Here’s a nice lengthy interview/article on “Faster”

The Rundown: Better, Stronger, ‘Faster’: On-Set With Dwayne Johnson; Chris Morris of ‘Four Lions’

credit: MSN James Rocchi

Being invited on the set of an upcoming motion picture is always a delight and a difficulty. It’s a delight because, for any movie lover, the chance to see the workings of the machine in operation — cameras, sound recording, effects and the whole equation in operation — is pure diversion and entertainment.

The difficulty is two-fold: The first part being that watching a film being made is no indicator of its eventual quality, as if you were looking at the ultrasound picture of an unborn child and trying to determine his or her SAT scores. The second is that while you are watching actors and directors and other craftspeople at work, they are at work, so you always feel more than a little in the way, and your presence as a member of the press does not mean that they can necessarily take time away from the multimillion-dollar enterprise that they are actually there for.

Fortunately, last March, on the set of “Faster” — the upcoming road-and-revenge film starring Dwayne Johnson, Billy Bob Thornton and others — the group of journalists I was with got plenty of time with star Johnson and director George Tillman Jr. to talk about old-school moviemaking, real-world stunts and the raw, rich taste of vengeance. The day’s filming involved Johnson walking down a hall, peering into the middle distance — clearly spotting an enemy — and unholstering a handgun larger than his head, or your head — or, for that matter, both put together — and furiously pulling the trigger as an offscreen voice yelled ‘bang’ from behind the scenes to help the make-believe process.

Watching Johnson do this 10 to 15 times lost a certain amount of appeal through repetition, but when the broad-shouldered star, looking buff and rough and ready, stepped away from filming to talk to the press, his easy, elegantly charming offscreen manner made for a warm contrast to the glowering, trigger-pulling figure we’d seen in action a few moments earlier.

Asked why he chose “Faster” after several more family-friendly films, the 38-year-old Johnson lit up. “The script spoke to me, right from the beginning,” he said. “It came across my desk about a year and a half ago, maybe a little bit more. I read it, I loved it, I loved the character, and I’m excited to get back into this genre. Getting back into the action genre is like going back home, so it’s great. Again, love the script, love the idea that the characters were well-written; it’s a simple backdrop, simple story: You took something from me; now, you’re going to pay.”

Johnson plays a just-paroled prisoner on the trail of the four men who not only made off with the loot after a job, but left him for dead with a bullet in his head after killing his brother. Watching Johnson smile and work the room with special-effects makeup prosthesis on his face and head replicating a jagged, ragged bullet wound is more than a little disconcerting. I asked Johnson if his character — known only as “Driver” — is looking to make a score, or just settle one?

Johnson, slipping into the third-person to talk about his character’s motivations, broke it down: “No, the money has no concern to me whatsoever. I started out with nothing, in terms of the character — (just) me and my brother. My brother was the only thing I had. My only interest, my only thought is to make the individuals pay.”

When “Faster” director George Tillman Jr. talked about his film, he wore his influences — and his heart — on his sleeve: “I’m a big fan of the ’70s action films, where there’s a lot of character and a lot of great action, but the action is kind of cemented with a great backstory with characters. My whole thing is if you look at a movie like ‘The Driver’ by Walter Hill, it’s a film where there’s no names. They are just named ‘the driver,’ ‘the cop.’ I just felt like this movie was a throwback to those films in the ’70s … like with Steve McQueen.”

But at the same time, Tillman isn’t just recycling the past — and with Johnson as a wheelman, Billy Bob Thornton as a cop and new face Oliver Jackson-Cohen as a snappily dressed obsessive-compulsive hit man, he knows he’s got some new wrinkles in a classic story of crime gone wrong. “I feel like this movie wasn’t really trying to be those films, it wasn’t paying homage,” he said. “It was just part of the character, part of the DNA of the story. I felt like this film was just being genuine. The three different characters have completely different stories, and they’re all kind of intertwined together thematically. It was a throwback. ”

I asked Johnson, only half-jokingly, which was tougher to handle: the Chevelle SS his character drives, or Billy Bob Thornton? Johnson laughed and gave a fairly diplomatic answer: “It all depends on what day you get Billy Bob. He’s such an interesting, intriguing guy. He’s very talented; he’s very passionate about what he does, especially, I think, when he locks into a role he really loves. I’ve been a fan of Billy Bob for a long, long time. We both have an affinity for old-school, outlaw country music. If I wasn’t in Hawaii (growing up), then I was all throughout the South, living in Nashville, Memphis, Atlanta, Charlotte, Tampa, so my country roots were pretty strong ever since I was 5 years old. So we had that to talk about. Talented guy, very intriguing and very passionate about his acting, and certainly passionate about his music.”

Jackson-Cohen’s no slouch, either; with his character, Killer, clad in a hand-tailored suit in deliberate contrast to Johnson’s T-shirt-and-jeans blue-collar murder machine, the British actor’s offscreen anxiety is the source of much self-deprecating humor: “The costume department has spent huge amounts of money on my clothing, which is very, very nice of them. They had everything tailor-made, and it’s just incredible. The s— thing is that I don’t get to keep anything. On every piece of clothing, it has written, ‘Handmade for Oliver Jackson-Cohen,’ and I don’t get to keep any of it.”

All kidding aside, Jackson-Cohen explained how in this case, the clothes helped make the man — or, rather, the character: “We got together, right at the beginning, and started talking about different looks. We put together this ridiculous GQ look, which was fitted to where he was at, really. There’s a huge part to him that’s OCD, so everything about him has to be perfect, down to his hair. If something is out of line, everything starts to crumble for him.”

Talking with Dwayne Johnson about his character’s journey in “Faster,” we inevitably wound up talking about the character’s tools for the task at hand: a Chevelle SS and a gigantic handgun. Johnson’s eyes lit up when he was asked about his favorite muscle cars.

“The Chevelle, for sure. But I’ve always been a truck guy, a pickup guy. I drove a pickup here to the lot. They presented me with this particular Chevelle, gave me the background on it, why it’s a muscle car, why it’s cool. They also put inside nitrogen boosters, things like that. It’s really a cool car. You’re able to go up against a Ferrari — there’s also a Porsche in the movie, too.” Johnson snapped out of details and got back to the big picture: “Look, as long as the car was fast and badass? And that big gun that I had? It’s all I need.”

Having watched repeated takes — at length — of Johnson mime-blasting away with a huge handgun, it has to be asked: How did he like firing it for real during his weapons training for the film? “It was awesome, man,” he said. “It’s a Ruger Super Redhawk Alaskan. It’s one of the biggest revolvers made. That thing is huge.” Johnson explained that the Ruger Super Redhawk fires a .454 slug: “It’s nicknamed ‘The Bear Stopper,’ and a lot of hunters take this when they go hunt big game, because they’re able to pull it out quickly if big game attacks them. You can stop a bear if you put that bullet right in his skull; it does a lot of damage.”

But even beyond shooting, Johnson also put in time behind the wheel, getting an intense education in high-speed stunt driving. Does he do any of the driving in the film? “Sure, sure. In a big way,” he said. “There’s a lot of the shots that we’re setting up, that we’re getting ready to do in a couple weeks from now where I’m going probably 80, 90 miles an hour, doing 45s [45-degree-angle spin-out stops] on a dime. Doing 180s, doing reverse 180s, we’ll do all of that. It was important for me to learn as much as I can in the limited time we had in order to not cut away, and have the audience know it’s me in the car. That was really cool. ”

Oliver Jackson-Cohen also gets cool wheels: “I got to drive a silver Ferrari. No one really knows what kind it is. But driving school was incredible. The stunt coordinator taught me how to do these flips. It was incredible.” He’s asked how much driving he gets to do on-screen, and the lanky British actor laughed, “Absolutely none! I’m on a biscuit  [a towed prop car] for most of it, and I pull into frame and out of frame. I don’t think they trust me, insurance-wise. Next week, we have quite a lot of driving that we’re shooting, so I don’t know whether or not they are going to trust me and actually allow me to drive the car … but hopefully they do.”