It’s Mitchell Saddleback’s big break, even if it meant playing a henchman to a crime lord. He’s not actually a gangster ... he just plays one in the movies.
The actor, a member of the Ermineskin/Samson Cree Nation, has been struggling for years to get noticed in film industry circles. Now, he’s right there on the big screen with heavyweights Liam Neeson and Tom Jackson in the new crime comedy Cold Pursuit, just released continent-wide in theatres.
“Cold Pursuit is my first-ever speaking role after over a decade of people saying ‘no.’ It was a life-changing experience that has already impacted my career for the better,” he said via an email exchange.
The movie focuses on Neeson’s character, Nels, a snowplow driver in a ski resort town who’s out to avenge the death of his son at the hands of a local drug gang. This sets off a turf war with a rival gang led by White Bull, played by Tom Jackson. Saddleback’s character is named Avalanche who, along with Smoke (Edmonton’s Nathaniel Arcand), figures largely in the second half of the film as the conflict escalates into even more complicated mayhem and brutal violence.
For Saddleback, being involved in the film means more than just giving him that “recognition factor” that hopefully would lead to other roles. He has otherwise worked behind the scenes in B.C. arts and culture organizations, and has done a series of wonderfully astute and sardonic short videos about race on Instagram (check him out @imwithmitch) so being a character with a face, a name and words to speak in the multiplexes is practically a golden ticket moment that he doesn’t take for granted. It means the world to him.
It also meant a lot to him to see First Nations people represented so largely in a big budget film.
“That’s something that I didn’t see enough of growing up, so it’s thrilling to be part of that kind of change.
“I am very proud and honoured to share the screen with such amazingly talented people … people I've watched my whole life. I told Tom Jackson that I used to watch him with my Kookom [the Cree word for grandmother] on TV when I was little.”
The actor only has a few other credits, according to the Internet Movie Database (found at www.imdb.com), and the others refer to his participation on a few short films, writing one and doing technical work on the others. He’s also a heckuva slam poet, too. Shorts don’t always have the same way of highlighting your own talent and ambition to the world as Hollywood feature films do though.
After the casting call went out for Hans Petter Moland’s remake of his 2014 Norwegian film In Order of Disappearance (Kraftidioten), Saddleback signed up for an “intense” audition with Moland and producer Michael Shamberg. Figuring he had nothing to lose, he showed up trying hard to make everyone laugh.
Getting the callback was almost as memorable an experience.
“I was so excited, I leaned over to the random lady next to me on the seabus and said, ‘I got a callback for a Liam Neeson movie!’ She just awkwardly smiled at me,” he remarked.
Production first took him to Kananaskis Country west of Calgary for a shoot on top of Fortress Mountain, before heading off to Fernie, B.C., before a few scenes in Victoria and Vancouver. Saddleback noted that Parks Canada prevented filming in Banff National Park because of the First Nations gang element in the movie, “Though they just let Game of Thrones film a month prior,” he added.
From Day 1, it was a dream come true.
“The whole experience was surreal. I still don’t feel like it was real. I learned so much from White Bull’s gang. It felt like a family. We hung out and talked about everything: acting, life, being sober. I owe a lot to every single one of them. They all gave me precious advice that I will treasure and carry with me forever.”
Oh, and that line of dialogue he gets sounds a bit prophetic for his career, which is surely on an updraft at this point: “I was born to fly.”
He added that his co-star Neeson was kind, quiet, gentle and wonderful to work with, while Emmy Rossum (who plays Kim, a big city cop recently relocated to the small town) was a bit intimidating when he first met her, though even she couldn’t resist that old Saddleback charm when he chimed in with a verse of Beyoncé after he caught her singing to herself.
Side note: look for Edmonton’s Ben Cotton and Chris Cook elsewhere in Cold Pursuit, now playing at Cineplex Odeon and Landmark Cinemas theatres.
For a review of Cold Pursuit, check the Feb. 9 edition of the St. Albert Gazette.
