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The Manchurian Candidate

The Manchurian Candidate

Thriller · Drama · 1962

Near the end of the Korean War, a platoon of U.S. soldiers is captured by communists and brainwashed. Following the war, the platoon is returned home, and Sergeant Raymond Shaw is lauded as a hero by the rest of his platoon. However, the platoon commander, Captain Bennett Marco, finds himself plagued by strange nightmares and soon races to uncover a terrible plot.

Movie details

The Manchurian Candidate

“When you've seen it all, you'll swear there's never been anything like it!”

1962 Thriller · Drama 2h 6m

Critical arithmetic

The consensus, allegedly.

IMDb

7.9 / 10

83.3K votes

Rotten Tomatoes

96 %

Tomatometer

Metacritic

94 / 100

Metascore

TMDB

7.5 / 10

Community rating

External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.

Near the end of the Korean War, a platoon of U.S. soldiers is captured by communists and brainwashed. Following the war, the platoon is returned home, and Sergeant Raymond Shaw is lauded as a hero by the rest of his platoon. However, the platoon commander, Captain Bennett Marco, finds himself plagued by strange nightmares and soon races to uncover a terrible plot.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over The Manchurian Candidate?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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Pork Chop Hill

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Blood Ties

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The Manchurian Candidate

The Manchurian Candidate

Thriller · 2004

Years after his squad was ambushed during the Gulf War, Major Ben Marco finds himself having terrible nightmares. He begins to doubt that his fellow squad-mate Sergeant Raymond Shaw, now a vice-presidential candidate, is the hero he remembers him being. As Marco's doubts deepen, Shaw's political power grows, and, when Marco finds a mysterious implant embedded in his back, the memory of what really happened begins to return.

The Deadly Affair

The Deadly Affair

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Charles Dobbs is a British secret agent investigating the apparent suicide of Foreign Office official Samuel Fennan. Dobbs suspects that Fennan's wife, Elsa, a survivor of a Nazi Germany extermination camp, might have some clues, but other officials want Dobbs to drop the case. So Dobbs hires a retiring inspector, Mendel, to quietly make inquiries. Dobbs isn't at all sure as there are a number of anomalies that simply can't be explained away. Dobbs is also having trouble at home with his errant wife, whom he very much loves, having frequent affairs. He's also pleased to see an old friend, Dieter Frey, who he recruited after the war. With the assistance of a colleague and a retired policeman, Dobbs tries to piece together just who is the spy and who in fact assassinated Fennan.

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

John Frankenheimer

Written by

George Axelrod

Frank Sinatra

Frank Sinatra

Capt./Maj. Bennett Marco

Laurence Harvey

Laurence Harvey

Raymond Shaw

Angela Lansbury

Angela Lansbury

Mrs. Iselin

Janet Leigh

Janet Leigh

Eugenie Rose Chaney

James Gregory

James Gregory

Sen. John Yerkes Iselin

Henry Silva

Henry Silva

Chunjin

Leslie Parrish

Leslie Parrish

Jocelyn Jordan

Court is in session

Put The Manchurian Candidate on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Prestige Tourist

“Form is the argument.”

Every composed frame and deliberate cut is evidence that control can be thrilling in its own right.

The prosecution The Popcorn Loyalist

“Technique in search of a pulse.”

Immaculate construction is still construction. The film may be too busy proving its craft to feel alive.