Anthony Hopkins to star as ex-logger brute in Go With Me

This news tickles me in a few ways. Go With Me, currently in post production in Sweden, stars Anthony Hopkins, Julia Stiles, Ray Liotta and Hol Holbrook. Based on Castle Freeman Jr's novel, a thriller set in a logging community, Julia Stiles plays a young woman who turns to ex-logger Anthony Hopper for help when an ex-cop-turned-violent crime lord (Ray Liotta) harasses her.


I'm always tickled at the thought of seeing Anthony Hopkins in anything—if only to hear his beautiful voice—but I'm especially tickled that the 77 year old Hopkins brings such cojones with him that a young woman in distress would turn to him for help. Take a look at the first image (above) released from the film. His character is described as a 'powerful brute'. Does Hopkins look like a 'powerful brute' to you? Somebody must have seen Silence of the Lambs. Without knowing the legendary actors cv, I don't think you'd pick Hopkins out of a lineup to play a brute. Good casting works like that and we've seen Hopkins bite off brutish roles before; usually he has a quiet charm about him that can turn in an instant. I'm intrigued to see how this brute presents himself.
I'm also tickled that Daniel Alfredson directed; before David Fincher did Girl with the Dragaon Tattoo, Alfredson sat in the director's chair for all three films based on Steig Larson's Millennium Trilogy, putting Noomi Rapace on the worldwide map. Sadly, Rapace is not in this one.

The book's title tickles me too —does Go With Me not sound like another YA love story? Lastly, I'm tickled at how the book cover looks. Or looked, past tense. Here's the initial cover, depicting a tree filled scene. There's nothing ominous about it at all; if anything the cover gives me a nice Walk in the Woods vibe.

Looks like a pleasant read

Until a marketing person got the book in her hands and ...

That's better. This cover screams THRILLER!

I'm guessing lots of you read this book when it came out in 2008:

A young woman recently relocated to a tiny Vermont logging town, Lillian is menaced by a mysterious stalker named Blackway. This one man—who kills her cat, forces her boyfriend to flee the state in terror, and silently threatens her very existence—is a force little understood by the local figures to whom she turns for help. Yet, in this spare and powerful tale, Lillian enlists the powerful brute Nate and the curmudgeonly Lester to take the fight to her tormenter as a raggedy quartet of town elders ponders her likely fate. With simple strength and extraordinary force, Go with Me is a riveting modern fable of good provoked to resist evil.

The film is slated to come out sometime this year! Have you read it? Are you pumped? Did they get the casting right? I'll add Go With Me to my Books to Read Before You See the Movie aka Movies Based on Books 2015 and update you with a trailer when I see one. Let me know if you see it first.

5/15/2015 I've just read a wonderful review of another book by Castle Freeman, Jr. "All That I Have" from Trish at The Bowed Bookshelf.  Give it a read here.