Bad Brains

More than once in Jonathan Demme's reimagining of The Manchurian Candidate, a distraught Denzel Washington jabs at his skull and rasps, "They got in here." He means it literally. Gone are the Communist brainwashers of the 1962 film, who controlled captured GIs by means of superpowerful Asiatic hypnosis. The global capitalists of Demme's version implant orders by the more up-to-date method of drilling into the brain.

Jitters have replaced goose bumps as the key audience reaction, now that the process of mind control entails sound effects reminiscent of a dentist's office and the sight of skull powder dusting the air; and given Demme's purpose, the change is appropriate. He's using the slightly sci-fi element of his plot as a cautionary exaggeration, to sensitize you to an actually existing form of brain invasion. For the most humane reasons, he wants this movie to get into your head.

Of course, the plot has already been embedded. Most moviegoers have at least heard about the original Manchurian Candidate (directed by John Frankenheimer from a screenplay by George Axelrod, based on Richard Condon's novel), and many of them know how that film managed to have its Red Menace and laugh at it, too, since the story's Chinese Communists turned out to be working in America through a clique of McCarthyite politicians.

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