Among a strong cast, Lansbury is wonderfully wicked as Shaw's despicable mother.
Comment
05/07/08
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
98 %
Reviews Counted: 46 Fresh: 45 Rotten:1 Average Rating: 8.5/10
Runtime: 3 hrs 6 mins
Synopsis: John Frankenheimer's brilliant adaptation of Richard Condon's Cold-War satire, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE is the director's best film, both a coruscating thriller and a razor-sharp satire of political hysteria that captures the turbulent mood of the 1960s. Packed with sly details, such... [More]
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Angela Lansbury, Janet Leigh, James Gregory
Director: John Frankenheimer
Screenwriter: George Axelrod
Producer: George Axelrod, John Frankenheimer
Composer: David Amram
Screenwriter: George Axelrod
Producer: George Axelrod, John Frankenheimer
Composer: David Amram
Reviews
Top Critic Top Critic
This genuinely frightening and daring film blew holes in the political complacency of post-war American cinema.
04/17/01
Top Critic
Top Critic
powerful experience, alternately corrosive with dark parodic humor, suspenseful, moving, and terrifying.
05/07/08
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.
05/07/08
Top Critic
...goes down the rabbit hole, though never too far to lose its satirical relevance to the insanity of real-world politics.
02/07/08
With spry editing and camerawork, [Frankenheimer] fuses together a documentary-like realism and more expressive stylizations to create a hybrid thriller-satire
08/27/06
even when taken out of its historic context, this film is a thought-provoking piece of quality filmmaking
08/12/05
People have called The Machurian Candidate the greatest political thriller ever made. People would be right.
12/20/04
A volatile work, part thriller, part quasi-science fiction, part vicious satire.
09/27/04
It's both exciting and disheartening that a 42 year-old satire like this still works as pointedly as it does.
08/07/04
Frankenheimer’s TV shooting style is only adequate, but it’s the McCarthyist and Freudian undertones that make Candidate a winner.
07/30/04
Frankenheimer easily ranks as the pre-eminent director of political intrigue.
07/30/04
It's heady stuff in a nail-biting chiller that still has the power to make viewers perspire profusely.
07/21/04
Mystery drama. Cold-War political farce. Spine-tingling thriller. Read it how you will...takes us for a wild ride through the mother of all conspiracy theories.
07/20/04
Still well worth a look, its reliance on the events of its time has undeniably diluted its power.
07/19/04
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