One of my favorites from the last decade, the French film <em>The Man on the Train</em>, was recently remade in an English-language version. The new screenplay hews closely to the original story of a laconic criminal, casing a bank in a small town, who becomes the unlikely friend of a retired literature professor, yet the remake falls short of the original. The new film lacks the elegiac melancholy, the fully developed sense of crisscrossing destiny and the rhythmic pulse of the editingnot to mention the gravitas of one time rock star Johnny Hallyday as the master criminal. Larry Mullen Jr. is good but not as good in the role. Going for the new version is the spry performance by Donald Sutherland as the professor, ably filling the shoes of the original actor (the great Jean Rochefort), as well as the story's theme concerning our potential to grow through the people we encounter. <em>The Man on the Train</em> is out on DVD.
