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The Manchurian Candidate, a classic of paranoid cinema from the 1960s,
gets a cunning update, rife with hot-topic references to corporate war
profiteering and electronic voting machines. Major Ben Marco (Denzel
Washington, Training Day) has been haunted by nightmares ever since a
firefight during the first Gulf War--a battle in which he believes he was saved
by the heroism of Sgt. Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber, Kate & Leopold). But
Marco's nightmares suggest otherwise and drive him to investigate what
happened, which may threaten Shaw's candidacy for vice-president. Meryl
Streep plays Shaw's mother, a senior senator who manipulates everyone
around her with an iron will and a sharp tongue. The Manchurian Candidate
loses steam towards the end, but up until then director Jonathan Demme
keeps the movie rolling fluidly, crafting some creepy paranoia of his own
while Streep tears into everything in her path.