This makes a certain amount of sense. John C. McGinley, the character actor who’s made a career alternating between wimpy scum in Oliver Stone movies (Platoon, Wall Street), mean scum in studio comedies/dramas (Point Break, Nothing To Lose, The Rock) and funny mean not-so-scummies on television (Scrubs), is set to play Chief of Police Richard Brookwell in Summit‘s upcoming I, Alex Cross, a character who sits somewhere in that realm of scum-miness. [Variety]
The picture stars one Tyler Perry as Dr. Alex Cross, the seminal detective of James Patterson’s impossibly popular detective novels. Directed by Rob Cohen (Stealth, The Fast and the Furious) and adapted for the screen by Marc Moss (the man wrote the last Alex Cross film, Along Came A Spider), the film is looking at a 2012 release date.
There’s no question that the multi-talented Perry has yet to prove he has the actorly range of someone like Morgan Freeman, who portrayed Cross in Kiss The Girls and Along Came A Spider. To that same point, Cohen has had a long period of nothing too impressive. Hopefully this procedural will allow both parties the leeway to impress in areas that have as of yet been dormant in their respective careers.
As for those true fans of McGinley, thanks to Car 54, Where Are You? we’ll continue to wait for the man to kill it in a leading role in some underseen Sundance indie.
What do you think of McGinley?