Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson Filming New Action Movies in Las Cruces

Lights! Camera! Action!

Our neighboring city to the west has been quite the hotbed of Hollywood film activity the last couple of weeks with two of Tinseltown’s biggest movie stars filming new flicks in and around Las Cruces.

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Yippee Ki Yay, Las Cruces

Bruce Willis and most recently Mel Gibson have been spotted shooting scenes for their new action movies, and Las Cruces residents are soaking it all in.

A gun-toting Willis was seen and photographed last week in the Bank of the West parking lot in downtown Las Cruces shooting a scene for a shoot-em up movie titled Knight.

According to a press release from the New Mexico Film Office, Knight is “the story of a seasoned cop who foils a robbery and must save his daughter in the process.”

Doesn’t sound like anything he’s ever done before. Kidding; only all of them. But I’m still a sucker for a good Bruce-foils-a-robbery-movie.

Lethal Gibson

Monday (11/1), a new Mel Gibson flick began production in the parking lot of Electronic Caregiver on Main just south of downtown Cruces. According to a report from Deadline, “Gibson is back in hero mode” for this one titled Hot Seat.

The plot is described this way by Deadline:

An ex-hacker is forced to break into high-level banking institutions by an anonymous man who planted a bomb under his chair at his office. Gibson plays the man who must try to penetrate the booby-trapped building to get the young man off the hot seat.

Fleeting Meetings with Fame

As you would expect with movie stars of this magnitude, Las Cruces residents are super-excited and social media is filled with posts about their fleeting meetings with fame; many sharing photos, video clips, and details of their interactions with the actors.

Mike Reitzell got to take a selfie with Willis. Reitzell tells me he was eating breakfast at Rosies Café next to where cast and crew were filming and curiosity got the best of him.

"I finished breakfast and went to [the shoot location]. I saw Bruce Willis several times walking by me and I thought what the heck. I said 'Hi Bruce' and he walked over to me and I asked him if I could take a picture and he said yes."

Abriel Leal was caught off guard when she caught a glimpse of Gibson. “I saw him the other day and all I could do was gasp from the shock of seeing a celebrity. I was so star struck I felt like a doofis,” Leal recounted on the Las Cruces Sun News Facebook.

Some Las Crucens have even turned the experience into a payday finding work as extras. “On set about to shoot with another great actor. But now it's a different movie,” wrote Alex Orrantia on his page. “Yes folks I'm working with Riggs. From lethal weapon!”

Kevin Dillon (Matt’s brother) and Sam Asghari (Britney Spears’ man) co-star in Hot Seat, and are also reportedly in Las Cruces.