Gerard Butler, Frank Grillo, and Alexis Louder in Joe Carnahan’s COPSHOP is more than an action-packed thrill ride. Fast and furious, it’s no holds barred action. But as GERARD BUTLER and ALEXIS LOUDER discuss in this exclusive interview, it’s not just the action that sets COPSHOP on fire, it’s good characters and bringing something extra to the performance of each.
Writer/Director Joe Carnahan is a master when it comes to action and using that as a storytelling tool. Just look at The Grey or The A-Team or Boss Level or El Chicano. He pushes the envelope, and pushes hard, with the story, performance, action, and production values, be it as director, writer, producer or any combination thereof. Put him together with producing partner and actor Frank Grillo, as we have seen with a few films now, and the result is electrifying. Now bring Gerard Butler and Alexis Louder into the mix with COPSHOP and it’s explosive.
Starring Gerard Butler, Frank Grillo, Alexis Louder, Toby Huss, and Ryan O’Nan, among others, COPSHOP is the story of con artist Teddy Murretto whom we meet in the Nevada desert as he’s tearing up the empty highway in his bullet-ridden Crown Victoria. Hot on his tail though is hitman Bob Viddick. Knowing it’s only a matter of time before Viddick catches up to him, Murretto sucker punches Valerie Young, a rookie cop who goes by the book and takes her job very seriously. Lucky for Murretto, that punch is all it took to get him locked up behind bars, safe from Viddick. Or is he? With a similar thought process, Viddick feigns drunk and gets himself arrested and tossed in the same jail as Murretto in a cell 8 feet away. While Officer Young is forced to be a very terse babysitter sitting in the hallway between the two men while interrogating them, trying to get to the truth of the situation at hand, corruption within the small-town force is taking hold upstairs with an all-out war about to begin thanks to the arrival of Anthony Lamb, a totally off-the-rails nutjob of an assassin determined to take out Murretto, Viddick, and anyone else in his path.
Grillo and Butler are outstanding as Murretto and Viddick, respectively, but when you get down to brass tacks, COPSHOP is Alexis Louder’s film. What Jodie Turner-Smith brought to The Last Ship series, Louder brings to COPSHOP tenfold. Her interplay with Grillo and Butler is outstanding and she matches each beat-for-beat with not only character performance of nuance, sarcasm, dialogue, facial expressiveness and body language, and cadence, but she soars with action. This is Louder’s breakout film and performance and she could do no better than going head to head with Frank Grillo and Gerard Butler with Joe Carnahan steering the ship.
I spoke with GERARD BUTLER and ALEXIS LOUDER in this exclusive interview where we chatted about action films and making it more than “action”, bringing something extra to the character, working with a director like Joe Carnahan, and more.
TAKE A LISTEN. . .
by debbie elias, exclusive interview August 28, 2021
COPSHOP is in theatres September 17, 2021.
