The Hire: The Follow is the third installment in The Hire series by BMW films, written by Andrew Kevin Walker and directed by Wong Kar-wai. It stars Clive Owen, Forest Whitaker, Adriana Lima and Mickey Rourke. The Driver (Owen) is hired to follow an ageing movie star's (Rourke) young wife (Lima), whom he suspects of infidelity.
The BMW film series The Hire consists of eight short films produced for the Internet in 2001 and 2002. A form of branded content, the shorts were directed by popular filmmakers from around the globe and starred Clive Owen as "the Driver" while highlighting the performance aspects of various BMW automobiles. The series made a comeback in 2016, fourteen years after its original run ended.
Ellen Louise Ripley, often referred to simply as Ripley, is a fictional character and protagonist of the Alien film series, played by American actress Sigourney Weaver. The character earned Weaver worldwide recognition, and the role remains her most famous to date. Ridley Scott, director of the first film in the series, Alien, made the decision early in production to switch Ripley from a standard male action hero to a heroine.
Clive Owen is an English actor. He first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for playing the lead role in the ITV series Chancer from 1990 to 1991. He received critical acclaim for his work in the film Close My Eyes (1991) before earning international attention for his performance as a struggling writer in Croupier (1998). In 2005, he won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in the drama Closer (2004).
The Transporter is a 2002 English-language French action film directed by Cory Yuen from a screenplay by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen. The film was inspired by the short film series The Hire. It is the first installment in the Transporter franchise and stars Jason Statham, alongside Shu Qi, François Berléand, Matt Schulze, and Ric Young. In the film, Frank Martin, a British mercenary driver living in France, finds himself involved in a people smuggling plot.
Vera Ann Farmiga is an American actress, director, and producer. Farmiga began her professional acting career on stage in the original Broadway production of Taking Sides (1996). After expanding to television and film, Farmiga's breakthrough came in 2004 with her starring role as a drug addict in the drama Down to the Bone. She received praise for starring in the 2009 comedy-drama Up in the Air, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Neill Blomkamp is a South African and Canadian film director, screenwriter and producer. He is best known as the co-writer and director of the science fiction action film District 9 (2009), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and the director of the dystopian science fiction action film Elysium (2013), which garnered moderately positive reviews. He also directed the science fiction action film Chappie (2015) and the biographical sports film Gran Turismo (2023).
Hannah Dakota Fanning is an American actress. She rose to prominence at the age of seven for her performance as Lucy Dawson in the drama film I Am Sam (2001), for which she received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination at the age of eight, making her the youngest nominee in SAG history. Fanning played major roles as a child actress in the films Uptown Girls (2003), The Cat in the Hat (2003), Man on Fire (2004), War of the Worlds (2005), Dreamer (2005), Hide and Seek (2005), Charlotte's Web (2006), Push (2009), and the title character in Coraline (2009).
Jonathan Edward Bernthal is an American actor. Beginning his career in the early 2000s, he came to prominence for portraying Shane Walsh on the AMC horror series The Walking Dead, where he was a starring cast member in the first two seasons. Bernthal achieved further recognition as Frank Castle / Punisher in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) television series Daredevil (2016) and The Punisher (2017–2019).
District 9 is a 2009 science fiction action film directed by Neill Blomkamp in his feature film debut, written by Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, and produced by Peter Jackson and Carolynne Cunningham. It is a co-production of New Zealand, the United States, and South Africa. The film stars Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, and David James, and was adapted from Blomkamp's 2006 short film Alive in Joburg.
Safe House is a 2012 American action thriller film directed by Daniel Espinosa, written by David Guggenheim, and starring Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds. The film follows Matt Weston (Reynolds), a CIA officer on a low-level posting in Cape Town, South Africa, who is in charge of a safe house where the CIA is interrogating Tobin Frost (Washington), a veteran operative accused of betraying the agency. When the safe house is attacked by mercenaries, Weston flees with Frost in his charge. As the team of killers, who seem to be one step ahead of the pair, track them throughout Cape Town, Weston wonders who to trust. Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Shepard, Rubén Blades, Nora Arnezeder and Robert Patrick co-star.
Elysium is a 2013 American dystopian science fiction action film written, produced, and directed by Neill Blomkamp. It was Blomkamp's second directorial effort. The film stars Matt Damon and Jodie Foster alongside Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga, Diego Luna, Wagner Moura, and William Fichtner. The film takes place on both a ravaged Earth and a luxurious artificial world called Elysium. The film itself offers deliberate social commentary that explores political and sociological themes such as immigration, overpopulation, transhumanism, health care, worker exploitation, the justice system, technology, and social class issues.
Higher Ground is a 2011 American drama film directed by Vera Farmiga in her directorial debut. The film is an adaptation of the 2002 memoir This Dark World: A Memoir of Salvation Found and Lost by Carolyn S. Briggs, who co-wrote the screenplay. The film follows Corinne Walker (Farmiga) and her vacillating relationship with Christianity. The cast also includes Joshua Leonard, John Hawkes, Donna Murphy, Norbert Leo Butz, and Bill Irwin.
Goats is a 2012 comedy-drama film directed by Christopher Neil and written by Mark Poirier based on his 2000 novel Goats. The film stars David Duchovny, Vera Farmiga, Graham Phillips, Keri Russell, Justin Kirk, and Ty Burrell. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2012, and was given a limited release in the United States on August 10, 2012, by Image Entertainment.
Chappie is a 2015 American dystopian science fiction action film directed by Neill Blomkamp and written by Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell. It stars Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel, Hugh Jackman, Ninja, Yolandi Visser, Jose Pablo Cantillo, and Sigourney Weaver. The film, set and shot in Johannesburg, is about an artificial general intelligence law enforcement robot captured and taught by gangsters, who nickname it Chappie.
Vera Farmiga is an American actress, director, and producer. She began her career on stage as an understudy in Ronald Harwood's 1996 play Taking Sides on Broadway. The following year, she starred in the Off-Broadway play Second-Hand Smoke (1997) by Mac Wellman. Farmiga made her film debut in the drama-thriller Return to Paradise (1998). She then had supporting roles in the romantic drama film Autumn in New York (2000), the crime drama film The Opportunists (2000), and the action thriller film 15 Minutes (2001). Farmiga's breakthrough role came in 2004, when she was cast in the drama film Down to the Bone. For her performance, she won the Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize for Acting and was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead. She then starred in the political thriller The Manchurian Candidate (2004) and the crime thriller Running Scared (2006).
The Commuter is a 2018 American action thriller film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and written by Byron Willinger, Philip de Blasi and Ryan Engle. The film stars Liam Neeson, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Jonathan Banks, and Sam Neill. It follows a man who is unwittingly recruited into a murder conspiracy after meeting a mysterious woman while on his daily train commute.
Rakka is a 2017 American-Canadian military science fiction short film made by Oats Studios and directed by Neill Blomkamp. It was released on YouTube and Steam on 14 June 2017.
Gran Turismo is a 2023 American biographical sports drama film directed by Neill Blomkamp from a screenplay by Jason Hall and Zach Baylin. Produced by Columbia Pictures, PlayStation Productions, and 2.0 Entertainment, it is based on the racing simulation video game series of the same name developed by Polyphony Digital. It tells the true story of Jann Mardenborough, a teenage Gran Turismo player who became a professional racing car driver. The film stars Archie Madekwe as Mardenborough alongside David Harbour, Orlando Bloom, Darren Barnet, Geri Halliwell Horner, and Djimon Hounsou.
