Grizzly Thriller Red Machine in Billy Bob Thornton’s Words

January 28, 2013

One project we haven’t heard about in a bit is Red Machine, the man-versus-nature thriller directed by David Hackl (Saw V) and starring James Marsden, Piper Perabo, Thomas Jane, Billy Bob Thornton, Scott Glenn, Kelly Curran, Michaela McManus and Adam Beach. While we await release plans for the film (we’re told it has found a home and is awaiting a release date), let’s turn our attention to Thornton’s official site where the man explains the film in his own word…

James Marsden (X MEN, ENCHANTED) and Thomas Jane (HUNG, yes, and so good in THE MIST) are a pair of estranged brothers who enter the wilderness. Marsden, fresh out of jail, is the ne’er-do-well who has come home to settle somed unfinished business. Jane is the town sheriff who helps his fiancée track the local fauna. Their outing in the great white north takes off, but goes horribly south when they are attacked, then relentlessly pursued by a monstrous and seriously territorial grizzly bear. This is clearly not Yogi Bear or Gentle Ben territory because this particular specimen of Ursus arctos horribilis goes by the nickname Red Machine.

Billy Bob plays Douglass, an Alaskan bear tracker whom James Marsden describes as much like Robert Shaw’s Quint character in JAWS. Douglass ain’t quite right in the head, but he knows that bears do more than you-know-what in the woods. The cast includes Adam Beach (THE FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, COWBOYS AND ALIENS), Scott Glenn (“You spook easily, Starling?”), Kelly Curran (HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER), and Michaela McManus (THE VAMPIRE DIARIES). Piper Perabo (THE PRESTIGE) plays Thomas Jane’s fiancée, a wilderness-savvy photographer whose ability to survive the escalating danger may be hampered by the fact that she is deaf.