It’s been a red letter year for foreign directors making their American debuts. From Kim Ji-woon making a fun throwback to 80’s action with The Last Stand, to long time cinephile favorite Park chan-Wook making the best film of the year (so far) with Stoker, modern American filmmakers could learn a thing or two from their foreign colleagues.
Enter Niels Arden Oplev, who many know as the director of the original The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, makes his Western debut with Dead Man Down, which follows Victor (Colin Farrell) as a ruthless gangleader hellbent on getting revenge on Alphonse (Terrence Howard) for ruining his once happy life. Oplev re-teams with Noomi Rapace, who plays an unconventional love interest in the film, who falls for Victor, but may have her own motives.
I was very fortunate enough to sit down with Mr. Oplev and discuss the film, his transition to the American way of making films, and all of the badass action in the film.
Why did you pick this as your American debut?
Good scripts don’t come very often. When I finished The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo I read a lot of scripts, and either they were standard thrillers. Some of them were well-written, but they were standard, and I felt ‘Well anyone could do this film.’ When I did Dragon Tattoo, we came away feeling we’d made a very special thriller, at least that’s what people have told me. It became this very influential thriller, which people in Hollywood have told me. It’s kind of funny because that was inspired by Hollywood. I think there are themes in that film you’re not really seeing in cinema. They stuff they do to her, that sets the tone for the whole film. Then there was a fair amount of scripts I got that had serial killer elements that I really did not feel like doing because I’ve done that and I want to move in a different direction. Then this came along, and I felt that this had that ‘specialness’ that I was looking for, that at the same time could make a really entertaining, action-packed film. I wanted to make a real American film, but I wanted it to be different and special in a way. Dead Man Down has this really cool script with a lot of characters and a lot of depth to them.
What’s different about making films here as opposed to overseas?
I’m impressed with how they get all the trucks parked! I wonder ‘How the hell is it to work with one hundred and twenty people on a crew when we work with thirty-five?’ Everything is bigger of course, and more expensive. But also the possibilities of what you can do are so much bigger, and that’s really exciting to come here from Scandinavia and work here, I’m like a kid in a candy store. You can bring out a side of yourself that you really can’t afford to.
You did a lot to make these characters seem unconventional. When you have the script and you’re reading it, how do you try to avoid those tropes. In Colin’s case, did you want him to come off as the typical action hero?
Yeah. He’s a man who by destiny and coincidence is turned into someone who becomes really good at taking people down. It was not something that he set out to be. It was not something that he wanted to be. He says in the film ‘I’m not here by choice.’ That character that is really good at what he does, and has the resistance to do it, is much more interesting to me. A really great fireman that’s desperately afraid of fire, is much more interesting than someone who comes in and gets stuff done. I wanted Victor, and Beatice also, to be a complex, human character. I wanted Colin Farrell to live as that because he has that range; to be a character but also be an action hero at the same time. He has credibility in being an engineer, but he also has credibility in being a street soldier because of what has happened.
With Noomi Rapace’s Beatrice, there seemed to be a subtext with how beauty is perceived in society, especially with her scars that appear to be veins. Was that the intention?
I guess you could call it vanity, but to be a beautiful woman and disfigured or to have something as traumatic as that happen. It’s one thing to have it happen to you on the outside, it’s another to have it happen to you on the inside. How do you see yourself, and you might see yourself a lot worse than the world would see you, right? That of course is a major. I don’t know for a man what that would be comparable to. Beautiful women have enormous power in being beautiful, and that’s just the way the world is. To lose that, to feel that you lost that, I guess would be the same for a man if he lost his strength as a man or something. So what that does to your character goes far beyond vanity in my opinion. It’s a loss of control over your world.
I wanted to talk about the violence in the film. There’s a torture scene with rats that I wanted to know how much input you had on it.
It’s scripted, and the interesting thing is all those rats are real. The guy Robert [Vataj] who plays that gangster, was very, very brave actor. Joel Wyman and I worked on that scene, and it’s a defining moment for Colin’s character. That of course, is a very important moment for Victor, and he is a dangerous man, he is a violent man. But he’s not like the other characters, and there’s still a line he doesn’t cross. It is a scene that will remembered. It’s something you don’t really see coming. You know the rats are there, but I don’t think you predict that’s what he’s going to do to this guy.
The big shootout in the house: what were some of the challenges shooting that? I mean, you have a car crashing through a house.
Yeah, it was a Dodge Ram, in its best meaning of the word. It’s a very American car, doing what it was designed to do. I took great pleasure in that. You’ve seen a lot action sequences, but it’s just outrageous how that car comes in and goes through the living room and right into the basement. That set was four floors high, and we had rain and fire coming out. Those were some tough scenes to shoot and we had very little time to shoot it. That whole thing was done in three days, it was really crazy. We had a house we used for the outside, and the inside was a set we built on an old Navy yard in Philadelphia. It was a crazy set. But there’s also a boyish kind of playfulness to be able to make things like that. Very entertaining.
Dead Man Down opens this Friday.
