Kimberly Elise is also a stand-out as Washington’s love interest (a reworking of the Janet Leigh role). She’s the only actress who could dare follow Angela Lansbury’s legendary performance in the ’62 film. The magnificent Meryl Streep rips into her meaty part with a vengeance and a keen sense of humor, crunching cocktail ice like she means it and firing off salvos of derisive laughter. That said, the modern “Candidate” works well enough as a stand-alone Hollywood suspense film.Īudiences who don’t keep harking back to the twists of the first will find it a head-spinning trip with an undercurrent of cynicism and mistrust that feels in sync with the times.ĭenzel Washington is by turns panicky and quietly befuddled in the Frank Sinatra role and a surprisingly athletic-looking Liev Schreiber commendably fills Laurence Harvey’s shoes as a brainwashed pawn.
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE CAST UPDATE
At the E-Walk, the Loews Lincoln Square, the Kips Bay, others.Īny contemporary retooling of “The Manchurian Candidate” was always going to suffer in comparison with John Frankenheimer’s revered 1962 original – arguably one of the most effective paranoid thrillers ever made.ĭespite boasting a top-drawer cast firing on all four cylinders, Jonathan Demme’s update – which moves the action from the Korean War era to a post-Gulf War setting – doesn’t add much to the original, which is still capable of soaking up all kinds of timeless fears.