Well the remake looks appealing.

>Remember that both police and criminals have guns... just because they have means of force doesn't mean they're after the same things.

REALLY? Think about that last phrase. Actually, I kind of agree, the police are closer to the terrorists than the Mafia in that they are also about politics and infuence of power! But read a book written about police corruption-like Serpico, maybe. Or any account of abuse of power by police- rarely is there a conviction, and most are determined by an "Internal investigation" to be unfounded, but the great majority are never heard of outside the affected organization.

Violence is always about infuence, money and power/control. This may put violent groups in different classes, but always in the same category.

"If you do whatever you want, you must be responsible for the consequences!"

>I would argue that the Mafia are terrorists.

< Argue away. I'd guess you weren't thinking it through properly and didn't have a fully formed idea of why each do what they do. Motivation and purpose are the key distinction between the two. >


What does it matter who the bad guys are and what they do when they both kidnap and hold a girl for ransom? Do you need a more dispicable enemy to be able to get into the story or are you just a mafia admirer??

<One of the key points to "the mafia" is that they're about business and about making money. Any political involvement has to do with affecting business and how it would affect income. >


The mafia terrorize legitamate businesses and harrass them through intimidation and violence in order to extort money from them. They routinely destroy businesses that oppose them and often force builders to pay more to complete projects. They are insidious parasites on society - they are bad people.

The "La Hermandad" in the remake with Denzel is a Mexican crime syndicate related to the abduction of children in Mexico City. It is a real organization, or at least was, I'm not sure if it still exists or not:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Hermandad

http://goliath.ecnext.com/comsite5/bin/pdinventory.pl?pdlanding=1&referid=2750&item_id=0199-1959527&words=La_Hermandad_Existe

"La Hermandad" translated to English means "The Brotherhood"; the only difference between the old version and the new version is that the old one is an Italian mafia and in the remake it is a Mexican mafia. Just because they are darker skinned and some of them have beards does not mean they are terrorists, there are no terrorists in the remake with Denzel. They are a Mexican crime organization, concerned with business and making money. Some ways of doing so being kidnapping and extortion. One of the things you hear some of the "bad guys" in the remake saying over and over is "I was just doing business" and "I'm a professional".

The older cop guy in the new version mentions that Creasy once did "counter-insurgency" for the CIA, though if you actually pay attention to the movie it is completely obvious that he is killing off members of a Mexican organized crime syndicate, starting at the lower ranks and working his way up until he gets the president of "La Hermandad", and then the family of "The Voice", which the cop kills at the end of the movie.

You could really enjoy the movie a lot more if you weren't so uptight about semantics. Yeah little details are changed to fit modern times. Kidnapping and extortion really are huge problems in Mexico, especially in Mexico city; MUCH more so than in modern Italy.

Mexico City is a place of beauty and passion, yet it is also suffering and full of such sadness and desperation. Creasy is a man looking for forgiveness, and questioning if his God will accept him in to heaven. His own sadness and desperation to find something real to live for fit well in to the story of Mexico City(If you remember just before the end credits it says "A special thanks to Mexico City, a very special place). He finds something beautiful that shows him how to live again, and then it is taken from him by greed and lust for money.

It is a very powerful story, whether it is set in modern Mexico City, or 1970s Italy. The beauty of art, especially in the case of movies, and turning a novel into a motion picture, is that each person interprets it a little different. Just because the director of the movie didn't translate the book word for word, doesn't mean it's any better or worse, it's just different. Mexico City was a much better place for this story to be told than Italy, there's just a lot of artistic vision in the remake that the old version is severely lacking in.

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