Expendables 3 Director Talks ‘Raid’ Remake

In case you’d forgotten, Expendables 3 director Patrick Hughes has been brought on board to direct The Raid remake, a western version.  Normally at this point in a ‘reboot’ news piece I start shitting on whatever it is, but even though they’re handling exceptional goods with ‘The Raid’, I get a weird feeling this could work.

Hughes has now spoken on the movie, stating:

“We have a really, really interesting take on that film. One thing, obviously the original just blew my mind…. 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.”

Hughes also gives details on how they plan to “Americanise” the film’s premise:

“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.”

Brad Ingelsby (“Out of the Furnace”) is the last writer attributed to be working on the script.  It’s interesting that Stallone vowed to out-raid ‘The Raid’ with The Expendables 3 and certainly the finale is written that way.  I wonder… did Hughes come close, and did sneak footage get him this job?  We’ll find out…

Source: [Comingsoon]