Without much warning it seems, this is heading to theaters, with an April 4 release date now set (a week from today), and a first trailer debuting.
History-making, Cesar Award-winning French actor Omar Sy is in the Harvey Weinstein business… or maybe it’s the other way around… Harvey Weinstein is in the Omar Sy business.
The young actor’s first post-Intouchables release, titled De l’autre côté du périph, or On The Other Side Of The Tracks, was picked up by The Weinstein Company in late 2012, and is now finally getting its long-awaited USA theatrical, a year after it was released in France.
The toast of France at the time, Sy, who relocated to LA, and signed with UTA that same year, seemed pimre to take on Hollywood, with Intouchables released Stateside, and generally well-received (although I didn’t care for it); since then, he’s landed roles in top-tier projects like X-Men: Days of Future Past, Jurassic World, and Stephen Gaghan’s crime thriller Candy Store.
As a recap, On The Other Side Of The Tracks is another inter-racial buddy pairing for Sy, except, this time, instead of a wealthy white quadraplegic and a street-smart poor black man, as was the case in Intouchables, On The Other Side Of The Tracks features Omar Sy playing 1 half of a starring duo of cops from opposite sides of the tracks (as the title says), who must come together to solve a murder.
The film’s synopsis reads:
David Charhon’s On The Other Side of the Tracks stars Sy as a street-wise police cop based in a rough Parisian suburb who joins forces with an uptight officer from an elite, central Paris crime squad to solve the murder of a prominent businessman’s wife.
Starring opposite Omar Sy is Laurent Lafitte – a name I can’t claim to be familiar with.
Also upcoming for Sy are Michel Gondry’s Mood Indigo, co-starring with Bradley Cooper in a culinary dramedy titled Chef; and a French-Language film titled Chocolat, which is a biopic of Rafael Padilla – a former Cuban-born slave, who became the first black artist in France during the Belle Epoque era.
He is also teaming up again with his Intouchables directors – Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano – on their next film, another dramedy, this one titled Samba, which Sy will of course star in, alongside, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Tahar Rahim and Izya Higelin.
The Weinstein Company will open On The Other Side Of The Tracks next week Friday, April 4.
Here’s the trailer: