Cheesy Action Lines Can Work, Especially in the Nelms Brothers’ ‘Red Right Hand’

Action movies aren’t easy to make and sometimes they have to lean into those cheesy moments to make a scene work. With Red Right Hand, the directing duo the Nelms brothers (Small Town Crime, Fatman) made their love of action dialogue shine while grounding the more outlandish moments in real family drama.

Red Right Hand stars Orlando Bloom as Cash, a blue-collar man given a job he doesn’t necessarily want to take. Cash, who takes care of his recently orphaned niece Savannah (Chapel Oaks), finds himself in debt to crime queenpin Big Cat (Andie MacDowell) in Appalachia’s Odim County. Cash promises to complete three jobs (of the criminal kind), but escaping Big Cat’s crosshairs might cause a war. Ian and Eshom Nelms relied on their love of ’80s and ’90s action movies to bring Red Right Hand to the big screen.

“For those lines, I mean, look, we’re big ’80s and ’90s fans, those are a lot of the movies we grew up on,” Ian Nelms said. “And in a movie like this, what we love to do is try to ground those lines, right? So you get those lines and they’re some of them that can be wonderful and some of them you’re like ‘That one pushed it too far’ or whatever. But we always love to ground those lines and can you get those lines pushing the movie, pushing the plot, pushing the character, sounding badass, and getting you wanting to root for either the moment or the character? And can you make them as grounded and real as possible?”

For Eshom Nelms, he referenced some of the classics. “We all bought Arnold with ‘I’ll Be Back’, right? I mean it’s just in the canon forever. It’s in the lexicon forever,” he said. “And, I don’t know, also the trailer is the most out-of-context presentation of those lines. It’s like plot point, bullet, bullet point. So they come off a little more heightened in trailers.” Which Ian Nelms agreed with. “That’s true. And the music’s pumping and it’s like ‘Three jobs, that’s all you’re getting.’ Like okay, this is a lot. It is going hard.”

You can see our full chat here:

We also spoke with actor Scott Haze about his role in Red Right Hand! You can check that out on our YouTube page! Red Right Hand is available on digital now!

(featured image: Magnolia Pictures)