Remakes

I would say that sequels suck more than remakes....trying to continue a story that "ends" just usually doesn't work out.

Remakes sometimes work (True Grit was one) but the Denzel/Travolta remake was particularly bad -- even with two fine star actors as hero and villain...because the simplicity of the original tale was blown way the hell out of proportion with new backstories for the hero and villain and subplots.

In the original, Matthau was simply a regular guy doing his job. In the remake, Denzel was a once-bigger-deal guy busted down to a lower level job in the wake of criminal prosecution(maybe or maybe not fair) and there was a hostage negotiator (John Turturro) and Travolta dropped Robert Shaw's British deadpan cool in favor of a over-hyper jacked up psychosis.

The final confronation between Matthau and Shaw is a model of wry, deadpan cool compared to over-extended hysteria-fest that marks the final confrontation between Denzel and Travolta. Its just way, way, too much in the remake -- overwritten.

In between, there was a TV remake. I assume it was made cheaply and couldn't get the "you are there" reality of the original. All I saw was the final scene -- which elected to mimic Matthau's famous final shot in the original, but tried to do it with two people (Edward James Olmos and Lorraine Bracco) to much less funny effect.

Like I said earlier, I liked both the original and the re-male, but I preferred the original. I even liked the one with Edward James Olmos, but not as much.