A remake of "Charade" which starred Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, and a host of reasonably well-known character actors.This isn't bad as remakes go. It substitutes drama for charm so in some ways its not quite the same story.The original had some tourist spots of Paris in the summer and made one long for a baguette to toast over his bidet. (Joke.) This one is Paris in the winter when it's cold and wet.Wahlberg does his best to appear whimsical and innocent but Thandie Newton with her crisp British diction and nicely configured configurations does a better job in the role of the puzzled center of attention.It's a rather dark movie but worth watching.

I count three times that Mark Wahlberg has taken parts that were originally done by stars from old Hollywood. He was the astronaut taking Charlton Heston's role in the remake of Planet Of The Apes. He played John Wayne's role in the urban remake of The Sons Of Katie Elder, Four Sons. Finally in this film, Wahlberg tries out playing the many named man that Cary Grant played in Charade. As in Charade, do we ever know The Truth About Charlie.Three different icons with three different personalities. Well at least he didn't try to imitate Cary Grant in The Truth About Charlie. Mark was his own man here and frankly he's the best thing about this film. Thandie Newton never seemed as vulnerable as Audrey Hepburn in the original. And Tim Robbins was absolutely colorless as the fake CIA man, not a patch on Walter Matthau.But the biggest error was the elimination of those colorful conspirators George Kennedy, James Coburn, and Ned Glass from the original. Those guys added so much to Charade.Not to mention the style and glamor that Stanley Donen brought to Charade has been boiled right out of this film. Jonathan Demme who got such acclaim for Silence Of The Lambs was the man at the helm. None of these people qualify as a Hannibal the Cannibal type villain. I think he forgot what picture he was on.Fans of the original will be sadly disappointed.

The credits for this movie say that it is based on Stanley Donan's Charade, starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. I suppose it is, but this movie inhabits a completely different world. There was something of a mystery to Charade, but its most memorable parts were the clever dialogues between Hepburn and Grant and the romantic tension. This movie has no clever dialogue, and very little romantic tension. There is no chemistry at all between the two leads. Wahlberg's character has no charm, and therefore elicits little interest from the audience.And the shots of a beautiful, romantic Paris have been replaced with shots of a modern, grungy Paris.We're left with a story about a disagreeable set of characters moving through an unattractive series of settings. The business about the stamps, which had included a wonderful cameo for the stamp dealer in Charade, flies by with almost no interest here.I forced myself to watch it to the end, but I don't see why you should bother.

Despite my usual loathing of remakes, sequels, prequels and the like, I tried very hard to like this film. I am a fan of a lot of Mark Wahlberg's work and wanted to see how they would give a modern treatment of a very typically 60s film. And there were a few things (a very few things) they got right.First of all, I will applaud the creative team for pushing this film into a different direction than the first. A verbatim retelling is not worth the effort. This film is a lot grittier, a lot more "realistic" than the Grant-Hepburn story. Gone are the campy references and glossy colors. But here it still falters, trying to retain some of the humor and almost naive romance in a vastly different world where such things just don't seem appropriate.I also appreciate the background they gave on Regina, explaining how she could possibly have married a man she knew nothing about. I admit it had always bugged me. But they took it a step too far in trying to give all the secondary characters too much dimensionality. When they tried to force sympathy down our throats, it just became very confusing. I still cannot figure out what in the world was going on with the Lola character or why Regina cared so much about a person who was constantly posing a threat to her.I was most disappointed in the sacrifice of suspense and plot twists for the sake of action. While I applaud trying to make something new, there was no reason to fiddle with the guaranteed seat-gripping plot. Somehow the focus shifted from a stunning who-dunnit to a deflated undercover cop film you could see coming a mile ahead. I would like to have the opinion of someone who has not seen the original on this film to see if this can stand on its own feet. But then again, I would hate to deprive them of the excitement of unraveling the mystery of Charade for the first time.