This past Sunday I saw the new Manchurian Candidate, an update of the 1962 classic starring Frank Sinatra. I saw the original when I was a kid and really enjoyed it. I became completely fascinated by the notion of sleeper agents, and really freaked out when I saw Telefon (although perhaps Charles Bronson is just more of an influence to my generation than Sinatra).
Anyway, I hadn't thought much about the Manchurian Candidate since my teenage years until last year when it was revealed that my co-worker CJ was the first person to discover that Richard Condon, author of The Manchurian Candidate, had plagiarized large sections of that novel from Robert Graves' I, Claudius. So I read the book for the first time, found it okay, and then watched the movie. The movie is indeed much better than the book.
When the remake came out, I wanted to see how it compared to the original. My opinion: the remake doesn't come close to the original. They really made the story take a backseat to watching Denzel Washington's (overblown) totured expressions. It's typical modern day Hollywood fluff. My favorite updated point in the plot: a huge multinational corporation is the perp rather than the communists, who today's kids wouldn't recognize. Russians? What's the big whoop?
Anyway, the real prize of the remake is Wyclef Jean's cover of "Fortunate Son" which, from what I heard of it, sounds better than the John Fogerty original. Why in the world isn't this song available on iTunes? Get with it, people!
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