Kevin Hart trained with Navy SEALS to learn combat skills that would make his character Roland more realistic in Lionsgate’s Borderlands adaptation.
Kevin Hart went to great lengths to ensure the Borderlands film adaptation is the real deal.
Hart will portray Roland, a Vault Hunter and former soldier of the highly trained private military force the Crimson Lance. To prepare for the role, Hart told Collider he trained with Navy SEALS and gained some essential combat experience.
Hart recalled how director Eli Roth told him, “Kevin, if you tell me that you can show up prepared and that you want to come in and knock this out, then you’re my guy.” Therefore, Hart trained with Navy SEALs and learned what he needed to portray a former member of the military. “So I went, I did some training with some Navy SEALS, I got real good with weapons, I got real good with my hand-to-hand combat,” the actor said.
Hart’s combat training isn’t the only thing that brings the movie to life. He also shared that Roth took the visuals straight out of the video game and created a movie that’s unreal. “And the experience here in Budapest filming Borderlands has been unreal,” Hart said. “Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, myself, Flo [Munteanu], Ariana [Greenblatt]… I mean, our cast is unreal. He truly is knocking this movie out the park. And I can say visually, it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. Somehow I find myself in these spaces where you get a part of these IPs that are hitting the big screen and have the potential to become so much more. … Borderlands, nobody knows what to expect, but if this thing comes and it smacks people correctly, you could be looking at Borderlands 2, Borderlands 3. It’s that good.”
Playing Roland in Borderlands is a completely new experience for the comedic actor. “Once again, it’s all about the shock factor. This is me stepping into action full speed ahead, no comedy. I’m responsible for the action,” he concluded.
Lilith, an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past, reluctantly returns to her home planet of Pandora to find the missing daughter of the universe’s most powerful S.O.B., Atlas. Lilith forms an alliance with an unexpected team – Roland, a former elite mercenary, now desperate for redemption; Tiny Tina, a feral pre-teen demolitionist; Krieg, Tina’s musclebound, rhetorically challenged protector; Tannis, the scientist with a tenuous grip on sanity; and Claptrap, a persistently wiseass robot. These unlikely heroes must battle alien monsters and dangerous bandits to find and protect the missing girl, who may hold the key to unimaginable power. The fate of the universe could be in their hands – but they’ll be fighting for something more: each other.
Directed by Eli Roth, Borderlands stars Kevin Hart, Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Black, Florian Munteanu, Arianna Greenblatt, Haley Bennett, Édgar Ramirez, Penn Jillette, Olivier Richters, Gina Gershon, Cheyenne Jackson, Charles Babalola, Benjamin Byron Davis, Steven Boyer, Ryann Redmond and Bobby Lee. The film has yet to receive a release date.
Source: Collider
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