It’s been almost a year since the screenshot above was taken from the set of director Gareth Evans‘s new film, The Raid 2, at the halfway mark of his seven-month long filming schedule. Today however, within days of the film’s limited releases in New York and Los Angeles, we now have the complete scene from which that very same shot was taken in its explosive, bullet-ridden, bloody form as the director himself imagined it before it underwent the misfortune of being removed altogether from the final cut.
This is one of a few deleted scenes taken from the film. Reasons to cut were entirely down to pacing issues. This was probably the hardest for me to cut due to the fact that the production on this scene lasted around 6 days of shooting, it cost us a fuck load to make and it served to escalate the gang war out onto the streets involving people outside of the closed off inter-gang politics.
At the end of the day though, after discussing its worth it took us away from the central theme for a little too long with characters that would only exist in this scene alone.
Whenever I edit a film – every scene feels like a precious moment. “No fucking way can I cut this” is a regular phrase I utter at Aram (one of the producers at XYZ Films who patiently worked with me to get the film to it’s final cut) but his patience was always a virtue and it’s when you make a cut and no longer miss it from the bigger picture a few days down the line that you realise it was the right decision to make.
But I still want you guys to see the chaos and the mayhem we had in store, and so with the release of the film coming in a few days time – here’s a sample of one of the action scenes that simply didn’t make it.
Enjoy.
– Gareth Evans
