Are movie remakes a genre in themselves?

Film critic Geoffery Macnab ponders a curent crop of movie remakes. "Sidney Lumet's classic courtroom drama '12 Angry Men' (1957), Joseph L Mankiewicz's 'Sleuth' (1972), Delmer Daves' '3.10 To Yuma' (1957) and John Waters' 'Hairspray' (1988) are just some of the films that have been recently retooled for contemporary audiences. '12 Angry Men' has now been given the Russian treatment. The film, about a dozen sweaty New York jurors on the hottest day of the year trying to work out whether a defendant is guilty as charged, seems like quintessential American fare. ... Nonetheless, the maverick auteur Nikita Mikhalkov has remade the movie with Russian actors and a Chechen defendant. ... What is refreshing ... is that film-makers now don't simply see them as exercises in moneymaking plagiarism and pastiche but – sometimes – as opportunities for fresh and original work."

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