10 Films That Should Never Be Remade

Although many mafia movies have made their way onto the silver screen in the last forty years, none have managed to come even close to capturing the atmosphere of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather.

Marlon Brando offers the most compelling performance of his career through the perennially calm yet always intimidating Don Vito Corleone.

Centred around the passing of the torch to Vito’s son, Michael – played by the brilliant Al Pacino in his breakout role – is forced to play a dangerous game against five rival families if he and his family are to survive the ongoing feuds.

This culminates in a brutal final few scenes as the Corleone family, at the command of Michael, wipe out the other family leaders, traitors and business rivals, to the detest of his wife.

With representations of mafia families and crime syndicates being fairly commonplace in the last few decades, it is not the story that cannot be recaptured, but the individual performances.

Each and every character fits seamlessly into this fictional New York, and whilst the subsequent sequels certainly could have benefited from closer attention to detail (and less nepotistic casting), The Godfather is certainly as close to perfect as we may ever see in the crime genre.