Emily Blunt is on a roll
Thursday, September 24, 2015 at 1:00PM Here's Murtada on a long time TFE favorite...
Blunt earlier this week at Sicario's London premiere
It’s a good week to be Emily Blunt. Her latest movie Sicario opened to strong reviews and scored the year’s best on screen average for a limited release indicating it might become a substantial hit when it goes wide. She’s one of the favorites mentioned for that Mary Poppins sequel. And her next movie The Girl on the Train just got a couple of high profile co-stars; an Oscar winner and Captain America himself.
Jared Leto and Chris Evans are set to join Blunt, Rebecca Ferguson and Haley Bennett in the adaptation of the best selling novel that will be directed by The Help’s Tate Taylor. The book, written by Paula Hawkins, is a publishing sensation, a la Gone Girl, having spent 20 weeks at the top of the hardback fiction charts. The plot is about alcoholic Rachel Watson (Blunt) who still pines for her ex husband (Evans) who is now married to Anna (Ferguson) while concocting a fantasy about the seemingly perfect couple (Bennett & Leto) she watches from the train on her daily commute. The story chronicles Bennett’s character disappearance and its effect on both Rachel and Anna. Though the book was set in London and Blunt will keep her English accent, the movie has been transplanted to the suburbs of New York City.
Clockwise L-R : Bennett, Leto, Ferguson and Evans
It’s exciting to see Blunt mixing it up. It would’ve been easy to be pigeonholed in action roles after her much lauded turn in Edge of Tomorrow. Even Sicario in which she plays an FBI agent is very different than her “full metal bitch” in Edge. Her Kate Macer is aces at her job but also overwhelmed by the grim reality of the drug trade along the US-Mexico border, a more nuanced characterization than the straight action-heroine of Edge. In a recent interview with Indiewire she talks about why only a handful of women are sought for all the action roles :
I think it’s because the list is very short, because we don’t see women in these kind of roles. So I think as soon as you do a role like that, like Charlize did or I did, or Rebecca’s done -- there’s like four of us or something. And Jen Lawrence. So I feel like us four, we get talked about -- and Angie, Angelina. So it’s a list of like, four women who are going to be considered for those kind of roles. So I think that’s why the rumors happen, because they’re like, "who else? Surely not another girl can wield a gun," you know what I mean? "A woman doing push-ups? There’s only one who can do that."
Sicario should take her to the next level, whether or not it brings her that first Oscar nomination. The film succeeds as both a vivid and violent thriller and a brilliant character study. At the center of it is Blunt’s Kate Macer who is by turns ferocious, steely, determined and also vulnerable and uncertain. It’s a great showcase of not only Blunt’s giant talent but Denis Villeneuve’s assured direction. Excellent word of mouth should translate into box office gold soon.
Have you seen Sicario yet? Isn't it funny that the two actresses who stole movies from Tom Cruise are going to be on screen together?
