THE RAID Remake Will Focus on America's DEA Task Force
I really hate that The Raid is going to be remade. There's no way it's going to be as good as the original, so seriously… what's the point? The director of The Expendables 3, Patrick Hughes, is the guy who will adapt the film for American audiences, and in a recent interview with Comingsoon he discused his take on the insane action film, calling it "Interesting."
"We have a really, really interesting take on that film. One thing, obviously the original just blew my mind and I was fortunate enough to catch up with Gareth Evans in LA at the premiere of The Raid 2. The thing that blew my mind with that film was the aesthetics and the fight sequences but also the simplicity of the premise, and there's so much you can do with that. So our take on it is really interesting and I feel like if anything what I want to do is elevate the emotional aspect of it, and I think those are my favorite action films of all time when you can balance the action and the emotion, and what he did with his first 'Raid' was phenomenal.."
Really, really interesting doesn't necessarily mean good. Also, I thought the emotional aspect of the film was great. I'm not sure how he'll elevate it even more, but he does talk about the direction they plan on taking the story, saying that it will focus on America's DEA task force.
"Certainly, we're not there to recreate that film beat for beat, with the set up we're following a DEA task team, which was implemented by the Bush administration after September 11th when they realized that terrorism and the drug trade were so closely aligned. So they set up a DEA task team that's six units and they work across borders and sort of act like Navy SEALS. You never read about it, you never hear about it, but they go on these missions. So that's a really interesting take and a really nice premise and also what's interesting on this take on it is the clash of cultures and the clash of martial arts, the fighting styles, which is something that's going to be a lot of fun when we've really started pre-vizzing stuff."
He uses the word interesting a lot, doesn't he? If this wasn't a remake of The Raid, I might actually think this concept is kind of cool. It was rumored that Chris and Liam Hemsworth were wanted to star in the film… I really hope that's not true.