'Freelance' Director Pierre Morel Recalls John Cena 'Riffing' With Allison Brie and Juan Pablo Raba (Exclusive)

Filmmaker Pierre Morel is well known for dark and intense action flicks like Taken and Peppermint, but now he's teamed up with John Cena, Alison Brie, and Columbian actor Juan Pablo Raba for the new action-comedy movie Freelance. The film stars Cena as an ex-military man who takes a one-off gig as a bodyguard for Brie's character, a journalist who is set to do a big interview with a notorious dictatorship, played by Raba. However, when the trio finds themselves in the middle of a violent coup it'll take their collective skills to survive the situation... if they don't kill each other first.

PopCulture.com had a chance to speak with Morel about the movie, and he told us that he would definitely consider this his first action-comedy film, as his "previous ones are pretty dark." Morel explained, "I picked this one because it was an action-comedy, because it was not dark. The premise feels like it's dark. It's like journalists and dictators in South America, but all this is a fantasy, actually, and it's not realistically treated the way I would've treated the previous movies. So, it becomes action comedy like in the '80s, like Romancing the Stone or those things... It's a fun ride."

A synopsis of the Freelance details, "Ex-Special Forces operative Mason Pettits (John Cena) is stuck in a dead-end desk job when he's reluctantly recruited by former military buddy Sebastian Earle (Christian Slater) to take on a simple freelance gig providing security for washed-up journalist Claire Wellington (Alison Brie). He begrudgingly escorts Claire on assignment to interview a ruthless – but impeccably dressed – dictator Juan Venegas (Juan Pablo Raba), when a military coup breaks out just as she's about to get the scoop of a lifetime. Now, the unlikely trio must figure out how to survive the jungle AND each other in order to make it out alive!"

Reflecting on working with Cena to bring the film to life, Morel shared, "I think we both read it a little while ago, and then the stars aligned at some point and... We both go for it. It's the way the movie industry works. You have a common interest and then one day the stars align. You happen to be able to work together, and that was the case on this one."

The on-screen chemistry between Cena, Brie, and Raba is quite electric, with all three getting plenty of laughs. When asked about creating space for them to improvise a bit, Morel quipped, "They tend to do that when the take is over." He then took a moment to praise them for being "very professional," and added, "I think Juan Pablo, who is the dictator, has more latitude in his character to play improv. So he did that well."

"Alison and John, they're entertainers, they're comedic people from the get go," he continued. "They know the timing, they know where it lands. They know exactly how it plays. So after rehearsing, we got, 'Okay, this is the tone, this is the time. That's great.' And then when I say, 'Cut,' we say they don't cut, and John continues riffing about stupid things that we have in the bloopers in the end, for instance... It was really a lot of fun."

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Notably, this was Morel's second time working with Raba, as the actor also appeared in Peppermint, Morel's dark action film with Jennifer Garner starring as a woman who sets out to get revenge on Raba's drug lord character and his men after they killed her family. Pointing out that Raba is playing a "very different character" in Freelance, Morel said that even though he most often has played "serious or dark characters... He has such comedic potential."

"It was fantastic," he continued, then going on to share how they came to cast Raba in the role. "Because he's Colombian —we were supposed to shoot in Colombia — I sent him the script directly and right overnight, and he called me back. We had dinner and during dinner, he was already starting to improvise how the dictator could be."

"He was immediately," Morel added, then pausing and continuing, "We sensed he was the right guy for that, which again, I was not surprised, because I know he has all the chops for that, but I never saw him in a comical part. So he was a very, very good surprise." Freelance was written by Jacob Lentz and begins playing exclusively in theaters on Friday, Oct. 27.