Lou

2022 - 9 - 23

Post cover — Image courtesy of "Variety"

Allison Janney on Becoming an Action Hero in 'Lou' and What ... (Variety)

Allison Janney discusses her new Netflix movie 'Lou' and how she's up for joining a Marvel movie.

It was fun to shoot that scene and fun to know how to defend yourself in a scene like that. And I loved them both so much – I felt proud to share the screen with both of them. She and Ridley were both game for everything – I couldn’t have had better partners to be running around the marsh with. The dog was the most beautiful dog ever and he hit his mark more times than I did. I would love to be an action hero. Our fight trainer was Daniel Bernhardt, who had just come off working with Bob Odenkirk on “Nobody.” I was doing it three hours a day and I came to love it. “And to be a lead in a movie at 62 and an action hero? After getting the peart, there was a time where I was like, “How can I get out of this?” But I was glad I didn’t. What I did learn for this film was to fight hand-to-hand combat. And I was an athlete. And then I met Anna who was like, “Are you ready to get down and dirty with me?” And I was. “Or I’ll think they’re about to talk about ‘Mom’ and they saw me in ‘A View from the Bridge’ on Broadway.

'Lou' Ending, Explained: Do Hannah And Lou Rescue Young Vee In ... (Digital Mafia Talkies)

The new action-drama film on Netflix, "Lou," is an average watch at best, with predictable plot points, no exceptional acting performances, and dialogues ...

Philip now catches up to the two women, and Lou decides to stay back and fight her son while Hannah and Vee make their safe exit from the place. While Philip was a fugitive wanted for his war crimes, Lou had in her personal possession documents (the papers and photos she burned at the beginning of the film) that would prove the CIA’s involvement in the revolution in Iran. Now that Vee was missing, and a postcard with a message and a picture of Vee with Philip had been left behind, Hannah was sure that her husband had faked his death and had now returned. As part of her job, she had to go undercover to get very close to a high-profile target in Iran during the years of the Islamic Revolution. The sheer fact that a solitary person like Lou easily agreed to help Hannah, and then her constant collecting of the notes that Philip was leaving behind at every stage, added to her age in relation to the other characters, made it very obvious that she was Philip’s mother. Philip takes her to the coast, from where he was supposed to take a boat to the mainland, but the terrible weather stops his plans, and they have to take shelter at a nearby cave for the night. She had ensured that Hannah moved to Orcas with her daughter Vee, and then she herself had moved in close to them to protect them from Philip, for she too knew that he would come back. Intervening in the whole act and not even realizing it, Hannah pleads with Lou to help her save her daughter from her vengeful husband, who has returned, and Lou agrees. While the two women try to find the missing girl, Philip makes his way through the forest with Vee, and at first, he uses a small cart to safely carry his daughter. On the day the film’s plot starts to unfold, the Orcas Island residents await a treacherous storm to hit the area that evening, and that very morning, Lou is seen stacking up items. A complete loner by choice, her only companion is a loyal dog named Jax, and it is with him by her side that Lou often goes out on hunts, even when it is not hunting season. A tale of bitter relations from the past is cooked up and sewn with the thrills of spy action, but none of it ultimately makes the film a watch worth remembering.

Lou Review - IGN (IGN)

Allison Janney and Jurnee Smollett are a fierce but reluctant duo racing to rescue a kidnapped child in a gripping, Taken-esque thriller.

That’s supported by some excellent sound design that amplifies the environmental soundscape as another player in the story, and the use of some savvy audio transitions. The storm brings with it someone from Hannah’s past who, using the cover of the torrential rain and lack of power, takes Vee and leaves notes for Hannah to follow. The story then widens out to explain the context of her actions and her aloof relationship with but respected place amongst locals of the small town she calls home. Jurnee Smollett is the desperate mom (and Lou’s neighbor) trying to get her daughter back from a kidnapper, who admirably has no fear in butting up against Lou’s flinty demeanor. Allison Janney slips into the role of Lou, an elder, battle-skilled misanthrope, like it’s a second skin, and barks and scowls her way into our hearts. Netflix’s Lou feels like a calculated strike to remedy that gap, and it absolutely lives up to the standards of its niche action subcategory.

"Lou" Star Jurnee Smollett Says She Would Return For A Sequel (Today.com)

Jurnee Smollett is in full mama bear mode in film "Lou." She plays Hannah, a single mother whose daughter, Vee, is kidnapped in the middle of a storm.

"That was a special one." She’s devoted her whole life to her country and to her sense of duty. It is not a sign of weakness," she said. Not everyone is supposed to be a mother. “Karen Earl, who founded it years ago — I mean, she’s doing God’s work — she was so amazing in my research process, and really gave me access to the facility but also the experts and the counselors and the lawyers. It sounds like a cliché, but it is absolutely an accurate description to say that it is as if your heart is living outside your body when you become a mom.

Exclusive Interview: Composer Nima Fakhrara Talks Netflix Thriller ... (We Got This Covered)

In person, this genuinely gifted and self-effacing musician revels in bending the rules of musical composition, by subverting his classical training to create ...

You can always become whoever you want with people, and the beauty of it is that you just have to be able to become a servant to the project versus what is being produced. I wake up and grab a little espresso, I sit on the deck over here in the studio, I listen to some music and literally I am either sitting on the piano or we go to the farm here, and that’s basically my life. For me it always comes down to what is the story doing and can I relate to it, especially because I am going to spend so much time on it. It was one of those eye opening experiences of being able to understand what is right and what is wrong in the movie, but having that epiphany much earlier on in say version two as opposed to version 12. Everything is broken in this music and the unconventionality of it is everything. Even in the penultimate scene of the film, instead of going bigger and throwing everything in there, we did the opposite, and it is just a guitar doing a very beautiful melody on top of this really emotional scene. It had to be three players and the tonality had to be correct. We recorded a trio of strings, not your traditional string quartet or string trio at all, it was all lower players, so basically just imagine a string trio lower down the musical scale. One of the first scenes that I scored was the opening and you hear a lot of things all coming together musically. That was one of the biggest challenges that my crazy mind created, in terms of getting hold of the quantity of blank cassettes necessary to record this score. One of the biggest dreams a composer can have is when someone tells you what they want the actual scene to feel like versus what it needs to do. She likes crazy ideas and I had plenty of them, so it was one of those things that we just hit it off.

Interview Podcast: Composer Nima Fakhrara on Netflix's "Lou" (The Spool)

Welcome to Right on Cue, the podcast where we interview film, TV, and video game composers about the origins and nuances of their latest works and select ...

[Nima Fakhrara](https://thespool.net/tag/nima-fakhrara)‘s richly textured score for Lou. (We’ll also hear a few exclusive track commentaries from the score.) And yet, here we are with [Anna Foerste](https://thespool.net/tag/anna-foerster)r’s Lou, the straight-to-Netflix action thriller starring the West Wing legend, now transformed into a former CIA fixer who’s given up the life for an isolated existence on a remote coastal island.