How can one movie be a hit and the remake a dud? What goes wrong is always a mystery but it follows the old rule: you never know how it will turn out.
Nine Queens is an Argentinean classic. A clever grifter recruits an understudy to help him with the big one: he’s got his hands on forgeries of a priceless stamp collection (the nine queens are the faces on the stamps). He’s going to sell them to a visiting billionaire for big bucks. Most of the action takes place in the hotel where the billionaire is staying, and where the con man’s sister is, conveniently, the concierge. The deal gets rough when the billionaire throws in an added condition: he wants to sleep with the grifter’s sister. She hates her brother, and grinds him into the ground on the deal for her ass.

Great idea, very original. The writer/director was an assistant director most of his short career (he died at 47 of a heart attack while casting a commercial in Brazil). Nine Queens is his lasting memorial. You can’t find much wrong with it, and the casting of versatile Argentine actor Ricardo Darin (see clip: Son of the Bride on MovieWithMe), and fetching Leticia Bredice (be sure not to miss her playboy photos) is inspired. 

So why did it bomb when remade in America as the film, Criminal? What are the clues? Remember the phrases “writer/director,” “versatile,” and “playboy.” The American director, Gregory Jacobs, is also an accomplished first assistant director.

Criminal is his one of Jacobs' (shared) writing credits, and his solo directing gig. I suspect he got this break because of pals on a lot of big Hollywood pictures he’d worked with as First A.D. Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney are the producers of Criminal. Their clout probably landed John C. Reilly and Maggie Gyllenhaal.THAT was the big mistake.

Movies are conceits. If you don’t believe what’s up on the screen is real you’ll take your popcorn and go home. Maggie Gyllenhaal is very talented, but upper class. I’ll NEVER believe she’s going to fuck a guy for her brother’s con game. Leticia Bredice will sell hers body to anybody for the right price, including Playboy.

There’s an old saying in movies, “you can’t play working class, you either are or are not.” Maggie is a gifted actress, but she’s no Stella Kowalski (A Streetcar Named Desire). She's better in the Blanche Dubois role.

John C. Reilly is no Ricardo Darin either. He’s also a wonderful character actor who specializes in sleazy bumblers. (see clip: The Good Girl on MovieWithMe.com). If he’s playing a bumbler and you know he will lose, so what’s the surprise?

Look at clips of the same scene from both movies. Leticia/Maggie are walking up to the billionaire’s hotel room door resolved to carry out their end of the bargain. See whom you believe.

The irony of Tell No One is a French film based on an American novel by a kid from Newark, New Jersey. Once upon a time American action filmmakers prided themselves and telling really great stories. No more. Shutter Island is a mess, and French cliffhangers like Tell No One are excelling at a genre we thought we owned.

It gets more embarrassing. Once this film became a hit in American art cinemas, Hollywood decided to remake it. Kathleen Kennedy, a big time feature producer, is transferring the action back to the US where it was set in the first place. Whether the remake will every see daylight is dubious.

Meanwhile the French, along with the Germans and the Koreans, are creating some of the best action and suspense films anywhere. Tell No One is a hard-plotted story of a guy who goes skinny-dipping with his wife, is hit over the head, and wakes up to find her dead. Or at least she is dead for several years until he starts getting disturbing notes from her. Then her best friend, who knows more, is killed. And then he is stalked by both the killers and the cops.

You want to see heart stopping ingenious action? Watch the chase across the Paris Paripherique expressway. Watch it again and again. American stunt men usually slow the traffic and speed up the camera. This is different: an intricate ballet between men and machines.

And when you’re finished analyzing that action sequence, take a look at District 13, also on MovieWihMe.com. It’s another amazing action picture that is supposedly in work for an American remake (called Brick Mansion). Don’t make any bets you’ll see it at a theater near you soon. Better to watch the original versions and marvel at truly great filmmaking.

Well-educated twenty-something Americans suddenly become Al Qaeda and Pakistani terrorists. Go back to 1967, substitute German names, and you have Baader-Meinhof. The pressure to preserve wealth and power always creates outliers.

Ulrike Meinhof was a journalist. She was married with two children. Her generation grew up in the shadow of Hitler and could not understand how Germany would consort with dictators and support the United States in Vietnam. If the Nazi era was supposed to never be forgotten, what was the lesson?

Benno Ohnesorg was killed in 1967 in a Berlin riot protesting the brutality of the Shah of Iran. We know today that the policeman who killed him was actually an agent for the Stasi, the East German secret police. But no one would know that for 40 years, and it still isn’t clear whether Karl-Heinz Kurras pulled the trigger because he was instructed to escalate the demonstration by his Stasi handlers.

But this act, the Kent State of Germany (the Kent State killings were in 1970) was proof that no justice would ever be achieved, and that only terrorism and violence would purify a western society corrupted by capitalism. Sound familiar? If we were not so afraid to actually hear what the current wave of terrorists have to say, maybe it would sound similar.

And let’s not forget that Islam has always been a religion of profound intellectualism. Isn’t it strange we believe all the young Islamic terrorists are being corrupted by deceitful mullahs? Isn’t it odd that some of the best and the brightest of a new generation are planting the bombs? The press remains incurious. To get press attention it helps to have a catchy name with “bad” coupled with a word that sounds like Mein Kampf (Hitler’s best-seller). The exploits of the Baader-Meinhof gang with its Bonnie and Clyde overtones were great for tabloid journalism.

The Baader Meinhof Complex is about how terrorism starts, why it starts, and how it grows in every generation that is summoned to action by the affront of corrupted power.  How it ends is another story; that too is covered in this long, detailed, and very important film. Know the past and know the future,or you are doomed to know only what those who own the present think you should know.

Watch for Martina Gedeck as Ulrike Meinhof. She plays Martha in Mostly Martha, also on Movie With Me. Only here you get to see what’s underneath that chef’s uniform.