The Manchurian Candidate

The Manchurian Candidate is a political thriller about Major Bennett Marco, a Gulf War veteran who begins to doubt the story he has been telling for years. During a patrol in the Kuwaiti desert, his unit was ambushed, and Sergeant Raymond Shaw was credited with saving his comrades and awarded the Medal of Honor. Marco now suffers recurring nightmares that cast that memory into question. Meanwhile Shaw, pushed by his mother, Senator Eleanor Prentiss Shaw, has risen to Congress and is being positioned for the vice presidency. As Shaw's political standing grows, Marco digs into what happened to his unit, and the investigation turns into a race against the campaign.

Jonathan Demme directed the film, the twelfth of fourteen he made, between The Truth About Charlie and Rachel Getting Married. Dean Georgaris and Daniel Pyne wrote the screenplay. Denzel Washington plays Marco, Meryl Streep plays Senator Shaw, and Liev Schreiber plays Raymond Shaw; Simon McBurney, Kimberly Elise and Bruno Ganz appear in supporting roles. The production, from Paramount and Scott Rudin Productions among others, cost about 80 million dollars and took in roughly 96 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.6 out of 10 from about 122,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.5 from a much smaller number of votes, while a critics' rating stands at 7.3 from 208 reviews, slightly above the audience scores.