On 12.14 The Hollywood Reporter‘s Borys Kit reported that Benny and Josh Safdie (Good Time) will direct a remake of Walter Hill‘s 48 HRS (’82). The original script, co-written by Hill, Roger Spottiswoode, Larry Gross and Steven de Souza, is about a racist tough-guy cop (Nick Nolte) springing a black convict (Eddie Murphy) from jail in order to gain an inside advantage in tracking down a pair of cop killers.

The problem, it seems to me, is that the racial epithets that came out of Nolte’s mouth 35 years ago will sound over-the-top horrendous by today’s cultural standards. Nolte’s Jack Cates calls Murphy’s Reggie Hammond the “n” word, for one thing, not to mention “spearchucker” and a couple of other terms that haven’t been heard in commercial films in a long time.

How to get around this? Reverse the ethnicity of the leads. Use a snarly, middle-aged black actor to play Nolte’s detective, and a younger white actor to play Murphy’s convict, except make him an under-educated alt-right guy.