10 Movie Remakes That Are Actually Worth Watching

The Original: Directed by Claude Zidi, who later made Asterix And Obelix Vs Caesar, La Totale is a 1991 French comedy about a supposedly boring civil servant who turns out to be a secret agent. When he suspects his wife of having an affair, he spies on her using all the sophisticated surveillance gear at his disposal with “hilarious” consequences.

The Remake: What’s surprising about True Lies is how much of the original James Cameron retained, even recreating several shots from the action sequences. This is of course a bigger, slicker movie, and it goes without saying that at no point in Zidi's movie does anyone commandeer an F-16 fighter jet at a moment’s notice.

In fact, Cameron’s large-scale action sequences actually improve the original narrative, which became a bit of a damp squib in its third act as the villains were revealed to be a bunch of incompetent klutzes. Cameron isn’t having any of that and throws in everything but the proverbial sink for the sake of an entertaining show, including an amusingly OTT finale where Arnie fights off the villain while piloting said F-16.