In 2004, Schreiber starred in director Jonathan Demme's sneaky good remake of the classic political thriller film "The Manchurian Candidate." In the film, he plays congressman and vice presidential candidate Raymond Prentiss Shaw, a Gulf War veteran who after being subjected to mind-control experiments has become a brainwashed assassin who can be activated by trigger words, along with the other members of his unit, including Major Bennett Marco (Denzel Washington), who is working to unravel the conspiracy.
Shaw's own power-hungry mother, Senator Eleanor Prentiss Shaw, gave him over to the brainwashers so she could control him on his rise to become President. The Shaws are disturbingly close. Eleanor is truly one of the worst mothers in cinema history.
Like Cotton Weary, Raymond Prentiss Shaw is a character who's an unsympathetic victim, a type of character Schreiber is very good at playing. Sight & Sound Magazine called his performance "oleaginous," meaning oily and obsequious, an exceptionally good word choice to describe Shaw.
