There’s innate folly in remaking foreign films that have been released recently. If you look at popular World Cinema (i.e. the type of World Cinema that actually makes it to American theaters), you’ll find that every country in the world is already trying to make movies that Americans might enjoy. These directors from other countries have been raised on a steady diet of American DVD’s, and their work, sometimes stellar, comes across as heavily indebted to American philosophies and ideas.
The Raid: Redemption seems to be one of those films. The first part of a trilogy, the Indonesian thriller found characters trapped within a high rise run by a drug lord, with one cop tasked with finding his addict brother and forced to fight his way out. And just in time for the release of the sequel The Raid: Berandal comes word that the first film is being remade, with Patrick Hughes directing according to The Wrap.
You may not know Patrick Hughes, but he just scored the two sweetest action gigs in the industry. After debuting with the Aussie thriller Red Hill, Hughes was tasked with the daunting gig of heading up The Expendables 3. Which, in and of itself, is a scary job: Stallone ran the first Expendables set, and action vet Simon West took over the second. But Hughes, a relative newcomer, was tasked with managing a production starring the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Wesley Snipes, Mel Gibson, and a host of other stars that have likely ended the career of many young, promising directors. Apparently, he showed enough moxie that Screen Gems is ready to start on Hughes’ Raid remake with shooting to being in the fall.
The Raid: Redemption is one of those movies that’s so bare bones that one could remake it for America and no one would even realize it. The first wasn’t exactly a crossover smash, pulling in $4.1 million domestically. And the whole highrise fighting element is basically a sidescrolling beat-‘em-up video game. Plus, we saw the same basic set-up in Dredd, where Karl Urban had to blast through the same style of housing killing fools following the orders of a drug dealer. If Renny Harlin made a similar action film called High Rise Hell right now with Kellan Lutz and Donnie Yen, no one would have any idea it was related to that earlier film.
The funniest part of the Wrap’s article is when they discuss the unlikelihood of American studios recreating the mind-boggling stunt-work that made The Raid so exciting. "The remake will feature a similar storyline, though it may be difficult for Hollywood stars to perform the brutal hand-to-hand fight scenes and other stunts with the same intensity as the original film’s martial arts experts." Which, duh. They also mention the Hemsworth brothers as possible candidates to star in the film, two guys who likely don’t do many stunts and aren’t going to become black belts by the fall. There’s also a reference to Shia LaBeouf possibly featuring in the film, which would be hilarious, since he’s the type of character the heroes physically throw at bad guys in order to distract them. We’re rooting for you, Shia.
