Hollywood star Andy Garcia, whose credits include The Godfather Part III and Ocean’s Eleven, arrived in the former Soviet republic late on Sunday as shooting moved from the former Russian-held town of Gori to the capital, Tbilisi.
Television pictures showed Garcia holding court in a suit, red tie and a lapel pin bearing the red-and-white Georgian flag in Saakashvili’s office in the presidential palace.
The plot revolves around an American reporter, who gets caught in the crossfire as war engulfs the country, testing his impartiality as a journalist. Papuna Davitaia, a parliament deputy from Saakashvili’s ruling United National Movement, is one of the producers on the project.
“Our main concern was to show war as a bad thing,” executive producer Michael Flannigan told Georgian television. “We had an opportunity to make a really anti-war film.”
He said the budget was “pretty restrictive,” in a departure from Finnish-born Harlin’s big-budget action thrillers Die Hard 2 starring Bruce Willis and Cliffhanger with Sylvester Stallone.
Georgia’s pro-Western president is widely accused of triggering the war by launching an assault on pro-Russian South Ossetia after days of fatal clashes and years of rising tension with Moscow.
The war substantially damaged relations between Russia and the West. Some 390 civilians on both sides died and more than 100,000 were displaced, as the Russian military carried out air strikes and sent tanks deep into Georgia.
Serb filmmaker Emir Kusturica turned down a Russian offer to direct another film about the war.
“I didn’t accept it because I have a binding contract for the next four years,” the filmmaker told Reuters.
