South Korea, 1952. A detachment of American soldiers gets surrounded, and only miraculously saved nine men under the command of Raymond Shaw return home. Raymond receives the Medal of Honor for this operation, but does not remember how they got out of the encirclement, nor many details of the battle.

4k movies reviews
A progenitor of the paranoid thriller genre (among its followers, the classics ‘Three Days of the Condor’, ‘The Domino Principle’, ‘Osterman’s Weekend’ and the more modern ‘The Road to Arlington’ come to mind first). Given that the plot is strongly tied to the Cold War theme, the movie may seem dated. Indeed now it is difficult to assess the relevance of the tape, which, apparently, existed at the time of the release of ‘The Candidate’ on the screen. It is not surprising that in the States, this story was not so long ago rewritten for modern realities, making a remake with Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep.

A couple of years ago I was very impressed by the remake, so I had a desire to get acquainted with Frankenheimer’s movie. I must say that by modern standards it looks quite decent. There are, of course, naive moments in the script and in the manner of shooting, which is somewhat aggravated by the seriousness of the narrative. If in Hitchcock (and Frankenheimer obviously quotes old Alfred) excessive plot implausibility was tinged with the Master’s trademark irony, then in ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ this disadvantage could finally kill the movie. But strangely enough the movie is still watched with interest and practically in one breath. Apparently, the skill of the director, whose ‘Manchurian Candidate’ is considered to be his calling card, is influential.

According to the current times in the movie Frankenheimer looks more not even spy-political side of the plot, but the drama of the two main characters – broken by life veterans of the war in Korea. Both characters are perfectly played by Frank Sinatra and Lawrence Harvey. As a rule, it is customary to praise Angela Lansbury for the role of Harvey’s bitchy mom, but I was somehow not particularly impressed (the effect of the eternal comparison of one with the other – I was very much in love with Meryl Streep, who played the role of this fanatic).

On the whole, it’s a well-deserved classic with impressive work of the legendary Sinatra, Harvey (about whom you may have heard from the movie ‘Domino’, where Keira Knightley’s character was none other than the real daughter of this actor) and Frankenheimer (the creator of such excellent films as ‘The Bird Lover from Alcatraz’ and ‘Ronin’).

Info Blu-ray
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265 (88.0 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.75:1

Audio
English: FLAC Mono
English: Dolby Digital Mono

Subtitles
English SDH, German.