10 Movie Remakes That Are Actually Worth Watching
2. Heat
The Original: Shot in two weeks, L.A. Takedown is a rare TV movie from Michael Mann, who at that point in his career was still coming to terms with the box office failure of The Keep and Manhunter. It’s essentially the same cops and robbers story he later retold in Heat, only on a smaller scale and with fewer name actors. The biggest “names” in the cast are Michael Rooker and Daniel Baldwin.
The Remake: Running nearly three hours, with a cast that’d do a Quentin Tarantino movie proud, Heat is the crime melodrama that other movies want to be when they grow up. It’s remarkable in so many ways, from the insight it gives into the lives of criminals to the way Mann juggles the multiple plot lines simultaneously, that it’s easy to overlook the solid supporting cast that includes Natalie Portman, Danny Trejo and Henry Rollins.
Front and centre, though, is the relationship between Al Pacino’s cop and Robert De Niro’s thief, and it’s a sign of how taut Mann’s direction is that one of the most memorable scenes involves a meeting between them in a coffee shop where nothing really happens.