For one thing I must say I have not seen the original 1959 French movie this remake is based on, but in my opinion French writer Francois Truffaut and French director Jean-Luc Godard are both masters in the field of cinema who have been well-known and respected in France for decades... I was trying to find a sentence that could resume what I think of this remake, and it could be "the devil is in the details", as goes the saying... There's many flaws in this remake but the main problem in my opinion is that they tought they could take the original 1959 story who was set in the fifities in France and apply it directly to the 80s Los Angeles USA, but of course then the story doesn't work very well... The main character is a sociopath, in the remake he appear clean-cut and nice but he steal cars without any remorse, break the lock of the apartment of some girl he almost doesn't know and then she become attracted to him, doesn't have any permanent residence and basically totally let himself go and doesn't care about anything at all... In the original 1959 movie who was set in the fifties all this would make sense, because it was the era of James Dean, "Rebel Without a Cause", it was when we begun to see rebelling bad guys with leather jackets riding motorcycles becoming part of the folklore.. Those guys would be popular with girls who were attracted to such rebels... In the 1983 remake set 30 years later in 80s Los Angeles the mentalities would have changed, I don't think such a guy would be seen as that romantic by anybody and especially not a girl... In this remake the girl who's a clean-cut university student in design hesitate between Jesse the sociopath and another clean-guy respectable guy; Jesse drive his car recklessly through all the movie, steal almost 5 or 6 of them, he's ignoring red lights and almost causing an accident 20 times, but the girl is beginning to like him for that... again the the early 50s in France that would have been possible, but in 80s Los Angeles? One time Jesse is in the girl's apartment and the girl receive a call from the other guy, Jesse is so angry he throw the answering machine up the windows... 5 minutes later the girl is so steaming they have sex... Overall maybe I'm too picky and can't buy anything, but even if I managed to finish watching the whole movie I don't think this is a quality remake, they should have paid attention to the details, in the original 1959 movie the character is played by Jean-Paul Belmondo, who's roughly in the same range as Mel Gibson, he have the credibility to portray such a rebel, not Richard Gere the romantic... Badly miscast!
Review of Breathless
