cdnchris wrote:
I did like the fact the remake gave Pacino more of a reason to kill his partner, so he'd definitely have to hide the mistake or feel more inclined to do it. I never really felt the urgency in the original.
Yes, I think the motive for the character doing what he does is explicitly linked to the partner in the remake. But I prefer the original - you get the threat to his job in a subtler way when, while getting changed after viewing the girls body, the Skarsgaard character overhears one of the mortuary technicians telling the story of his disgrace when he was found in bed with a witness. So you get a general sense of a rumour about him, that may be true or not - it is never stated. Rumours also have a life of their own spreading as gossip - there is no one particularly responsible for starting it that the film points a finger at, so there is nobody for Skarsgaard's character to have a motive to silence, although it is just as much of a threat to his job if it is found credible by his bosses as the face-to-face accusation that happens in the remake. The powerlessness that this brings to the character feels like the starting point of his paranoia, insomnia and eventual accidental shooting of his partner. I do like the way the remake muddies the waters with 'was it an accident or was it pre-meditated?' questions, but I think making the threat tangible with a real human face damages the subtlelty of handling that can be found in the original.
In the original you get the sense that he has crossed the line before and it is weighing heavy on his conscience, whether due to the situation that the people in morgue are gossipping about or other matters. It is pointed towards as part of what causes his lack of sleep and his disorientation that contributes to the shooting, but it is never explicitly stated as
the direct factor, whereas in the remake it seems that it is the partner who is directly responsible for threatening Pacino's job. Once he is eliminated it then becomes a matter of getting away with it.
I think Skarsgaard's character does not have to hide the truth about the shooting, as the real killer tells him at one point that if he'd confessed he would have been suspended and investigated, but is in deeper trouble now that he has tampered with evidence. It could be seen as an expression of the troubled mental state the character is in that he does not correct the officer when he draws the wrong conclusions from the shooting. There are small glimpses of his troubled mind before the shooting such as the scribbling out of the girls face in the photograph on the plane, or his running the red light on the way to the hotel which his partner catches him on (maybe even the caressing way the camera moves up the body of the girl in the mortuary - I've wondered whether it was meant to be a point of view shot, as it seems especially creepy to be viewing it in that way).
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