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Movie Review - The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
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(What this rating means)
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| Director: |
John Frankenheimer |
| Starring: |
Frank Sinatra, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury, and Laurence Harvey |
| Rated: |
PG-13 |
| Length: |
126 minutes |
| Genre: |
Film Noir |
| Website: |
The Manchurian Candidate |
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PLOT
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An army unit, led by Captain Bennett Marco (Sinatra), is ambushed and taken prisoner by enemy forces.
While in their enemy's control, they are taken to Manchurian territory and brainwashed. One of their unit,
Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Harvey), is programmed to become an assassin and kills two of their number in a
demonstration. The prisoners are then released and tell the story they were brainwashed to believe - they
were saved from an entire North Korean battalion by Sergeant Shaw. Upon his return to Washington, Shaw is
awarded a Medal of Honor, the most prestigious award given in the military.
Shaw's mother (Lansbury), whom he hates, is married to a prominent Senator whom she has high political
hopes for, and she plans to use her son, the Medal of Honor winner, to fulfill those hopes. However, her
son hates his stepfather as much as his mother, and moves to New York to work for a newspaper editor who
opposes the Senator.
Meanwhile, Sinatra is having recurring nightmares about their captivity. Army psychologists discount his
dreams as just stress from having served in a combat situation, and when reassigning him to a less
stressful job does not work, he is placed on sick leave. He decides to use his leave to go visit Shaw in
New York, and by doing so he causes a plot so sinister it's unbelievable to ensue.
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MS. CALI'S TAKE
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The Manchurian Candidate was made at the height of the Cold War, and thus has a lot to do with
Communists and the whole McCarthy-era sentiment that existed during that time. Sinatra and Lansbury are
both excellent in their roles, and the supporting cast holds up well under their leads. Janet Leigh's
character seems to be unnecessary, but they are including the character in the remake (Starring Denzel
Washington), so somebody thinks she belongs.
While I am a huge Sinatra fan (I could listen to Old Blue Eyes croon all day long), the real standout
here was Angela Lansbury (and yes, the Murder She Wrote puns actually fit into the movie at one
point). With the help of close up shots and aging makeup, she goes from evil wainch to evil villain
before your very eyes.
The movie is a thriller that can actually keep you in suspense until the very end. You might figure some
things out along the way, but even if you figure everything out, the suspense comes from watching how
the movie reveals its secrets.
While we aren't shown the actual brainwashing, we do get to see (through the nightmares of Sinatra and
another member of the unit) the demonstration of their programming before they are released. In those
scenes we see both what is really happening and what the soldiers have been programmed to believe is
happening. The entire concept is so well carried out that switching back and forth between the two flows
naturally without being distracting at all.
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ODDS & ENDS
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- Angela Lansbury, at 37, was only one year older than the actor playing her son. The makeup job on her
was so well done, that in 1962 she looked exactly like she did thirty years later on Murder She Wrote.
- Frank Sinatra is the greatest singer who ever lived.
Johnny: Actually, that honor belongs to John Fogerty.
- The movie has been remade with an updated plot (instead of the Korean War, it's the Gulf War) and cast
including Denzel Washington as Captain Marco, Meryl Streep as Eleanor Shaw (the mother), and Liev
Schreiber (who I keep mistaking for Vince Vaughn for some reason) as Raymond Shaw.
- The movie was withdrawn from theaters after John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Rumor has it that
Sinatra was so upset by the assassination and the similarities to that in the movie that he bought the
rights and kept it relatively unseen until it was re-released in 1987 (although, in my research, I also
found rumors that he kept the movie unseen partly because he believed UA was withholding on the profits
of the film).
- The cartoon that is on Adult Swim (Cartoon Network) as I am typing this actually had the line
"I must have been possessed by the spirit of Steve McQueen." Yikes.
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MAMA'S APPROVAL
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There's nothing too offensive in this movie - there is some violence, but it's not gory (in typical Film
Noir fashion, it's "artistic" violence - done in creative, rather than gory, ways). It's not a film for
children.
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TRAILER COMPARISON
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The DVD I rented has the trailer on it, and the trailer plays more on the fact that Frank Sinatra and
Janet Leigh are in the film than on the actual plot. It absolutely did not do this movie justice.
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THE GIST
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The Manchurian Candidate is an excellent example of the Film Noir genre. With an excellent cast, an
excellent plot, and enough suspense to keep you guessing until the end, it's definitely one to add to the
"must rent" list. I would recommend watching it before you see the remake.
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