There’s an update on big, beefy men joining Sylvester Stallone’s latest big, beefy project, with news from Variety that the trio of Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Christian Slater and Holt McCallany will join Sung Kang and Jason Momoa in the untitled action-thriller movie also known as “Headshot.”
The film, directed by Walter Hill, stars Stallone and Kang as a New Orleans hitman and a Gotham cop, respectively. The two team up to take down the men responsible for their wives’ murders. Momoa will play one of the bad guys, with Akinnuoye-Agbaje playing the other, a powerful attorney trying to cover up his scams surrounding the poor neighborhoods hit hard by Hurricane Katrina. Slater will play a middle man, while McCallany plays a crooked cop who partners with Kang.
Alessandro Camon, one of the screenwriters of excellent “The Messenger,” has adapted the screenplay from the original graphic novel “Bullet to the Head” by Matz and Colin Wilson. And whatever our beef is with such a silly film as this, Hill is taking advantage of a great pool of television actors, with Momoa, Akinnuoye-Agbaje and McCallany all coming from solid shows (“Game Of Thrones,” “Lost” and “Lights Out” respectively). Though it will probably look like every other “Expendables” or Jason Statham-starrer, the film will probably bring in quite a bit of money for the WB. Filming kicks off any day now.
In keeping with your beef theme for the article: beefy guys shooting at each other or non-fiction films for the intelligentsia reiterating beef (and most other food) is bad….don\’t many films run the risk of looking like every other one?
My chief beef with this project: I would be more optimistic If this was a return to \”The Driver\” style Hill, but with Joel Silver micromanaging to the point of ousting Jane as a costar, I fear the overly stylized and exaggerated CGI bloodletting of \”Ninja Assassin\” will be the standard here.
On the plus side, with all the film activity in Louisiana, it\’s an increasing novelty to have one actually still set here. Hopefully, some of the creative spark of the director\’s previous years here with \”Hard Times\” and \”Johnny Handsome will prevail.