15 Movies You Didn't Know Were Remakes

8. Heat

The Remake: Michael Mann's utterly electrifying crime thriller starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino as criminal and cop respectively. The pic features one of the most entertaining heist sequences in movie history as well as a superb supporting cast, including Val Kilmer, Jon Voight, Tom Sizemore, Ashley Judd William Fichtner, Dennis Haysbert, Hank Azaria, Natalie Portman, Tom Noonan, Danny Trejo, Henry Rollins, Jeremy Piven and Xander Berkeley. The Original: Heat is based on Mann's own film from 6 years prior, 1989's L.A. Takedown, which was originally filmed as a TV pilot but, after being rejected, was re-shaped as a standalone TV movie. Though the central premise is the same in both versions, most character names were changed for the 1995 film, while more dramatic subplots were also added in to make Heat a whole 78 minutes longer than this first effort, which Mann now refers to as a "dry run" for the later classic. Even so, the DNA of Heat is very much recognisable here in numerous scenes which went into the remake almost verbatim. Which One Is Better?: You'll struggle to find someone who prefers the original in this case: Heat has a higher budget, better actors, a more dense story, stronger characterisation, slicker action sequences, and steamrolls the original in every way it possibly could.