anthony mackie Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Bomb squad. War zone. Malfunctioning robot. In the opening sequence of The Hurt Locker, director Kathryn Bigelow expertly sets a tone of anxious, sweat-soaked drama. The film has been playing in New York and Los Angeles, expands to selected cities this Friday, and then goes wide on July 24. You can watch the first eight minutes online at Hulu (or after the jump).

And if that doesn't grab you, I don't know what will. I saw The Hurt Locker at SXSW, and that opening sequence pinned me to my seat. Guy Pearce leads a bomb squad that includes Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty. They're already suited up in protective gear as the scene begins, wisecracking and otherwise demonstrating an easy camaraderie. A small wheeled robot has a minor mechanical malfunction, requiring Pearce to walk into harm's way to fix it. The team's wary conversational bravado continues, even as they shift into high alert on the mostly empty street. Civilian bystanders could be friendly -- or they could be waiting to trigger the bomb.

Jeremy Renner, who turns up a little later in the picture, stars as a new member of the squad. He's a confident expert, but his reckless methods cause the others to question whether his devil-may-care attitude is needlesssly endangering their own lives. Ralph Fiennes, David Morse, and Evangeline Lilly also appear in small roles. I fully agree with James Rocchi, who wrote in his review: "You'll want to see it at a theater near you, in fact, on the largest possible screen with the best possible sound." Don't miss it.

Based on journalist Mark Boal's real experiences following bomb disposal experts in Iraq, The Hurt Locker isn't just a welcome return to big-screen action from director Kathryn Bigelow (who has wrung both fame and infamy from her art with Near Dark, Strange Days and Point Break). It's an assured, confident, swaggering piece of moviemaking that manages to not only evoke every war of the 20th century but also, despite the claims by makers and some reviewers that it's an 'apolitical' film, speaks very specifically to the Iraq war. Even so, plunging us into the thick of things alongside the highly-trained men (and they're all men here) who defuse bombs for the Army, Bigelow and Boal avoid the speeches and postures and long, contemplative talks of home front films like Stop-Loss and In the Valley of Elah by staying in Iraq, and they shun the loopy, loony formal experiments of Brian De Palma's Redacted. Boal and Bigelow stay laser-focused on one group of men with a singular mission, and make us live in the constant possibility of death. Viewed from half a world away, a bomb is a political concern; viewed from less than a foot away, a bomb's just a high-stakes exercise in problem-solving, where making a mistake means a final, terminal education in the physics of expanding gases.

The Hurt Locker follows three soldiers -- bomb tech James (Jeremy Renner) and his subordinates Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Eldrige (Brian Geraghty) into the jaws of death; it's all last names in The Hurt Locker, as seen on patches and heard in urgent radio dispatches. Early on, Bigleow establishes that people will be killed in this film -- with a bravura sequence that depicts a bomb's detonation on the macro and micro level, billowing bursts of smoke and pressure and flame intercut with gravel and dust leaping choreographed in lockstep by the pressure wave, as if God had slammed his fist on reality hard to make a point -- and while Renner, Mackie and Geraghty are fine actors, they're also unknown enough to subconsciously let us know that they aren't safe from what may happen.

No, that's not the Notorious B.I.G. That's Jamal Woolard, who has just been cast by Fox Searchlight to play him, Christopher Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls, in the upcoming biopic Notorious. Man, the only possible critique I could come up with is that his eyebrows are a little dark. That's some spot-on casting. They're definitely not Dead Wrong.

Voletta Wallace, Smalls' mom, is happy with the casting as well: "it was Jamal's charming personality, warm spirit, wonderful sense of humor and beautiful smile that won my heart. He is a talented and charismatic actor and I am excited that he will bring Christopher's character to the big screen." Topping that off, Woolard also has the real-life experience to make this pop. THR adds to the press release, explaining that Jamal is a drug-dealer-turned-rapper just like Wallace was.

Under the directorial eye of George Tillman Jr., we've got Woolard as Wallace, Angela Bassett as Voletta, Derek Luke as Sean Combs, and Anthony Mackie as Tupac Shakur. Production begins March 24 in New York.

Kathryn Bigelow should really make more movies. She's directed some terrific action flicks (Near Dark, Point Break, Strange Days), but she seems to disappear from filmmaking for long periods of time -- her last movie was 2002's K-19: The Widowmaker. Bigelow's upcoming project is a drama about the Iraq war called The Hurt Locker, and it was announced today that the film will star Jeremy Renner, Brian Geraghty and Anthony Mackie . "Who, who, and who?" you might be asking yourself. Renner recently starred in the pretty sweet 28 Weeks Later. Geraghty has done the war movie thing before, he played Fergus in the underrated Jarhead. And Mackie starred in Half Nelson and what I consider Spike Lee's only bad movie -- She Hate Me. "He Who Must Not Be Named" Ralph Fiennes and "He Who Can't Remember His Name" Guy Pearce will have cameos in the film.

The script was written by Mark Boal, a former Playboy journalist -- see! there's good articles in there! -- and was inspired "by true events and recently declassified information." The film will follow "an elite Army Explosive Ordinance Disposal team in present-day Baghdad that fights an onslaught of bombs and snipers." Renner will play the team leader. Mackie, Geraghty, and Pearce will play team members, although if Pearce just has a cameo I'd imagine he doesn't last long. Fiennes will play a mercenary. Says Boal: "The idea is that it's the first movie about the Iraq War that purports to show the experience of the soldiers. We wanted to show the kinds of things that soldiers go through that you can't see on CNN, and I don't mean that in a censorship-conspiracy way. I just mean the news doesn't actually put photographers in with units that are this elite." He adds, "It's really exciting for me, coming out of the world of journalism, to have a movie come out about a conflict while the conflict is still going on." Hell, at the rate things are going, they could delay the release of Hurt Locker ten years and it'd still be going on.

Jesse Owens was one of the greatest sports legends of all time. His 4 gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics made history -- and shamed the Nazi party and their repulsive theories of a 'master race'. Despite his achievements at the Olympics, Owens still struggled with racism at home; "I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President ,either".

Variety has announced that Milkshake Films (Goal) have signed Anthony Mackie (Freedomland) to portray Owens in the upcoming biopic Jesse: The True Story of J.C Owens. A director hasn't been chosen yet to shoot the James L. White (Ray) script, but Milkshake Films is expected to announce a director soon.

It's amazing to me that it took this long to make a film about Jesse Owens. So far there has only been one TV special that aired in 1984, whose cast included LeVar Burton and Tom Bosley -- that's right, Mr. Cunningham from Happy Days -- not exactly a fitting tribute.


[via Empire Online]