Comparisons are odious, but whenever someone remakes a film universally hailed as a classic, comparisons are pretty much inevitable. So are cheap shots.

That being the case, let's get 'em out of the way. The new version of The Manchurian Candidate, directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep and Liev Schreiber, isn't nearly as satisfying as the original. That version, which was directed by John Frankenheimer and written by George Axelrod, was shrewder, sharper and more suspenseful. Forty-two years after it was made, it still crackles with tension and wit, not to mention riveting performances by Angela Lansbury, Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and just about everyone else who happens to wander in front of the camera.

Why then would anyone want to remake something that wasn't broken? Because of the powerful resonance of The Manchurian Candidate's paranoid premise: that a sinister enemy has brainwashed a group of American soldiers and sent them back into society as sleeper agents. And then, too, there are the ready parallels the filmmakers (including producer Tina Sinatra, Frank's daughter) find between the present day and the height of the McCarthy era.

But where the earlier Manchurian Candidate was a Cold War thriller about communism and the rabid Red-baiting it inspired, the new version finds the threat even closer to home, in the form of unthrottled American capitalism. Here, the villains are not Mao and McCarthy, but Manchurian Global, a rapacious multinational conglomerate that bears more than a passing resemblance to Halliburton, the Carlyle Group and other corporations who have plenty to gain from war and little to lose. Late in the film, Manchurian Global's mission is neatly summed up by Captain Ben Marco (Washington): "This is rich people funding bad science to put a sleeper in the White House"-a line that by itself almost justifies the new film's existence.

That sleeper is Congressman Raymond Shaw (Schreiber), a veteran of the first Gulf War, where he served under Captain Marco. When Marco and his men are ambushed during a routine night patrol, Shaw ostensibly rescues the entire unit-earning the Congressional Medal of Honor and launching himself on a promising political career, abetted by his Machiavellian mother, Sen. Eleanor Shaw (Streep). Eleanor Shaw is a no-holds-barred bully, not to mention a canny distillation of every right-wing ranter currently smogging up the airwaves. She's also a big, ripe plum of a part, and Streep plays her with relish, juice running down her chin as she chews on the scenery and on any characters who stand in her way.

But while the Shaws are busy ascending to the height of power, Captain Marco and the other soldiers are slowly going mad, haunted by the same nightmare of what really happened in Kuwait. Far from being rescued, Marco suspects they were kidnapped and brutalized by their captors, and here, the film clearly departs from its predecessor. Where Frankenheimer depicted the brainwashing as a clever mind game, what Demme shows us is physical and psychological torture. Yet when Marco expresses doubts to his Army superiors, he's told to take his meds and go away. This government supports the troops only when it's in its interest to do so.

If Frank Sinatra played Captain Marco with his familiar Rat Pack swagger, Washington plays him as a man alone, nearly broken by his experiences yet driven to uncover the truth. His complex performance gives the movie a deeply mournful tone, which seems to be exactly what Demme is after. His Manchurian Candidate is an indictment not only of multinationals, but also of a corporate-owned news media that, unlike Captain Marco, are concerned less with getting at difficult truths and more with protecting profits. Cable news is virtually a second soundtrack to the film, and, with its emphasis on sensational headlines and visuals, becomes its own form of brainwashing.

So compelling are these ideas that Demme seems willing to sacrifice suspense and a taut narrative to make his points, and ultimately this is what makes the second Manchurian Candidate less than successful. Still, they are points worth making. "There are always casualties in war," Washington observes, leaving us to recall what that very first casualty is: the truth.