Two first looks at what are upcoming B-movies? Hard to say, you be the judge. The first is the action thriller “The Expatriate” starring Aaron Eckhart. It’s a picture without many stars outside of Olga Kurylenko, and while she’s certainly attractive, she’s hardly a big star. The film is directed by Philipp Stölzl, a German director known for “North Face,” “Young Goethe in Love” and music videos by Garbage, Evanescence and Rammstein.
”I learned a lot about self-reliance, street fighting, how to get out of a knife fight, stuff like that,” Eckhart told EW who brings us this first look of the movie. The actor hasn’t apparently found any real-life use for his knife-fight evading skills, but says, ‘I tell you, it gives you a certain confidence.”
Eckhart plays a former CIA agent who hopes to make a fresh start with his estranged 15-year old daughter. He moves to Belgium to take work as a security expert and one day discovers that his colleagues have mysteriously vanished and a trained operative is intent on killing both him and his daughter. Sounds a little “Taken“-ish. The release date is still TBD, let’s just hope he wasn’t an in-character jerk to the rest of the cast like he did as the hard-ass Sgt. Nantz in “Battle: Los Angeles.” It’s just a movie, yo.
Next up, a feature this writer barely remembers. The cleverly titled, “Fire With Fire” (that’s what you fight with!). It’s about a fireman who takes an unexpected course of action when he’s threatened by a man who he’s been ordered to testify against. EW gives us a first look at the film’s star Josh Duhamel and his girlfriend played by Rosario Dawson. B-movie alert! It also stars Bruce Willis and 50 Cent (pretty much everything they do together goes straight to DVD), plus Vinnie Jones, Vincent D’Onofrio and Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson. Quite the all-star cast.
The film is directed by TV helmer David Barrett known for directing “The Mentalist,” “V” and “Cold Case.” Duhamel tells EW his character is like “a workingman James Bond. Circumstances compel him to do things completely against his nature.” Holding back snickering… No release date on this one. We assume, January or straight to VOD or DVD, but happy to be proved wrong.
