https://deadline.com/2022/11/bradley-cooper-frank-bullitt-steven-spielberg-steve-mcqueen-1235168968/
shareCOOPER IS A GOOD CHOICE...DESPITE MCQUEEN BEING ONE OF MY FAVORITE ACTORS,BULLITT IS ONE OF MY LEAST FAVORITE OF HIS FILMS...I WILL BE INTERESTED TO SEE WHAT THEY DO WITH THE FLICK. NOEMOJI
shareSpielberg is too good a director to be doing remakes.
shareOr maybe he can make a good one.
shareI'm one of those people who actually likes remakes.
I don't like sequels much because usually "a perfect story ends perfectly" and doesn't need to be continued.
But a remake? Well, if the story was good once, sometimes I find it fun to see someone else give it a try.
That said, I INVARIABLY like the original better. Every time.
Take True Grit. I love the 2010 True Grit. Jeff Bridges was starry enough to fill in for John Wayne(if not the icon Wayne was). And Matt Damon was a definite improvement on Glen Campbell. I had a good time at True Grit 2010.
But I had a BETTER time at True Grit 1969. John Wayne was a more important star for the film. It has two great scenes at the end (not from the book) that didn't make it into the remake.
Other remakes I eagerly awaited:
Cape Fear (Spielberg produced this one, and almost directed it before giving it to Marty Scorsese.)
Ocean's Eleven(Clooney, Pitt, Damon and Roberts were pretty starry -- if no Rat Pack.)
The Manchurian Candidate(Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep in for Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury.)
Charade(now called The Truth About Charlie -- with Mark Wahlberg pre-stardom and Thandie Newton in for Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn! And Tim Robbins in for Walter Matthau.)
The Magnificent Seven (Denzel again.)
Psycho (the highest ranked classic to get a shot-by-shot remake, with Vince Vaughn in for Anthony Perkins and Anne Heche in for Janet Leigh.)
CONT
Hmm...well, how did THOSE turn out?
The Manchurian Candidate and the Charade remake -- both by Jonathan Demme -- totally screwed up the original stories and flopped. Also Wahlberg/Newton weren't Grant/Hepburn. Not even close.
Psycho -- not bad in the making but all that miscasting. And the wrong HOUSE. (Its like calling a giant bowling ball "The Washington Monument.")
Ocean's Eleven -- cool , competent filmmaking with a true all star cast -- though 1960 Vegas and the Rat Pack were sorely missed.
The Magnificent Seven -- not bad at all, but more like a sequel than a remake -- different characters, a "new Seven."
Cape Fear --ALMOST the most successful of them all, except Robert DeNiro was great but really no match for Robert Mitchum's much more sexually menacing cool dude in the original and -- the "good" family was converted into a bunch of neurotic jerks by Scorsese and his writer.
True Grit -- THIS is the most successful of them all but....no John Wayne, no great two final scenes...not good enough.
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Against that backdrop, I'm not upset by the prospect of a new Bullitt, but it seems the casting of Bradley Cooper is the biggest fail since Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates. And the opposite of the perfection of Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn.
Steve McQueen was one of the two biggest young stars in the US in 1968 -- Paul Newman was the other and McQueen was doing a little better at the time(no Butch Cassidy or Sting yet.) To match McQueen's star power today would be hard. Brad Pitt most likely. Tom Cruise(OK, bigger star power.) Leo. And as some have noted, Daniel Craig, who has always had some of McQueen's look (as does Kevin Costner, but he's a TV guy now.)
OK, so we get Bradley Cooper. He just doesn't have the history or the hits, outside of American Sniper. Well, A Star is Born, kinda sorta. Last year, he was in Licorice Pizza and Nightmare Alley, neither was a hit(though Pizza was a great film.)
CONT
Steven Spielberg directing? THERE's the star of the new Bullitt. But he remade West Side Story last year and -- Oscar noms aside -- audiences didn't show up. Some of the gleam is off the auteur...West Side Story couldn't bring back 1961..can "Bullitt" bring back 1968.
Here's something key: the big deal about Bullitt was the car chase (one of the first done without ANY process screen work; real cars bouncing on real streets) BUT it actually had quite a great "1968" character conflict: working man's hero Frank Bullitt versus oily, unctuous and RICH legal eagle Robert Vaughn. The McQueen/Vaughn dynamic was the next best thing AFTER the car chase in Bullitt with two perfectly cast actors.
Some modern actor could have fun with the Vaughn role, but evidently this new movie is NOT a remake of the story. So there goes that.
My guess is that whatever this "new story" is, it will have ANOTHER car chase, and Spielberg at 70-something will pull his old "Duel" skills out of the trunk and try to give us bigger, better than the original in that regard.
Still, I don't think this will be better than Bullitt. Cooper for McQueen guarantees the problem. Bullitt was my favorite movie of 1968, I doubt this will fill in the blank.
Stop the world, I wanna get off.
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