The Director of THE RAID Reimagining Offers an Update on The "Nitty-Gritty" Action Film

The Raid movies are two of my all-time favorite action films and director Patrick Hughes (The Expendables 3, The Hitman’s Bodyguard) is making a new one for Netflix with producer Michael Bay. In a recent interview with CB, Hughes talked a little bit about the film and offered an update. One of the things he wanted to make clear, was that this movie is not a remake, it’s a reimagining. He said:

"It's not a remake as such, it's a reimagining and it's taking what was so incredibly crazy with that hook. It's a very nitty-gritty, real world in that. Stepping into the straight action-thriller, but it's on that saga level and that's a project that I'm really, really excited about.”

The original movie followed an elite Indonesian S.W.A.T. team that becomes trapped in a tenement run by a ruthless mobster and his army of killers and thugs. This is easily one of the most hardcore and best action films ever made. I really hope that this reimagining can reach the bar that the original two films set.

The new film is set in Philadelphia’s drug-infested ‘Badlands’, and in it, an elite undercover DEA task force climbs a ladder of cartel informants to catch an elusive kingpin.

There’s not much more that’s been revealed about the story, but Hughes did go on to say:

"There's not too much I'm allowed to say, but it is something where we're really... I'm excited because I have come off a big run of doing action comedies and I love that genre and I'm certainly going to be working [in] it again in the future, but for now, I've got two projects and the other's a big action, sci-fi, horror, thriller, survival, epic movie. There are just a couple of different genres I want to step into for a while and then I'll certainly be coming back to the action-comedy because it is so much fun to work in, too."

The original Raid films set such a high bar with the action and I just don’t know if this reimagining will be able to reach that high bar. I hope that it does! We’ll just have to wait and see.