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Rating: I open the January issue of Ciak magazine, and they publish the titles of the 100 most anticipated films of the year... 90 OF WHICH ARE REMAKES! Ideas have run dry, inspiration has vanished, today we merely "update" old films and bring them to the present with modern techniques, which essentially means removing that MAGIC that was felt 20 or 30 years ago and coating it with TV fiction techniques; the results are almost always inferior to the originals, with a few exceptions.
I'm not against remakes... if they are few but good, I can accept them, but we are being invaded! And this starts to stink. A few good remakes don't hurt, but too many... kill cinema.
In this review, I will talk about the film "THE HITCHER" from 1986 and 2007, comparing them:
1986 version directed by Robert Harmon and starring Rutger Hauer and Thomas Howell.
2007 version directed by Dave Meyers and starring Sean Bean, Sophia Bush, and Zachary Knighton.
PLOT of the original version:
An '80s kid (leather jacket, long hair, tight jeans, and a wannabe tough guy attitude) is driving a car to be delivered along the desert roads between Chicago and San Diego, and since he's still a kid trying to act tough, he succumbs to the classic drowsiness in the car after 10 PM... he's tired... and almost crashes into a truck! To stay awake, he picks up a hitchhiker, saying, "Mom says I shouldn't do it," and mom was absolutely right! In fact, this handsome blond with blue eyes turns out to be one of the most ruthless and cynical killers in cinema history. A masterful Rutger Hauer who usually enjoys killing everyone who gives him a ride; only in a death threat situation with a knife, the kid gathers some Fonzie-like grit and decisively throws the poor Killer out of his car, and of course, the Killer, a sort of blonde Terminator, takes it personally... and instead of killing the young man, he decides to play cat and mouse, a bit in the style of Spielberg's "DUEL," driving the boy to madness...
PLOT of the 2007 version:
Two cute college lovebirds are driving along more or less the same desert roads as the original version, except the hotties are on vacation. One rainy evening, he's driving while goofing off with his bride, almost hitting a hitchhiker standing in the middle of the road! They swerve, the car skids off-road... luckily nothing happens except a modern action movie spin, but the person they dodged is too shady, and the young man gets terrified and drives away. The shady guy reaches them on foot at a rest stop and plays the part of the poor guy abandoned on the road. The young man regrets fleeing earlier and offers him a ride, but... guess what? This guy is another sort of Rutger Hauer who wants to slice the poor boy to pieces, all while the girl in the back watches (in fact, it seems to turn on the maniac), and being a remake, of course the young man gets rid of him by throwing him out of the car... and the guy starts playing cat and "two mice" for the whole movie....
DIFFERENCES:
The '80s were a time when the high school kid was a dork who becomes a hero halfway through the film, the car model was important, because back then there were no cell phones or other modern glamourous stuff; in the '80s, driving a Cadillac Seville was every student's dream, especially those wearing leather jackets! Yet they were fun and charming in their naïve pursuit of image dreams. From the first shots, the protagonist becomes likable, and in this genre of film, you need to form an attachment to the characters, or the plot just doesn't work. Showing a guy alone at night in a car was a great idea completely lost in the new version! The film begins with the classic recipe of modern cinema, those cursed "Teen Movies" full of college girls in miniskirts and runway model boys, hot young people running from the killer is the most annoying thing to watch! In the original, the couple formed halfway through the movie; here, we immediately have that "American Pie of horror" opening, and it's monstrously irritating. He's unlikable and acts like he's in an episode of Smallville, she's a cheeky minx making snobbish comments and you can't wait for her to die, yet they make her the film's heroine! The little minx fighting in a miniskirt! Enough with these teenage heroines! Besides this detail, which ruined a large part of the original's atmosphere, the plot is mostly identical, the police station scene with the dog eating the officers' corpses, the killer making the helicopter fall, the motel scene where the killer sneaks into the girl's bed, practically the same! And to see what? That the photography is sharper and the filming more modern? Please!
ACTORS:
In the original, everyone is excellent, very charming, especially... Rutger Hauer's icy stare cannot be replaced! Here we have a certain Sean Bean who is charming and engaging but seems straight out of an X-Files episode, he doesn't hold up, he doesn't hold up, and if you know no one can measure up... why the hell are you making a remake? Oh, right... to attract the kids. Besides the cast's original talent, it's noteworthy how the director cleverly uses them within the story, he's alone for half the film, he must rely on his strengths, and that's what engages the audience. When he enters the rest station, it seems he will face the big bad wolf alone... but it's here that the restaurant girl befriends the young man, and the audience cheers, "come on, help him!" creating atmosphere! Excellent idea not to form the couple right at the restaurant, but to have them meet again on a bus and show the bond between the two with a few looks at the inn, at that point the audience loves the couple! And roots for them. In the new version, we're introduced immediately to these rookie fools, she has no respect for him, he hasn't been with her for 12 years, how can you root for such kids? The film loses all the pathos! The killer is more charming than the original... but as for cruelty, besides a few evil actor studio-type glances... there's nothing, he's entertaining... but not scary. And especially between him and the girl, there’s no intrinsic connection as in the original between Hauer and the boy (the scene where they shake hands at the service station with that ambiguous look is outstanding). All wrong, the new version's cast should be physically eliminated!
TECHNICAL DIFFERENCES:
Remakes are made for this purpose, nothing competes with the original, actors, atmosphere, suspense, nothing! But they focus everything on modern techniques, REMOVING the well-crafted realism of the original version to turn the film into a USA-made action video clip! From this perspective, the new version is entertaining, and not a little. The original scenes where the Killer takes out the cops and helicopter by shooting from his car transform, in the new version, into a kind of amusement park full of acrobatic shots, fast cuts, and Rock-Metal music! Thrilling, to say the least, when in the new version, the two young people are escorted by 12 police cars plus a helicopter... and suddenly a Rock track kicks in, and the killer’s car emerges to start exterminating everyone with gunshots and car acrobatics! From these scenes, you can tell the producer is Michael Bay! The director with the wildest video editing in today's cinema. I admit having re-watched this sequence about thirty times! Yes... it is thrilling, BUT... it doesn’t mean it adds something new to the original version, it adds visual artistic components, but it removes the most important component, which is the well-shot realism of the original episode. If I wanted to watch a film like that, I'd watch the highway chase from "Matrix Reloaded", you can’t retake an '80s cult film just to insert Michael Bay-style scenes. So despite the fun... FAILED!
CONCLUSIONS:
Poorly executed remake in acting, story (worse retelling) and updating to modern Teen Movie genre. Only the recreation of some action scenes in a current spectacular key can be praised, but it remains just a simple exercise in style. Nothing more.
ORIGINAL OR REMAKE?
Original.
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