The Foreigner, Monday June 29 on TMC: the truer than life faking that terrorized London

In “The Foreigner”, broadcast on Monday June 29 on TMC at 9:15 p.m., Jackie Chan and Pierce Brosnan clash against a backdrop of personal revenge and IRA attacks. A thrilling action thriller in which Jackie Chan displays all his fighting skills, but whose filming has, for a few moments, terrorized Londoners …

Jackie Chan in London, beware of the damage!

In November 2017 comes out The Foreigner, honest action thriller directed by Martin Campbell and embodied by a very attractive duo: the actors Pierce Brosnan and Jackie Chan. In this film, more frontal than what Jackie Chan had accustomed us to, the Chinese superstar plays a father launched on the track of the murderers of his daughter, killed in an attack in London, attack claimed by the “authentic” IRA. Jackie Chan, Ngoc Minh Quan in the film, is a quiet restorer, but above all a former US special forces. Aged 61 at the time of filming, this specialist in action and kung fu will severely undermine the plans of the terrorists … If the film is full of action scenes and gives pride of place to suspense , know that the filming itself was not easy, especially for Londoners …

The Foreigner : an explosion too successful?

One of the most dramatic scenes in The Foreigner is that of the explosion of a double-decker bus, an iconic public transport in the English capital, on the Lambeth Bridge, one of the many London bridges that span the Thames. And the shooting of this sequence, at the very beginning of February 2016, was particularly scary for those who, by chance, attended. Indeed, despite the announcement of the shooting of this sequence by posters posted in the streets and by messages on social networks, many first believed that it was an attack, or at the very least a real accident!

We cannot honestly be surprised by such a reaction, because if those closest to the scene were necessarily aware that it was a shooting, residents and passers-by more distant could legitimately believe in a drama. Especially since London had been bereaved a decade earlier by a series of attacks. On July 7, 2005, four explosions had occurred, three in the metro, and one on the top floor of a double-decker bus. The toll was terrible, with 56 dead and 784 injured. An injury and a memory still very vivid among our friends from across the Channel, that this sequence of the shooting of The Foreigner could therefore logically disturb.

When filming scares

When you’re not shooting in the studio and you’re in real sets, the production challenges are more demanding. Neither destroy nor block the selected locations, and do not disturb or frighten occupants and passers-by. So, on the occasion of the release of his film Carbone, Olivier Marchal explained during a press screening that it had become almost impossible to organize shootings of shooting sequences in Paris, following the attacks of November 2015. In a less dramatic register but just as explosive as that of The Foreigner, it was during the shooting of Matrix 4 in San Francisco that things almost went wrong, with a massive explosion that literally stunned the surrounding residents, and melted a big advertising sign …

The Foreigner is to (re) see Monday June 29 at 9:15 p.m. on TMC.

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