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Canwest News Service
Typecasting is an occupational hazard for any actor, but those who play spies are particularly prone to it. Look at former James Bond Pierce Brosnan, whose Walther P99 barely had time to cool after Die Another Day when he signed up to play a professional assassin in The Matador. Or Daniel Craig, who took time out of his busy double-0 schedule to play a Second World War freedom fighter in Defiance.
The latest who-else-could-they-have-cast is Matt Damon in Green Zone, which opens March 12 and features the actor as a rogue U.S. Army officer in an unstable Middle-Eastern locale. Damon famously played superspy Jason Bourne in three films, with a fourth untitled one on the horizon. (My vote for its name: The Bourne Manicotti, which finds him deep undercover as a master pasta maker.)
Before that happens, however, Green Zone reunites Damon with The Bourne Supremacy/Ultimatum director Paul Greengrass, and with much of what we expect from a Bourne movie: shaky, hand-held cinematography; wild third-world back-alley driving; blasting guns; tilting helicopters; and judicious use of satellite phones.
And while Jason Bourne was hot on the trail of Project Treadstone, Green Zone finds Damon’s character trying to track down a shadowy figure code-named Magellan. Bourne had to work his way around evil boss David Strathairn. Greg Kinnear fills that role in Green Zone, taking a page from Strathairn’s none-too-subtle playbook and barking during the trailer: “You take him out!”
A lighter example of typecasting can be seen in the trailer for Date Night, which opens April 9 and stars Tina Fey and Steve Carell. The actor has created some memorable roles in The 40-Year-Old Virgin and TV’s The Office, but this movie seems to draw on his bumbling secret agent from last year’s Get Smart, which also has a sequel in the works. Carell and Fey play a married couple who pretend they’re someone else to get a restaurant reservation, then find out their alter egos are wanted by bad guys.
The trailer shows Carell engaged in comedic stunt driving, jocular gunplay and shameless mugging opposite a special-ops expert, played by a shirtless Mark Wahlberg. But the clincher comes in the trailer’s final shot, which shows Carell and Fey walking into a glass door. We’re clearly meant to think “That smarts!” And then: “That’s Smart!”
cknight@nationalpost.com or nationalpost.com
