Charlie Kirk’s conspiracies are finally back in the news thanks to the resignation of Trump’s anti-terror chief, decorated Green Beret Joe Kent, noting how his unit wasn’t allowed to investigate possible foreign ties. Well, this brings back the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Watching it again, you realise it’s rewound to before 9/11!

By Emad Aysha
You’re never actually told ‘when’ the story is happening, just that it's 20 years after the First Gulf War. And yet the characters look essentially the same age as they were at the opening of the movie, during the Gulf War.

This is a very well-made movie, mind you, with attention to detail and high production standards, so this can’t be a mistake or coincidence. They want you to feel like it’s still in the 1990s and America still hasn’t made the mistakes it made under George W., embroiling itself in the Middle East and, not least, in Iraq.

CONCERNED CITIZEN: Denzel Washington in the Frank Sinatra role of yonder. The past's lessons unlearned or reruns from the future?

The evil mother character Eleanor Shaw (like ‘Eleanor’ Roosevelt), played to glorious perfection by Meryl Streep, is clearly meant to be Hillary Clinton – Bill’s backseat driver. They have her down to the haircut and taste in skirts.

Critically, when she pitches her son as the better vice presidential candidate, she does this based on the growing, nagging fear Americans have that something terrible is going to happen, through nuclear terrorism driven by cabals of smaller, envious states. That was an actual security doctrine in the 1990s.

Just watch Robert De Niro in Wag the Dog (1997). Arab commentators on 9/11 said the same thing: that movies like Independence Day (1996) and Swordfish (2001) were embodiments of this fear of ‘blowback’.

I found the same thing in espionage literature in Tom Clancy’s Ruthless.com (1998), where East Asians conspire against America – symbolised by the president, of course – in revenge for the American destruction of the East Asian miracle.

Thank heavens Clancy was willing to admit to that crime at least, a testament to a growing awareness that the US had created so much ‘collateral damage’ that it would eventually come back to haunt it.

So the movie is deliberately creating a hazy sense of time to look at the USA in retrospect, forcing the country and its policymakers to face themselves in the ugly mirror. What has our war on terror and ‘liberation’ of Iraq wrought on us?

VICTIM SYNDROME: A sizzling screenshot from 'Threes Days of the Condor' (1975) with Robert Redford and Glenn Close. (The scene was actually forced onto them by the studios.)

They even have commentator Al Franken’s voice telling us how the country is even more in debt than before. (The German character notes how this could all be an illusion, and we’re still in Kuwait.)

JFK is mentioned in a deleted scene, and the term lone gunman is explicitly used. And note the usage of ‘these’ United States instead of ‘the’ US as well; announced by a black guy no less!

Man, what an appropriately timed movie, coming in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War. The brainwashing metaphor is just a conceptual tool to remind Americans how their leaders are puppets of their corporate financiers, with the public being ‘medicated’ by the media (into eating Pot Noodle).

Much the same was true of the original 1962 classic. The buffoon senator talking about Communist infiltration, a stand-in for Joseph McCarthy, is the ultimate tool of the Communists.

The movie was clearly trying to say that paranoia ‘eroding’ civil liberties is exactly what any foreign enemy wants. Democracy is more important than winning the Cold War, as is the war on terror.

COMPANY MEN: Believe it or not that's Robert Redford speaking to Dick Helms, the former CIA chief who was hired as a consultant for this anti-establishment movie!

Having Denzel Washington, a black guy, as the hero, compared to the original Frank Sinatra, is both an update and a continuity with the original, since Sinatra was an Italian American. They’re also individuals known for being the king of cool, and yet here they’re flustered and wracked with doubts.

Such a visual contrast works wonders for the drama and tragedy of the respective movies. The woman (Kimberly Elise) helping Denzel is also much more proactive this time around, admittedly in contrast to Janet Leigh, although she is a polyglot racial character in herself.

The times have changed. The country is much more selfish and self-absorbed, which is why the military doesn’t support Denzel the way it supported Sinatra. The brainwashing techniques on offer in the 2004 version are also more intrusive, with electronics placed inside your brain.

The old movie relies on hypnosis. But you feel the new movie is more metaphorical, since the chip they place in your back was modelled on a device meant to contain the medical details of a lost GI.

Gulf War syndrome is mentioned too; hence Jeffrey Wright’s moving performance. Meryl Streep’s controlling instincts are also more up-to-date, with incest.

Note the evil mind control doctor, while South African (apartheid) is played by a very transparent Englishman, Simon McBurney. This contrasts with the ‘East’ German friend (Bruno Ganz, RIP). Whose real ally are you after the Cold War?

Even the closing scene on the seashore is reminiscent of the original The Bourne Identity (1980) novel by Robert Ludlum. The hero is swimming and finally recollects his name.

Oh, if you’re wondering about the title of this conspiracy piece, it’s in reference to Sydney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor (1975). Here, Robert Redford plays a CIA analyst on the run from assassins who are secretly working for dark forces within the CIA itself.

That movie itself is just as timely, since these dark forces are hungry for Arab oil. Resource wars are predicted as a thing of the not-so-distant future. (Venezuela, hint, hint).

In a key scene, one of the bad guys shoots Redford’s CIA friend, right in the neck. Even the CIA bigwigs, when they discuss what happened, wonder at how a desk-jockey like Redford could pull off such a professional shot. He doesn’t have that kind of training.

SIGNATURE MOVE: Walter McGinn as Sam Barber, Robert Redford's ill-fated friend who gets 'dispatched' in spite of the body armour.

Note that the poor guy who was shot was wearing body armour. Someone like you or me would shoot at the head, but the neck is a safer bet. Heads wobble, necks don’t. Hitting on a lower trajectory to the neck (or mouth) is a guaranteed kill because it hits the brainstem.

Hey, wait a minute: Where was Charlie Kirk shot again?!