When I saw that Orlando Bloom was out and about, promoting his latest movie, Zulu, my heart sank. Not another Hollywood rehash of a film classic with Bloom playing Lieutenant Bromhead or even more frightening the role-played by the great Welsh actor Stanley Baker.
A quick read of the article and my fears were unfounded it was a completely different story line. This film is a cop film about an investigation into a massacre during apartheid in South Africa. My scare got me thinking about other remakes and just how bad they were.
One that springs to mind is the Ladykillers. The 1955 British comedy made by Ealing Studios was a classic with an incredible cast, Alec Guinness, Herbert Lom, Peter Sellers and Katie Johnson beautifully played Mrs Wilberforce. Then you have the remake it was dire only salvaged somewhat by the performance of Tom Hanks in the Guinness role from the original.
I ask myself are film producers too lazy to come up with original ideas that they need to raid back film catalogues. What producer thought a remake of The Italian Job is a good idea even if the film is completely different from the original but for the name?
I am not a total hater of remakes. I enjoy a few only a few but one I can think of that bucks the trend was Red Dawn. Both were good entertainment if it was slightly unbelievable anyone could launch a sneak attack on the USA is pushing it a bit fine.
The rise of the made for TV films is now in the forefront of the remake these days. One such TV-made-film is Lifepod, a reworking of the Alfred Hitchcock classic Lifeboat where a group of passengers try to survive after their ship was torpedoed during World War 2. With Lifepod substitute, a lifeboat in the middle of an ocean for a spacecraft's escape pod drifting through space and you get the idea.
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