Sex and the Single Guy

From the Chicago Reader (November 19, 2004). — J.R.

Alfie

* (Has redeeming facet)

Directed by Charles Shyer

Written by Elaine Pope and Shyer

With Jude Law, Marisa Tomei, Omar Epps, Nia Long, Jane Krakowski, Sienna Miller, and Susan Sarandon

After the Sunset

** (Worth seeing)

Directed by Brett Ratner

Written by Paul Zbyszewski and Craig Rosenberg

With Pirece Prosnan, Salma Hayek, Woody HArrelson, Naomie Harris, and Don Cheadle

The terrible thing about most remakes is that they downgrade borrowed experience. I’ve never been a big fan of the 1966 Alfie, a precise, bittersweet portrait of a misogynistic cockney lady-killer in a sordidly downscale London. But it’s unequivocally a reflection of things that have been lived, above all by Bill Naughton (adapting his own play) and Michael Caine (whose cockney background helped make the title role indelibly his own). The special kind of music these two make together, under Lewis Gilbert’s efficient direction, matches the brashness of Sonny Rollins’s score and tenor sax solos.

So what would motivate a remake? Director and cowriter Charles Shyer seems to think he’s come up with contemporary counterparts. He also seems to think the class consciousness, cockney accents, English settings, fleshed-out characters, social milieu, and period of the original are all expendable — raising the question of what Alfie is without them. Read more