Is Face-Off a remake of the original Don?

This thought came to me on a bus to Delhi from Chandigarh while being treated to the screening of the new version of Don.

The movie is about a gangster who is killed by a police officer. The officer chances on a down and out look-a-like and sends this double back to the dead Don’s lair to get information about the gang and its operations.

Now India is an underdeveloped country and Don was made in the late seventies early eighties so instead of using technology to change faces, Bollywood did what it is best at -giving people a chance to live surreal lives- and therefore chose to give some nobody to act like a gangster and bring the evil doers to justice.

A few years later Hollywood used plastic surgery to interchange the faces of Castor Troy and Sean Archer and the result was Face-Off.

I have watched ‘When Harry Met Sally’ umpteen times and loved it every time. Meg Ryans role in this and ‘You’ve got mail’ and for that matter in ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ are sure signs of changes in technology and the mindset of people about technology. In the former two movies Meg uses the computer at work, these are more like electronic typewriters with massive screens, in the latter movie she uses a laptop and uses it more for entertainment (its another matter that she finds Tom Hanks).