Diane Kruger and Demián Bichir
in The Bridge
Demián Bichir has had a pretty interesting career since that Academy Award nomination a couple of years ago. Not that he was entirely unknown before that; he played Che Guevara in Steven Soderbergh’s mini-series on the revolution; he was a regular on a season of Weeds here in the U.S., and he’d already appeared in a wide range of Mexican TV programs and films, all before his nomination. But his work in Chris Weitz’ A Better Life really set things off.
Since then, we saw him as a member of a drug cartel whose career ended very, very badly in Oliver Stone’s Savages; this summer he’s in the Sandra Bullock/Melissa McCarthy action-comedy The Heat, which made a tidy $86 million in its first weekend (exactly twice the budget of the movie itself)…though the promotion of the film has been so focused on Bullock and McCarthy you’d never know it. And he’ll join half of the Latinos in Hollywood this October when Robert Rodriguez’ Machete Kills finally hits a couple thousand screens across the country.
And then there’s The Bridge. Everything about this gritty, confrontational new series on FX looks fascinating, especially Bichir’s casual, pointed, smart portrayal of Chihuahua cop Marco Ruiz.
L-r: director Gerardo Naranjo, actors Diane Kruger,
Demián Bichir at a screening and q&a of The Bridge
Photo: Alexandra Wyman/Le Studio/FX Networks
This is clearly more than just another cop show. Placing it in a volatile border town, opening with a murder about human trafficking, building character relationships that are specifically based on the cultural gulf between the U.S. and Mexican cultures–this is a show with something to say as well as something exciting. And it’s been a long time coming.
You can see a whole rainbow of clips, interviews, twitterfeeds and even online games on FX Network’s special page for The Bridge, right here. And there’s a short blip of an interview with Bichir, along with a fresh clip, from the Associate Press…
The 90-minute premiere of The Bridge appears for the first time at 10P on Wednesday, July 10; then FX is replaying it nine times almost daily until the next episode, a week from Wednesday.
