On the heels of the the trailer dropping for Benicio del Toro’s upcoming eight-episode series Escape at Dannemora, the Puerto Rican actor is prepping for his next big role. Continuing his association with gritty directors, del Toro has been announced to lead Oliver Stone’s White Lies.
Described as “a departure” for Stone, the director of films like JFK and Natural Born Killers, White Lies sees del Toro play Jack, a child of divorce fall into the same trap as his parents with his own son. Jack decides to hit the road on a “lust-filled” road to self-discovery that involves a new woman. As of right now del Toro is the only actor cast in the feature which will start filming in New York City sometime next year.
This marks the second collaboration between Stone and del Toro. You might remember the actor played the serape-wearing bad guy in Stone’s Mexican drug cartel drama, Savages, back in 2012. Since then del Toro has dropped into several prominent works for the Disney Company, including Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Interestingly, del Toro was last seen in the sequel to Sicario, Day of the Soldado earlier this year, a feature that left many of us at Remezcla saddened by its blatant antipathy towards Mexicans. Couple that with del Toro in Savages and there’s an interesting case study here in how the actor portrays certain Latino groups.
Hopefully, White Lies won’t fall into that camp. The plot sounds generic right now, but there’s promise with the right cast working alongside del Toro.