Hollywood is well-known for taking inspiration from Asian cinema and remaking its films to suit its wider Western audience, oftentimes turning them into blockbusters. Films such as Hachi: A Dog's Tale (remade from Hachi-ko), The Departed (remade from Internal Affairs), and Eight Below (remade from Antarctica) have all become box office hits in their own right and featured an array of A-List actors. It may come as a surprise to some, but Hollywood films have also been remade by Asian cinema! Taking the appealing stories created in Hollywood and pairing them with the creative talents of Asian directors and actors is a recipe for excellent entertainment. Here are 5 great Asian remakes of Hollywood films.
Lady Maiko
A remake of My Fair Lady, Lady Maiko is a Japanese musical comedy filled with colourful melody. It tells the story of a simple country girl, Haruko, who travels to Japan’s ancient capital Kyoto with the ambition of becoming a polished “maiko,” or apprentice geisha, one of the most familiar yet mysterious figures in Japanese culture. Haruko is unusual for a modern Japanese teenager. She dreams of learning the age-old but declining traditions of the maiko. But she soon finds out that her rustic speech stands in the way of her dream. To be an apprentice geisha, or “geiko,” as they are called in Kyoto, she must speak the city’s special dialect. In My Fair Lady, a girl with a thick Cockney accent becomes part of a wager by a phonetics professor, who bets that he can make her speak “proper” English, and fit in with the high society of London. Lady Maiko takes these ideas and transforms them to suit Japanese culture and traditions, with fantastic musical numbers that are masterfully composed and written.
Unforgiven
A remake of the Clint Eastwood film that goes by the same name, Unforgiven is stunningly shot, well acted, and very immersive. Set on the northernmost island of Japan at the dawn of the Meiji era, the narrative centres around a bounty offered on the heads of two men who assaulted and scarred a young woman. Jubei Kamata, a retired warrior whose promise to abandon the sword has been weakened by the death of his wife, teams up with an ageing comrade and a young firebrand. Jubei leaves his two children to head off once again into the fray, and back into the abyss. This remake draws many parallels to the original, where a retired killer decides to take up one last job in killing two men who have horribly disfigured a woman. Things get messy when the town’s corrupt sheriff gets involved with everyone trying to get the bounty.
A Simple Noodle Story (A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop)
A remake of the Coen Brothers film Blood Simple, this film begins with a group of Persian merchants who come into Wang's noodle shop to sell some wares, and ultimately Wang's Wife decides to buy a three-barrelled gun. Nobody knows what for, and a cannon demonstration brings forth the local police, whose chief investigator Zhang gets engaged in an expensive scheme by Wang to finish off his adulterous wife and her lover, employee Li. But of course things never go according to plan, especially when everyone has their own agenda, and it becomes one heck of a comedic blood bath with motivations questioned. Praised by the Coen Brothers themselves, this film pays close attention to the original, which centres around an owner of a seedy small-town Texas bar who discovers that one of his employees is having an affair with his wife. A chaotic chain of misunderstandings, lies, and mischief ensues after he devises a plot to have them murdered.
Crossing Hennessy
A remake of Crossing Delancey, this film is a light-hearted tale of a happy-go-lucky electric appliance store owner and a quiet, stubborn girl-next-door, who takes care of a sanitary ware shop for her uncle. Their relatives set the two up for a date, seeing that they have both entered their thirties and still have no stable partner in their lives. The truth is, both of them have someone else on their minds. The “date” didn’t work as well as planned, but day by day, a somewhat peculiar friendship comes into bud. The film's inspiration revolves around a Manhattan woman who moves from her tiny apartment to her grandmother's place in the city. As her grandmother tries to get her married, she is torn between a pickle vendor and a married man.
Connected
A remake of Cellular, this action thriller begins with a single-father named Bob, whose life is seldom exciting as he works to make ends meet as a dead-end debt collector. His easy-going and helpful personality leaves him prone to putting himself under immense amounts of pressure to be a better father, worker, and overall individual. In the midst of all this, he must also deal with his sister who threatens to move to China with his son in the hopes that Bob begins to clean up his act. One day, Bob receives a call out of the blue from a stranger named Grace who claims that a kidnapper is holding her hostage and begs him to save her and her son. Is it just a harmless prank call, or does Bob need to act fast and rescue this mysterious caller? It follows the original film closely, which focuses on a young man who receives an emergency phone call on his cell phone from an older woman. The catch? The woman claims to have been kidnapped; and the kidnappers have targeted her husband and child next.
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Ben