Kevin Hart has done a lot in the movies. He's been in films that have certainly had their share of action, but I'm not sure anybody has ever thought of him as an "action star" before. However, we may all need to change our thinking. The actor and comedian recently shared a shirtless picture of himself, as he is wrapping up production on the Borderlands movie, and the guy would make his buddy Dwayne Johnson quite proud. He looks incredible.
It seems that Kevin Hart's character in Borderlands (a soldier character Roland) is covered in not only muscles, but also tattoos. He definitely looks like the kind of guy you don't want to mess with. And apparently that comes from training with the best. Hart thanked all those that helped him get ready for the film in his Instagram post. He got weapons training, hand-to-hand combat training, and even worked with Navy SEALS. Check it out.
Kevin Hart honestly seemed like an unusual choice to play a soldier in the Borderlands movie. While the video game the movie is based on has a lot of humor, and Hart made sense in that way, he probably wasn't seen by many as "soldier" material. In the games, the character of Roland isn't the funniest person you come across. And yet, this shows that if you put the work in, anybody can get to that point physically. And he does look every part the character of Roland.
And Kevin Hart has said that the physical work was an incredibly important part of him landing the role. Hart recently told Collider that when he spoke to director Eli Roth about the part in the Borderlands movie, he was given the role on the condition that he showed up looking, well, looking like this. Hart explained...
He said, 'Kevin, if you tell me that you can show up prepared and that you want to come in and knock this out, then you're my guy.' So I went, I did some training with some Navy SEALS, I got real good with weapons, I got real good with my hand-to-hand combat. And the experience here in Budapest filming Borderlands has been unreal. Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, myself, Flo [Munteanu], Ariana [Greenblatt]... I mean, our cast is unreal.
Doing serious training to get in peak physical condition is pretty standard for action movies. We've seen the work that Keanu Reeves does for the John Wick franchise, for example. And while one might expect the Borderlands movie might not go quite that hard, apparently it is.
Kevin Hart has been selling this movie pretty hard from the beginning. He clearly thinks it's something special and in addition to potentially being a great adaptation of the video game franchise, it might also be a great pure action movie that even those unfamiliar with the games might love.
