Casting News: Helen Mirren to play assassin in her first comic book role!

According to the Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision, Oscar winner Helen Mirren is cast to play an assassin in Summit Entertainment's adaptation of the Wildstorm/DC Comics' Red.

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Details as follows:

The Oscar winner has signed to play an assassin in "Red," Summit Entertainment's adaptation of the Wildstorm/DC Comics miniseries being directed by Robert Schwenke. Mirren joins Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman in the tale of a former black-ops agent (Willis), now in retirement, who has to contend with younger, more high-tech assassins who show up to kill him. Mirren plays an old associate of Willis with a lethal set of skills. [ read more ]

This is, yet again, proof of the versatility of Mirren, who won Best Actress for her role as Queen Elizabeth II in Stephen Frear's The Queen. Of course, this is not the first time for Mirren to play an assassin. In Shadowboxer (that's where the picture above came from), she plays Rose, a female assassin, who is diagnosed with terminal cancer; decides to carry out one final killing, assisted by lover and also stepson, Mickey (played by Cuba Gooding, Jr.)
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I don't think this movie was well-received by the critics, but I enjoyed watching it. Among her co-stars were Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Macy Gray and Stephen Dorf (who did frontal nudity here). Mirren did quite a number of bold scenes - in which she made love with Cuba Gooding Jr. in an open-air garden.

Says Stephen Holden at the NY TImes:

Playing one of the most unlikely couples in screen history, Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding Jr. are Rose and Mikey, contract killers and lovers living in Philadelphia who happen to be stepmother and stepson. And oh yes, Rose is dying of cancer and eventually exits the world with the kind of bang not seen since Jeanne Moreau’s self-annihilation in “Going Places.” The intensity of Rose and Mikey’s passion goes way beyond conventional Hollywood sex, and the fact that it is interracial and intergenerational (Ms. Mirren is 22 years older than Mr. Gooding) lends it an extra transgressive kick. I haven’t seen a black man and a white woman make love like this in an American movie since Ellen Barkin and Laurence Fishburne tore at each other in “Bad Company” in 1995. Although I suspect that this explicitness will damage the film’s already marginal commercial prospects, I applaud the film (and the actors) for putting it in our faces at a time when Hollywood has turned squeamish. (In fact, “Shadowboxer” is independently produced and released and unencumbered by studio strictures.) [ read more ]

Says Kate Davies:

There are two features of this film that you can't fail to miss; it's mighty big on the sex and violence. It deserves some dubious honour for featuring the most disturbing sex scene you will ever come across, involving a soft-focus colour-enhanced camera shot of Rose and Mickey "making love" under some trees in a forest with bright pink blossom floating softly down from above, while birds sing in the trees, and leaves rustle underfoot, topped off with the occasional flashback to the pairs romantic meeting (Rose winks at seven-year old Mickey at his mothers funeral. I kid you not). Words cannot do justice to this assault on the eyes and ears. See it to believe it. At the other end of the scale, it also features a man being anally assaulted with a pool cue. The humanity. It's a film of extremes, this much is true. [ read more ]

It might appear 'disturbing' to some simply because the actors who did the sex scenes were of different color. I think the chemistry between Mirren and Gooding, Jr. was quite intense and they're acting out their roles, which they did with such authenticity, one can't help but wonder - why all the fuzz on the sex scenes?

Anyway, Mirren is such a gifted actress I would watch her movies whatever the role.

Lastly, I'm so looking forward to Mirren's take as the wife of Leo Toystoy in The Last Station. She has already gained additional Oscar mileage when she won the Best Actress award at the recent Rome International Film Festival for the role.

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What's on your mind? Are you a fan of Oscar winner Helen Mirren? Which among her movies are your favorites? Let us know what you think!
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