Manchurian Candidate (2004)

This movie was not what I expected at all, and boy was it weird at times.

Starring Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber and Jon Voight, this is the movie that makes all of your wildest fears come true, the idea of a president that is bought and controlled by a special interest.

This movie is very trippy to follow, and violent at times. The first half of the movie is told is flashback to an opening scene in the Gulf War that goes horribly wrong. Denzel Washington starts to think that what he knows to be true isn’t, and he sets out to find out the truth before it is too late. It leads him right to the White House where the vice president on the Democratic tickets is being controlled by a group called Manchurian Global.

In the end, the movie works out to be pretty interesting. I was put off at first because even some of the footage looked a little futuristic, like the nomination celebration settings, and the live feeds of the presidents talking. Plus there are as always, a ton of close ups of Denzel’s face either breathing hard and sweating, biting his lip, or any of his other “troubled” quirks that he brings out for a movie like this.

If you like Denzel, even though this isn’t really his typical take charge kind of role, it is still solid acting and you may like it. If you like a different movie that you may not figure out right away, but gradually unravels, you may like this movie. But, if you don’t like psychedelic scenes with covert operating tables and sinister things happening to soldiers, you may want to pass.

Overall an interesting remake of a movie I would almost be curious to see the original with Frank Sinatra.

Here are some similar arcade posts

• Inside Man (2006)
• Man on Fire (2004)
• Minority Report (2002)
• Shaun of the Dead (2004)
• Guarding Tess (1994)

If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.