In the autumn of 2016, speedboats race through the narrow canals of Amsterdam. That is a remarkable sight in itself, but later motorbikes come flying over the bridge too, and an armed man jumps out of a blacked-out Porsche Cayenne. The man fires and the bullet hits its target, blood spatter and all. These are the shoots for an international blockbuster: The Hitman's Bodyguard, a film with Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds. Hollywood has come to Amsterdam once again.
It is all real
Watching the film, you sometimes do not realise that most of what you see is real. The police car chases through the narrow streets of the centre, the speedboats blasting through the canals, Samuel L. Jackson hanging off a tram. And what about the unsuspecting Smart car parked along the Krom Boomsloot that gets pushed into the water by the Porsche with a smooth half-donut? Okay, it is staged of course and not real, but it is not animation.
Run for your life
You have to be ready for it: the shooting of a chase scene in your neighbourhood. A jogger in the Sarphatistraat briefly overlooked the five super-fast cars and was grabbed by the collar just in time by a traffic marshal. It looks so real that it would not have been out of place in the final cut of the film.
- 01Shooting took place in the city centre and in the ring around it. The prison, for example, is a building on the Weteringschans opposite the Rijksmuseum (where filming also took place);
- 02No Dutch police cars with the familiar blue and red stripes were used for the film. Instead, the vehicles have blue checks;
- 03The tram scene was filmed with a beautifully polished GVB tram from line 4. These scenes were shot around the Roeterseiland and on the Rozengracht, among other places.
