These War Films Were Remade — Should They Have Been?

Beau Geste

The 1924 novel by P.C. Wren, about brothers who run off to hitch the French Foreign Legion within the wake of a household shame, has been filmed a number of occasions (1926, 1939 and 1966) and tailored for TV. The finest model is arguably the 1939 movie starring Gary Cooper, the 1926 silent drama with Ronald Colman coming in a detailed second.

Sahara

The 1943 model of this movie, based mostly on the 1927 Philip MacDonald novel Patrol, stars Humphrey Bogart as an American tank commander preventing Germans at an oasis in North Africa. A 1953 remake—filmed because the Western Last of the Comanches—remained trustworthy to the unique script, whereas a 1995 TV adaptation starring Jim Belushi was solely satisfactory.

Tora! Tora! Tora!

This 1970 epic concerning the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese shock assault at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was based mostly on histories of the strike by Gordon Prange and Ladislas Farago. Featuring a global forged and crew, it wowed audiences. While not technically a remake, the 2001 movie Pearl Harbor, starring Ben Affleck, bombed with critics however did surprisingly properly on the field workplace.

The Manchurian Candidate

Two movies have dramatized the 1959 Richard Condon novel a few Korean War veteran brainwashed by Communist Chinese captors to be a sleeper murderer. The 1962 model —starring Laurence Harvey, Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury—ranks among the many all-time finest political thrillers. The 2004 remake, up to date for the Gulf War and starring Denzel Washington because the murderer, pales by comparability.