It’s time for the penultimate installment of Faster The Chronicles, the weekly series where IGN has partnered with a bunch of our online colleagues to bring you all the details about the latest, possibly greatest Dwayne Johnson movie of them all — Faster!
Head over to our pals at UGO, where the one and only Matt Patches has an exclusive interview with Maggie Grace. Color us jealous, but then again… we got to talk to the film’s other star hottie, Moon Bloodgood. Can’t complain then, can we?
An old-school revenge movie, Faster stars Johnson — let’s just call him The Rock, shall we? — as “Driver,” an ex-con who is out to seek revenge for his brother’s murder, which happened during the bank robbery gone wrong that also landed him in jail. Billy Bob Thornton costars as the lawman (“Cop”) who is on his trail, while Oliver Jackson-Cohen plays a hitman (“Killer”) who is engaged in a game of cat and mouse with The Rock’s character.
Bloodgood plays Marina, Cop’s girlfriend. And for those who were worried that this film might turn out to be some modern-day Shakespearean dialogue fest, the actress says you can rest easy.
“Well, Dwayne doesn’t say much in this movie,” she laughs. “I think it’s perfect. He’s just kind of quiet and intense and determined. And when we all did the read-through it was really good. I think saying less is always better. I do have a big scene with a lot of dialogue, but so much can be conveyed by the visual means, and I think [director] George [Tillman, Jr.] is good with that.”
Faster is, of course, faster. Like, chockfull of car chases and action scenes fast. But Bloodgood, no stranger to action after doing projects like Terminator: Salvation, says that she actually sat most of the high-octane stuff out this time around.
“It’s more dramatic stuff,” says the actress. “It’s more about my relationship with Cop and there’s some other stuff that’s going on that will be revealed in the movie — his relationship to me and his relationship to his son. You know, Cop’s f#@ked up. He’s a drug addict. I think they do talk about how you can’t tell if he’s a good cop or a bad cop. You don’t know what he is. I got to have a great scene where I got to slap Billy Bob around a little bit. It was great. It’s one of those moments where you’re like, ‘This is awesome, getting to slap around Billy Bob.’”
Indeed, who wouldn’t want to slap around Billy Bob?
“Marina is someone who loved Cop and had a child and wanted to make it work and helped him through a rough time,” says Bloodgood, though she’s hesitant to give too much detail regarding her character and Cop’s back story.
As for the car chases in the film, she explains that — perhaps not surprisingly — Steve McQueen’s Bullitt was an inspiration for Faster. But beyond that, Bloodgood says that Tillman, Jr. had very specific “themes” outlined for each character.
“I know that when George and I sat down there were all these images,” she says. “He’s really interesting. For each character he has a theme. I can’t remember what it was for all of them, but for Driver it was all about his eyes. For Cop it was something else. Each character had a thing that was their theme. He also had a visual idea of what each person would be. I can’t remember totally what it was, but I remember with Driver it was the eyes. He showed me all these pictures of different eyes and the visuals he wanted to put on the screen. Because that’s what you have to master, making it visually interesting and still make the story the most important thing.”
Perhaps placing an undue burden of expectation on her director, Bloodgood actually raises the name of the almighty Francis Coppola when talking about Tillman, Jr.
“I was just watching Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula last night,” she says. “So much of that is visual, but you have to have a story and actors who are carrying out a [tale] that is interesting and isn’t flat. It has to have a full body to it and an arc and all that good stuff.”
And since the actress didn’t get to do much action in this film, it fell to a different kind of special effect to keep things lively.
“Well, she’s a heroin addict, so I get to do a scene where I actually got to get these eye contacts that were all bloodshot,” she laughs. “That was really fun to do. Playing the heroin scenes was great. Billy Bob was awesome and gave me all this great feedback. It was intense, but good. I had throw-up all over me. It was really gross! I loved it. It’s a great role, especially for a female actress. When you’re always the girl with the gun or the tough chick, it’s nice to be different… a little vulnerable.”
Faster will be released on November 24, but first, make sure you check in for the last part of Faster The Chronicles next week at Collider.
