Alfie

Jude Law (right) stars as a heart-breaker in 'Alfie', a remake of the Swinging 60s London classic.

Herald rating: ***

What's it all about, Jude Law? Why did you and veteran writer-director Charles Shyer think it would be a good idea to remake Michael Caine's Swinging 60s London classic?

The action has been relocated to Manhattan but the movie remains faithful to the story of a cheeky Cockney heartbreaker who shags birds and roars away from relationships on his Vespa.

This time around, Alfie is a limo driver, a job that gives him access to a lot of women, and vice versa. The parade will include a lonely wife, Dorie (Jane Krakowski); a successful exec who negotiates her way to the bedroom, Liz (Susan Sarandon); a beautiful model, Nikki (Sienna Miller, Law's off-screen partner); and - the man has no shame - Lonette (Nia Long), girlfriend of his best mate, Marlon (Omar Epps).

And, of course, there is the one who will get through to Alfie. She is Julie (Marisa Tomei), a sensible solo mum who wants Alfie to herself. She will be sadly disabused of this notion. Around about the same time that Alfie realises that he is falling for the kid. And the kid's mother.

Given that most of Jude Law's audience won't realise that this is a remake of a 40-year-old flick, because that's how old their parents are, we should probably judge this as a new movie. As such it's shallow, but looks great.

Which is an interesting development picked up on the DVD. In The Women of Alfie, the film-makers discuss how they updated the female characters to make them less "downtrodden". In other words they made them into sexy babes, which rather destroys the point of the original movie - Alfie's self-delusion - but is probably more of a commentary on self-image in the new millennium. Lonette is a lovelorn frump in the earlier version and a slinky barmaid this time around; Liz was Shelley Winters, Rubenesque, ageing and desperate; now she is Susan Sarandon's assertive business suit, taking and discarding younger lovers at will.

The film-makers discuss updating Alfie's lifestyle in two other features, The World of Alfie, and a discussion with production honchos. There are two commentary tracks and a music-lover's dream: Let the Music In, where sometime Eurythmic Dave Stewart and some old git from 1966 called Mick Jagger get together to make the soundtrack.

* DVD, Video rental today