This film is one of the worst pieces of crap I have ever seen.

A ridiculously far fetched, jumbled narrative about international corporations trying to take over the world. Its as if the actors, director and screenwriters all pooled together to make the characters of the film as two dimensional as possible. No character has any kind of convincing history or motive. Every potentially interesting relationship in the film is given the backseat to unevenly propelling the stupid narrative.

No cliche is left unexploited. The character archetypes are ridiculously typical of the kind of crap that is being pumped out by Hollywood and its counterpart in the literary world. The retired army officer haunted by memories, the unexplained old man with a microscope who has access to secrets, the strange men in suits who work for the government. And there is no way that anyone but a man or a group of men wrote this as the female dialog sounds so forced and incredibly unnatural, as does the love story that fails miserably at adding any kind of depth to this waste of film. Seriously, its like an "author" like Dan Brown or Michael Cordy wrote the script when they were feeling particularly uninspired.

The film is also bogged down by stylistic techniques (colour filters, jarring mid coversation camera switches, dramatic flourishes etc) that appear to have no clear purpose and as such alienate the viewer from the crap going on on the screen. After the first hour, the viewer feels like the film is a drill going into their brain and that the pain would just end. But no, the film clocks in at far too long for its own good at over 2 hours. To add insult to the injury that is the viewing experience of this film, the ending holds absolutely no suprises. ARGH. Its this shit and the fact that the public eats it up that is ruining the film industry.

Unless you are the kind of person who enjoys pain, avoid this film completely. Watching it is like having a hangover. Only 10 times worse.

I have a few comments, but no one should take these as rebuttals to Member 27's post, just some remarks.

I noticed that you never mentioned the original 1962 film, so I'm not sure you compared and contrasted the two. To me, every time they kept a scene or line of dialogue from the original, it played worse in the new version. Also, every time they changed something, it seemed weaker.

Both films were written by men, as was the original novel, which was excellent. The dialogue between Marco and his love interest wasn't in the novel, but was in the original film.

The use of cinematic techniques was meant to show how disoriented the characters were, but it obviously affected you more. Changing the original's plot to update it made sense, since there would have been no point in remaking it as a Cold War thriller/satire since that was already done to close to perfection, but I'll agree the new "bad guys" have been villains in films now for decades.

My overall reaction to the film, though, isn't such revulsion. The basic structure and forward momentum of the source material was kept intact, although obviously diluted. I thought it was an OK (if pointless) film, which just reminded me how much better the original was.
Director Jonathan Demme ("Silence of the Lambs") did a better job on this than his utter waste of a remake of the Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn classic "Charade". His unfortunate "The Truth About Charlie" has to be current remake king, Mark Wahlberg's, worst.

I personally really enjoyed this movie. Not only was it suspenseful and entertaining but I thought the plot was interesting and unique. Also, it was very well acted by Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep. I also really like the work of Johnathan Demme and the movie was set up perfectly. There were fun twists and surprsing moments. Overall, I thought this movie was excellent. I have not yet seen the original, so I can understand how that could influence other people's opinions.

Sorry 27, but I must say I really liked this film too. I have seen the original and when I heard they were doing a re-make I thought, "Why must Hollywood insist on ruining the classics?"

I gave it a shot anyway and was pleasantly surprised. Denzel Washington gives another solid performance that seems almost effortless. The man is truly talented. But Liev Shrieber steals the show and would make my short list for best supporting actor this awards season.

I have to be honest and say I did not like Meryl Streep in this movie. I know that's pretty much the idea but to me she seemed completely one-dimensional and by the end of the film I truly wanted her to die. If that was the intention (which is more than entirely possible), then her role served its purpose... but nothing more.

As a side note, I was hoping that Demme would find a way to keep the whole solitaire thing from the original. I just think that would be such a cool concept to toy around with in 2004.

By no means should the Sinatra classic ever be overlooked. These are two very different films that are both very well done. The latest Manchurian Candidate is simply a more modern angle on a kind of political paranoia that continues to captivate our society.

it wasn't great, but there's no way it was worst film of the year

When you people call movies worst of the year, you forget about so many others that came out. This movie wasn't a worst. It was entertaining, made you cringe, wonder what was gonna happen next, and at the end you're like "*Gasp!* whoa!" So, I wouldn't call it a worst at all.

6/10