The new action comedy Freelance follows Mason Pettits, an ex-Army Special Forces soldier who feels stuck in his life. He takes a job offered by an ex-Army buddy protecting disgraced journalist Claire Wellington, who is conducting a highly coveted interview with President Juan Venegas of Paldonia. However, things take a drastic turn when the trio are nearly killed in a military coup meant to overthrow Venegas. They will have to work together to not only survive in the deadly jungle but also discover a dark truth about what has inspired this coup and brought them together.
Freelance features a star-studded cast led by John Cena, Alison Brie, Juan Pablo Raba, and Christian Slater, who pass the comedic baton back and forth. Acclaimed action director Pierre Morel, perhaps best known for helming Taken, directs Freelance from a script penned by Jacob Lentz. Freelance is produced by Steve Richards, Renee Tab, Christopher Tuffin, and Camilo Buendia Villaveces.
Screen Rant spoke with director Pierre Morel about his new action comedy, Freelance. He praises Cena’s ability to tap into emotional vulnerability as well as Brie’s humor and physicality. Morel also compares the movie to Romancing The Stone and discusses building the chemistry between the lead trio.
Pierre Morel On Freelance
Screen Rant: Freelance is the perfect blend of action and comedy. The action makes you feel like you’re right there with John and Alison. And the comedy it hits, it’s so great, because those two—the chemistry between all three of them, actually—is phenomenal. John said he’s always wanted to go back and explore his acting roots with the character from his first role in the movie The Marine, to challenge himself to see how he’d approach the role now, and Cena said that Freelance was the perfect opportunity for that. John did a great job in this film; you really feel Mason’s broken spirit at the beginning of the film. Can you talk to me a little bit about Mason Petit and why John Cena was the right role for him?
Pierre Morel: Well, John, I think, has that amazing capacity to be, obviously, a very physical guy. We know that. [He’s] amazingly muscular and has a crazy body. We’ve seen that in Peacemaker, and we’ve seen that in other movies. He is an amazing comedian and is hilarious in life. He has a sense of humor, which is fantastic, but he also has that capacity, which I didn’t know much about, [bringing] some kind of fragility to him. He can be a broken guy and can be very sensible. And so he was the perfect choice. He was the perfect guy, right away.
Absolutely. Alison Brie also plays journalist Claire Wellington. Alison can do anything. You’ve described her as a Swiss Army knife, but this is really her first time in the action genre. What surprised you the most about Alison’s dedication to the role, and what impressed you the most about her performance in the action genre?
Pierre Morel: She is so fit. It’s insane. I mean, I saw her working out. We’re all staying in houses, and we’re using gyms, and I saw her working out, doing series of pushups with weights on her back that I wouldn’t be even capable of doing one. She was prepared. She’s fit, she’s physical, and she can do anything. And she’s afraid of nothing. I mean, before we started shooting, I was like, “Okay, how do you want to do that? How comfortable do you feel doing the action?” Like, “I want to do everything.” So she was—oh, she’s a trooper. And she never said no. She would say, “Yep, yep, let’s go. Let’s do one more. Going to go in the water again? Yeah, let’s go.” She’s fantastic. She’s fantastic, really.
Absolutely.
Pierre Morel: And so much fun! She’s a goofball off camera. She never stops doing stupid things. Really. And she’s easy to work with, and she’s not precious. And there was one moment, which I always remember, in that one of the scene when they’re supposed to be in the jungle for already a few hours or she’s supposed to be dirty and she shows up from the trailer and the costume is not [dirty] enough, and we, okay, call the costume people. And, “No, no, no, don’t worry about it.” And she just threw herself on the ground and started brushing herself in the dirt, and she got up like, “Okay, yeah, okay, good, let’s go.” She’s that kind of person. She’s fantastic.
That is incredible. Now, you’ve worked with Juan Pablo Raba before in Peppermint, where he plays a straight-up villain, and many remember him from Narcos, but Juan Pablo does such a great job of making Venegas hilarious and eccentric. What did he bring to Venegas that wasn’t on the page?
Pierre Morel: That eccentricity. I mean, he made a character. He worked on building that character who was like that over-the-top, larger than life, eccentric dictator who you expect as a very dangerous guy. And maybe he is. But he is so unlimited. He has no limits, has no filter, basically. So it makes him very, very funny and actually very compelling. You like that guy at the end.
Absolutely. Now look, you’re one of the best action directors in the game right now, and Freelance, like I said, feels like you’re in the middle of the action with John, Juan Pablo, and Alison. And can you discuss a little bit about your approach to the action? Because there’s no CGI in this, this is all practical, correct?
Pierre Morel: Yeah. I always try to push actors to do everything themselves, to the limits of safety, obviously. And I always like to do physical effects live because they look better than fake explosions and fake this and fake that. So yeah, there’s no CGI. We did almost everything live, and I think it shows. It’s an old-school way of filmmaking, but I think the audience is not fooled by a full CGI thing. It’s a different ride.
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like this movie is kind of like the same type of movie that I fell in love with the action genre growing up with, because everything is done in camera and you feel it like it’s done in camera. Speaking of practical things, you guys actually shot on location in Columbia, which couldn’t have been easy. Can you talk to me about the challenges of shooting in the jungles of Columbia and what the country added to the film that you couldn’t do on a stage or anything like that?
Pierre Morel: Well, it is not supposed to take place in Columbia, but it’s supposed to [be] in a fantasy country that we don’t know. But shooting Colombia was my first, and we shot mostly in Bogota for all the urban stuff and in the jungle, as you said. There’s great crews, there’s great facilities, and there’s a lot of things. Obviously, when you shoot in the jungle, accessing it is not that simple. You don’t go deep in the jungle. You still have roads and things. But bringing equipment, even if it’s like 20 meters off the road, is already a challenge because there’s trees, because there’s foliage, and because there’s not really friendly nature. So that’s a challenge by itself.
You cannot say, “Okay, I want a track from here to there,” because people are between there and there; there’s trees, so you cannot do that. So you have to find other ways. But also, there’s the heat, there’s the rain, then there’s sun and there’s rain again, there’s mosquitoes, and then there’s everything you can deal with in the jungle, which is challenging. But also, everybody’s in the same thing. The entire crew and cast are experiencing the same elements, so you kind of bond around that. So actually, it was fun. It was fun. Once you are itching yourself every night because you’ve been devoured by mosquitoes, you go past that, and it’s just a great experience.
The snakes would’ve terrified me out there in the jungle. I’m sure you guys had to deal with a ton of that.
Pierre Morel: I didn’t see too many. Snakes are… they’re very shy creatures. When there are too many people, they just go away, so you don’t see them, ever.
I want to talk about the chemistry between the three because it is amazing. John, Alison, and Juan Pablo have tremendous chemistry together, which really helps balance the action out with their comedy. Can you talk about building the chemistry with the three of them?
Pierre Morel: It kind of built by itself. I mean, they knew their characters really well, and they actually bonded off camera. So the chemistry—they all had that crazy sense of humor; they all were riffing, and the banter off camera between takes was already there, so it translated on camera. But they knew exactly… it’s all about the timing, and they knew exactly their game, and John has the perfect sense of timing, Alison has that sense of timing, and we had that crazy Juan Pablo, which just was in the middle of that, extravagant. So it built up naturally. I mean, I think because the characters were extremely well written and they’re all three on top of the game, it built up naturally.
I want to ask you about some of your inspirations visually for this film, because I caught some Romancing the Stone vibes from this. What were some of the action comedy films you used as inspiration for Freelance?
Pierre Morel: I think you named the one that always comes to my mind actually, is Romancing the Stone, because it’s the same South American thing, also in the nature environment, like in Jungle, and because two people were not supposed to get along and end up having to bond, I think it was definitely visually the inspiration for that. Obviously, it’s a film from the eighties, so things have changed—the way you shoot, things have changed—but it was definitely in that vein.
About Freelance
Ex-special forces operative Mason Pettis is stuck in a dead-end desk job when he reluctantly takes on a freelance gig to provide private security for washed-up journalist Claire Wellington as she interviews the ruthless—but impeccably dressed—dictator, Juan Venegas.
Key Release Date
Freelance
Release Date:2023-10-27
