As remakes go, The Manchurian Candidate is better than most. It remains faithful to the premise and themes of the original, but, by avoiding a slavish re-interpretation, it offers some surprises to those who are familiar with the 1962 version. Yet there's still a problem, and it has to do with the ending. 42 years ago, The Manchurian Candidate capped off a Hitchcockian climax with a grim-but-reasonable conclusion. Here, the climax is just as taut, and the payoff is equally tragic, but it's immediately followed by a cheat. (If you see the movie, you'll immediately recognize what I'm carefully avoiding stating explicitly.) There's a falseness to the denouement of Jonathan Demme's The Manchurian Candidate that diminishes everything that has gone before it. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the reactions of focus groups compelled Demme to re-shoot the last few moments. The result, regardless of how it was arrived at, is gutless. Let's hope no one tries to remake Chinatown with the same mentality.
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