On the set of Faster

Source: http://www.ugo.com/

Directed by George Tillman, who also directed Soul Food, Notorious and Men of Honor - a diverse filmography, for sure - Faster features a slick and deadly assassin otherwise known as Killer. It's a familiar character portrayed by an unfamiliar face - up-and-coming English actor Oliver Jackson-Cohen. The young, twenty-three year old thespian talked candidly about the backstory that he and Tillman created for the character.

"George asked me where he was from and we worked backwards and forwards with quite a lot of ideas. Fundamentally, all of his problems stem from when he was a child," laughed Jackson-Cohen. "I'm hired to come in and I suddenly find myself in this chaos, but all three of us - me, Dwayne, Billy Bob - we've all got our own demons and the whole situation makes us deal with them. There's nothing sane or normal about this man... The Killer sold a software company and made a huge amount of money. He's bi-polar; he's never been very stable. And there's this kind of thrill, this need to find something that's going to excite him, and he finds it in this."

 Full article after the jump



 After a long - some would say too-long - stint doing family films and kid-friendly adventures, The Rock is finally returning to the action genre...And while the former wrestler now prefers to go by Dwayne Johnson, it's The Rock that many of us have waited to see kick-ass across the big screen for the last few years - at least, those of us who loved The Rundown as much as we did. And so, as if to answer our bloodthirty prayers, Johnson is returning to the genre that made him a star with Faster, the kind of gritty, '70s-inspired revenge thriller where the three main characters don't even need names - going only by Driver, Cop and Killer.

Stepping into the role of Driver alongside Billy Bob Thornton (as the grizzled, drug-addicted Cop) and newcomer Oliver Jackson-Cohen (as the finely-dressed, mentally unbalanced Killer), Johnson takes up the mantle of a man looking for revenge against the four men who murdered his brother.

We recently had the opportunity to loiter around the set of Faster in the midst of a massive shootout, and in-between the barrage of bullets and exploding squibs, talked to Johnson about what drew him to the project:

"The script spoke to me, right from the beginning," said the actor. "It came across my desk about a year and a half ago. I read it, I loved it, I loved the character. I'm excited to get back into this genre. It's like going back home. I loved the idea that the characters were well written against a simple background, a simple storyline...The story is about two brothers, and one of those bothers is ripped away from me. The brothers love each other dearly; he's the only thing I have in my life. He's ripped away; he's killed, and I have to spend ten years in prison. But when I get out, the four men who are responsible for that suffer the consequences."

Directed by George Tillman, who also directed Soul Food, Notorious and Men of Honor - a diverse filmography, for sure - Faster features a slick and deadly assassin otherwise known as Killer. It's a familiar character portrayed by an unfamiliar face - up-and-coming English actor Oliver Jackson-Cohen. The young, twenty-three year old thespian talked candidly about the backstory that he and Tillman created for the character.

"George asked me where he was from and we worked backwards and forwards with quite a lot of ideas. Fundamentally, all of his problems stem from when he was a child," laughed Jackson-Cohen. "I'm hired to come in and I suddenly find myself in this chaos, but all three of us - me, Dwayne, Billy Bob - we've all got our own demons and the whole situation makes us deal with them. There's nothing sane or normal about this man... The Killer sold a software company and made a huge amount of money. He's bi-polar; he's never been very stable. And there's this kind of thrill, this need to find something that's going to excite him, and he finds it in this."

Lastly, Tillman himself spoke about why he chose to tackle this action-fest in the wake of a small, personal drama about the late rapper, the Notorious B.I.G.

"I'm a big fan of '70s action films with a lot of character, a lot of action, but where the action is cemented in the back-story of those characters," answered Tillman. "If you look at a movie like The Driver, that's a film where there's no names - the Driver, the Cop - and with this film, it's a throwback to the '70s, but it's not trying to be those films. It's just paying homage; it was part of the DNA of the story. I felt like this film was being genuine. And all three characters - three completely different stories - are all intertwined together. It had great characters, great themes; it's a real throwback."

We spent a lot of time on the bustling set and had the opportunity to talk to a number of people involved in the production. For more with Johnson, Jackson-Cohen, Tillman and others, check back closer to Faster's November release date for more on our on-set experience.