Code Name: The Cleaner starring Lucy Liu, Nicollette Sheridan, and Cedric the Entertainer as FBI/CIA Secret Agent
Official Code Name: The Cleaner Site: Lucy Liu Gallery, Cedric the Entertainer Pictures, Will Patton Movie Gallery
Cast: starring Lucy Liu, Nicollette Sheridan, Cedric the Entertainer, Mark Dacascos, Will Patton and Callum Keith Rennie
Code Name: The Cleaner new release movie starring
Lucy Liu
,
Cedric the Entertainer
,
Mark Dacascos
,
Will Patton
and
Callum Keith Rennie
. Coming to local movie theaters January 2007.
With Cedric in place, the rest of the casting followed, with Lucy Liu signing to play his waitress girlfriend, doubling as an undercover FBI agent. 'I don't have the opportunity to do comedy a lot, but when I do, I enjoy it more than anything, especially when you get to combine it with action,' says Liu. Nicollette Sheridan gives new meaning to 'Desperate Housewife' when she took on the role of the blond bombshell pretending to be Jake's wife, who's on a mission for the heavies in the piece to find out where Jake's hidden an elusive high-tech device - a tough assignment, as Jake has no memory.
'Lucy Liu's name came up early on,' recalls Cedric, who also is an executive producer. 'I was excited about that choice. By being in the Kill Bill's and Charlie's Angels movies, she has an edge about her and a different kind of sexiness that we thought was necessary to make her believable - someone who would date this guy and at the same time really be this agent working undercover.'
Liu thought it would be fun to do a comedy, particularly a two-hander with Cedric. 'I think Jake and Gina have a fun chemistry with each other, which is why I signed on for this movie, because I like him so much. He brings a warm, wonderful energy that draws you in and I just love his generous spirit.
'Gina's a very colorful character,' continues Liu whose combined experience of scooping ice cream at age 12 and cooking breakfast omelets with her fighting skills from previous action films, allowed her to slip into her dual role as waitress and undercover FBI agent with ease. 'Gina's from Queens in New York, so I brought a bit of an accent and some attitude, since that's where I'm from.'
In the true spirit of collaboration, Liu, who also serves as executive producer, brought some of her own ideas to the table in terms of character and costumes during the development stage. During the shoot she also contributed to the creative, improvising on the spot. 'Les was really open to many ideas about Gina, making her more colorful than she was on the page and having her be more involved,' says Liu.
Mayfield responds, 'As Gina, Lucy plays Jake's confidant. She takes him under her wing and tries to help him piece together his life, putting him in places that will allow him to remember where this important device is that he had possession of and that everyone was looking for.'
'There's a whole identity twist in Lucy's character. While Cedric is saying, 'I'm James Bond on Red Bull,' she's saying 'no, no. You're a janitor. And we then find out she is playing something different from what she is as well,' says Stern.
'Nicollette is Diane, who works for the heavies in the film, is in charge of security at the high-tech company DART (Digital Arts Research & Technology). She is also trying to gain Jake's confidence, but for the wrong reasons--to help the villains by returning this device to them,' says Mayfield.
'Along with the script, the main attraction to the project for me was Cedric,' says Sheridan. 'He's just brilliantly talented and a wonderful, physical comedian. And Les has a wonderful sense of comedy and timing. It's been a lot of fun and I think a wide age range will enjoy watching this film.'
She describes her character. 'Diane is a woman of mystery. She's a married woman. The mystery is to who. She is not what she appears to be. She's so much more. As a high-ranking executive at DART, she deals in many different things, some good, some bad. Diane's trying to retrieve something that has been stolen and she'll do almost anything to get it back. She's a very strong character, she's sexy, she's a villainess and she surprises you.'
Stern agrees. 'Nicollette's a powerful woman. She brings great power, beauty and sexiness to her part. What everybody's after in the movie is this high-tech device that everyone thinks Jake has hidden, which he actually has hidden, but he doesn't' remember hiding it because he has no memory. In Hitchcock' terminology, the device is the classic 'McGuffin' of this movie.'
Says Cedric, 'Nicollette's energy brings another level to the comedy as well as solidifying the storyline. She is part of the group of people that's confusing me. It's rare to have two beautiful women as your costars, but they've both been amazing.'
Other notable cast members are Callum Keith Rennie (Memento), Will Patton (Remember the Titans), comedian DeRay Davis (Barbershop) and Mark Dacascos (Brotherhood of the Wolf), a huge European star, better-known to the movie-going public for his fighting skills. 'He's playing a more dramatic role than people are used to seeing him play,' notes Stern.
Responds Dacascos, 'The character I play, Eric Hauck, is an extremely smart, aggressive alpha male to whom money and power means more than anything. He's a bad guy who's a legitimate threat to Cedric.' Mayfield wanted that threat to be very real, so when the audience sees Hauck on screen, they sense danger.
Danger manifests itself between the two women when their characters collide in a fisticuffs. Sheridan, who did double duty, commuting between The Cleaner in Vancouver and Desperate Housewives, shooting in Los Angeles, says 'There is a fabulous love triangle which results in Lucy Liu and myself fighting over Cedric.
'It was a mixture of the nastiest fight ever with the most erotic bubbly bath fight,' laughs Sheridan who had previously studied kick boxing for a year and a half, so jumping, twisting and spinning came easily to her to pull off the cat fight between the two women.
Notes Dix, 'Nicollette's just a physical woman. She's always working out which makes her character Diane tough and convincing. She amped up the fight and at the same time, made it really funny.'
'What's really fun about this movie is that Jake has these fantasy moments, and the fight scene is one of them,' says Liu who insisted that the fight looked authentic. 'I wanted the punches and the kicks to land so it looked like we were really duking it out,' she says.
'I liked the combination of action and comedy. This was an opportunity for me to be in some fight scenes, run and be in a kind of espionage high tech world,' says Cedric, who previously acted mainly in family comedies.
The comedian reveals that he used to slap box, a prelude to training how to 'tuck and roll, kick and spin' among other martial arts moves he learnt for his part in The Cleaner. But as Stern points out, 'If Cedric's playing Everyman, how does he have skills to be able to actually take anybody out? So he ended up with one great 'signature move' derived from the urban warfare video game which he enacts in front of a mirror.'
Recalls Dacascos, a world martial arts champion, 'When I auditioned for this role, after my reading, Cedric wanted to spar. I've never gone to an audition before and have the lead actor ask me to spar with him to see how I moved. That guy has amazingly fast legs. You wouldn't expect it. Bop! Snap! Cedric! My guess is he'd be a good match for Jet Li and Jackie Chan.'
Pictures of FBI agent Callum Keith Rennie and rogue federal bureau of investigation agents
Pictures of Cedric the Entertainer, wallpaper gallery, and wallpapers of new movie releases
Pictures of Lucy Liu, photos, wallpaper gallery, and wallpapers of new movie releases
Pictures of martial artist Mark Dacascos in an illegal international CIA/FBI arms ring conspiracy
Nicollette Sheridan pictures gallery, photos and upcoming crime/action/comedy movie pics
Pictures of Will Patton, winner of Best Actor, Obie Movie Awards and Newport International Film Festival
distributed by New Line Cinema
