Series star Beth Riesgraf directs the Leverage: Redemption episode “The Shakedown In Clone-Town Job,” and she includes an impressive fight sequence inspired by a Korean classic. Leverage: Redemption is the sequel series to 2008’s Leverage. The original series saw a group of criminals with very specialized skill sets form a team to take a stand against corrupt wealthy individuals. The sequel series continues that tradition with some new faces.

Riesgraf’s season 3 directorial effort sees the team going up against corruption in a small town. After falling victim to a speed trap set up by local law enforcement, Parker (Riesgraf), Elliot (Christian Kane), and Sophie (Gina Bellman) discover that there is more going on in the town than meets the eye. They decide to investigate the potential corruption for themselves, which leads to one epic fight sequence inspired by Park Chan-wook’s South Korean film Oldboy. The movie sees a man who has spent years imprisoned suddenly released and seeking revenge. He has one epic hallway fight scene, all in one long shot, that has made its mark on action fans.

Beth Riesgraf has directed five episodes of Leverage: Redemption so far: Season 1's "The Bucket Job" and "The Great Train Job," Season 2's "The Tournament Job" and "The Turkish Prisoner Job," and Season 3's "The Shakedown In Clone-Town Job."

Leverage: Redemption Season 3's Oldboy Hallway Fight Scene Homage Was A Logistical Nightmare

One Star Was Missing For Part Of The Shoot

There is always a challenge when it comes to getting stunt sequences just right. Because Leverage and Leverage: Redemption have a character primarily referenced as the team’s Hitter, the show has had its fair share of fight scenes and action sequences in between the crimes. In “The Shakedown In Clone-Town Job,” the action gets a little more intense and a little more complicated.

That comes courtesy of a sequence inspired by the South Korean movie Oldboy. Riesgraf is a big fan of the single-take hallway fight that was filmed for the movie. When preparing to direct the episode, Riesgraf had the idea to pay homage to it, telling Screen Rant:

The fight sequence that I designed is an homage to the corridor shot from the South Korean film, Oldboy. We'd never done something like that before, so as soon as I read it, I'm like, "Wait a second, if I can find a location where we can track, what if we could do this, and I could pay homage to this amazing shot that I love so much?"

When speaking with Screen Rant, Riesgraf reveals that “logistically, it was kind of a nightmare” because of all of the pieces that had to fall into place, including one of the main cast not actually being there. Christian Kane, who has been a part of Leverage since the first episode of the original series, is also a main cast member of Dean Devlin’s The Librarians, which is also getting a sequel series. For half of the filming of the episode, Kane also had to fly out from New Orleans, where Leverage films, to Serbia, where the new Librarians series was filming.

Kane had to be on the other side of the world while Riesgraf and Leverage stunt coordinator Lex Damis were working on getting all the moving parts into place. She explained:

…it was difficult, logistically, because Dean needed him in Serbia for half the episode in real life to go shoot Librarians, so one of my main players was going to be gone. So, logistically, it was kind of a nightmare, and trying to figure that out was really challenging.

Leverage: Redemption's Oldboy Homage Is A Perfect Example Of What The Reboot Does So Well

Leverage: Redemption Is Allowed To Be More Experimental

The original Leverage series was not afraid to think outside of the box with its script. It had episodes that used the Rashomon style, telling the same story repeatedly from the different perspectives of the team . It also was not afraid to do episodes with just certain sets of characters - like just the female of the team on their own adventure. It did not, however, get to be too experimental.

Leverage: Redemption offers the series a chance to play more with its style, its storytelling, and even its character dynamics. The show is a bit more elevated than the original series, giving fans the Leverage they love, but with even more artistic flare. Showrunner Dean Devlin has talked about the original series being considered a lesser form of TV because of it being called “escapist television” in the past. He says he’s accepted that term, but he also sees it as a “necessary part of the diet,” explaining fully:

The beautiful comments that we get from people who say to me all the time, "I don't know if I could have gotten through my cancer treatment without that crazy band of thieves," or, "I don't know if I could have dealt with the death of my husband of 30 years if I didn't see Parker dealing with the world in a way that I never thought I could deal with the world." It just it shows it may be a lesser art form, but it's a necessary part of the diet.

Leverage: Redemption is giving some of those critics the chance to see the art that can be infused into the "escapist" series.

Oldboy's Hallway Fight Scene Has Been Referenced & Copied In Other Movies & TV Shows

Oldboy’s Hallway Fight Changed The Action Game

Of course, Leverage: Redemption is hardly the first project to provide an homage to Oldboy as part of “escapist” art. One of the most memorable homages occurs in the first season of Marvel’s Daredevil. There, the series sees Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) fight his way through a hallway to get to a kidnapped child in much the same way Oldboy sees a man fight his way to his own freedom.

Like Leverage: Redemption, Cox’s Daredevil also faced some logistical problems while filming, from Cox injuring his own hand while hitting a pole during a punch to the child actor meant to be rescued at the end of the sequence having to be pulled from set because their working hours were over. Like Riesgraf on Leverage, the team found a workaround, including having an assistant director take the place of the child actor. The series also continued to feature similar one-take fight scenes in each season.

Movies like The Raid, John Wick, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story have all done their own homages to Oldboy as well, making the single-shot, confined fight scene a staple in the action genre. It's difficult to pull off, but incredibly rewarding for the creative team and the audience. Reisgraf and Leverage: Redemption made it their own, complete with motorcyclists, rising to the challenge of doing something the series had never done before.

Riesgraf explains:

I threw it out there, and Lex Damis and I really worked on it while Christian [Kane] was away. Then, we came in and pulled it off, and it was something that was exciting, and there were motorcyclists and the BMX bike, and the whole thing. It ended up just working out beautifully.

That was really challenging, but really, for me, satisfying to put my own spin on something. You don't want to go in and remake the show, it's not our job as directors. It's to come into an already established, beautiful model and figure out how to fit in that world, but also, you get a couple moments maybe that you can say, "Okay, well, what could I do here that we haven't done that could be exciting for everybody?" And that was definitely one of those moments for me.

Riesgraf’s desire to put her own spin on Leverage: Redemption is helping to keep the series fresh for long-time fans of the series.