The Boys From Brazil is not a film for everybody. Starring Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier, the 1978 movie finds Dr. Josef Mengele hunted down as a war criminal only for it to be discovered that the doctor has been busy attempting to start the Third Reich back with a series of clones of Adolph Hitler. Part science-fiction, part thriller, the movie was a bit too touchy for some people, but gained appeal as a bit of a cult film.
According to Ain’t It Cool News, X-Men: The Last Stand director Brett Ratner is developing a remake of The Boys From Brazil with the help of New Line Studios, a move I find a bit odd. The Omen already proved once this year that Gregory Peck’s shoes are incredibly hard to fill, especially if a remake has nothing new to bring to the story. Ratner’s third X-Men movie already proved once this year that Ratner isn’t the best guy to handle stories with underlying Holocaust themes. So why pair Brett Ratner directly with a movie that has already been made pretty well, and doesn’t really fit his motif as a director?
As I mentioned above however, the original film is more of a cult classic than a mainstream film (it has Steve Gutenberg in it after all), and definitely doesn’t come quickly to mind when either Olivier or Peck are mentioned. Perhaps New Line can find a way to make the movie more memorable this time around and give Ratner a chance to show he can do more than just bang-bang action/comedy pictures like After the Sunset and the Rush Hour movies and forgettable thrillers (Red Dragon) and dramas (The Family Man).
