MANILA, Philippines – Following the sucess of BuyBust, Viva Films is releasing another action movie with a female lead – Maria, starring Cristine Reyes.

Cristine, who is known for doing drama and sexy roles said she didn’t have to make adjustments for her new role as an action star. “I never thought I would enjoy it. And not just enjoy it doing an action film so there’s nothing hard about it, except for the physical thing” she said, referring to the action scenes.

The actress underwent a month-long training for fight scenes and also did weight lifting and gun training to prepare for the role. She also trained some of her friends from the mixed martial arts community, who gave her additional lessons to add to her existing knowledge on the field.

Aside from the physical training, Cristine also watched some action shows such as John Wick and Atomic Blond to prepare for the role. 

Although they had stunt doubles, director Pedring Lopez said around 90% of the stunts were done by the actors themselves.

“We only used the doubles doon sa (in the) diffcult scenes,” Pedring said. “Actually gustong ni Cristine gawin, kami naman teka muna may mga days eh baka masaktan ka so iyon nag-dodouble kami. Pero all through out may double din sila.”

(Actually, Cristine wanted to do them but fo us, we were like hold on a sec, you still have days to shoot and you might hurt yourself. So we had doubles, and throughout the film we had doubles in case.)

Even ahead of Maria’s premiere, Cristine is already looking forward to a sequel. “I can’t wait,” she said.

In Maria, Cristine plays Lily, a former drug cartel assassin who begins her life as “Maria” – a woman with a husband and kids. Her family life is cut short when the cartel catches her. She now vows to take revenge on them for hurting her loved ones.

Maria also stars Jennifer Lee, Ivan Padilla, KC Montero, and Ronnie Lazaro and opens on March 27. – Rappler.com