'Dead Man Down' Brings Action and Romance to the Big Screen
If you’re wondering what type of movie you’ll feel like watching this weekend – whether an action movie, a love story or a foreign-flavored film – Dead Man Down promises to deliver all.
Set in New York City, Dead Man Down tells the story of a gang member named Victor and his quest for revenge from the gang’s merciless leader, Alphonse. His careful planning goes slightly awry when his neighbor, Beatrice, reveals to him that she’s been watching his every move. She then blackmails Victor to help her seek retribution against the man that altered her life permanently. Victor and Beatrice join forces to get their payback, but things go differently than planned.
Entertainment Affair sat down for an interview with the cast of Dead Man Down, including Hollywood heartthrob Colin Farrell as Victor, Academy-Award nominee Terrence Howard as Alphonse, and from Prometheus and the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Noomi Rapace as Beatrice.
A charming Colin Farrell let his funny side come out to tell us about his character, the quiet Victor, for whom he had to rely on his acting skills more so than on script lines to deliver his performance. “He keeps his emotions very close to his chest. But also, words are potentially dangerous for Victor,” he said. Farrell also talked about working with Rapace for the first time, “I had such a great time working with Noomi. Our rooms were right beside each other in the hotel. We shared a balcony, and we'd go [there] and talk about the day’s work. We just riffed, all free form. It was fun. I felt I had a great dance partner.”
The beautiful Noomi Rapace, who for the role of Beatrice had to wear heavy makeup that made her look scarred, told us about going out of the movie set while still wearing the makeup. "People stared at me," she said. The actress is no stranger to the sacrifices that actors have to make for some movie roles. For the role of Elizabeth in The Girl With the Dragoon Tattoo, Rapace went through a major change of look, “They dyed my hair black, and put a lot of piercings on me … people thought I was this punk girl.”
Terrence Howard told us that he found inspiration to play the villain role of Alphonse from issues he was going through in his life that had tested his “strength of character.” Reflecting on what playing the roles of villains entails – Howard has played a great number of them throughout his career – he said “there’s no good guys and bad guys – just human beings. You can really discover more about humanity by going through the darker octaves.”
We also met with the movie’s director, Niels Arden Oplev, and writer J.H. Wyman. This is the first studio movie for the Scandinavian director, following the success of his critically acclaimed movie The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. When Arden read Wyman’s script for the movie, he immediately thought “This is it. I was really thrilled to find a double-intriguing revenge [story] that had the potential to be an American film with cool action and really entertaining [value], which I really wanted my first American film to be.” This is the first collaboration for Arden and Wyman.
