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Thursday
15Oct2009

Foster, Sutherland Join Statham's 'Mechanic' Remake

DateThursday, October 15, 2009 at 2:46PM
For the upcoming remake of the Charles Bronson film, The Mechanic, Jason Statham will be joined by two great supporting actors, Donald Sutherland and Ben Foster, which should bolster the film quite a bit.

Entertainment Weekly has a little blurb about it, saying only that Sutherland will play Foster's father - though not a foster father - who is also Statham's handler. Foster, seen last in Pandorum, though admittedly not by too many people, will play a hitman-in-waiting.

In the original, Bronson's hitman-on-his-way-out took a shine to Jan-Michael Vincent and trained him to become a professional killer. In the update, Foster will play the apprentice role, which by extension could mean a remake of the bad-ass 80s TV series Airwolf with Ben Foster! OK...maybe not. I'd still want Borgnine, though, if they did it.

This could be one of Statham's bigger projects, actually. The Transporter and Crank movies were never released in, say, 3,500 theaters or anything, but with Simon West (Con-Air) directing and an attractive December 15, 2010 release date already pinned down, Nu Image/Milennium could be aiming pretty high with this one.

I would contend some of that would have to do with the success of The Expendables, which is produced by the same companies and co-stars Statham. That one comes out in August and if it's a huge smash, then I think it's possible The Mechanic would see a larger release pattern. A lot of that depends on the distributor, which probably won't be known for several months.

Still, I'll give the production credit for going after an established action director and some fine talent to support Statham. It's also a decent bit of source material, though not great. However, I think it's the kind of remake people won't mind as much, because it's not exactly one of the classics of the 1970s or its own genre.

AuthorColin Boyd | | in , , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | Comment2 Comments |

Reader Comments (2)

Another remake. Yay.

I enjoyed the original (especially the ending) and don't need to sit through a Simon West-directed film anytime soon.

Thursday, October 15, 2009 | Unregistered Commentermdamien13

Charles Bronson was The MAN. Release his older films NOW.

Friday, October 16, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterTjei

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