THE PROTÉGÉ
Michael Keaton, Maggie Q + Samuel L. Jackson Kick Ass
In The Protégé, Maggie Q stars as Anna, an assassin who travels to Vietnam to track down the person, or persons, who murdered Moody (Samuel L. Jackson), the man who raised her after finding her in the aftermath of a massacre in Saigon. As she embarks on her quest for vengeance, she finds her life becoming intertwined with the mysterious, and dangerous Rembrandt (Michael Keaton).
New Zealand Director Martin Campbell (behind The Mask of Zorro, and Jame Bond franchise entries GoldenEye and Casino Royale) helmed the action flick from a script written by Richard Wenk (the pen of the Denzel Washington vehicle The Equalizer). A trailer was recently released for the film and promises us an exciting cat-and-mouse game, with a large heaping of sizzling sexual tension between Q’s Anna and Keaton’s Rembrandt. We would be slightly remiss if we didn’t point out the large age gap between Maggie Q, who is 41, and 69-year-old Michael Keaton. Which, for reference, makes him only 3 years younger than Samuel L. Jackson, who is playing her father figure. But hey, at least they didn’t pair Keaton up with a woman in her 20s. Admittedly though, he’s still got it.
In addition to Q, Jackson, and Keaton, the film also stars Li Gong, Ori Pfeffer, and Florin Piersic Jr. The film has been in development since 2017, but the film’s main three stars didn’t join on until 2019. It started filming in January 2020 in Bucharest, London and Da Nang.
The Protégé is scheduled to be released in theaters by Lionsgate on August 20, 2021.
