If there’s one thing Hollywood loves doing, it’s adapting foreign material to Americanize it — because everyone hates subtitles, right? — and generally upping the action, streamlining the plot, and often completely missing or scrapping subtext that is crucial to the socio-political structure of where it originated. A new subtext rarely replaces it, leaving viewers with a less-than-satisfactory reboot of something less than a decade old.
So comes the announcement via Deadline that New Line has acquired the rights to a remake of the 2010 Jeong-beom Lee revenge actioner The Man From Nowhere, which was actually already remade in Bollywood under the name Rocky Handsome, released just a few months ago. The original was a well-received thriller following a reserved and rugged pawn shop keeper with a dark, violent past who must dive back into the world of crime to save a young girl from a gang of drug-and-organ traffickers. So, Jason Statham will star as — er, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself a bit.
The original opened #1 at the Korean box office and held its spot for a whopping 5 weeks in a row, raking in $41 million and securing itself as the highest-grossing Korean film in 2010. It’s unlikely that a U.S. reboot can break any records in the current tight spandex climate, especially with a much smaller American following of the source material than, say, Oldboy, whose 2013 U.S. remake only pulled in just over $2 million domestically on a $5 million budget. Still, miracles have happened. If not, add franchise viagra Dwayne Johnson to the mix.
See a fight scene from the original The Man From Nowhere below and a trailer for the Bollywood remake.