Kate Beckinsale returns to the action movie world with the revenge-fueled comedy flick Jolt, and ET is exclusively debuting the exciting new trailer!
Jolt features Beckinsale as Lindy, a beautiful, sardonically funny woman with a painful secret. Due to a lifelong, rare neurological disorder, she experiences sporadic rage-filled, murderous impulses that can only be stopped when she shocks herself with a special electrode device. Unable to find love and connection in a world that fears her bizarre condition, she finally trusts a man long enough to fall in love, only to find him murdered the next day.
In ET’s exclusive debut of the Jolt trailer, Lindy explains that she has this “condition” that makes her snap, demonstrated when she physically attacks a fellow train passenger who keeps bumping into her. She receives her “cutting-edge avant-garde treatment” from her therapist, Dr. Ivan Munchin, played by Stanley Tucci. He warns her that the device that sends the jolt through her body isn’t a cure and that “there’s only so much that the human body can take.” When Lindy finds romance with Justin (Jai Courtney) — despite her intense anger-management issues — and he gets murdered soon after, detectives Vicars and Nevin (Bobby Cannavale and Laverne Cox, respectively) eye her for the crime.
Lindy embarks on a vengeance-fueled rampage to take down Gareth Fizel (David Bradley), the man behind her beau’s death. “You spent years being forced to repress your anger but now you have seen how powerful you can be when you embrace your rage,” Susan Sarandon tells Beckinsale’s bruiser as she battles various characters onscreen.
Written by Scott Wascha and directed by Tanya Wexler, Jolt also stars Ori Pfeffer. Beckinsale calls the film a mix of Promising Young Woman and Atomic Blonde, telling ET that Lindy’s condition forces her to react when most people would “be irritated and swallow it.”
“So, it’s a kind of wish-fulfillment thing,” she said. “You know, every time somebody’s manspreading next to you on the subway or saying ‘Cheer up, smile,’ she punches them in the face.”
Beckinsale also shared that she was excited to return to action films and doing her own stunts, especially after having made a name for herself with the Underworld franchise. “For me, Underworld was a giant stretch — I never imagined I’d ever be in an action movie. I sucked at PE, I was not sporty and I never had that in my mind,” she confessed. “You like to kind of stretch and try different things as an actor and this was something I hadn’t done and that kind of took off more than I thought it would. And I sort of felt like I had the expectation of doing that all the time, which really wasn’t my thing. But at the time, it was like, ‘Ooh, it’s such a big risk, it’s a female lead in an action movie.’ But now I think that’s become a little bit more commonplace.”
She added, “What isn’t more commonplace is that it’s an original character that’s not based on a comic book or a video game or something like that.
