The acting career of “Fast and the Furious” star Paul Walker has been an interesting one, and by interesting we mean it’s puzzling as to why this guy has constantly been positioned as one of Hollywood’s “It” guys for over a decade. Despite attempts at legitimacy with films like the faux-gritty crime drama “Running Scared,” Walker is still best known for the superfluous ‘Furious’ films and running away from perverted truck drivers in 2001’s “Joy Ride.”
Still, Deadline is reporting that Walker is looking to step outside his comfort zone with a (wait for it) post-Hurricane Katrina thriller called “Hours.” Walker will play a father who is fighting to keep his newborn daughter alive in a New Orleans hospital following the Katrina tragedy. Sounds a bit like “John Q” meets “World Trade Center,” and we have a feeling it could be right on par with those two. Eric Heisserer, whose resume boasts scripts for the remakes of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and the upcoming “The Thing,” will be making his directorial debut with this picture.
We’ve yet to see an honest and tasteful portrayal of the Hurricane Katrina events on film, despite fine documentaries like Spike Lee‘s “When The Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts,” (using these events used as a story device in David Fincher‘s “Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” for example, was just one of that film’s many problems). But we doubt that Paul Walker and the guy who wrote “Final Destination 5” will provide us with our first sensible Katrina aftermath fiction film. Though Heisserer’s script for the “A Nightmare on Elm Street” remake had some intriguing elements in it, the film was an overhyped cluster of rehashes from the original (and “The Thing” looks like it may suffer from similar laziness). We’ve made our opinion of Walker known, and it’s clear to this writer who guiltily enjoys a few of the ‘Furious’ franchise films, that their main draw has always been Vin Diesel‘s machismo and Justin Lin‘s campy action direction.
The rights for the movie go up for sale soon and we’d guess that once enough territories buy in, the cameras will start rolling.
