Finally, The Rock is
returning to action. After a long stretch of family comedies, Dwayne
Johnson is
gunning for the genre that made him a star, hopping aboard director
George
Tillman's latest action flick, Faster. The film is a gritty, 70's-inspired revenge thriller, the kind where the three main characters
barely
require names, going only by Driver, Cop and Killer. Stepping into the
role of
Driver alongside Billy Bob Thronton (as the grizzled, drug-addicted Cop)
and
newcomer Oliver Jackson-Cohen (as the finely-dressed, mentally
unbalanced
Killer), Johnson takes up the mantle of a man looking for revenge
against the
four men who murdered his brother.
"The
script spoke to me, right from the beginning," said Johnson about his
return to
the world of gun-fights and explosions. "It came across my desk about a
year and
a half ago. I read it, I loved it, I loved the character. I'm excited to
get
back into this genre. It's like going back home. I loved the idea that
the
characters were well written against a simple background, a simple
storyline...
When you talk to the writers, it was Bullitt meets The Good,
the Bad
and the Ugly. When those guys write, they write 70's-style. Your
character
has one main focus. It doesn't gets over-intellectualized or too
complicated,
and while the characters can be complicated and well layered, the main
point
remains clear."
Getting
into the specifics of the story, Johnson becomes obviously excited,
stating,
"The story is about two brothers, and one of those bothers is ripped
away from
me...He's killed, and I have to spend ten years in prison. But when I get
out, the
four men who are responsible for that suffer the consequences...We were
involved
in a robbery and the robbery went awry. The guys we were involved with
turned on
us. They execute my brother and shoot me in the back of the head, but I
live.
Through that, we get busted, which is why I have to go away, but the
guys wind
up getting away. And now, ten years later, they have families. One's a
telemarketer, one's a bouncer, one's a pedophile and one's an
evangelist.
"
Sounds
like the beginning of a joke, right? Well, the film is certainly no joke
to
Johnson, who's not only bulked up for the fight sequences, but learned
how to
drive like a very well-trained maniac. His character is called "Driver"
after
all.
"We're doing eighty, ninety
miles an hour," says the Rock, "doing forty-fives on a dime, doing
one-eighties,
reverse one-eighties. It was important for me to learn as much as I can
in the
limited time we had in order to not cut away and allow the audience to
know that
it was me in the car."
"George [Tillman] is
great. He's a very smart director," says Johnson. "We often hear those
words
about directors - smart, passionate. George is very studious. He
provides for
the actor. He'll give you pages and pages of notes, of backstory. The
one thing
I find really satisfying is getting into specific details about
character. When
you're in sync with the director about the type of movie you want to
make, the
arc of the characters, how they intertwine, interact, it really makes
them
different. George comes from a very articulate background and he really
cares
about the material. Oftentimes, in movies, the art reflects the artist,
and his
filmography is pretty diverse-- from directing Soul Food, to Men
of
Honor, to Notorious."
For more fun with Dwayne Johnson, play "The Rock" Trivia!
