For fans of the mid-budget action thriller, the prospect of seeing Gerard Butler and Frank Grillo sharing the screen is about as exciting as it gets. Throw in Grillo’s regular creative collaborator and Smokin’ Aces, The Grey, The A-Team and Boss Level director Joe Carnahan, and the end result is wildly entertaining shoot em’ up Copshop.
Grillo stars as professional con artist Teddy Murretto, who intentionally gets himself arrested to try and escape the criminals hot on his tail. Unfortunately, Butler’s deadly hitman Bob Viddick has exactly the same idea, and fakes a drunk and disorderly to become incarcerated so he can get close to Teddy.
Throw in Alexis Louder’s rookie police officer Valerie Young, Tobey Huss’ eccentric rival assassin Anthony Lamb and a hail of blood, bullets, shootouts, outlandish humor, fistfights, double-crosses and two of the industry’s premier grizzled badasses facing off, and you’ve got the recipe for an instant cult favorite.
We Got This Covered had the chance to chat to Butler and Louder about Copshop, and you can check out what the stars had to say below.
Not to try and butter anybody up in particular, but I’m coming to you live from Glasgow, where I can see Celtic Park [the home stadium of Butler’s favorite soccer team] from my window.
Gerard Butler: Awesome! That’s awesome.
So Alexis, how does it feel to be part of a movie with action stars Frank Grillo and Gerard Butler, but walk out of it as the biggest badass of them all?
Alexis Louder: It feels amazing, especially when you point it out! I really enjoyed working with Gerard and Frank. Like, they know what they’re doing, and they brought me in as a peer. They didn’t treat me as an ingenue or anything like that. And it’s amazing for two giants in this industry, and in this genre, to basically lift me up to this height, and I’m like, ‘This is dope!’.
I honestly cannot believe the opportunity that I’ve been afforded, because these three together; Gerard, Frank and Joe Carnahan, we’ve never seen that before. And we need more of it. And it’s awesome that I was able to be a part of their first time teaming up. Because a lot of people don’t know; they’ve been friends, it’s just their first time working together.
Did you struggle not to break character during Toby Huss’ scenes, because he seems like he’s walked in from a completely different movie to everyone else?
Alexis Louder: It wasn’t a struggle, because I didn’t try to hold it in. I was like, ‘You’re just gonna have to focus, Toby, and do your job. If I’m laughing, I’m laughing’. He made it almost near impossible, and there’s just so much that’s probably in the movie, not in the movie, that you’ll never know. Just really great moments that he had, that he made his own.
Gerard, this is a different character and performance than we’re used to seeing from you in a genre you’re very familiar with, was it always the plan to upend the expectations that came with your involvement?
Gerard Butler: It’s funny, when I made Law Abiding Citizen I was always playing the Jamie Foxx role, and we offered him the role I ended up playing. And he said he didn’t want it, but he’d play the lead basically. And I said, ‘Oh, okay, I’ll play the other guy’. So with Copshop, I’ve had this script for many years and there was a complete misunderstanding! I always thought they wanted me to play Teddy Murretto and then they said, ‘No, we always wanted you to play Viddick’. And I was like, ‘Oh, okay, I hadn’t thought of that. But okay, I’ll play Viddick’.
And then when Joe Carnahan came along he was like, ‘Why don’t we all jump in this; Frank, you can play Teddy, you can play Viddick, and I’ll direct it’. And I went, ‘That’s cool’. Because for me, it was the chance to play something different and get my teeth into a bad guy, and have a lot of fun with that, because it’s pretty irreverent.
That concludes our interview with Gerard Butler and Alexis Louder. Copshop is coming to theaters this Friday, September 17th.
