“En la mira”, a film in which Nicolás Francella plays his first leading role, arrives in theaters tomorrow / Télam
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The surname, the legacy, always weighs, but Nicolás Francella has accepted to be “the son of” in silence, quietly building his own path that now leads him to star in his first leading role in cinema: tomorrow “En la mira” will arrive in local theaters ”, where Francella gets into the role of a call center employee threatened by a sniper stationed in a nearby building.
Directed by Tony winner Ricardo Hornos and renowned assistant director Carlos Gil, two Argentines with extensive international experience who return to the country to direct their first film, the thriller follows a day from hell for Axel, a charismatic young man who answers calls for a telecommunications company and remains hostage to what appears to be a “civic vigilante” fed up with the impediments that users go through when unsubscribing a service. A film of those that are not usually seen in Argentina, with important action sequences and a tense time that keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat.
The film, which also has the performances of Gabriel Goity, Emilia Attías, Maxi de la Cruz and Paula Reca, stands out for Francella’s performance and good rhythm for the genre, with numerous similarities to what Joel’s “Deadly Link” proposed. Schumacher in 2002, which is also a whole subgenre: ordinary men who find themselves hostage to a high-voltage situation that they have no idea how to deactivate.
Except that Axel, the character of Francella, is not the typical reticent American hero, but a jovial, carefree young man, with people skills and a bit of a chantun. He has a girlfriend he doesn’t deserve and is about to leave him, a high-stress call center job and an unbearable boss, but nothing takes a toll on his spirits…until he takes that call.
In this case, of course, there will not be the extinct public telephone booth that appeared in Schumacher’s: the action is limited to a very current call center office, sharing -in addition to the ever-present sniper- the theme of infidelity and action in real time as narrative anchors.
“Ricardo, who lives in the United States, continually watches this type of content a lot and had a great idea in his head of what he wanted to achieve, having consumed so much all kinds of American films,” Nicolás Francella said in an interview conducted by the Télam agency. about the elements contained in the film.
“THE HISTORY IS DIZZY”
Enthusiastic about the project, the actor said that “he wanted to get into a film of this type of content and genre” and that “the story all the time generated a lot of vertigo” because the directors “always conveyed a very clear idea of what they wanted to have the film.”
Francella says that she faced the role, atypical in national productions, “in the same way that I always face all projects. And I felt very supported by the producers, who have a lot of experience and important shoots, and also by the directors and by the story. So I had to flow and find how to tell the film. It was a very pleasant shoot, beyond being intense, and very nice, with an almost 100 percent Uruguayan team”.
To prepare himself, the young actor from “Las Estrellas” and “Pequeña Victoria” “saw many films of this genre; I remember one with Jake Gyllenhaal and another with Ryan Reynolds, who belong to this code of confinement and tension and adrenaline”. It was not, however, easy to replicate what those actors did in those movies.
“What cost me the most”, says the interpreter, “was not having the luck of being able to shoot a movie chronologically. I am quite attached to personal notes to write me the continuities of all kinds. If one is making a film of a different style, perhaps it is a little easier to remember more or less where you come from and where you are going. In this case, the character needed to go in crescendo but we had no luck with the chronology due to a matter of locations and multiple reasons. And that was the most difficult thing: not to lose that rudder of going in crescendo. Not to go too far at a certain moment so as not to fall short later elsewhere, not to explode beforehand because I need to explode elsewhere. That was what cost me the most and what made me more obsessive to see if I was in the right place or if I was drifting a little.”
“I saw a lot of movies of this genre; I remember one with Jake Gyllenhaal and another with Ryan Reynolds, who belong to this code of confinement and tension and adrenaline “
In this regard, he anticipates that “at one point in the film there is a click and something serious happens, but the character cannot overflow and must remain intelligent and calculating because the pressure of the situation cannot beat him. That is the empathy that appears for the character, that he has to solve and take care of many people. At that moment the heroic appears and he has to maintain a coldness and an intelligence that is rarely possible”.
Francella engages in an acting duel with Gabriel Goity, although they only maintain telephone communications. “We tried to be very careful with the technology because it was elementary for me to have a good sound in my ear: I had audio recordings of Goity speaking to me. And a lot of times I have long, text-heavy scenes, and I couldn’t hear the crew or anyone else. So all of that was pretty special,” she says of that dynamic.
“I really like the movie and being part of such a project; of a genre that we are not used to seeing”, adds Francella. “Generate that dynamism, adrenaline, tension and that vertigo that the viewer feels, which must be uncomfortable. The trailer generates that discomfort when you see it, and that is going in the right direction. That it bothers you a little to see, the threats bother you. It is almost necessary that it be seen in the cinema, beyond the fact that it is later on the platform (it will be released on HBO Max), because it is the type of film that is good to be seen on the big screen. Today, the need for people to go to the movies is even greater after so long standing still. Cinema needs to have a little more life back”.
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