When we visited the set, production was just a few days away from wrapping and Helen Mirren was already finished shooting. We kept hearing how she’s kicks ass in the movie and asked Bonaventura about her character.
“I said to her, what was particularly attractive about it? She said, ‘Well first of all what a great role, but I’ve always wanted to be in a Bruce Willis movie.’ I was like, ‘really’? And she goes, ‘Yeah he’s a very underappreciated actor.’ She said, ‘You know he’s really more of a character actor than a movie star and I always thought it would be really fun to be in one of his movies.’ I said ‘okay, that’s great. I’m glad you came aboard.’ And Victoria, the character, is a load of fun. You literally meet her in this quaint B&B and the next thing you know she’s… first she’s shooting a sniper rifle, and then later on she’s behind a 50 caliber machine gun shooting at… tearing up an underground garage. Like thousands of rounds. We pushed that one as much as we could.”
Besides talking the cast and Bonaventura, we also go to watch Wills, Malkovich and Parker shoot a scene. We were at an abandoned shipping containment yard a few minutes away from the French Quarter.
Frank found a hit list and his name is on it as well as Marvin’s. Willis was wearing a brown leather jacket, jeans, tennis shoes and had his gun drawn. He kept Parker behind so she would be out of harms way and Malkovich was on the other side of him holding a pink pig stuffed animal. They were running from a woman trying to kill them.
“Nice try old man,” she yells as they begin to fire their guns.
“No respect,” Frank says.
“Can we kill her now,” Marvin asks.
Bonaventura explained more about what the scene is.
“They’re trying to discover what the meaning of [the hit list] is, why he’s on it, where it comes from. You realize that a lot of people are dead on the list and they’ve come to New Orleans to find Gabriel Singer. James Remar plays one of the guys on the list and so they’ve come here to try to figure out what the hell is on this list. What do they all have in common? Marvin and Frank are both on it and six or seven of the people are dead on it. This is one of the last people alive other than our two guys.
“They try to find him and they find him and all hell breaks loose here. The bad guys find them. They realize what they’re doing. This is an action sequence. You will see Malkovich carrying around a pink pig. It’s one of the props we have in this movie. It’s one of the gags we have in the movie .When Frank comes to him he says, ‘Okay I’ve got to bring the pig.’ And he carries this pig around with him. It’s a big stuffed pig for quite a while and here’s where you’ll discover what’s inside the pig. Malkovich’s character is telling Frank that they’re watching us, they’re watching us. And this is the scene where of course he was right. And we have helicopters, RPG’s, machine guns, the whole work here.”
Red is scheduled to hit theaters on October 15. Stay tuned for more interviews with the cast as we get closer!
