Mel Gibson has been spending a lot of time in Georgia.
He is about to shoot the heist thriller “Bandit” with Elisha Cuthbert and Josh Duhamel, his third film in the state in three years.
The movie is based on author Robert Knuckle’s best-selling novel and journalist Ed Arnold’s interviews with Gilbert Galvan Jr. (aka Robert Whiteman). He was called the Flying Bandit after pulling off a whopping 63 bank and jewelry heists during a notorious crime spree.
Duhamel, who currently stars in the Netflix drama “Jupiter’s Legacy,” will play Galvan, who escapes a U.S. prison and sneaks into Canada, assuming a new identity. There, he keeps committing crimes but once he turns to lifetime gangster Tommy (Gibson) for money, he gets embroiled in the biggest heist in Canadian history.
Gibson has had a roller coaster career. He rose to fame in the 1980s with his “Lethal Weapon” and “Mad Max” films, then peaked with his Academy-winning 1995 film “Braveheart.”
He was caught making antisemitic rants in 2006 following a DUI stop and yelling racist epithets on leaked tapes in 2010, when he was also accused of domestic abuse by a girlfriend. After some years in relative isolation, he received an Oscar nomination in 2016 for his film “Hacksaw Ridge” and is now working consistently again.
Gibson since 2017 has starred in “Daddy’s Home 2,” “Force of Nature” and “Boss Level.”
Gibson shot the spy thriller film “Agent Game” earlier this year mostly around Augusta with Dermot Mulroney. And in 2019, he shot the action film “Last Looks,” which was previously named “Waldo” and is scheduled to be released later this year.
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