Indian actor-producer John Abraham, whose new action-packed film Rocky Handsome is out on March 24, says that the country is missing action heroes of the calibre one finds in Hollywood. “We [the film’s cast and crew] really wanted to take action to the next level. What the country was missing was real action heroes ... If you see internationally, the best action heroes are [Sylvester] Stallone, Bruce Willis, [Arnold] Schwarzenegger, Dwayne Johnson The Rock,” Abraham said at the trailer launch of Rocky Handsome in Mumbai.
“It’s not as much about the action, but it is about the attitude, and that’s what we tried to maintain in the film,” he added.
The trailer of Rocky Handsome sees Abraham in a number of action sequences, complete with guns and knives.
Abraham explained his training regime for the film: “I went off to Thailand for a little less than a month to train, especially the knife action that you see. Even if the knives are blunt, they really hurt. I remember when I was going for a shower in the evening, I used to remember the action in the day, because the whole body was black and blue during training”.
However, the Welcome Back actor said that the hard work paid off because the director of Rocky Handsome, Nishikant Kamat, wanted the scenes to look real.
Rocky Handsome also features Shruti Hassan in the lead.
Nishikanth Kamat plays a villain in the film. “There is no action sequence with Nishikant,” Abraham said.
Kamat, whose movie portfolio includes Marathi films and the Hindi movie 404, will for the first time act in a mainstream film. “Honestly, I didn’t think at all of portraying a baddie. Kevin Pereira’s role was supposed to be done by my friend ... he was not certain and just two days before the shooting, he opted out.
“As we had already finalised John’s dates, we couldn’t change the schedule. Since I was very much aware of the script I thought of giving it a shot,” the Drishyam director said.
In Rocky Handsome, Abraham plays an unforgiving man who goes on a lethal rampage when the only person he cares about, a seven-year-old child, is kidnapped.
Shot in Goa, Mumbai, Pune and Seychelles, the film also stars Nathalia Kaur, Nora Fatehi and Sharad Kelkar, and is an official remake of 2010 Korean film The Man from Nowhere.
