Killer Elite Poster

Look! It's the one-sheet for this fall's Jason Statham/Clive Owen/Robert DeNiro spy movie, Killer Elite. (Read more about it here.) With that cast and that trailer, this is one I'm really looking forward to...

Trailer For Statham's The Killer Elite

All week long new distributor Open Road has been aggressively pushing their debut feature release, The Killer Elite. On Monday, USA Today (via Dark Horizons) published the first photo from the film, which stars Jason Statham, Clive Owen and Robert DeNiro and is not a remake of the 1975 Sam Peckinpah movie The Killer Elite. The picture in the newspaper reveals DeNiro's bearded look in a scene between him and Statham. The paper also got some good quotes out of Statham.

"This is more rooted in reality [than the Crank or Transporter films], and it's exactly what I've wanted to do for the past 10 years," says the actor, who compares the feel of the film to the Jason Bourne franchise. "This is the kind of movie I would want to see," Statham says.

As for the plot, Statham doesn't want to reveal much: "It involves a Saudi prince whose sons were assassinated in the Oman war and who is looking for revenge." That means he and his team must take down the three killers responsible as well as their protector (Clive Owen) before De Niro can be saved.

While the action in the movie unfolds all over the world (Paris, Wales, London, Dubai, Oman), USA Today also reveals that most of the filming was done in Australia. A day later Coming Soon scored some even cooler exclusive pictures of Statham and DeNiro in action. Check them out here. But best of all, Open Road capped this mini-push by unveiling the trailer. Unsurprisingly given the cast (which also includes Chuck's Yvonne Strahovski), it looks pretty awesome. I was a little taken aback at first by Owen's mustache, but I do love it when Statham flips over him while tied to a chair...

Tradecraft: Jason Statham's Killer Elite Set For September

Deadline reports that first-time distributor Open Road has set a September 23 US release date for the Jason Statham/Clive Owen spy thriller Killer Elite. As we heard last month, Killer Elite is not a remake of the 1975 Sam Peckinpah movie of the same name, but an adaptation of the non-fiction novel The Feather Men, written by Ranulph Fiennes (a cousin of Ralf's). Statham plays a highly-skilled special ops agent sent to infiltrate a secretive group of ex-SAS operatives led by Owen. In a whirlwind adventure that jumps from Australia to Paris to Wales to Dubai, he and his team must take down a rogue cell of solider-assassins before their actions result in a global political meltdown. Robert DeNiro and Chuck's Yvonne Strahovski round out the killer spy cast.

Tradecraft: Meet the New Transporter

Deadline reports that Chris Vance, who played the smarmy "psycho" arms dealer Mason Gilroy on Season 3 of Burn Notice, has been tapped to fill Jason Statham's sizable shoes on EuropaCorp's Transporter TV series.  Hm.  I'm not convinced.  Vance didn't really impress me on Burn Notice, and physically he's certainly no Statham... but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.  (At least he's English.)  I think he was also considered for the new Saint telefilm, so presumably he's got reserves of charm that weren't on display in Burn Notice.  As previously reported, the 12-episode, $48 million Transporter TV series (based on the awesome Luc Besson-produced series of neo-Eurospy movies) will air here on Cinemax. It will shoot in Europe.

Tradecraft: US Distribution Locked For Jason Statham/Clive Owen Spy Movie Killer Elite

Deadline reports that AMC Theaters' new distribution arm Open Road has acquired the action spy movie Killer Elite for US distribution this fall. In Killer Elite, we'll get to see Jason Statham go up against Clive Owen. As if that weren't already a killer spy cast, the film also stars Robert DeNiro and Chuck's Yvonne Strahovski. Statham will play Danny Bryce, "one of the world's most skilled special ops agents," who's lured out of retirement when his old comrades start being murdered. He assembles what's left of his old team to rescue his mentor (DeNiro), but to do so he'll need to infiltrate a secretive group of ex-SAS operatives led by Clive Owen. According to the press release, "Danny and his team must take down a rogue cell of solider assassins before their actions result in a global political meltdown. [The] whirlwind action crosses the globe from Australia to Paris, Wales, London, Dubai and Oman." Despite the somewhat similar subject matter, this is not a remake of the 1975 Sam Peckinpah movie of the same name starring James Caan and Robert Duval; the Statham Killer Elite is instead based on a "non-fiction novel" called The Feather Men by Ranulph Fiennes.  With that cast, it's just become one of my own most anticipated movies of the fall!

Tradecraft: Jason Statham Circles Echelon

Wow, this is the week for movies and TV about former British special forces troops turned secret agents.  Hot on the heels of yesterday's news about Cinemax remaking the UK TV series based on former SAS operative Chris Ryan's Strike Back comes news that Jason Statham is circling a film adaptation of a novel by Ryan's former SAS commander, Andy McNab.  (Both were veterans of a disastrous operation known as Bravo Two Zero, which was chronicled in a film starring Sean Bean.) Deadline reports that Statham is close to signing on to a movie called Echelon based on McNab's book Firewall.  Obviously, production company Hyde Park/Imagenation Abu Dhabi couldn't call the movie that because of the 2006 Harrison Ford film, but Echelon's kind of an overused title in the development world already! We've heard about The Echelon Vendetta (currently in development), Echelon Conspiracy and NBC's in-the-works TV series ECHELON. Ever since the NSA's massive electronic eavesdropping apparatus ECHELON went online, it's fascinated film and television writers as much as it's fascinated privacy advocates.

In this take on ECHELON, to be directed by Simon Crane (stunt coordinator on Salt and The Tourist) the software itself is the MacGuffin. Statham would play Nick Stone (a role to which Eric Bana was previously attached), a former SAS operative (of course) and freelance intelligence agent who finds himself caught between Russian gangsters and American and British agents when a mission in Helsinki goes bad.  I've never read a McNab book, but Helsinki is one of my favorite backdrops for a good spy story, and after watching him flit around the periphery of the spy genre for so long with films like The Bank Job and the Transporter series, it would be mighty nice to see Jason Statham in a real secret agent role. So I hope this movie happens!

Tradecraft: Transporter TV Series A Go
Also: More details on Taken sequel

We first heard about the prospect of a TV series based on EuropaCorp's neo-Eurospy Transporter films last year, then quiet.  I had kind of assumed that meant the project was dead, but it turns out that's not the case. Deadline reports that not only is the series very much alive, but it's already got a commitment from an American network and is due to start filming early next year.  According to the trade blog, EuropaCorp won’t reveal who the US partner is, but chairman Pierre-Ange Le Pogam promises "it's a big one.”  (My guess would be Spike or FX, which both play the Transporter movies and both seem like good fits for the franchise.  But we'll have to wait and see.)  The first 12-episode season is budgeted at $48 million. Filming is slated to commence "early next year," with the first episodes expected in November.  One EuropaCorp franchise is already a successful TV series in America: Nikita, which airs on The CW (and has improved significantly since its pilot), and already has a full-season order.  The company is aggressively trying to expand further into television, with not only the Transporter series on the horizon, but also tentative plans for a show based on its Liam Neeson neo-Eurospy hit Taken.  That won't move forward until after Taken 2 films in the spring, however, according to Le Pogam.  (Neeson is committed, but they're still trying to lock down a director.) 

I love the Transporter films, and while I would much rather see a fourth cinematic entry starring the great Jason Statham, a TV series appeals to me as well–especially since it will be shot in Europe.  I loved Taken, too, but I'm more hesitant about its potential as a TV series.  The premise of an ex-spy's daughter being kidnapped, prompting him to go on a merciless tear of righteous ass-kicking until he finds her, would not really lend itself to a series.  (Or even really a sequel, so I'll be curious to see how they pull that one off.)  The character of Bryan Mills (Neeson) probably has more to do with the film's success than its premise (and certainly has the potential to fuel a film sequel with a different set-up), but that's so tied in with Neeson's performance that it's difficult to imagine Mills making much impact on television, where he would probably come off as a Jack Bauer clone.  Still, I'll give any potential spy series a chance, so we'll see where this leads.  In the mean time, I'm sure looking forward to Taken 2.

Just to clarify, it is not expected that either TV show will star the actor from its respective film series.  So who could possibly fill the shoes of Statham and Neeson?  I don't really have any ideas about Neeson.  Presumably on TV, the character would be sort of Equalizer-like: a skilled former operative–not young–who uses his spy skills to help people.  I can't think of anyone off the top of my head in that age range with Neeson's requisite gravitas.  I do have an idea for The Transporter, though: I think Rome's Kevin McKidd (currently seen on Grey's Anatomy) could be good.  Come to think of it, his co-star Ray Stevenson wouldn't be a bad choice either...

Movie Review: The Expendables (2010)

Despite a few standout titles like The Wild Geese (starring Roger Moore), I’ve never been a big fan of the mercenary genre. For better or for worse, it’s one that frequently intersects with the spy genre, from TV shows like Saracen that straddle the line to my least favorite episode of Return of the Saint (which tries to cast Simon against type as an out-and-out soldier of fortune) to movies like The Wild Geese and Sylvester Stallone’s new action all-star jam, The Expendables. The Expendables is not a perfect movie (though it’s plenty entertaining!), but it definitely ranks among the better mercenary pictures, in my opinion.

Bruce Willis cameos as an Agency spook who tasks Stallone’s titular soldiers of fortune with overthrowing the government of a small island nation in South America. The island is ruled by a military dictator named General Garza, but the real threat is the guy pulling his strings: rogue agent James Munroe (Eric Roberts) who could prove an embarrassment to the CIA, hence farming out the assignment to mercenaries rather than using American forces. Munroe bankrolls Garza’s junta in exchange for massive quantities of cocaine he can sell back in the States. If that plot sounds right out of the Eighties, well, that’s the point.

The whole movie is a throwback to the sort of Eighties action movies Stallone and his co-stars used to make, like the second two Rambo movies, Cobra and Commando. It takes place today, but other than a brief (and underwhelming) opening featuring Somali pirates, the CIA/cocaine threat is torn from Eighties headlines. There is nary a mention of Iraq, Iran or the War on Terror. Just as American and British Cold War audiences took comfort in reliving WWII victories on screen throughout the Fifties and Sixties, I think contemporary audiences find solace today in the threats of the Eighties: the Cold War itself (as seen on the final season of 24 and in Salt–as well in newspaper headlines this summer) and islands full of drugs led by evil juntas. These are threats that we’ve conquered (to some degree, anyway; I’m not saying there isn’t still a huge drug problem!) and which seem manageable compared to rogue nuclear states and terrorists hiding in caves. Movies that try to take on realistic contemporary threats head-on, like Green Zone or Syriana, tend to falter at the box office. It’s much easier to embrace nostalgic threats.

The nostalgia in The Expendables is not limited to the bad guys, however. The whole movie is an unabashed throwback, both in its cast and its direction. Eighties and early Nineties icons like Stallone, Dolph Lundgrun (who many forget began his career as a Bond baddie in A View to a Kill) and even Arnold Schwarzenegger (who pops up extremely briefly in the same scene as Willis, which was my favorite scene in the movie) mingle with the most old-school action stars of today, like the great Jason Statham, whose Transporter series is one of the last vestiges of the pre-Bourne action movie. The Expendables itself is defiantly pre-Bourne (or anti-Bourne?) in its approach; Stallone directs action the old way, without an abundance of confusing quick cuts or an over-reliance on obvious CGI. In one of the coolest touches, the general’s army all paint their faces like Aladdin Sane, with yellow bolts cutting across black greasepaint. This not only makes them easy to differentiate from the heroes in the battle scenes (which is kind of necessary since there are so many heroes packed into this flick), but also successfully dehumanizes them, turning them into something more akin to robots or monsters than men, and making the ridiculously high body count easier to accept. Yes, there’s an Eighties level of violence, with death tolls reaching and probably exceeding Commando levels. There’s also a certain exuberance to the violence only found in the films of that era–especially Commando, Cobra and Rambo III. Obviously a film that so gleefully celebrates violence isn’t for all tastes, but if you check any PC inhibitions at the door and let yourself be transported back to a past era of action movie, you’ll probably enjoy it.