Manchurian Candidate

[Katrine]

Watched it yesterday. It was exactly what I expected, and I have not seen the original.

Good suspense, but completely predictable. Denzel was great as always. Merril played the loathsome "Hillary" character almost too well. I could have done with less hystrionics.

Also, way too many loose ends that weren't tied up. The story could have been much tighter. What was the purpose of the probe? Who were the arab ladies with the painted faces? How did Manchurian actually pull it off? Beyond improbable.......

Liev Shreiber (sp?) was really good as the son. I like this actor. What other movies has he been in, he looks like my dad in a weird way.

NOW WE HAVE AN EXPLANATION FOR JOHN EDWARDS!!!

3 of 5 stars. Totally average movie.

[afxturnip]

Hi,

I haven't watched this one yet. I'm very reticent to watch remakes, especially remakes of veritable classic masterpieces, and after what Jonathan Demme (the director) did to Charade with The Truth About Charlie... However, I've heard some good things, so I'll probably see it in due time.

Kat, you should see the original which offers great performances, some wonderful b&w cinematography, and some of the strangest dialogue you'll ever hear. And the scenes of the brainwashing are just wonderful wonderful stuff. But if you require all loose ends to be neatly tied, you won't get that. In fact, the movie is so great, because you get the feeling that there are more manipulations going on that are undiscovered, especially with the Marco character played by Sinatra.

Liev Schreiber has been in several movies, but the ones I most remember are The Daytrippers, an indie comedy with Parker Posey; Sum of All Fears, where he played the uberbadass John Clark, which had been previously played in Clear and Present Danger by Willem Dafoe; and the Scream movies.

Later on.

-afx

[mr_punk]

Watched it yesterday. It was exactly what I expected, and I have not seen the original.

i saw it a couple of days ago. it was average (2 1/2 out of 5 stars)movie, but not a great movie and certainly not good enough to recommend the movie to others. the remake started with an excellent concept, but it fails badly in some areas of execution (such as the very weak and typical hollywood ending) when compared to the original. i suppose, that's the curse of remakes. they rarely improve or surpass the original.

Good suspense, but completely predictable.

i agree ,but it's just the way movies are made nowadays and to a certain extent, movie goers like predictability. as a result, market research and focus groups are now part of the movie making process. some of the great movies from the 70's probably wouldn't be made today because that was the last era when studios were not afraid to take chances.

Merril played the loathsome "Hillary" character almost too well. I could have done with less hystrionics.

actually, i got a kick out of her role. some people knocked her performance, but i thought she played it perfectly. i thought her performance was at least the equal of angela lansbury's in the original and much like lansbury, i think she deserves an Oscar for her performance.

[Moneywise]

So it's not worth seeing? I've never seen the original but am a gigantic Denzel fan. I guess I will wait for PPV.