1. Michael Mann - LA Takedown (1988) / Heat (1995)
Around the same time as Paul Thomas Anderson released The Dirk Diggler Story, Michael Mann released LA Takedown for NBC, a TV-movie for which he had to cut his mammoth script, which originally ran for 180 pages, down to size. Seven years later he made Heat, a film with the same basic tale of bank-robbers and the cops trying to catch them, but one elevated by its all-star cast (inc. De Niro and Pacino finally on screen together) and its masterfully slick direction, Mann having improved immeasurably in the gap between the two films. The outcome was one of the greatest action films ever made and certainly the best-looking one ever made. While much of Heat does come from LA Takedown - some of the lines are ripped verbatim from the original - the cinematic release tops it in every way, from complexity and sprawl, to style and sheen. Obviously, the De Niro/Pacino axis helps Heat achieve a higher level of grandeur, the pair at the top of their game and turning in their best performances in a while, but Heat would be a far superior work even without them. It's not that Takedown is a bad film, and it's certainly an important one - not only in terms of Heat, but elsewhere, too, with Christopher Nolan citing it as an influence in the past - it's just that the remake is a near-perfect crime epic, a masterpiece that many similar films pall in comparison to. Which of these remakes turned out the best? Share your favourites below in the comments thread.
