Eva Mendes is Queen Of The South.
Now, relax, football fans, this doesn’t mean that she’s going to play Rangers in the Scottish Cup Final (although they’d probably stand more of a chance with Mendes distracting the defence of Walter Smith’s men). Instead, she’s signed on to star in the movie of the same name, along with Josh Hartnett and Ben – sorry, Sir Ben – Kingsley.
The film, based on the best-selling novel by Spanish writer Arturo Perez Reverte, is an action movie focusing on Mendes’ character, a Mexican woman who escapes to Spain after her drug-runner boyfriend is murdered. Once there, she becomes hellbent on revenge, while simultaneously becoming the reigning drug smuggler in Spain.
All of which sounds very cool to us – shades of Scarface, shades of vigilante drama, shades of the Catherine Zeta-Jones’ storyline from Traffic, but with enough originality and unique flavour for it to be its own thing. Mendes has had a rough year, for reasons we won’t go into here, and this could be the movie that gets her back on track. Certainly, there hasn’t been a movie yet that has really given her a chance to kick some ass - Queen Of The South could be that flick.
We’re guessing that Hartnett will play a guy who becomes involved with Mendes at some point (it would be a surprise if he were the dead boyfriend), while Kingsley (making this something of a Lucky Number Slevin reunion) could well be the villain of the piece.
LA-based Venezuelan director Jonathan Jakubowicz will direct the movie, from a script he co-wrote with Albert Torres (no relation to Fernando, we’d assume). Elizabeth Avellan – the former Mrs. Robert Rodriguez – and Sandra Condito will produce. Shooting will start in Mexico and Spain in September.