‘Hard Days’: Cop thriller remake proves bigger isn’t always better

It’s usually a on condition that when a profitable Asian movie will get the Hollywood therapy, the tip consequence will probably be larger and brasher whereas someway missing the spark of the unique. Even Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning “The Departed” was in most respects inferior to “Infernal Affairs,” the Hong Kong crime drama on which it was based mostly.

There’s one thing related occurring with Michihito Fujii’s “Onerous Days,” a blustery remake of the 2014 South Korean thriller, “A Onerous Day.” Kim Seong-hun’s movie was a grimly creative B-movie that punched nicely above its weight: Screened within the Director’s Fortnight part of the Cannes Movie Competition, it turned a word-of-mouth hit at dwelling and has already spawned Chinese language, Filipino and French diversifications.

This Japanese model is definitely one of many higher iterations, however that’s partly as a result of France’s Regis Blondeau set the bar so low with final 12 months’s “Stressed.” Working with screenwriter Kenya Hirata and producer Masaki Koide (who had been additionally accountable for the 2017 Japanese remake of South Korean drama “Memoirs of a Assassin”), Fujii takes a comparatively lean narrative and bulks it up significantly, although the added weight is extra flab than muscle.