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Film The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

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Some 40-odd years since its release, John Frankenheimer's supremely suspenseful The Manchurian Candidate remains on point — even prescient — about closed-door politics. McCarthyism stuffs the contextual crevices of this puzzle of a film, in which former Korean War POW Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra) experiences chronic nightmares that hint at something deeper than battle-triggered trauma. Soon, he realizes that his platoon was brainwashed Peking-style, with his decorated superior Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) programmed for political assassination. Shaw, in turn, becomes an instrument for his self-serving mother (Angela Lansbury) and her anti-communist, presidential-hopeful husband. Awash in Red Scare fear, the film bandies between satire and thriller for an unforgettable finale.

 

– Jason Jude Chan

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