‘The Rip’ Director Joe Carnahan Recalibrates ‘The Raid’ Remake As An Original Concept – Wants To Surpass The Indonesian Film
It’s a minor miracle when a remake outshines the original. Sure, Cronenberg’s The Fly, Carpenter’s The Thing, and Scorsese’s Cape Fear tower over the films that inspired them. But for every one of those triumphs, you get a Gus Van Sant Psycho reminding you just how low the bar can sink. And yet Joe Carnahan, a special breed of filmmaker in his own right, seems utterly undeterred by this trend.
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Carnahan spent years trying to shepherd an American remake of The Raid into existence, working through different casts and configurations in the hope of finding a version that could stand beside Gareth Evans’ original. It was a long, uneven stretch of development, the kind where even a filmmaker as stubbornly committed as he is can feel the limits of adapting something already held up as a modern classic.
But he was prepared for this outcome. “I wrote on spec with the idea that if we did it – I wanted to make it modular so that if we couldn’t come to an arrangement with the actual ‘The Raid,’ that we could take those elements out and it would be my own script,” Carnahan revealed to The Playlist. “And that’s what wound up coming to pass, that we couldn’t reach an agreement with the producers.”
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At some point, though, he recognized a simple truth: the idea itself was worth keeping, but the remake wasn’t. So he’s stepped sideways, taking the core setup – a building full of danger and nowhere to run – and reshaping it into something that reflects his own instincts rather than someone else’s template. Same contained chaos, same rising pressure, but now with the freedom to let it move the way a Carnahan story naturally moves.
The director added this is a fortuitous turn that will make his version better – than the 2011 film! “And so, I just pulled it, and it became its own thing. In many ways, because of its conceit, it’s better than the original. Just the way it’s written, it’s a much more fundamentally emotional film than the original. You feel these things with these characters very, very innately. And I’d love to be able to do that,” he said.
Ever since Narc put him on the map, Carnahan has worked at a steady clip, moving between bruised‑knuckle crime stories and larger‑scale action with the same sense of purpose. Smokin’ Aces, The Grey, and The A‑Team are the titles most people reach for; each one has a signature momentum, a bit of swagger, and that unmistakable feeling of a director steering the chaos rather than chasing it.
It will be a while before we witness the chaos of his Raid script unfold on screen, if we ever do, and there is still a big chance of Carnahan eating his words. Until then, his latest release, The Rip, is already out in the world, conquering the Netflix charts.
