Mike Fallon (Scott Adkins), dubbed the Accident Man, is back in Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday. The action-comedy is jam-packed with enthralling fight scenes and hilarious dialogue bursting out its seams. In the first installation, fans saw Fallon looking for those responsible for the death of his loved ex. This time around, Fallon is protecting the son of a mafia boss, saving his only friend, and trying to develop his relationship with his father figure.
Alongside Adkins in the cast of Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday are Ray Stevenson, Sarah Chang, George Fouracres, Beau Fowler, Flaminia Cinque, Faisal Mohammed, and more. It’s co-written by Adkins and Stu Small and directed by George and Harry Kirby.
“When I was a kid, I used to make these home videos with my friends. Really cheap, completely ludicrous stuff. And it’s almost like I’ve been given a budget to do that, and I’m getting away with it… the reaction has been great so far. It’s just crazy, madcap martial arts, action, comedy, and people seem to respond to it,” commented Adkins.
Madcap Martial Arts in Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday
The martial arts in Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday are certainly surreal, especially when considering the movie opens with a fight scene involving a sledgehammer-wielding killer clown, captured in high pace fashion. “A fight sequence generally will be about two days on one of my films, and it’s from the morning, ‘Go, go, go,’ pushing everyone to get the number of shots that we need… we push hard to try and give the audience what they expect from me,” said Adkins.
Though the challenges of capturing these scenes don’t stop at the production end as it also requires a lot of physical endurance from those involved in them. “Aside from everything else, the acting and the producing things you’ve got to think about, if you do a fight sequence, essentially for the whole day, you don’t want your body to cool down because that’s when you get injured. So, you’re literally just on your toes staying warm for 12 hours of the day. You need endurance to do these martial arts films,” explained Adkins.
As for a favorite fight scene throughout, Adkins commented that he likes all of them for different reasons, “but it’s pretty hard to top the final fight. It’s very Hong Kong cinema that one, and Andy Long is an amazing performer. He actually choreographed and directed that fight sequence, along with the directors as we’re all working together, but he created it from his mind. He wasn’t the fight choreographer for the whole film, but specifically for that fight, and the other fight with Sarah Chang and Peter Lee Thomas, he was the choreographer and that’s a great fight. But they’re all good. Every fight is good in different ways.”
The Kirby Brothers & Comedy in Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday
“Harry and George Kirby were the perfect directors for this film because of their visual style and the fact that they are English and sort of get the banter and everything that we were going for,” said Adkins, “but also, they come from stunts, specifically George who is a working stuntman. I actually met him on Dr. Strange. And so they perfectly understand the action, the comedy, and they’ve got a visual style that they brought to the action sequences. There’s a lot of motion in the camera, so you’re never bored. It’s never a static shot with two people fighting, which can work and can be fine, but what they wanted to do was make the camera very energetic, which I really appreciated. I think it works brilliantly and is a very slick-looking film.”
The comedy in the film is best seen when Fallon sneaks in snappy punchlines during fight scenes or in the banter between characters. Most of it was scripted, explained Adkins, though some lines heard in the film were improvised. “We didn’t have the luxury of time,” he explained, “you need time for the action, and you also need time for the comedy. The action is very structured, we know exactly what we need to do, and we just got to get those shots. With comedy or improv, essentially you need the two actors and some coverage of the cameras. One of me and one on the other and just play around and fire some stuff back at one another… of course, you need time to do that, which we didn’t really have the luxury of time to be honest. But we did do some, and some improv lines definitely made it into the movies, and quite funny ones as well.”
Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday comes to us from Samuel Goldwyn Films and is available on digital and on demand on October 14, 2022.