Actor Joel Kinnaman talks to The Inside Reel about approach, training, energy, texture, humor and drama in regards to his new action film from director John Woo: “Silent Night”, being released by Lionsgate.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 (screaming)
00:02 (dramatic music)
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00:37 - My first question to you is, you know,
00:39 you've done different kinds of action films over the years.
00:42 Everyone has their own identity.
00:44 Everyone has their own cadence.
00:47 Could you talk about that?
00:47 'Cause obviously "Woo" is different than most,
00:50 but it also, there's an emotional resonance
00:53 that his films have that, you know,
00:55 sometimes other action films don't have, per se.
00:58 - Yeah, especially this one.
01:00 It was, you know, it was a very emotional film
01:05 and, you know, the scenes with the family,
01:10 you know, of course, this film is about a father
01:13 whose son gets killed by a stray bullet
01:16 from a gang shootout and is unable to sort of reconnect
01:21 with love, really, and with, unable to reconnect with life
01:26 and his wife, and just gets consumed by this idea
01:30 of making the people that took the light of his life away
01:34 pay for it.
01:35 And, you know, so it's a very emotional, dark journey,
01:40 you know, into that hole.
01:44 And the way John shot the film, you know,
01:49 he gave us a lot of room to explore.
01:53 And, but then, you know,
01:56 because there's no dialogue in the scene,
01:58 it gave him an opportunity to really, you know,
02:01 design a beautiful shot that tells the whole story
02:05 of a scene.
02:06 So, you know, as you saw the film, so, you know,
02:09 there's a lot of like very cinematic long takes
02:13 that sort of balance up the hardcore intense action.
02:16 So it becomes a really interesting and unusual film.
02:20 And the response that we've gotten is that the people are,
02:23 you know, sitting at the edge of their seat.
02:25 So it's really good to hear.
02:27 (dramatic music)
02:30 - Shots fired, shots fired.
02:38 - All units, please respond.
02:40 (dramatic music)
02:42 (beeping)
02:57 (dramatic music)
02:59 - Well, because the thing is, I mean, he, you know,
03:17 this is a, and nothing is, it's slightly smaller budget.
03:20 So more creative decisions have to be made.
03:23 I mean, that there's not as much coverage,
03:25 but that requires, you know,
03:26 you exactly knowing what he's doing.
03:28 Can you talk about that collaboration,
03:30 knowing how he does either the fight sequences,
03:34 the gun sequences, or like the car chases?
03:36 Could you talk about that?
03:38 Because it has to be very precise.
03:40 - Yeah.
03:42 So when it came to the action part of it,
03:45 I spent a few months before we started shooting,
03:50 training with this stunt crew that I've been working with
03:55 over the years.
03:56 So that was sort of my contribution to this,
03:59 that I was able to bring that team into this film.
04:03 And it became a really nice and beautiful blend
04:06 of sort of the new and the old,
04:08 where, you know, with John's like, you know,
04:11 incredible OG master visual storytelling,
04:15 but then with the fight coordinators and stunt performers
04:19 that are, you know, very, you know, they're cutting,
04:22 they're the best in the world.
04:24 And we blended these things together,
04:28 and we trained a lot leading up to the film,
04:31 and we wanted to make all the fight sequences really messy.
04:35 Also because my character,
04:36 he's not some special forces guy or some martial artist.
04:40 So to make the fight sequences exciting,
04:43 we just wanted them to feel very gritty and realistic
04:47 and not choreographed.
04:49 So what we did was we choreographed sort of anchor points
04:53 in the fight sequences.
04:55 And then the way that we got from one end to the next,
04:59 that was somewhat improvised and a real scramble,
05:04 as you talk about, if you talk about fights.
05:06 And it makes for like messy,
05:11 but fights that have an intensity.
05:14 And John really embraced all of that.
05:16 And also I was really impressed
05:19 of how he wanted to shoot the action,
05:21 'cause he also really wanted to shoot the action
05:24 in longer takes without cutting.
05:26 And that's the more modern side of action filmmaking
05:30 that Chad Stahelski showed to perfection
05:34 in the John Wick movies.
05:35 And it demands that the actor does the majority
05:39 of the action because it's in the cuts
05:41 that you switch out from the stunt to the stunt guy.
05:43 So if you don't cut, the actor's got to do it all.
05:46 So we had to design the fight
05:48 so I could do the whole fights.
05:51 And yeah, I was really happy with how it turned out.
05:54 It feels realistic and dynamic.
05:56 [dramatic music]
05:59 [clicking]
06:03 [gunshots]
06:13 [gunshots]
06:15 - Well, yeah, it makes everything else feel earned.
06:25 I mean, the thing is, is that obviously your character
06:27 can't speak because of what happened.
06:30 And it's sort of interesting,
06:31 those silences mean just as much when he's pondering stuff.
06:35 You know, either a little bit of the humor,
06:37 but mostly it's like, if anything, it's a gallows humor.
06:40 Like when he's watching the video,
06:42 in order to learn how to fight,
06:44 you know, those little things make it feel earned.
06:47 Can you talk about looking at the psyche
06:48 of those silent moments?
06:50 'Cause the silent moments make everything
06:52 he does later earned.
06:55 - Yeah, so, I mean, the big challenge was,
06:58 you know, always having the emotional intensity,
07:03 but not being able to use any words to sort of express it.
07:08 So it puts even more pressure on the, my internal life,
07:12 because it's, everything has to be in the eyes.
07:16 And the thing that I realized really quickly is like,
07:18 you can't hide, you know, actors hide a lot behind,
07:22 like how you say something.
07:23 And then they, you know, they say it with an intensity,
07:27 but it's not really filled with emotion behind it,
07:31 but you get away with it because, you know,
07:33 because you know how to say the line, the delivery's good.
07:36 But here, because it all has to be in my eyes,
07:38 like I couldn't get away with anything.
07:40 So I had to prepare emotionally a lot more intensely
07:44 than I would for other films.
07:46 And I found myself having to prepare for like almost
07:51 every take of this film in the same way that I would prepare
07:53 for the most emotional scene of a film in another film.
07:57 So I was acting like a madman on the set.
08:00 I was like screaming and, you know, kicking things
08:04 and crying like right before the camera would start.
08:06 And then, and then when the camera rolling, you know,
08:08 I got quiet, but then you have that sort of inner fury
08:12 and desperation, because it just,
08:16 you have to create that intensity in the eyes
08:19 and also to create those little facial movements
08:22 that you only get when you're filled with a lot of emotion
08:25 or intense thoughts.
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