Renny Harlin Discusses The Bricklayer: Action & Emotion & Action

Alright, hey everybody it's Alison with FlickDirect and I am here at Popcorn Fright's special screening of The Bricklayer and I have the opportunity to speak to the one and only Renny Harlin. Hello sir, how are you? I'm very well, thank you. Have you seen this movie with an audience yet? I have never seen this audience with a movie before. Seriously, I've never seen the movie on a big screen.

Of course when I've been, you know, mixing it and doing the sound and everything, but never in a movie theater, never with an audience before. So this is, this is to me, it's the culmination of my work that starts from the development of the script and the casting and the crewing and the shooting and the editing. Now it meets the silver screen and the audience and we see how they react.

So it is the best moment of my life. Fantastic. What for you will be the biggest moment, do you think, how the audience reacts to it? Two things, because I wanted to make this movie kind of like an old-school movie. There's no digital effects, there's no digi doubles, it's all real, the action is real, like the movies that I grew up with that I fell in love with.

So that's what I wanted to do, so I would love to feel that the audience reacts to the action and really feels it. Yeah. And then I'd love them to react to the emotion of the movie because I think the movie without an emotion is an empty shell. So I hope that they will respond to the kind of emotional story that I'm trying to tell. And I feel like there really is a lot of emotion in there, especially for Vale, because this was somebody, not to give anything away, but this was somebody that he really trusted and has now kind of turned on him and he, you know, has to do certain things that he didn't necessarily want to do.

For me this movie is about friendship, love, redemption, about missed opportunities, about lost opportunities, about two ships passing each other in the fog and all those bittersweet moments of life. But it has great action and that's one thing that you as a director are sometimes known for, really great action. So when you read the script, tell me what your thought process was about those action scenes.

I actually added action to the movie. When I read the script I thought it was fantastic, but I said, "Hmm, the audience is going to need a big action scene in the first 20 minutes of the movie." So I actually wrote the first action scene in the movie. I wrote it into the movie and I said, "I think we need this." So my reaction was, "Great action, but we need more." I think the audience is gonna love the action, so I think they'll agree with you on that.

Talk to me a little bit about the actors. We were talking with the producers, especially about Aaron Eckhart, who to me was always so sophisticated and he's a much grittier role in this part, but still has that sophistication. So tell me about casting him. Well, you know, there are only so many action stars in the world. There's not like a Keanu Reeves born every month.

So it's very hard to cast an action movie without going to the obvious choices, and not that everybody would love to go to those obvious choices, but because everybody does, they are never available. So you have to invent somebody new, and for me the fact that Aaron is known as a great dramatic actor and also a real physical guy, he was like the perfect combination.

To me, I would dare to say he is pound for pound the best actor to do action in a very long time, and he does action for real. Every actor likes to say, "Oh yeah, I did all my stunts." Well, try to believe that. In Aaron's case, he really did, and I swear that you will never see a stunt guy in his place in this movie. It's all him. Wow. Well, he did a phenomenal job.

Nina Dobrev was great. The whole movie is really good, full of action, full of heart, which I really enjoyed. Thank you so much for your time. I hope everybody enjoys it tonight. Thank you, such a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks. [music] [BLANK_AUDIO]