dougray scott Tagged Articles at Cinematical

One of the few '80s remakes I can get behind is Highlander -- the original is something I always wanted to love, but couldn't. I know! It seems tailor made for me, what with Scotsmen, swords, immortals, and finest power ballads known to humankind. But there are levels of ridiculousness I will accept in film, and somehow Highlander just overruns my tolerance for it when a "Spanish" Sean Connery disdains haggis while speaking in a warm Scottish brogue. A remake has always topped my guilty wish list, and it shocks me that Summit went and green-lit it.

But news has been pretty scarce -- so scarce that the moment I saw this rumor on JoBlo, I took it. It seems one of their faithful readers heard Scottish actor Kevin McKidd on a Dublin radio show, and he mentioned that the producers had approached him about starring in the film.

I would actually love this to happen. McKidd not only has the advantage of actually being Scottish, but he's quite an ass kicker as well. If you have been good readers and rented both seasons of Rome like I've told you, you will have seen this for yourself. He also swung a sword in Kingdom of Heaven, but I'm not sure if you can really make him out in that blurry opening fight where everyone dies. So take my word for it. He's a badass -- and that's not surprising since he does hail from the land that probably invented the word.

If not McKidd, who? The Highlander has to be Scottish this time around. While you might expect me to favor Gerard Butler, I think he's dead tired of bulking up to kill people. So I nominate Dougray Scott, who deserves a nice big role after missing out on Bond and Wolverine, and he has the world-weary look of an immortal. McKidd or Scott, Summit. Listen to me, for I know my Scotsmen.

We Dougray Scott fans are used to disappointment. We've seen our man suited up for Wolverine and then de-clawed when Joo Woo couldn't bring in a movie on time, we've seen him so close to becoming Bond that he actually talked about it with the press -- what a Bond he could have been, too: snarling, Scottish orphan grown into an ice-water assassin -- and we've seen him reduced to bill-paying roles in films like Dark Water and Ever After. But hope springs eternal -- another chance at glory will come this October, when he takes on the bad guy role in the much-anticipated film Hitman. At this late stage of the game, I can't imagine he'd let an opportunity like that fly by without swinging hard for the fences, so buy your tickets early. Until then, we must make do with Perfect Creature, a direct-to-DVD feature being released today. As far as these things go, the film, a vampire story set in a fantasy version of New Zealand, is actually not all that bad.

Opening the action of the film are some lovely shots of zeppelins cutting across a moonlit sky; the world below is a Proyasian mish-mash of styles and eras, with thoroughly modern police detectives interacting with a Dickensian city panicked by the possibility of Influenza. The technology seems to have evolved along an alternate timeline; we get a completely random mixture of present-day gadgets mixed with what looks like vintage equipment. The film's vampires -- they prefer the term 'brothers' -- were born in some genetic freak event hundreds of years ago, and now co-exist among humans as a powerful minority sect who long ago wove themselves into the fabric of the predominant religion and have carefully honed their status as behind-the-scenes political players. They don't kill anyone, nor can they themselves be killed, although they do eventually die of old age, apparently. The problems begin when one of their own goes off the reservation and begins targeting humans. They try to bring him down themselves, but fail, prompting human cops to get involved.

During the run-up to Daniel Craig's casting as James Bond, I was fervently hoping that the producers would go in a different direction and give Scottish actor Dougray Scott a chance. He would have been the leanest, meanest Bond since Timothy Dalton, I thought, and still think -- although I was pleasantly surprised by Craig's performance. Scott also infamously missed the boat on Wolverine, barely losing the part to Hugh Jackman. Luckily, he isn't being completely ignored by Hollywood -- IGN reported yesterday that director Luc Besson has said Scott will co-star in the long-awaited movie-version of the Hitman game. Timothy Olyphant stars in Hitman as Agent 47, an assassin who works for a shady outfit called The Agency.

According to what IGN was picked up, Scott will play the antagonist who pursues Olyphant throughout the film. Production on Hitman is scheduled to begin this month in Prague. Cinematical recently spoke to Olyphant and touched on what his hopes for Hitman are -- you can read that here. He'll next be seen in the fourth Die Hard installment, Live Free or Die Hard, while Scott's next project may be the mystery drama The Last Chapter.