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Reel To Reel:
The Manchurian Candidate

How It Rates: ***1/2
Starring: Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, Liev Schrieber
Rated: R
Red Flags: Language, Action Violence

Preconceived Notions: Remake a classic political thriller? Are you brainwashed?
The Bottom Line: Hits all the right chords, but Meryl Streep steals the show.

It's no coincidence the updated Manchurian Candidate was released one day after the end of the Democratic National Convention, striking while John Kerry's and John Edward's speeches about the direction of America are still fresh on the cable-news soundbite machines and in our heads. That only adds to its effectiveness.

The original Candidate, for those of you who don't know, featured Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury in a tale of eastern communists brainwashing a politician in a plot to infiltrate the government. The new version retunes to a post-9/11 world, subsituting a multinational corporation, Manchurian Global, as the bad guys and an implant as the means.

Their sleeper is Seargeant Shaw (Schrieber), Seargeant Raymond Shaw, Raymond... Prentiss... Shaw... -- a vice-presidential candidate who can be manipulated like a light switch. That's when he's not being manipulated by his mother (Streep), a powerful senator who gets what she wants -- all in the name of protecting America, of course. Streep swears she's not emulating Hillary Clinton. Yeah, suuuuurrrrre. Watch her performance and tell me if I'm wrong. Maybe it's not the Hillary we've seen in front of the cameras, but it has to be the woman behind closed doors. Schrieber's character has this constant creepy aura, making him an awfully cold fish for half the presidential ticket. He wouldn't be there without Mommy's help.

Washington plays Captain Bennett Marco, commander of an ambushed Gulf War unit both he and Shaw served in. Marco has had reoccouring nightmares for years of the ambush and knows something more went on there. His search for the truth accelerates when he meets a fellow soldier in his unit who's being mentally destroyed by the nightmares. Much of this film is Marco's picture, a study of a man collapsing under the weight of disturbing facts and diaboloical images.

The new Candidate taps into our fears about globalization and terrorism. A lot of us will subsitute Halliburton for the fictitous Manchurian Global. But it also plugs into some eternal truths about politics -- the manufacturing of candidates, the corruption of leadership through money, and the sideshow spectacle of the presidential race. Even Al Franken plays a darkly comic cameo as a lame television commentator. We have arguably seen, in the current administration, examples of corporate influence. After seeing this picture, you realize it's not that great of a leap to direct control.