Walter Hill's St. Vincent Moves Forward; Gong Li, Ray Winstone And Forest Whitaker Join Mickey Rourke

It's been quite a while since Walter Hill directed a film that could be called a total success, but I never stop pulling for the guy who directed The Warriors, 48 Hrs. and Streets of Fire. (Even if he also directed Another 48 Hrs. — nasty stuff.) So I'll take any shred of positive news about his upcoming work, and this news is seriously positive. Hill is working on a film called St. Vincent that will reunite him with his Johnny Handsome star Mickey Rourke. Now he's added another Johnny Handsome alum, Forest Whitaker, and some other great cast members that should push the film up  on my watch list.

Twitch has the casting news. We don't know much more than the new cast members, among which are Gong Li and Ray Winstone. But that collection of talent is enough for me; now my hopes for the film are higher than they would have been otherwise. Cameron Young wrote the script, and he's not a guy I'm very familiar with; he's got an anthology film called Locker 13 to his name, and not much else.

Here's the synopsis:

Hitman Vincent Novena (Mickey Rourke) goes deep undercover portraying a priest to get close enough to kill his gangland traitor target. He soon discovers that playing the part of a good man is more dangerous than being a mob killer ever was.  No good deed goes unpunished. The more Vincent opens up, the more vulnerable he becomes ...

And here's another great little piece of recent Rourke performance that you may have missed. The actor recently voiced Navy SEAL Dick Marcinko in Rogue Warrior, a truly terrible video game. But the game's end credits are scored by the following song, featuring most of Rourke's rabidly vulgar dialogue strung into lyrical form.