By A lot of people forget or don’t realize that Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown is an adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s 1992 novel Rum Punch. Leonard first wrote about the characters Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson) and Louis Gara (Robert De Niro) in the 1978 novel The Switch, which is now being adapted for the screen as Switch. (You think you’re too good for the definite article, bub?)
Taking on the role of the younger Louis Gara is John Hawkes, who’s had some incredible performances in the last few years with Winter’s Bone and Martha Marcy May Marlene, and apparently The Surrogate as well. Mos Def, who now prefers to go by Yasiin Bey, is stepping in to play the role of the young Ordelle Robbie. Goodbye Baby writer/director Daniel Schechter is at the helm.
Set 15 years before Jackie Brown/Rum Punch, the plot of Switch is as follows:
Gara and Robbie are two career criminals in Detroit who team up to kidnap the wife of a corrupt real estate developer. When their ransom demands backfire and the jilted housewife demands their assistance in seeking revenge, the two criminals must rethink their plan.
This sounds like some accurate assassin s**t, the whole and not the half of it, Def and Hawkes close like Bethlehem and Nazareth. Bai-Oooh.
[Via Collider]