Rosario Dawson doesn’t get the credit she deserves. For years she has avoided being pigeonholed in any particular genre, and she looks just as comfortable playing the love interest in Clerks 2 or the upcoming Zookeeper opposite Kevin James as she does kicking ass in Quentin Tarantino’s Deathproof or the gritty noir Sin City.
The consummate actress is moving on to a new field -- the self-defense thriller -- now that she has signed on for the indie thriller Fire With Fire. Variety, which broke the story, says Dawson would join Josh Duhamel, Bruce Willis and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson in the story of a firefighter in the witness protection program who is forced to fight the thug he’s set to testify against when the criminal threatens the fireman’s lover. Duhamel would play the firefighter, while Dawson, no doubt, would play the damsel in distress.
I use the term “distress” loosely as Dawson has proven in films like Unstoppable, Eagle Eye and The Rundown that she’s just as capable of hanging in an action or fight scene as the next muscle-bound actor. Just ask Kurt Russell’s face what Rosario’s boot tastes like. No word on when Fire would be released, but Dawson’s got Zookeeper in theaters next month and Jamie Linden’s Ten Year in the can, so we’ll see her on screen sooner rather than later.
