Abstain early from this 'Candidate'

It's a fact -- cinematography has improved since the original "Manchurian Candidate" was released in 1962. However, in an attempt to make for stunning, innovative imagery, it's hard to avoid the feeling that actual storytelling is getting thrown by the wayside. The classic Frank Sinatra film was nuanced and fleshed out to an extent never seen before; Jonathan Demme's remake is a flashy, gorgeous slideshow that manages to be both painfully sensational and cloying. Considering Demme's record, it's a real tragedy to have produced such a dud -- however, this film is a disgrace to the title and major plot device that made the original so innovative and memorable.\nArmy Special Forces Major Bennett Marco (Denzel Washington) is having trouble sleeping. He's been having the same dream over and over again -- he sees pictures that make him doubt whether or not his platoon sergeant, Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber) actually saved his life and the lives of countless fellow soldiers after their reconnaissance mission was ambushed in Iraqi-controlled Kuwait. While Marco has been sleepwalking through the past 13 years, Shaw has become a well-liked congressman and is on his way to the vice-presidential nomination (with the help of his senator mother, a chilling Meryl Streep). While his supervisors think he's falling deeper and deeper into paranoia, Marco realizes that his nightmares may have some basis in fact; he suspects he might have been brainwashed.\nThere are two crucial flaws in this movie. First, Shaw was revealed to be a multifaceted character in the John Frankenheimer original -- he was self-absorbed, cold, cowardly and totally self-loathing. The new incarnation of Shaw seems like the personification of a politician's sound bite: superficially explained and lacking in substance. Perhaps it's the fact that Steadicams and color filters weren't available in 1962, but the black and white version managed to create a much more believable character, which has much more importance to the plot than the kaleidoscopic photography. Second, the original managed to discuss the communist threat in the postwar world, the Korean war and the KGB's suspected subterfuge without ever becoming dated. Demme's version tries as hard as it possibly can to relate to current events and pre-election fears to the point that it makes your eyes roll back into your brain, and it will be dated in a year (much less 42).\nThere is no innovation in this film's plot -- there is only a vaguely anti-corporate and anti-military conspiracy masking a weak story, forced characters and predictable paranoia. The original was a memorable, eclectic classic; this remake values 'timeliness' over storytelling and pales horribly by comparison.