Money can’t buy you happiness, but apparently it can buy top talent for your crappy movies. Rapper-turned-entrepreneur 50 Cent extended his empire into film production with his company Cheetah Vision Films, and besides the cast listings, the results are less than promising. The flops offer nothing to audiences, but leave big names like Bruce Willis – who starred in the thriller, Setup – laughing all the way to the bank.
A trailer for Cheetah Vision’s next obscure release, Freelancers, was leaked online, and the first look delivers a depressing roster of once distinguished actors. Robert De Niro and Forest Whitaker play corrupt police officers in this tired cop drama – if their involvement wasn’t bad enough, they also take second billing to the ever humble Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, who plays Malo, the son of a murdered NYC cop. He’s then mentored by his father’s former partner, who’s played by Jackson’s former Righteous Kill co-star, De Niro. Eventually, he joins a rogue street crime task force and patrols the streets with Whitaker, who appears to have taken a page from Denzel Washington’s handbook on how to overplay crazy authority figures. See what I mean below:
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Freelancers was directed by Jessy Terrero, who also worked with Fiddy on two music documentaries and the action thriller Gun. The film should release some time this year, most likely straight-to-DVD.
Should 50 Cent quit making movies? Does De Niro and Whitaker’s involvement make you at least somewhat interested?