Customer Reviews

The Manchurian Candidate (Special Edition)

5 star:		(97)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

During the Korean War a platoon was mislead and abducted for nefarious purposes. This was well planned as there was only one person in the platoon that would serve further purpose SSgt. Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) and was already in a position needed for the future. The rest of the platoon is used to support a story to help Raymond get the Congressional Metal of Honor

One other in the platoon Cap. /Maj. Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra) finally realizes what happed and is in a position to thwart the plot this is because he is with Army Intelligence. As with real life luck would have it that he is assisted be a quirky woman who sees his potential and dumps her old beau for the new challenge.

What is the plot and will it succeed?

Or will Marco be able to foil it?

Who is the mysterious American Control?

Who are we supposed to root for?

Watch as the story unfolds and remember they can not hear you when you say "Watch out!"

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I was shocked to see Angela Lansbury, "Murder She Wrote" not being quite as nice as I remember her. A real advantage was not recognizing Laurence Harvey from anywhere and so this did not distract from his acting.

I really enjoyed watching this just as a movie and not trying to make any connections to underlying messages. But I was really surprised to find out who the American control was. And so much for the theory that you can't be forced to do anything that is not within your nature. I was surprised to the last.

With out the immediate threat of the cold war the movie still holds suspense for us. John Candy did a parody of this in the movie "Volunteers"

Lawrence Harvey was a brilliant actor, but one that tended to put people off with his aloofness bordering on arrogance. But this movie is not about likable people. It's about control, dirty politics, communism, and the anti-communist witch-hunts that took their toll on Hollywood and Washington. Harvey's distance works perfectly as Raymond Shaw, but even in the dis-likable Raymond, Frankenheimer pulls out moments of pathos. In a tour de force, Harvey is perfect as the man controlled by his mother, by forces the brainwashed him. He gives a bleak insight into the character of Raymond, a man driven to do things he has no idea why, and man so manipulated by his harpy mother, a 'gun' that has been loaded waiting for the trigger to be pulled, one that kills the woman he loves without hesitation.

But his brilliance does not dominate the film, because there are so many other superb performance by this All Star Cast. And oddly, John Frankenheimer in untypical Hollywood style, cast against roles and demanded such range from all the actors. Angela Landsbury (Murder, She Wrote) built a career of being the person everyone adored, yet in this film she is the woman behind the man...the true power. She is hard-edged, totally manipulative, rather ugly in spirit, and determined at all costs to change the face of US politics. Frank Sinatra, usually Mr. Macho, comes across as a man a tormented by dreams that made no sense, but keep him convinced something is terrible wrong, with him, with Harvey, with all the men of their unit. Many consider this Sinatra's best performance. Janet Leigh is warm as the woman who falls in love with Sinatra, though under used. James Gregory play Landsbury's husband, the wishy-washy Joe McCarthy-type senator, who is merely his wife's mouthpiece and puppet. John McGiver gives a fine supporting performance as the voice of reason, a senator who would block at all costs Landsbury pushing her husband's bid for the presidency.

The edgy, black and white lensing, gives a dated feel to the movie, but actually enforces the cold war era sensation, a perfect medium for Frankenheimer's anti-McCarthyism rant. Landsbury won an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for this performance. It's well deserved.

It's not a likable film, its not a comfortable film and maybe a little hard for younger generations to appreciate the horror, the tension of the cold war and McCarthyism, but is a film so brilliant it needs repeat viewing to appreciate all the small nuances.

Lawrence Harvey was a brilliant actor, but one that tended to put people off with his aloofness bordering on arrogance. But this movie is not about likable people. It's about control, dirty politics, communism, and the anti-communist witch-hunts that took their toll on Hollywood and Washington. Harvey's distance works perfectly as Raymond Shaw, but even in the dis-likable Raymond, Frankenheimer pulls out moments of pathos. In a tour de force, Harvey is perfect as the man controlled by his mother, by forces the brainwashed him. He gives a bleak insight into the character of Raymond, a man driven to do things he has no idea why, and man so manipulated by his harpy mother, a 'gun' that has been loaded waiting for the trigger to be pulled, one that kills the woman he loves without hesitation.
But his brilliance does not dominate the film, because there are so many other superb performance by this All Star Cast. And oddly, John Frankenheimer in untypical Hollywood style, cast against roles and demanded such range from all the actors. Angela Landsbury (Murder, She Wrote) built a career of being the person everyone adored, yet in this film she is the woman behind the man...the true power. She is hard-edged, totally manipulative, rather ugly in spirit, and determined at all costs to change the face of US politics. Frank Sinatra, usually Mr. Macho, comes across as a man a tormented by dreams that made no sense, but keep him convinced something is terrible wrong, with him, with Harvey, with all the men of their unit. Many consider this Sinatra's best performance. Janet Leigh is warm as the woman who falls in love with Sinatra, though under used. James Gregory play Landsbury's husband, the wishy-washy Joe McCarthy-type senator, who is merely his wife's mouthpiece and puppet. John McGiver gives a fine supporting performance as the voice of reason, a senator who would block at all costs Landsbury pushing her husband's bid for the presidency.

The edgy, black and white lensing, gives a dated feel to the movie, but actually enforces the cold war era sensation, a perfect medium for Frankenheimer's anti-McCarthyism rant. Landsbury won an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for this performance. It's well deserved.

It's not a likable film, its not a comfortable film and maybe a little hard for younger generations to appreciate the horror, the tension of the cold war and McCarthyism, but is a film so brilliant it needs repeat viewing to appreciate all the small nuances.

A very disturbing view on brainwashing, masterfully filmed. One feels that this just might happen, which is what makes it so scary. Techniques used allow you to see what the brainwashed are seeing. Will stay with you!!

it took me awhile to finally get around to seeing this movie,but it was
worth it.i found it much better than the remake in many respects.first
off,it was easier to follow,and made more sense.second,the depth of
story impressed me.there was a lot going on in this film.thirdly,the
depth of acting.Angela Lansbury may have been in a supporting role,but
she steals the show when she's in the movie.her character is a far cry
from Jessica Fletcher of Murder,She Wrote.this is an evil woman,and
Lansbury plays it to the hilt.Laurence Harvey is great in his role,but
Frank Sinatra is superb as the main character.Henry Silva also deserves
some praise for his minor role.in short,this movie was well watching,in
my opinion,and the remake pales in comparison.my vote for the
Manchurian Candidate is a 4/5

I don't think I can add much to the praise already heaped upon the movie itself except to say that all of it is richly deserved. It is one of the most brilliantly conceived, written and executed movies I have seen in a long time. I wish I had discovered it years ago. The acting is mostly top-notch, as is the lighting, set designs and editing. The dialogue, though wordy in spots, is always focused on manipulating the suspense and creating a reasonably believable situation (with one intriguing exception which may not be an exception at all, see below). The goal of the movie is not to keep you guessing at what is going on as much as it is to keep you guessing at how it will play out. This it does masterfully.

The only gripe I have is not with the movie but with the commentary supplied by the director, John Frankenheimer. Commentaries are often my favourite part of a DVD. Surely, in a movie of this complexity, there must be a thousand insightful and instructive stories but, for some reason, they mostly go untold. There are so many spots in the movie where you desperately want him to tell you something about the character or the actor or the difficulty in staging the shot or 'something' of interest but he says nothing of consequence or, more often, he says nothing at all. With about 20 minutes to go in the film, he finally gets into some informative details but by then it's too little, too late.

What I found most annoying was his virtual silence during the first scene between Janet Leigh and Sinatra where they trade off a long string of seemingly disconnected sentences. His only comment was that most people found this dialogue a little odd. Gee, no kidding! Taken at face value, the dialogue has ostensibly no bearing on the rest of the movie. In fact, if you listen carefully, every scene between these two have a number of apparently disjointed remarks. But we know that can't be right. The movie is too well-crafted to have random dialogue. So it has to be telling us something, something that is not resolved with the death of Raymond. I have my own ideas what the strange exchanges mean but I really wanted to hear from the director some idea of what he was striving for in these scenes. Just a hint. Anything. Throw us a bone here.

The Manchurian Candidate is a John Frankenheimer directed film set in the middle of the cold war. A group of US soldiers is captured and then brainwashed by the North Koreans and returned to the US lines. Members of the patrol begin to have strange dreams which are in reality the repressed memories of their brainwashing technique.

The crux of the story is the manipulation of one of the soldiers [Shaw] by his mother who's marriage to a McCarthy like senator hides the fact she is really a communist plant. The patrol's commander, played by Frank Sinatra in a fine performance, slowly pieces togther what occurred behind North Korean lines.

Manchurian Candidate predates the Kennedy assasination and the assasination itself was a key reason that the film was later taken out of circulation until the 1980's. A masterpiece of paranoia and political intrigue, The Manchurian Candidate set the tone for a slew of like minded conspiracy films none an finely made or anywhere near as chilling. Both Sinatra and Angela Landsbury in the role of Shaw's mother, put in very fine performances.

Highly recommended.

"The Manchurian Candidate" was a product of its era that has managed to transcend the era that produced it. This political satire and thriller captures the sense of paranoia that existed in America during the 50's and early 60's. Frank Sinatra, Lawrence Harvey, Angela Lansbury and James Gregory all give top notch performances in John Frankenheimer's classic film of Richard Condon's novel.

A platoon of soliders are betrayed by their military guide and captured by the North Koreans during the Korean War. Their subjected to mind control techniques to make one of them the perfect assassin. When they return home, the platoon's captain (Sinatra)begins having nightmares where his Sgt. Shaw (Harvey)kills two of his men in cold blood. In these dreams they are surrounded by the enemy in a lecture hall being conditioned for the mind control experiments. It's clear that the Sgt. has been conditioned to become a "sleeper" agent--impossible to detect because he doesn't know that he's now an agent for a foreign power. Additionally, Shaw's mother (Lansbury)uses the concerns over communists in the US government to launch her husband's (Gregory)bit to be put on the ticket for the vice-presidency.

This new edition comes with two featurettes. The first features director William Freidkin ("The French Connection", "The Exorcist", "To Live and Die in L.A.")in an appreciation of Frankenheimer's career. Freidkin discusses how "The Manchurian Candidate" broke with the conventions of political thrillers of the time. The second features 15 minute interview with Angela Lansbury about working on the film.

The animated menus is also new and the features from the first disc including Frakenheimer's marvelous commentary track are kept in tact. Do you need to upgrade to this new edition? Only if you didn't purchase the previous one. The previous edition had both the widescreen and full screen versions of the film and all the features here except the two previously mentioned featurettes.

To some (myself included), the term "Political Thriller" can seem like an oxymoron...that is, until one watches The Manchurian Candidate. This is one emotionally charged roller-coaster ride of a movie.

Acting-wise, I thought Sinatra's performance was only lukewarm, but the others were great--ESPECIALLY Angela Lansbury's. I'm not too familiar with her other film work, but this has to be the best performance of her career--she is absolutely superb in her Lady Macbeth-type role.

The ending is somewhat predictable, but it hardly matters. This film has a gripping storyline, great style (e.g., the mind control/ladies' gardening club scenes), and as much suspense as any Hitchcock film. Highly recommended!

MGM has upgraded and repackaged thier DVD version of John Frankenheimer's classic 1962 political chiller just in time for the release of the (pointless!) 2004 remake in theaters. For serious fans of the original version this is actually a good thing, for two reasons: 1. The new anamorphic transfer, and the audio track are a VERY noticable improvement over the first edition. 2. MGM has admirably avoided the usual trick of jacking up the list price-it is the same as the first edition (let's hope this signals a new trend in the industry!). As for the film itself-fellow reviewers have already done a fine job of plot synopsis; just suffice it to say that this one fits snugly into your "Conspiracy A-Go-Go" section right next to "The Parallax View", "JFK", "The Conversation" and "Three Days Of The Condor". And you wanna see something REALLY scary? When "Farenheit 9-11" is released on DVD, try it on a double bill with "Manchurian Candidate". Pleasant dreams!