When a director endeavors to remake a globally acclaimed masterpiece, the critic’s question should never be “Is it as good as the original?” (answer: no) but “Does it honor the original?” On that count, Egyptian crime master Kamal El Sheikh’s remake of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) is undeniably successful. His respect for Wilder’s classic is evident throughout, whether it’s the almost perfectly faithful script (only a couple of elements are switched up for his Egyptian audience) or his care to develop an intimate yet oppressive noir atmosphere not as intensely present in Sheikh’s other thrillers like Chased by the Dogs (1962) and Last Night (1963). Narrating not into a Dictaphone but to a visitor in his hospital room, the exceedingly handsome Omar Sharif plays the Fred MacMurray role, here named Shokri, ensnared into the life insurance murder plot by Elham (Layla Fawzi), a more glamorous variation on Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis Dietrichson. Cinematographer Bruno Salvi had clearly studied the 1944 film and sought to replicate much of the imagery (thick shadows, strips of light from Venetian blinds, low-key lighting in dark settings), in one shot perfectly centering a framed photo of “Phyllis” behind and between her husband and her lover as they draw up the insurance papers. The final few sequences juxtapose the high drama and high (gunshot) volume of the brutal, climactic murder with a final minute of total silence in a hospital corridor. The uncredited score starts out playful and even silly, incongruent with the subject matter, but over time becomes eerier and even surreal as the scenes become darker both visually and thematically.