Indie action-comedy Welcome To Acapulco hit streaming video services last week, starring Michael Kingsbaker and a number of recognizable actors including William Baldwin, Paul Sorvino, and Sin City‘s Michael Madsen. The movie is something that came together like a whirlwind, and filmmaker Guillermo Ivan describes the whole thing coming together in a matter of months. It has elements of genre touchstones like Die Hard (the everyday guy out of his depth in a crazy plot) and Get Shorty (high action and high humor).
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In the film, video game designer Matt Booth has one shot to save his career by unveiling his biggest project yet at the Video Game Awards in New Mexico. But after running into a friend at the airport and having a little too much to drink before his flight, he ends up in ACTUAL Mexico – specifically, Acapulco. As soon as he lands, he finds himself on the run from high-powered criminals, deadly hitmen, and the Feds, all looking for a mysterious package that he has allegedly smuggled through customs yet knows nothing about. Kingsbaker joined ComicBook.com to discuss his role in the film. You can check out our recent chat with the film’s director, Guillermo Ivan, here.
The tone of this movie reminds me a little bit of a lot of late ’90s kind of…not quite Get Shorty, but in that vein of late ’90s action movies, where there’s a lot of intrigue, but it doesn’t lose its sense of humor, and it doesn’t take itself super, super seriously.
The script and a lot of things have changed through the process. But certainly knowing that, it was kind of like I wasn’t exactly sure how to approach early on. And then as we got down there, we started working on it. It really leaned into this fish-out-of-water situation, and that like not knowing what’s around the corner, and what’s happening next. So it was a lot of fun as far as the hijinx and action stuff, but keeping that sense of humor about it and not taking it too seriously. I think that sort of helps the tone of the film for sure.
Did you have any other content that you watched ahead of production to get yourself in the right headspace, or are you the kind of actor who thinks that all you have to work with is what’s on the page?
It’s hard to say. I will say that I wouldn’t subscribe to one or the other. The script was going through some changes though, and was going through changes while we were shooting as well. And then went through some changes in post too. So and that’s the interesting thing about movies, and I come from a lot more of a theater background, where the script is a bible. You know what I mean? You just don’t touch it, nothing can change. And here, a lot can. And so, but as far as the approach, I don’t know if I was looking at any particular movies going into it. I had the script, and I was just trying to figure out who this fellow was and try to put him in situations and see what came out of it.
Was the video game element kind of a gift? Because I feel like it allows you to have a character who’s an everyman to be a hero without a real like ninja skill set, or anything. There’s a metaphor there, and there’s the groundwork for why he knows how to do certain things.
Yeah, it’s an interesting thing in our day and age, wherepeople, especially people about our age, we grew up on video games. So we all feel like we have some sort of action star and sort of know how to handle a gun by playing Time Crisis, or whatever it is. You know what I mean? And we all played GoldenEye. So you feel like you belong in this world. And then when you’re thrown in, then you’re not. That was something definitely I was considering, and then figuring out how to do some things sort of badly, and what does he do well? Having that balance. But, yeah, the video game aspect was certainly a gift.
Usually, your lead character in an action movie is hyper-competent, and something needs to go wrong in order for him to ever be at risk of losing. Is it fun to be playing this kind of character, where you’re almost … it almost feels like your character hasn’t read the script?
Yeah, very much. It was funny because I tried to prep a lot, and then realized the best thing I could do was just show up and see what they throw at me. And I like these type of films too, because I think they’re more relatable to the everyman. What happens when a Middle America guy gets thrown into the thing, as opposed to Jason Bourne or 007? I do love those films where some guy is haplessly finding his way through things, but then has this knowledge of video games and some of these things. Where does his assets then become something that can help him survive?
This feels like the kind of project where if somebody came up with the right story idea, you could jump back into this character and pick up with a similar but different story. Would that be something you’d be interested in, or if Guillermo came to you with that, would you be like, “Well, let’s do something else instead?”
I mean, if we get the crew back together, you know what I mean? It was such a great fun family, I would certainly be down. Yeah, why not? Especially if a lot of these people are back around, I’m sure we could have a lot of fun. I’m sure Matthew Booth hasn’t seen his last day in the sun, if you will. So who knows? We’ll see.
