Who's pulling the strings?(Now Playing)

Forget rocking the vote. The movies, not MTV, may have normally disinterested voters going to the polls this November.

On the heels of such issue-minded summer fare as The Day After Tomorrow and Fahrenheit 9/11 comes nothing less than a remake of the 1962 political thriller, The Manchurian Candidate. The original was a work of unnerving paranoia for paranoid times. Can the same be said of this new version?

The basic premise, taken from Richard Condon's novel, remains the same: Raymond Shaw, a brainwashed war hero, is the key to a plot to gain control of the Presidency. When Bennett Marco, another member of the hero's combat unit--played by Frank Sinatra in 1962 and Denzel Washington now--suspects his own mind may have been messed with, he begins to unravel the sinister plan.

Both movies spin tantalizing conspiracy theories uniquely fitted to their respective eras. The original opens in 1952 Korea, where communist scientists do the brainwashing in cahoots with a power-mad American senator's wife (Angela Lansbury). That the woman also happens to be Raymond Shaw's mother adds a layer of Greek tragedy to the proceedings.

The new take from director Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs, Beloved) moves the military theater to 1991 Kuwait. The villains still include Shaw's mother (Meryl Streep) but also--in a bit Michael Moore would love--a shady investment firm and arms manufacturer called Manchurian Global. (Communist bad guys are so 1980s.)

The new Manchurian Candidate sends off creepy, through-the-looking-glass vibes. Demme establishes his contemporary milieu in subtle ways, such as the newspaper headline "Mob Kills Muslim at University," or radio snippets announcing another U.S. anti-terror operation in far-off places like Indonesia. Such touches resonate, especially when I'm writing this owl a public bus in which a video screen reminds passengers that we're under an "elevated" terror alert.

Demme and screenwriters Daniel Pyne and Dean Georgaris have crafted a tight, claustrophobic thriller, but it is the cast that ultimately sells their loopy story. In the role of Marco, Washington brings a sweaty urgency to each moment he's on screen. Marco makes for a frightening audience ...