The harpoon gun moment is crazy. Tom, while the action is so insane and impressive, I also loved these neo-noir elements in the story and how much Walker is struggling with this weight hanging over him at all times. What was your approach to honing in on the psychological aspects of the character?
TH: Gareth pointed out things like The French Connection and Thief, looking at those leading men, and he wanted Walker to have the authenticity and the presence and the grounded nature of a character from one of these films. So I looked at Walker and thought, how could I take Walker and put him in, and it sounds probably a bit abstract, but like, The Wire? How could I take Walker and have him as a resident acting character in The Wire for six years? So you get to know him well, and there’s an authenticity to his sound, his movement, his face, his problems, his issues. And do we recognize this person? Is he a recognizable silhouette beyond a parody? Is he somebody that you could actually earth?
Because we know in Gareth’s movie, he’s going to go for a hyperrealism. There are elements of fantasy, and the body count is obtuse in so many aspects. In a reality, could you take the basic precedent or the silhouette of Walker and put him in a TV series or a movie or a film where he doesn’t have a body count, but we still feel like we know this person? Who’s a believable cop, who also has an ethical framework which leans towards a moral compass that’s going south, but having some form of heart that is a noble intention and a will to good, but is completely clouded by anger mismanagement, which comes from a deep fear for something that he’s guilty of and he can’t move past that point.
So as a stock character, I wanted to create that, so you have this ingredient for Gareth, and then place that in the obstacle course that becomes the ensemble piece with Forest Whitaker and Luis Guzmán and Justin Cornwell and Quelin Sepulveda and Jessie Mei Li and everybody. Within this world, which is very much a comic book at times for adults, and it’s a computer game at times, there’s a fantasy element to it, there’s genre swapping, there are all kinds of things going on in there, every so often you can land on Walker and believe he would exist in the real world. Then if he can exist in the real world, you then turn him turbo in this world, if that makes sense.
