It was only a matter of time before badass Indonesian fight film The Raid was remade here in America, and we learned back in 2017 that Joe Carnahan (The Grey) would be the man in the director’s chair for that remake. Frank Grillo had been set to star, but then the project seemed to completely vanish. The good news? It’s still happening, Carnahan tells Collider this week!
In addition to letting the site know that he’s hoping to begin the prep process as early as next month, Carnahan shared some plot details.
“You meet Frank’s character having just rotated back from a really, really, brutal special forces operation,” Carnahan explained. “He’s got soft tissue damage in his hands, and his rotator cuff is blown out, and they take fluid off his knees, and the doctors basically tell him, ‘Listen you’re at the razor’s edge of PTSD and you need three months of just nothing, some R&R, because you’re jacked up.’ And in that space he gets the message that his brother, who he thought had been dead for four years, is actually alive and working for a very bad guy in Caracas, and in 18 hours they’re gonna kill his brother. These forces are gonna descend and murder the bad guy and murder the brother, so do you wanna go and get your brother, who you thought is dead? Do you want that opportunity? So that’s where we start.”
He continued, “I want the entire movie to feel like the knife fight between Adam Goldberg and the German in Saving Private Ryan. Everything.“
“In every great action film there’s always an emotional quotient that you’re dealing with. You have to have a sense of stakes.”