There are remakes and then there are remakes.

Rating: 5/10 (29 November 2010)

There are remakes and then there are remakes. At one extreme is Gus Van Sant's recent shot-for-shot version of Hitchcock's "Psycho", not so much a remake as a carbon copy. At the other extreme you would have something like the Robert de Niro/Sean Penn "We're No Angels", officially a remake of a Humphrey Bogart comedy from the fifties but having virtually nothing in common with it beyond the title and a storyline about escaped convicts.
The 2003 "Italian Job" comes somewhere in the middle, although perhaps nearer to the "We're No Angels" end of the scale. Like its British namesake from 1969 it is a heist film about a bullion robbery. It keeps the names of some of the characters and part of it is set in Italy. It features a complicated plot to steal the gold involving the modern version of the Mini Cooper, a piece of product placement quite as blatant as that in the original film. The plot, however, is quite different; there is, for example, no equivalent of the famous "cliff-hanging" ending.
In this version Charlie Croker and most of his gang are American rather than British, although there is one Englishman among them, played by Jason Statham. This is perhaps unsurprising; the film was, after all, made by an American studio, Paramount Pictures, although given that the original was never a great success in the States I am surprised that Hollywood showed any interest in remaking it. There are in fact two robberies featured in the film, the first taking place in Venice where Croker and his gang succeed in stealing a large amount of gold and making their getaway in speedboats in a sequence doubtless inspired by a similar one in the James Bond film "Moonraker". Unfortunately, one of the gang, Steve, betrays his colleagues, shooting one, John Bridger, dead and making off with the gold himself. (Bridger, older and more experienced than the rest of the gang, is the rough equivalent of his namesake played by Noel Coward in the 1969 film, although unlike that character he is not currently serving a jail sentence).
Croker and his surviving comrades swear to get revenge by stealing the gold back from Steve. In this they have the assistance of Bridger's beautiful daughter Stella, a character with no equivalent on the original film, which had no major female characters. Stella has inherited her father's skills as a safe cracker, although unlike him she has hitherto only used those skills for lawful purposes, using them to assist the police. Her desire for revenge on her father's murderer, however, leads her to throw her lot in with Croker. (Inevitably, the two fall in love). The rest of the film tells how the team manage to double-cross Steve, retrieve the loot and make their getaway through the streets of Los Angeles in a trio of Mini Coopers.
As in the original, the three cars are red, white and blue, but here no patriotic significance attaches to those colours. The original film was markedly nationalistic in tone- the message seemed to be "We Brits may no longer have an empire, but we are still better at stealing things than Johnny Foreigner"- but, fortunately, the remake does make similarly jingoistic claims on behalf of the American criminal fraternity. Nor does it replace "Rule Britannia" and "God Save the Queen" on the soundtrack with "America the Beautiful" or "The Star-Spangled Banner".
Because the two films are so different in terms of plot, it is difficult trying to compare them. In the end I gave both the same average mark because I did not enjoy either very much, although I disliked them for different reasons. The 1969 version is marked by a certain amount of originality, and has two charismatic stars in Coward and Michael Caine, although I dislike the nasty xenophobia which lurks just below the surface veneer of smug patriotism.
The 2003 version is at least free of xenophobic tendencies (something one cannot say about all recent American films), but has little except its connection to its famous predecessor to distinguish it from a morass of similar movies. Apart from Donald Sutherland who gets killed early on, none of the cast displays any charisma, least of all Mark Wahlberg who replaces Caine as Croker. As usual, Charlize Theron looks better than she acts, and I was surprised to see Edward Norton, an actor I normally associate with more intellectual fare than this, as Steve. (Apparently he was obliged to take the part for contractual reasons). As with the original, most of the interest lies in the action sequences, especially the getaway, but overall but this is little more than a standard-issue heist movie. 5/10