Dir. Jonathan Demme, 2004, USA, 129 mins
Cast: Denzel Washington, Liev Shreiber, Meryl Streep, Jon Voight
After a long hiatus Jonathan' Philadelphia' Demme returns in style with this intelligent conspiracy thriller featuring one of the strongest casts of recent memory. Don't let the remake tag put you off: this is an updated, very different beast to the original Frank Sinatra movie about a soldier who believes the army is using mind control experiments on him and his men to gain political power.
Denzel Washington plays Major Bennet Marco, a Gulf-war veteran who has insomnia and spends his days giving speeches about the attack on his men in Kuwait that went bad and how they were all rescued by Sergeant Raymond Shaw, who earned the Medal of Honor. Except Shaw never seemed like a take-charge kind of guy and now 12 years later he's a high-powered senator running for office. Marco's interest in Shaw begins with a visit from Corporal Melvin, a jittery man who claims to have nightmares about his crew being brainwashed in the desert. The more Marco thinks about his own eerily similar nightmares and the haziness of that time in Kuwait, the more he starts to question what really went on.
Meanwhile Raymond is having his own problems; a stressful political campaign for the vice-presidency led by his over-bearing mother Eleanor Prentiss Shaw, also a senator, and the same bad dreams about Kuwait are taking their toll. Marco visits Shaw and gradually convinces him to take a moment to hear his story. Shaw has a lot of respect for Marco, but finds it hard to believe that he's really just a puppet in a grand play. But Shaw seems like just that; a puppet, and the more the conspirators push him, the more suspicious he gets until drastic action has to be taken to shut him and Marco up for good.
The big twist is essentially spelled out in the first five minutes, but it's the skill of director Demme that he holds our attention throughout with strong characters and a classic detective arc (it's not about where you're going but how you get there). Washington and Streep may be the big names on the movie poster, and their performances are as impressive as usual, but the real kudos must go to Liev Shreiber, who is nothing short of a revelation as Raymond Shaw. Usually typecast as the brooding bad guy in films such as Scream, here he gives a restrained performance as a man torn between what he thinks and what he feels may actually have happened. Let's hope the academy takes note come February.
The music (and sound design) must also get a special mention, from the laid-back cool of the opening titles right through to the bold use of music at the climax, and Demme's trademark use of actors looking directly into camera is almost hypnotic. There are flaws in the film (the typical British bad guy for one; the absurdity of the conspiracy for another), but make no mistake: this is one of the best films of 2004. Taught, engaging, and that rare thing: a film for grown-ups that doesn't dumb down its delivery, or have merchandising and box office as its primary agenda. For a film about brain-washing, The Manchurian Candidate won't easily be forgotten.
Tom Ramsbottom
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