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About the Movie
A U.S. Army platoon, captured by Communists during the Korean War, is whisked to Manchuria for three nightmarish days of experimental drug-and-hypnosis-induced "brainwashing." The aftermath transforms one of the captors (decorated with the Congressional Medal of Honor) (Laurence Harvey) into an operational assassin with a mission...and with a domineering mother (a menacing Angela Lansbury) who has intensions to promote her henpecked, Joseph McCarthy-like husband's political career. This classic spinetingler, which comes to a stunning--and suspenseful--climax at a political convention at Madison Square Garden, is a stunning cinematic triumph for director John Frankenheimer. With Frank Sinatra as another "brainwashed" officer who realizes that something is very, very wrong...
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Rotten Tomatoes Movie Reviews
TOMATOMETER
98%- Reviews Counted: 54
- Fresh: 53
- Rotten: 1
- Average Rating: 8.7/10
Top Critics' Reviews
Fresh: Every once in a rare while a film comes along that works in all departments, with story, production and performance so well blended that the end effect is one of nearly complete satisfaction. Such is The Manchurian Candidate.
Fresh: The direction and acting are good, so interest is maintained. Frankeheimer's handling of the early sequences, in which he attempts and succeeds in creating on film the corruption of the mind, is imaginative filmmaking.
Fresh: Has an excoriating, destabilizing wit that seems as knowingly sophisticated today as it must have then.
Fresh: Its story of Cold War intrigue, murky East-West dealings, assassination, brainwashing -- and the idea of a glorified cue-card reader playing president -- resonates today like never before.
Customer Reviews
About Time!!!
This original version with Frank Sinatra is by far the best!! Took Apple long enough to finally make it available on iTunes tho!
At last!
I was beginning to believe iTunes would never carry this great classic, which happens to be the best though the film actually sanitized the book failing to show and to portray what a conniving and deranged mother The Manchurian Candidate actually had.
Bait and Switch
The film is advertised as an anticommunist piece, however, the film's ending reveals the true intentions of the filmmakers. This film is actually an anti-american, anti-western propaganda film in which the protagonist goes on a disgusting murder spree ending with the killing of his own parents and finally his suicide.
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- $14.99
- Genre: Classics
- Released: 1962
- © 1962 FRANK SINATRA TRUST NUMBER 10. All Rights Reserved.
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