Flutterby™! : Manchurian Candidate

Charlene and I were both pretty brain dead last night so we went to rent a video, and somehow the recent remake of The Manchurian Candidate caught our eye. So, popcorn in hand, we sat down to watch it.

It's been a long time since I saw the original with Frank Sinatra, on film, but my memory is that it's a very different film, and both of them speak moderately effectively to their respective zeitgeists. I thought the acting in the new one was stellar, but it fell down when it went just a little too conspiracy theorist; too many people in on the plot to let me continue to believe.

But the triumph of self-determination in this remake was powerful enough to redeem some of the issues I had with the screenplay and the direction. Not a great movie from that standpoint, could have been a lot stronger, and not nearly as rich a set of material to parody from as the original had in the Joseph McCarthy hearings, but a perfectly watchable movie.