“The Secret in Their Eyes” Getting Americanized

"The Secret in Their Eyes," this year's Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film, is poised to get tossed into the Hollywood Remake Machine.

Warner Bros. is attempting to secure the rights to make a new English-language version of the Argentine thriller, reported 24 Frames. The studio wants Billy Ray, writer-director of "Shattered Glass" and "Breach," and scribe of the upcoming "24" movie, to adapt and direct.

The story "The Secret in Their Eyes" is a great film told in a series of flashbacks as federal investigator Benjamin Esposito tries to recall the events surrounding the savage rape and murder of a beautiful newlywed. Looking back a quarter-century rekindles long-buried feelings for his former supervisor, Irene Menendez Hastings.

There's some question as to whether or not Ray will try to find an American parallel to the Peronista's Dirty War that terrorized Argentina in the '70s. Failing to do so would be a huge mistake, gutting the film of much of its dread. Part of what makes "The Secret" so effective is the underlying sense of death and duplicity that pervades the society. That era, with its political climate, inspired some of the very best in paranoid American cinema, from "The Conversation" to "The Parallax View" to "Three Days of the Condor." 

Considering the recent box-office failure of "Let Me In," a remake of the 2008 Swedish vampire film "Let the Right One In," this seems like an uncommonly gutsy move on the studio's part. Despite getting strong reviews from just about every corner of cyberspace, including ours, "Let Me In," finished eighth in its opening weekend, taking in less than $6 million.

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