Manchurian Candidate

[Matt1]

Not so good. It's one of those movie where you want to give it a good review, give it a thumb up, but just can't. So many elements of this movie were great. Washington's and Schrieber's performances, the flashback sequences, and all of the political speeches (I swear I heard some of those just last week.) However, these good parts just don't add up to a good sum.

Any potential suspension of disbelief necessary to buy into the film's outlandish plot, is effectively shattered by Meryl Streep's way too over the top performance and the overly cartoony, hyper-satirical cable news interludes. While I get the point the Demme was trying to drive home with the graphic intensive news bits, they would have seemed more at place in a Paul Verhoeven movie then in a political thriller. They totally ruin the tone of the movie.

And the conspiracy just doesn't add up. It's full of so many holes and inconsistencies that are never addressed by Demme.

And the ending is so [censored] lame. It was obviously not the original ending they intended. In the history of lame, ball-less, wussy endings, it will surely hold one of the top spots.

Thoughts?

[Threadkiller]

Eh, I liked the movie for some of the reasons you mentioned including the performances and gave it a thumbs up. You are right about Streep although I enjoyed seeing Al Franken as a newscaster.

My biggest complaint about the movie is that, as a thriller it didn't actually thrill. There didn't seem to be any pacing or tone as it just went from one scene to another awkwardly unfolding the story.

Still, I thought it was cool and the plot, while outlandish serves as a metaphor for the current political system that allows corporations to essentially buy political offices.