John Woo to direct Yakuza remake, 'Day of the Beast'

After establishing himself as one of the great Kong Kong filmmakers, John Woo made the move here to big Hollywood cinema, where he promptly lost his way and his touch. While movies like Face/Off and Mission: Impossible II have their fans, disasters like Paycheck and Windtalkers are best left forgotten. The last couple of years have seen him jet back home and undertake the type of huge spectacles he's best at, in particular the excellent historical epic, Red Cliff. Now he'll turn his attention to an unquestioned Japanese classic, remaking 1963's Youth of the Beast.

Woo will direct and co-produce Day of the  Beast, based on a script by co-producer Terence Chang and Rob Frisbee. The announcement comes as a tribute to the 100th anniversary of Nikkatsu, the oldest major movie studio in Japan. The original story follows a mysterious Westerner who gets in the middle of a turf war between a new breed of Yakuza(the Japanese mob) and Cold War era Russian mobsters. I expect some of that will be updated to make it more current, but the core story will likely remain intact.

Youth of the Beast is an amazing film, and one of the few that I was hoping would get the remake treatment. Not that there's anything wrong with what Seijun Suzuki did, the film remains as gritty and intense as ever. But it also served as a basis for so many films that followed it that a proper remake just seemed like a natural.