Not as good as the original

Rating: 7/10 (6 October 2006)

I know that it is not difficult to say that in every remake's case, but this one really got my hopes high. Unfortunately, it wasn't the case this time. Don't get me wrong, the movie is still great, it just falls below expectation. Yes, Di Caprio is great for the first time (he was good in some movies before, but here he is just superb). Nicholoson - is over the top, being 69 years old he is still much more charismatic and believable than his young rivals. The rest of the cast is just good, no flaws.
Whenever they tried to stick to the original - everything worked great. For some unfortunate reason they decided to over-complicate already sophisticated screenplay - and spoiled it. There are some unnecessary characters creating the mess, some FBI storyline in the movie that only God knows what that was intended for. And also the ending - I do not know, ending in the Hong-Kong movie was reasonable and understandable, here it is basically the same - but messy. In the original all of the characters had very clear reasons for everything they did, and they lost it here.
My biggest problem with that one is that in the original neither one of the main 2 characters was either complete bastard or saint - and here they actually made it black and white.
And no, don't forget about Taxi Driver:) this one is very good (especially if you have not seen the original), but not great.