Movies You Probably Didn’t Know Were Remakes, in Honor of ‘Evil Dead’

Movie #6 – Heat

Year – 1995

Al Pacino and Robert De Niro were originally in The Godfather: Part II together. Although “together” might not be the best way to describe it. DeNiro played a young Vito Corleone, a character originally played by Marlon Brando. Pacino played Michael Corleone, Vito’s son. DeNiro’s part existed entirely in flashbacks that predated the birth of Pacino’s character. Therefore, they never shared the screen.

Fast forward twenty-one years and we have Heat. Written and directed by Michael Mann, Heat was an intense crime thriller where Pacino and DeNiro played a game of cat-and-mouse. While they were the stars of the movie, they only shared one scene together; a scene that has gone on to become legendary.

Don’t believe me? Just Google “diner scene”. The first hit is the even more legendary scene from Five Easy Pieces. Coming in at number two is Heat. But Google has weird algorithms. Maybe you’ll get an old episode of Alice.

People love to compare actors. But this is always a difficult task in that actors aren’t like baseball players. They’re not all playing the same game. Pacino is great. So is Dustin Hoffman. But could they play the same role? Unlikely. With the exception of theater, it’s a rarity to see different actors play the same part. It’s virtually unheard of to see it in film or television. Sure, we see remakes all the time. But how often do you get to see two different actors actually have to use the exact same dialogue? The only instance I can think of is Vince Vaughn in the misguided shot-for-shot remake of Psycho.

But most people don’t know that the previously mentioned legendary diner scene had already been used…on television. In 1989, Michael Mann shot a failed television pilot called L.A. Takedown. Typically when a show is filmed and fails, its creator(s) move on. But not Mann. He knew he had something good. So he just hired better actors and remade it. All I can say is that when you do something like that, you’d better be right. Well, he was. But that gives a rare opportunity to see two different actors perform that diner scene. And, they did it before Pacino and DeNiro. So they didn’t have any fear of failing by comparison. All they were doing is making a TV show.

It’s fascinating to see how much difference actors can make. Obviously, bad acting can destroy a film. But the actors in the original version are good, they’re just not great. Both of the actors still work to this day. Their names are Scott Plank and Alex MacArthur. Check them out on IMDB. While neither has become a household name, they are obviously working actors that don’t need day jobs. They’re just not Pacino and DeNiro.