I picked this up at Hollywood Video last night, it's one of the better new releases to DVD I have seen as of late. I don't remember hearing about it when it was out in the theatre, and didn't realize it was a remake of a 1961 film which starred Frank Sinatra until I looked it up on the IMDB today. I haven't seen the original yet, so I can't critique based on comparison.
This updated version is directed by Jonathan Demme who did "Silence of the Lambs" and stars Denzel Washington as Ben Marco, a Desert Storm vet who has reoccurring nightmares about a surgical procedure he underwent during the war.
The plot revolves around a conspiracy theory where implants are put into solders during the Gulf War for brainwash experiments by the Manchurian corporation.
Liev Schreiber plays Raymond Shaw, who is running for the Vice President position in the 2008 election, and everyone believes he heroically rescued his entire squad, including Ben Marco in Kuwait.
Ben discovers he is not the only one from his unit who has been having the nightmares, and begins to realize that the experiments during the war were real, as well as the implants.
I won't say much more, as it would give too much away, but there are many bizarre dream sequences throughout the film and the plot twists and turns, it's not too predictable.
Overall it's a good watch if you are into war/political theory movies, I recommend it.

i like the original a lot more
i'm deeply interestead in
operation mk ultra which was used to create "the manchurian candidate"
through the use of depatterning and repatterning sessions
using sleep dep / excessive sleep , drugs, negative and positive reinforcement, continous tape loops , smells , excessive and zero light

basically torture
to break down and rebuild a persons thought processes
to make a disposable assisn
some claim lee harvey oswald was a manchurian candidate


at one point i wanted to make a whole record about this project
but i wanted to basically re-create the tape loops that were used
and add some other unsettleing sounds
but i can't find much info on what was on the tape loops
i know lot of it was just tones at different frequencies
but i've also heard that there were some tapes
that were like positive comments
some negative
that were played on loop for hours

enough rambling

watch the old one

highly suggest the original(the sinatra saga w/ that flick -priceless),his seconds,& 7 days in may

pollack's 3 days of the condor another..