who risked their careers in a movie that was actually banned, in parts of the world, for almost 20 years, that no remake should be attempted.The Schrieber/Close remake can only be considered as a well acted reminiscence of the original, but, the fact remains, there is no substitute for the original and absolutely no need for a remake.If anyone doubts that Frank Sinatra was an excellent actor, then make this your first stop. Then, after this, check out any other movie with his name in the cast and ask yourself how it is that you never noticed that before. Ol' Blue Eyes wasn't just a jazz singer or a crooner. He was a performer.That's part of the problem with the remake. The tension that exists and is eventually exposed between the hypnotized victims of capture has a real effect on all of the participants in the investigation of their experience. In the remake, everything is invested in the sordid relationship between the candidate and his mother. In the original, the actual horror at the center of events is that the favored amongst the returned captives--well...watch the movie. To say any more about the plot would to give it all away.Trust me, the original is the best. Laurence Harvey was a very spooky private character to begin with, but a box-office popular personality at that time. Given his thespian success and that of both Frank Sinatra and Janet Leigh, they must, all three have been shocked at the ban on the movie, that lasted for a decade (Harvey was already dead before the ban was lifted), which, again, speaks against attempting a remake, given that the ban is, itself, a distinct qualification that can not be carried out of one age of perception to another.I have a particular affection for the original version because the author of the story, Richard Condon, a U.S American living in Ireland, had the option as an Irish resident artist to take advantage of Ireland's income tax exemption for artists--an artist's bonus that Bono and the rest of U2 heartily used to their advantage--but Condon chose to declare his income to the U.S. Treasury, in order to keep his citizenship intact. It must have hurt him that the country to which he showed such respectful loyalty would give in to the same paranoia that he tried to expose and lay bare, so that it could be challenged and resisted.In fact, it is a shame that Condon's work is not on the required list of American author's, instead of boring Paul Auster, who, while he writes well, has never written anywhere near close to this, and whose stories all tend to drift away into nothingness, as if he is afraid to say something wrong.It takes a lot of time and strength to write even a half decent book, and it is not my intent to put Paul Auster down. I just wish that Richard Condon's work was on the same list as Auster. Gun control would, at least, be reconsidered, maybe even prior to the assassination of JFK, MLK, and RFK--but also Malcolm X. None of them should have died and just a little bit more security could have kept them all alive.We have been made to become cynical since then, and that is the problem with the remake. When Christopher Lee heard about the remake of The Wicker Man, he said, Why? A sequel might make sense, but why remake a success? Same thing with The Manchurian Candidate. If you haven't yet seen either, go with the original. It even has the author's blessing, and he paid his taxes promptly.

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE is a suspense thriller drama, which is full of disturbing anxiety and intimidation in a "colorful" political game. It is based on the novel of the same name by Richard Condon.During the Korean War, the Soviets capture a U.S. platoon and take them to Manchuria in Communist China. A few days later, most of the soldiers have returned to American lines, and one sergeant has received the Medal of Honor, because, according to a report of a captain, he has rescued his comrades. However, unsympathetic character of a young sergeant, which is mentioned in earlier reports, is now under question. The soldiers are behaving pretty strange. They suffer from a recurring nightmare in which a hypnotized sergeant demonstrates murder. The captain wants to investigate that strange phenomenon, but has no solid evidence to back his claims and thus receives no support from Army Intelligence. Meanwhile, a sergeant mother drives a political career of her husband and his stepfather, who is a demagogue and widely dismissed as a fool. A desperate captain will have to connect all the strings in a dangerous and dirty political game...This is a very intelligent story, which could cause determination consequences to the viewers, given the political environment. A brainwashing has a double meaning in this case. It is trapped between political conflicts and fear of a certain ideology. A political manipulation is in contrast with the logic and free thinking. That topic is fairly well covered in the film. A tension is a consistent segment, but the direction is uncertain, because some key scenes are not convincing. The balance between the main protagonists is lost through satirical reflections or ironic attitudes.A paranoid-depressive atmosphere is very good, while the characterization could be a lot better. The plot has lost its sharpness and direction in the second part of the film.Frank Sinatra as Maj. Bennett Marco is a generator of a turn in the story. He is a quite unconvincing character, although well developed, especially in the second part of the film. Laurence Harvey as Raymond Shaw is impressive as a hypnotized killer. He is a victim and villain at the same time. Mr. Harvey has offered a very good performance.Their support are Angela Lansbury (Mrs. Iselin) as a dominant and intense character. She is a mother, wife and agent "of dark forces" at the same time. James Gregory (Sen. John Yerkes Iselin) is her puppet and a vulgar politician with a fake and unconvincing stance. Janet Leigh (Eugenie Rose Chaney) has, given the timing of her appearance in the film, received too little space in the film. There is a romance between her and Maj. Marco, which is on the verge of absurdity.Frankly, I do not like this idea, but this shocking conspiracy thriller is not bad.

The Manchurian Candidate has always been a favourite film of mine, anchored by Sinatra's brilliant and edgy performance, the strange and highly effective cinematography (look at the use of focus in key scenes, the unusual framing and the tension between foreground and background characters), the psychological depth and the unspoken subplots around sex and romance. Brilliant film. But, with the election of Donald Trump, it's starting to seem like a documentary. The continued revelations about the ties of his inner circle to Russia are chilling. And the unlikely conceit of a hard-right populist 'patriotic' candidate as the agent of America's enemy looks like straight-up news reporting now!

A film with a plot like "The Manchurian Candidate" has would more often than not come across as silly, but, somehow, John Frankenheimer manages to craft this bizarre little story into one of the finest and most surprisingly modern films of the 1960's.The silly story is structured ingeniously, forcing the audience to, at first, piece together various parts of the cinematic puzzle, before pulling us in to a world of evil and mayhem that lies beneath the political surface. Frankenheimer's lens captures the many oddities hidden within this story, using bizarrely comic and horrific dream sequences and effective use of wide angled lens shots to their finest advantages.Mixing tragedy, intensity, and wit may sound like a challenge, but for films like "The Manchurian Candidate", it comes naturally and infects the screen in a magical and engaging way.