Alfie
Paramount
Starring: Jude Law, Jane Krakowski and Nia Long
The Verdict: Jude Law’s great performance saves this remake from shame.
3 stars out of 4 stars
Director Charles Shyer’s remake of the ’60s Michael Caine classic “Alfie” gets off to a very bad start. The old familiar Paramount logo goes for its usual spin, only this time the mountain and stars register in shades of pink and purple. This, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. It becomes a bad (read: awful) thing when the soundtrack choice to back it up is a couple of R&B sirens wailing away the line “What’s it all about, Alfie?” This critic cringed, buried his head in his hands, and awaited the worst.
Never fear, though, gentle readers-“Alfie” gets better quickly. A few seconds after the shrill opening logo, Shyer slips things into a much smoother rhythm. The soundtrack improves, the colors broaden and the director slips in a cheeky visual joke by having the camera linger on the crotch of a collectible Superman figurine.
The Superman in question is owned by Alfie, who audiences meet moments later curled up in bed in his cozy Manhattan bachelor pad. Alfie, embodied with endless magnetism by Brit star Jude Law, opens his eyes, scratches and does what any other normal man does first thing in the morning … talks to the camera and extols the virtues of his favorite pink shirt?
As Alfie confidentially explains, “Clothes speak the international language.” Cineasts familiar with the Caine original are already familiar with Alfie’s habit of confessing his inner motivations directly to the theater audience, a useful trick that allows Alfie to essentially be two people at once-real and surface-and that lends the lead actor’s performance an intimacy and immediacy that would otherwise be much harder to establish.
Without a window into the character’s lost puppy soul, Alfie would be a very unlikable guy. He’s a cad, a rotter, a bounder, a user of women who believes his forthrightness about his proclivities should let him off the hook when relationships become too confining. The Caine version had chauffer Alfie bedding babes in swinging ’60s London; the update finds limo driver Alfie imported to New York City, tearing through Gotham streets on a Vespa, flexing his killer grin and European metrosexuality for all they’re worth.
Turns out they’re worth a lot to the opposite sex, as Alfie charms his way into the knickers of a bevy of growl-worthy femmes. There’s the married hottie (Jane Krakowski) who romps with Alfie in the backseat of his limo, the damaged model type (Sienna Miller) who’s willingness to commit turns Alfie off more than her emotional problems do, and the “beautifully preserved” older woman (Susan Sarandon) who introduces Alfie to absinthe and beats him at his own seductive games. Oh, and his best friend’s girlfriend (Nia Long) isn’t off-limits, either.
And then there’s Alfie’s “semi-regular, quasi-, sort-of girlfriend” (Marisa Tomei), a single mom who loves Alfie despite his flaws, but she’s of little consequence to Alfie’s willfully untethered lifestyle. Alfie’s philosophies of “you never know where the day may take you” and of “wine, women and … well, that’s about it” force him to refuse domesticity at every turn (“Change your nature and you’re a dead man”). He rejects deeper connections in favor of a “simple life” of “women who mean nothing to me,” an endless pursuit of elegant but vacuous sexual pleasure that befuddles him when it leaves him hollow.
Alfie’s most engaging trait in this remake is his innocence. Caine’s Alfie had a heart of coal black, but Law’s Alfie has a heart more gray in color. He makes mistake after terrible mistake, but he seems just as confused as those he’s wronged. He never means to hurt anyone; it just sort of happens. When one flame exits a clinic moments after she presumably aborted Alfie’s child, his uncouth first words to her are “didn’t take long.”
Alfie keeps trying to grow but usually, inevitably screws it up. When he’s finally decided it’s time to commit, you cringe when you realize that he’s chosen the absolute wrong woman to try it with. His clueless na‹vet is simultaneously what draws women to him and what drives them away.When he learns that the old adage “looks aren’t everything” is a truthful one, it’s less a reinforcement of old ideas than a major revelation. There’s a real yearning somewhere deep inside of Alfie to be more than pretty, affable and oversexed. “What’s it all about?” he asks himself and the audience as he slowly discovers that momentary pleasure may be worth nothing without peace of mind.
That little kernel of dialogue is lifted straight from the 1966 version of “Alfie,” just one of Shyer’s stylish tips of the hat to the first film and the decade that spawned. The new film borrows the original’s neat device of playing without opening credits (save the title) and running acting credits at the end with accompanying glamour shots for each lead performer. There is sentimental music in the film, but it’s from Rolling Stones idol Mick Jagger. One character falls asleep watching a move on a holiday evening, but the film isn’t “Miracle on 34th Street” or “It’s a Wonderful Life;” it’s the Steve McQueen vehicle “The Thomas Crown Affair.”
The director also adds his own unique touches to the film, particularly within the realm of bold and colorful visuals. For instance, Alfie often finds himself walking by posters and billboards with oversized words (“Desire,” “Lost,” “Wish,” etc.) that quietly act as chapter divisions for the plot. Shyer’s witty solution for quickly showing Alfie’s whirlwind romance with one equally superficial gal pal is to show the events in still-frame photos reminiscent of a typical Vogue spread. Shyer’s transition to modern times and his trans-Atlantic import of the action from Britain to the Big Apple work surprisingly well.
It’s also a classy touch that Shyer fills small roles with notable Broadway actors who made a splash on the Great White Way but are mostly unknown to the average filmgoer, including past Tony winners Dick Latessa and Jefferson Mays.
The cast is very attractive overall, though most of Alfie’s ladies have precious little screen time to make an impression. Nia Long comes out the most memorable of the pack, with Omar Epps adding first-rate support as the betrayed best friend who’s already twice as strong and sensitive as Alfie will ever be.
The unmitigated star of this show, though, is Jude Law. Law’s performance doesn’t have Caine’s dark edges or tough Cockney cynicism, but, on its own terms, it’s every bit as affecting. Caine’s Alfie never would have betrayed himself with honest tears, but Law’s would and does in one very cathartic moment near film’s end.
Law is appealing, engaging, charismatic. He owns the camera (and the audience) with every searching monologue and every petty aside. Whatever Alfie’s going through, it’s all in Law’s eyes. His Alfie is not just a villain on a sexual crusade; he’s a bruisable, genuinely lost soul who puts up a good front. It’s both pathetic and endearing to watch the film’s hero shrug away heartache with a perfect, and perfectly hollow, smile and a preprogrammed response of “I’m fine. I’m always fine.”
Though it loses the original’s bite, the new “Alfie” has a more accessible heart. It modernizes and mainstreams Alfie’s story with considerable warmth, intelligence and panache. Ultimately, what it’s all about is Jude Law arriving as a full-fledged American movie star and the way that he seduces you into forgetting that Michael Caine ever played the part before him.