ANSEL ELGORT IN “BABY DRIVER”

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ANSEL ELGORT, AWKWARD HOTSHOT BEHIND THE WHEEL IN “BABY DRIVER”

Ansel Elgort has quickly amassed an impressive body of work in a very short amount of time as both an accomplished actor (The Fault in Our Stars, Divergent series) and musician. Now, he breaks from the pack as he plays the title role of Columbia Pictures’ U.S. No.1 box-office hit heist thriller Baby Driver (in Philippine cinemas August 02).

Photo credits: Columbia Pictures

Cool but a little naive. Young but with an old soul. goofy at times, but all business when it counts. Thrillingly good at his given task, but not always aware of the consequences of what he does. That’s Baby, a character writer-director Edgar Wright created as a way for moviegoers to live vicariously through a criminal, but also experience the very real fallout of that world.

The Baby we meet at the beginning of the movie – hidden behind sunglasses, dialed in to his iPod playlist, then a hellion at the wheel – is like the greatest gang apprentice ever. “This kid’s a hotshot, but he’s also on the fringes of the gang,” says Wright. “He literally sits as far away from them as he can, because he really doesn’t want to be part of the group. He thinks, wrongly, that he can be a getaway driver but not be a criminal Like, ‘I’m just the courier. I don’t have anything to do with the bad stuff.’ The action scenes are kind of like Baby’s day job, and I think a lot of people that work in a job sometimes shield themselves in a different persona. Then when they’re home, they’re a different person.”

When Wright was dreaming up the role, he envisioned a riff on the strong silent type personified by Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen, but with the tension that it might all be a front. “You meet him, and he’s a badass in his profession, and then immediately afterwards you start to meet the real kid. It’s an interesting dichotomy, that he’s really good at a job that he should not be doing.”

Though he initially imagined Baby as short – “because I’m short,” he adds, laughing – he says meeting Ansel Elgort made him realize nobody else could play the title role.

“The thing that really charmed me about him was the fact that he’s very musical, and he can play lots of instruments,” says Wright. “One of my favorite scenes with Ansel, he has his headphones in and he’s listening to Dave Brubeck, and starts playing piano on the table. There was something so beguiling and hypnotic about watching a 21-year-old actor play along to some jazz from the ‘50s. Ansel is fascinating in that regard.”

Elgort explains that it was his and Edgar’s mutual love for music that connected them upon their first meeting in LA. “Edgar and I met in Los Angeles and we had lunch, and all we talked about was music,” says the actor. “At the time I didn't even know what this film was about, but we both shared a love for music.”

Says Wright, “Ansel is actually obsessed with music, which the lead character in the movie is. His life is completely governed by music and living to the rhythm of the music he's listening to, and Ansel has a dance background. And also he's a great actor and a nice guy.”

Elgort was excited to take on the role of Baby, explaining, “I loved how eclectic the role was. He’s the getaway driver so I had to learn to drive, he has a deaf foster dad who he signs with, so I had to learn to sign, and his life moves through music so there’s the dance and choreography challenges too.”

In the film, a talented, young getaway driver named Baby (Ansel Elgort) relies on the beat of his personal soundtrack to be the best in the game. When he meets the girl of his dreams (Lily James), Baby sees a chance to ditch his criminal life and make a clean getaway. But after being coerced into working for a crime boss (Kevin Spacey), he must face the music when a doomed heist threatens his life, love and freedom.

Baby Driver stars Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Jon Bernthal, Eiza Gonzalez with Jon Hamm and Jamie Foxx.

Baby Driver is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.

“xXx: RETURN OF XANDER CAGE” SOLO BANNERS

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THE GUYS OF “xXx: RETURN OF XANDER CAGE” SHOW OFF THEIR SOLO BANNERS

The male castmembers of Paramount Pictures' xXx: Return of Xander Cage show off their action skills in individual character banners recently rolled out by the studio. 

Xxx: Return of Xander Cage opens across the Philippines on January 18, 2017.

The third explosive chapter of the blockbuster franchise that redefined the spy thriller finds extreme athlete turned government operative Xander Cage (Diesel) coming out of self-imposed exile and on a collision course with deadly alpha warrior Xiang and his team in a race to recover a sinister and seemingly unstoppable weapon known as Pandora’s Box. Recruiting an all-new group of thrill-seeking cohorts, Xander finds himself enmeshed in a deadly conspiracy that points to collusion at the highest levels of world governments.

Packed with the series’ signature deadpan wit and bad-ass attitude, “xXx: The Return of Xander Cage” will raise the bar on extreme action with some of the most mind-blowing stunts to ever be caught on film.

Directed by D.J. Caruso (Disturbia), and written by Chad St. John (London Has Fallen) and F. Scott Frazier, adapted from characters originated by Rich Wilkes. The film also stars Samuel L. Jackson, Ruby Rose, Nina Dobrev, Toni Collette, Donnie Yen, Tony Jaa, Deepika Padukone, and Rory McCann.

“xXx: The Return of Xander Cage” is distributed in the Philippines by United International Pictures through Columbia Pictures.

MODERN DAY ROBIN HOOD IN “MARAUDERS”

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“Marauders” reels into action when a bank is hit by a brutal heist, all evidence points to the owner (Bruce Willis) and his high-powered clients. But as a group of FBI agents (Christopher Meloni, Dave Bautista and Adrian Grenier) dig deeper into the case — and the deadly heists continue — it becomes clear that a larger conspiracy is at play.

                Bruce Willis portrays Jeffrey Hubert, president and owner of Hubert National Bank, and the target of repeated heists.  An air of entitlement and authority, he goes ballistic when the local newspaper smells a scandal beyond simple robbery.

                “Marauders explores the idea of to what lengths you go to right a wrong, and then where does that place you. Does that place you on the side of wrong? It’s almost revenge. And then when does revenge go wrong, or is revenge ever right, or are you avenging something?” Meloni states.

                “I knew that I wanted Marauders to be gritty and dark and to have a lot of rain,” recalls director Steven C. Miller, of his first read through the script. “As soon as I got to Cincinnati, it really matched what I wanted to see. I love movies that always have rich architecture and everything in the scene has got a lot of substance to it. You can almost touch the texture in the scenes. Cincinnati is just rich with that; I mean the history of the city, the buildings and the architecture are just a great backdrop.

                Miller’s previous film with Bruce Willis proved invaluable, “I understood his process and how he’s gets into the character and moves through a scene.” When casting the rest of the roles, Miller found that a lot of the actors he liked were on producers Randall Emmett and George Furla’s list. A few nights before each actor arrived, Miller gave them a call. “We kind of hashed out what their character was about, their arc and where they were going in the story, and really what they as actors wanted to do. Bringing their own style to the mix, their own thing to the game, gives the movie its own personality.”

                Shooting in Cincinnati was somewhat of a homecoming for Bautista. “I not only spent a lot of time here wrestling, but my MMA coach is from here, my boxing coach is from here, so throughout the years training I’ve spent a lot of time in the city and the arenas. It doesn’t feel like I had to leave home and come to a strange town; as soon as I got here I went straight from the airport to the grocery to stock up on food. It is a comforting to see familiar places and familiar faces.”

                 “We’re running and gunning, its very high paced, high energy and we just have to be on top of it, and the style of film making and the production really reflects the energy that you’re going to feel on the screen,” assures Grenier. “One thing I really love about this particular shoot and working with Steven Miller is he’s nimble, he’s lean and it really does allow for a vitality, a sort of visceral quality to the filmmaking and in this day and age, you don’t need a lot of fancy lights or set ups to get good story and good action. He’s almost like a Special Forces operative – he gets in, gets the job done and gets out. That’s really exciting to watch that kind of energy; it’s guerilla film making, but on a high, high level,” adds Grenier.

UNLOCKING CIA’S TOP SECRETS FROM THE MIND OF A “CRIMINAL”

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Hollywood’s brightest young and veteran stars Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot, Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Oldman star in “Criminal” -  the story of the right man in the wrong body.

                “Criminal” finds an ex-convict’s brain being implanted the memories of a top CIA agent in a last-ditch effort to stop a diabolical plot. At first, it appears the operation has failed. But Jerico (Costner), unsure of what has happened to him and in fear for his life, escapes and finds himself on the run. At large in London, Jerico begins to experience memories that are clearly not his own – memories that take him into an overwhelming world of family, love and responsibility that he’s never known.  As Jerico enters a secretive world of international spies, ingenious hackers and powerful tyrants, he roams a London he’s never known but mysteriously can navigate.

                Says director Ariel Vromen: "Our main character, Jerico, is a person who starts with no feelings and no real emotions and then he goes on an incredible journey. He acquires all these memories from CIA agent Bill Pope’s mind and he has to react to an entirely new view of life. Because of the massively high stakes, that core emotional story is surrounded by a plot that has great suspense and lots of action. That really appealed to me.”

                Leading the film’s star-studded cast is award winning Kevin Costner in one of his most challenging and unusual roles. As Jerico, Costner had to inhabit two minds at once – that of a hard-bitten, unfeeling criminal capable of anything and that of a patriotic spy and family man driven to be a good man – and find the ways they fuse in one man’s reeling mind.

                Costner says of his reaction to the script: “I'm always attracted to projects when they are multi-layered and this story is very much that. “Criminal” is definitely an action movie but I responded most strongly to the complexity of my character, to all the confusion and turmoil that is scrambled up inside Jerico as he comes to terms with what he is experiencing."

                He goes on: "When we meet Jerico, he is in prison and has spent most of his life there. An injury he suffered as a child rendered him a sociopath, so he has no understanding that the things he does are wrong. He just reacts, sometimes violently, sometimes humorously. He is so unpredictable that he is not even allowed near anyone in jail. But after his operation, Jerico starts going back and forth between who he was and who Bill Pope is. He’s very mixed-up and suddenly he’s comprehending things and having sensations that he’s never experienced before on every level. And that’s what I had to figure out how to portray.”

                Gadot was drawn to Jill’s own transformation in the course of the story. "With Bill, Jill had settled for a convenient life, staying with a husband who she had trouble communicating with because it was comfortable. When her husband dies, Jill has no choice other than to fight for the truth,” Gadot observes.         Her character has to span both fear and inexplicable attraction in her relationship with Jerico, a process Gadot says Costner helped tremendously. "Kevin brings his own charm to the hardcore character of Jerico. He is an incredible actor and by the end of the film, he goes through an amazing transformation."

                Gadot notes that part of the fun of her character is that she is in the dark about who Jerico is and what he wants, though the audience knows. "My character is suddenly confronted by a total stranger who knows every detail about her. She is mystified and the audience will be on the edge of their seats because there is so much going on at every level."