The Manchurian Candidate

Good as the players are, they can't make this hokum remotely believable.

Sleek remake is more violent than original.

Jonathan Demme's new Manchurian Candidate is a gourmet-popcorn movie--a hugely entertaining thriller shot through with dark shards of agony and paranoia. It takes nothing away from the original while delivering pleasures all its own.

Happily, this extremely timely entertainment matches, even perhaps surpasses its predecessor.

Impressively accomplished and highly entertaining, with sufficiently smart new twists to keep you guessing all the way to the nerve-wracking climax.

An exhilarating, if politically wishy-washy, modern-day reimagining of Frankenheimer's gem.

…In 2004, it seemed like a vanilla cop-out for Demme’s updated thriller not to pick political sides, not putting blame on right or left, but on the oligarchical monied elite, but in retrospect, his Manchurian Candidate was on the money….

And yet the film as a whole fails to move deeply. One questions whether it will have a profound impact on its viewers.

Demme's 2004 remake, which moved the action into the present day and cast Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber and Meryl Streep in the key roles...tweaked the ending just enough to make things feel even more hopeless.

Disappointing remake of the classic 1962 thriller.