Thanks to the likes of Liam Neeson, Denzel Washington, and Jeff Bridges, as well as the old guard like Sylvester Stallone, Jackie Chan, Harrison Ford, and more still going strong, the aged action hero has now become a staple of the genre. Well, it’s time for all of them to move over, as Scott Glenn, the 85-year-old Hollywood icon and star of Daredevil, the Bourne franchise, and Backdraft, joins the ranks in the upcoming action thriller Eugene the Marine. The actor, who is himself a former marine, will lead the action movie as Gene Lee Grady, a man fighting not only to keep his son from forcing him out of his family home, but also to stop a mysterious murderer who has begun killing those closest to him.
No, action movie fan, you’re not dreaming, this does indeed sound like the ultimate aged action outing. And with Glenn, who is also known for the likes of Training Day, The Hunt for Red October, The Challenge, Greenland, and The Silence of the Lambs, at its center, it’s sure to boast a captivating central character. You can check out the synopsis for Eugene the Marine below, courtesy of THR, who also reveal that Glenn “is in full reluctant hero mode.”
“In the film, Glenn stars as Gene Lee Grady, a lonely military man mourning his late wife and living a quiet existence in his tidy house. Yet as he starts to open his life up to the people he interacts with each day — including a new friend (Shioli Kutsuna), a potential love interest (Annette O’Toole) and a sleazy local realtor (Gaffigan) — dark, violent secrets from the past appear.”
Scott Glenn Is Eager to Flex His Action Movie Muscles at 85
Directed by Hank Bedford and written by Beford alongside Cesare Gagliardoni, the rest of the cast includes Annette O’Toole, Shioli Kutsuna, and Jim Gaffigan. The role marks a change of pace for Glenn in his later years, with the acclaimed actor revealing that, at this stage, the roles he’s offered usually involve “a walker.”
“The last five parts I’ve been offered, three of them I had a walker. Three of them, I was dying of Alzheimer’s. It’s almost predictable — you get sort of the apologetic way you’re offered of these things: ‘He’s lost a step. He’s using a cane, but he’s still sharp.’ I’m thinking, ‘I’m 85, I still work out, hike mountains, do ridiculous amounts of pushups and kettlebell swings.’ What I see with ageism is just a conventional way of telling stories. It’s hard to tell whether you’re being overly sensitive or not about all this stuff.”
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Thanks to the similarities between Glenn and Eugene and their shared past as a former marine, Bedford let the actor do pretty much anything I wanted to with the character.” And this included taking his co-star’s life in his hands.
“All that I was concerned with when we got to the end of this scene was making it physically as real as possible, but also as safe as possible. For instance, I don’t know if Jim knows this, but at one point I put something called a ‘naked choke’ on him. I always made sure that my bicep was not really next to his carotid artery, because if you squeeze that thing wrong, you can very quickly halt blood going to the brain and hurt somebody permanently.”