This "updating" failed. For one thing, it is very, very long.... or one should say, one feels time creep by. For another, the script is nowhere as witty and bizarre as the original. Somehow, the villainy of a multinational does not come across as evil or alien as that of the Chinese/North Korean communists. Denzel Washington's character wears his angst on his sleeve to the point of embarrassment; Frank Sinatra was cooler and better able to put the puzzle together (in the new movie nobody seems terribly smart, except Meryl Streep, of course). The very few acts of violence in the original shocked; the ones here are just graphic. There was such cleverness in the original, even fun, none of which one can find here. This was a dead-earnest re-imagining of the plot with a switch at the end; it came out a bore.
Review of The Manchurian Candidate
