By now most of you know Clint Eastwood is working on his new project Flags of our Fathers, a World War II epic. The choice of topic for his next directoral work isn’t surprising to me… but what is surprising is his choice of casting.
When you look at his list of films (especially lately), Eastwood has pretty much chosen to only work with top notch casts. I mean hell, in his last 2 motion pictures, Million Dollar Baby and Mystic River, there are no less than 5 Oscar wins for acting (Himself, Morgan Freeman, Hillary Swank, Sean Penn and Tim Robbins). That’s a lot of Oscars.
All that makes his cast selection of this new epic of his quite strange. Paul Walker and Ryan Phillippe? Here’s what the good folks over at ComingSoon have to say:
Paul Walker will star in Clint Eastwood’s World War II epic Flags of Our Fathers, says The Hollywood Reporter. He joins a cast that includes Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford and Adam Beach. The DreamWorks Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures co-production is based on the book “Flags of Our Fathers: Heroes of Iwo Jima,” by James Bradley with Ron Powers. Paul Haggis (Million Dollar Baby) adapted the book.
Ummm… yeah Paul Walker and Ryan Phillippe are both dreamy… but quite the major step down from the calibre of cast we’re accustomed to seeing Eastwood work with. Hey, Eastwood knows what he’s doing so I’ll just wait and see how this works out. I just thought it was curious and worth mentioning. Your thoughts?
Clint Eastwood knows what he’s doing but film making is one of those endeavors where you never know how audiences will react. If you read the book and compare the actor’s with the roles they are going to play it’s pretty much a safe bet. Plus.. I live in his home town. How can you not support the guy. He’s worked for it.
Eastwood has for the most part avoided “Big name” actors in his movies. In fact many of his films as an actor have had no other big name actors in them other than himself.
Perhaps Clint didn’t want a Big name star to overshadow the material.
Eastwood is a supurb director and should be able to pull great performances out of his actors. He has earned the right to cast his films without the general public second guessing him (but doing that is a lot of fun ;^) )
Although I am also a little disappointed with the casting, my take on this is, Eastwood has done wonders when he cast Sean Penn and Tim Robbins in “Mystic River”, as both received acting awards for their performances, and just recently, same acting awards were handed out to Morgan Freeman and Hillary Swank in “Million Dollar Baby”. It seems like Clint Eastwood is fast becoming an actor’s director.
I think agree with you. What is more interesting to me is HOW is Eastwood going to tell the story. The book jumped from the present to the past from war scenes to post-war scenes like crazy – which made for a great read but a movie?
Eastwood will figure it out because he is that good of storyteller. I would have loved to seen Jude Law rather than Paul Walker.