xXx director Rob Cohen is on the rebound from the massive failure of Stealth last summer, and he's signed on to helm a movie called Scared Straight for New Line. The Hollywood Reporter calls this one a "prison thriller", put the word "women" in front of that and suddenly audiences might be interested.
Apparently Cohen hasn't been scared straight, because even after last summer's flop he's sticking to the high-octane formula that he's used throughout his career. Scared Straight is about a governor's son visiting a prison as part of the Scared Straight program, only to end up being taken hostage by shiv wielding inmates when a riot breaks out. The governor's kid then teams up with street urchins and an ex-con to stop the riot.
Cohen blames this project on the success of TV's "Prison Break". He says, "After the success of "Prison Break, there is revival of interest in the genre." So he's the one who watches that show. I'd wondered.
Rob goes on to try and bill this latest project as character driven, but anyone whose seen his other work ought to know better. He's a filmmaker in the mold of Michael Bay. Cohen's films can be fun, but nobody would mistake them for character driven. Explosion driven is more like it.
