I could. But I don't think I would want to.

On first impressions I do think, Gere was grossly miscast seeing as the protanganist needed to be a common, not particularly handsome individual who expresses himself with melancholic abjection with no distinguishing idiosyncracies. It seems like a overly flowery bastardisation of the original which shows enough pathos and underlying desolation of urban living and social restrictions, something which I think the remake might have done away with to give it the Hollywood treatment of an uplifting, inspirational but ultimately hollow message to middle-aged housewives and watery-eyed teenagers. 

Stinks of trying to lend legitimacy to an inherently problematic film. What made the original great was its digs at Japanese society and the lack of progressive liberalisation of its people. What could they possibly replace that with in an American pop remake?