Filed under: Interviews
From the 'Mission: Impossible' films to 'Dawn of the Dead,' Ving Rhames has gone up against spies and zombies and has always prevailed. With his latest film, 'Piranha 3D,' he's going up a against a species he won't be able to fend off so easily.
Directed by Alexandre Aja, the horror film features an ensemble cast, including Adam Scott, Elisabeth Shue, Kelly Brook, Richard Dreyfuss, Jerry O'Connell, Christopher Lloyd, Dina Meyer, Ricardo Antonio Chavira, Paul Scheer and Eli Roth.
After a sudden underwater tremor sets free scores of the prehistoric man-eating fish, an unlikely group of strangers must band together to stop themselves from becoming fish food for the area's new razor-toothed residents.
BlackVoices caught up with the New York native as he spoke about his role and his efforts to free an inmate from a death sentence.
What role do you play?
Ving Rhames: I play a deputy, and Elizabeth Shue is the sheriff. There's an event that happens during spring break, and college kids are partying and so forth. There's a prehistoric piranha that winds up attacking someone. Then we find out that there's hundreds and thousands of piranha. So we basically try to save this little town. The film is fun, scary, entertaining and also has humor, with the 3-D effects. It's good. Some of the gore is over the top and some of it is just funny.
What was the attraction to the film?
VR: It was fun and it was my first 3-D movie. My children are young and I can explain some things to them, but I think I can possibly allow my kids to actually see it. I don't get to do too many films that aren't R-rated and that was one of the reasons. Plus, the film has a very good cast, including Richard Dreyfus, Christopher Lloyd and Elizabeth Shue. I saw the director's reel of his work, and he did 'The Hills Have Eyes' remake. I thought he could do his thing with this film and decided to it.
How was shooting the film in 3-D?
VR: This film for me was very easy. They did all the effects after we finished filming. If I'm in the water with piranha, and the director's telling me that there are piranha around me, he gave me a perimeter in which I could do things. They would put in the piranha after the fact. They matched the piranha to the actors rather than vice versa.
Having done a horror before with the remake of 'Dawn of the Dead,' which is easier to fight off, zombies or piranha?
VR: I'd say zombies. With 'Dawn of the Dead,' everyone is on foot and no one is in the water. The water gives piranha an advantage.
The last film I caught you in, 'Phantom Punch,' you weren't fighting species, but boxing.
VR: I haven't seen 'Phantom Punch' because I didn't know it was released in the states. I thought it was only going to be released overseas.
Congratulations on coming back to the fourth 'Mission: Impossible' film with Tom Cruise.
VR: There is still working on that, but I'm working on a film based on a friend of mine. His name is Aaron Jones. The film is called 'The Junior Black Mafia,' based on a true story. Aaron Jones received an unjust penalty. It's the first time in American history on organized crime that someone got the death penalty. He's on death row as we speak. He's done 21 years and, literally, the people from the hood put up the financing for the film. Yes, he did some negative things, but the death penalty is something that no one has ever received if they were part of organized crime. Al Capone or John Gotti never got this sentence. This film tracks down the pitfalls that one can fall into growing up in the hood. In Junior Black Mafia, the higher-ups were the Black Mafia known throughout Philadelphia. As a matter of fact, the in the series I did for BET, 'American Gangster,' there's a piece on them. My thing now is to work to get this brother off death row. Hopefully, this film will aid in doing that. We start filming in September.