Today's Movie: The Manchurian Candidate

Based on the 1959 Richard Condon novel, 1962's The Manchurian Candidate is a fantastic suspense film. It boasts a strong cast consisting of Frank Sinatra, Janet Leigh, Laurence Harvey, Angela Lansbury, and James Gregory all of whom are solid in the movie.

The film is about a U.S. Army platoon that is captured during the Korean War and whose members are brainwashed by communists. Once the soldiers return home all of them seem to be strangely speaking quite highly of Sergeant Raymond Shaw (played by Laurence Harvey) a guy they never particularly liked and who, unbeknownst to them and everyone else, has been brainwashed to be an assassin. Frank Sinatra's character, Major Ben Marco, is the one who starts to put the peices together and relizes what happened him and the rest of the platoon. Then it's a race against time to try and stop Shaw from assasinating a prominent political figure.

Overall, this is a classic movie with a compelling story and an ending that I really like. This is one that I definitely recommend. There was a remake in 2004 starring Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, and Liv Schreiber which is a fine movie but, not nearly as good as the original in my opinion.

I give this one a 5 out of 5