East July 14 ‘The Invisible Agent’, Netflix’s new and hilarious multimillion-dollar project – budgeted at 200 million dollars – arrives in Spanish cinemas exclusively, which we will be able to enjoy properly before your landing on the platform next day 22 of the same month.
On the occasion of its premiere, at Espinof we have been able to participate in the press conference to present the feature film, in which its directors Joe and Anthony Russoand cast members like Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Rege-Jean Page or Jessica Henwick have talked long and hard about this action-packed thriller in international key.
Espionage and action with its own identity
To begin with, Joe Russo began by scoring the difference between ‘The invisible agent’ and other spy titles such as franchises like ‘Bourne’ or ‘Bond’.
“It’s a modern story. This movie is connected in a lot of ways to some of the problems the world is having right now, the lead is very existential and quite funny. It fits our sense of humor a lot and it’s the kind of movie that We think it can work really well with today’s audiences.”
But shaping this film was by no means easy; especially with regard to the action scenes. The Russos stand out as the most complicated to execute the one that takes place in Prague, which starts with a shootout in a square and leads to a tram chase through the city. This is how Anthony Russo spoke about the complexity of the setpiece.
“For the Prague sequence we need a very large part of the city. It starts in a main square in the city and spreads out in a city-wide chase. It was very complicated. Just to give you an example of how hard it was, there is a tram that Ryan’s character gets on, and Ana’s character is chasing him in a car surrounded by mercenaries; in order to shoot that scene we used real trams from Prague and we used buses modified to look like real trams, because we needed the tram going at a higher speed and going down streets that didn’t have rails. We also had a tram on a set in Prague surrounded by blue screens. We built the scene in all these different locations, we shot with our cast, we shot with stuntmen for the parts that were too dangerous… It’s a very complex process.”
Evans and the Russos
‘The invisible agent’ supposes the reunion of the Russo brothers and Chris Evans after their multiple collaborations in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. On this occasion, the actor has been able to change register and give life to a lunatic villain; an opportunity that he considers liberating.
“Playing a villain is always more fun, you have more freedom and it allows you to make more jokes. But working with the Russos is what gives you that feeling of confidence and freedom. When you trust directors you are more willing to take risks, And a character like this is very risky. Without the Russos and without the relationship we have, I don’t know if it would have been such a rewarding experience.”
Evans elaborated later on how his way of thinking has evolved and varied. work with the Russos ever since they first teamed up to play Captain America in the MCU.
“It’s just a matter of evolving our trust, our mutual understanding and communication. Cinema is a world where you can get lost in semantics, there are many creative minds on set trying to reach the same goal and trying to communicate their vision , and it can be tricky. You develop an understanding of people’s language and they understand my strengths and the things that I might not want to do and can’t wait to do. That familiarity is what creates trust, and that trust is the one that makes the risky filmmaking process seem less risky.”
But this trust is not only reduced to the relationship between the Russos and Evans. The directors are open to making the shooting experience as collaborative as possible. This is underlined by Joe Russo.
“We’re always open to what’s happening in the moment, if it’s organic or funny, no matter where it comes from, if it works for the character and for the story, we try it out. Everybody here brought us dialogue, jokes and nuances of characters that made the movie more colorful”.
girl power
One of the great successes of the film is found in its female characters. A poker of strong women represented by some actresses who have not hesitated to vindicate the figure of women in action cinema. Julia Butters put it this way.
“It’s very important that women in action movies present themselves as more than just women in heels being sexy and beating up men. It’s important that they portray themselves in a way that they’re doing their job no matter how attractive they are. I think that it’s very important to represent women as women and not as, you know, high heels, long hair, and long nails that beat up guys… Represent them in a way that is respectful and powerful at the same time.”
Ana de Armas couldn’t help feeling identified by Butters’s words, and threw a small dart at his participation in ‘No time to die’, the last James Bond feature film directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga.
“I’ve been there! I’ve done it! I’ve been a woman in heels in a James Bond movie. There’s something very refreshing about this movie, and it’s that the focus isn’t on that. I’m not the love interest of the Bond character.” Ryan. It’s all about her power. It’s important to represent women like this in action movies like this, to highlight badass women like that.”