The 2004 version of The Manchurian Candidate centers on a corporation's plot to control the executive branch of government. Following in the footsteps of The Insider, Wall Street, Erin Brockovich, and the Tim Robbins-bomb AntiTrust, The Manchurian Candidate is just the latest anti-business offering from Hollywood.

What nefarious enemies of big business produced these movies? The Communist Party? Anti-globaliztion protestors? Michael Moore? No, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Universal, Metro Goldwyn Mayer/United Artists, and Paramount respectively. Maybe The Manchurian Candidate is right after all: some corporations do engage in brainwashing!

A recent Washington Post article explored the phenomenon of cinematic odes to corporation bashing. It noted, "as many of the 20th century's evils have been dispatched--communism, Nazism, fascism--barely restrained capitalism-gone-bad has persevered as a go-to hobgoblin."

Joe Sobran finds the current Manchurian Candidate--whose 1962 version focused on a Communist, and not a corporate, plot to control the president--a bit unrealistic. A more believable script, he opines, might depict "A robotic Texan from a prominent Republican family [who] is kidnapped and brainwashed by a shadowy group of political 'progressives.' He is then set up in a political career in order to subvert the conservative movement. His mission is to keep expanding the government, while using conservative rhetoric in order to fool gullible talk-show hosts whose support he needs. When he is elected president of the United States, he is to complete the consolidation of the two parties into one huge big-government party."

Alas, this script may appear too fantastical to the makers of 2004's Manchurian Candidate.

People like a good bashing of whatever force is most powerful. Corporations are the most powerful insitutions in the world right now. It's no surprise they have thier critics. Anything powerful does.