ALL'S fair in love, war and politics.

As American presidential elections throughout the years have proved, scandal and muckraking can sway the allegiances of fickle voters.

And a candidate's service record on the battlefield has always been a badge of honour to be worn proudly before the electorate.

Jonathan Demme's timely remake of The Manchurian Candidate, based on the novel by Richard Condon, resets the action to the Desert Storm military campaign.

Highly decorated soldier Major Ben Marco (Denzel Washington) is haunted by the past: he suffers nightmarish flashbacks to one fateful night in the Kuwaiti desert when his platoon came under fire from Iraqis.

Some of his men died and Marco would have perished himself, were it not for the courageous intervention of Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber), who single-handedly protected the unit, winning the Congressional Medal of Honor for his selfless actions.

Slowly piecing together his fragmented memories, Marco begins to suspect that he and his men were subjected to brainwashing in the desert, which has erased all memory of what really happened that night.

Searching for answers, Marco approaches Shaw, who is now a New York congressman in the running for the vice presidential nomination.

The politician admits, under duress, to be suffering from flashbacks too but he refuses to believe in a conspiracy.

Shaw's mother, the fearsome Senator Eleanor Shaw (Meryl Streep), becomes concerned by Marco's interest in her son and she attempts to keep the major from wrecking her boy's glittering political career.

However, she knows far more than she is letting on, such as her links with the shadowy Manchurian Global Corporation.

The Manchurian Candidate is a slickly directed revote of the classic 1962 John Frankenheimer thriller, which starred Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Angela Lansbury.

It's essentially the same film, apart from the ending, which veers in a completely unexpected direction.

Washington ably embodies a man tormented by the horrors of war and he contrasts nicely with Schreiber's all too trusting politician.

The 1962 film secured Lansbury an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress and Streep should expect similar accolades for her chilling, tour-de-force portrayal of a manipulative, controlling mother.

When Senator Shaw snarls at a room full of congressmen, "I will do whatever is necessary to protect America from anyone who opposes her," you believe her without a shadow of doubt.

By the twist denouement, we realise the full extent of her Machiavellian meddling. Mother knows best.

Rating 8/10