the film has such a distinct sense of tension and unlike Hitchcock who said that you know he wanted the audience to be aware of things that the characters were not like in sabator or as the cas or sabotage uh in this film we're very much with Emily's character as she's going alongside Josh and and Bono's character and kind of immersed in this world we're with her as she's finding out about things is that how you saw the the it's really the idea was really to uh Embrace that point of view all the way until it
switched brutally uh almost at the end of the film and to uh I think that the idea of create that that and it was like that in the screen play to create right from the start a violence uh uh that the audience would be in contact with strong violence and and uh knowing that anything could happen when you that's the way the first scene is constructed it's just a big surprise and V violence erupt in very brutal brutal way and after that you I think you have the feeling of tension that anything can Happ happen
and uh it allows it allows us to play with the idea of waiting and nothing happening you know and the threat of that something could happen is is more powerful than anything else as as the moving is going through there's a lot of moment where we are tense I think and in fact when you think about it nothing is happening Emily the much has been made lately of the the uh strong female characters uh action heroes in in films or the lack thereof but I sort of feel like your character Kate would sort of roll
her eyes at that I feel like she would sort of say you know what being Fierce and being strong is just one more weapon for her to to wield in a way during this drug war is that correct yes I mean I I actually you know I I think it's a good fight to have to um talk about these kind of female protagonists in you know especially in a sort of masculine action fueled world but um but I actually always saw Kate as more gender Al and I also feel that she's not necessarily A A
perfected Warrior and action heroine who can take down any guy and as the perfect thing to say at every given moment you know she's a very real person and she's a female cop in in a pretty impossible situation in a situation that's incoherent and at times frightening to her even though she's highly skilled and so she's quite a multifaceted um character um which is which gets away from a lot of scripts that I where the woman is either tough or she's the Damsel in Distress or she's sexy or she's not or she's old or she's
young and this character has has an ability to be many many different things B I've heard Alejandro your character described as an avenging angel I don't know if I would describe him as that I almost would feel I almost feel like he's a man who's trying to claw his way back out of hell uh does that sound like something that uh that approaches the character in some way for you yeah I guess like a like a polar bear would um but you know I think um I think uh um the character when I read it
was a very compelling character because you understood him and yet you were repelled at the End by his actions you know so um so it's the type of character I think any actor would love to jump at the at the at the task to build them put him together so um you know I was very lucky and glad to be part of it you know but it's but he's he's got that thing that is really interesting yeah another aspect of the performance that that really struck me is that you use your physicality in a way
with this role in a way I don't think I've seen I mean certainly in Chay it's there but maybe not since traffic you really get in some of their your suspects faces like the way Alandra will just use their space he'll move into their space so often to intimidate them it's really a remarkable bit of acting in a way that I'm I wasn't anticipating did you see that uh well maybe Denine had something to do with that you know it pushing me to you know get closer penetrate Josh the I I feel as if uh
it's been a long day Josh I feel like one of Matt's uh your characters secret weapons is the sort of American insian and sort of smart aliness there's a lot going on there but everything from the the flip-flops that he's wearing to his sort of Let It Roll attitude is a bit of an armor that he has did you see it that way as well yeah I don't I don't know an armor I think it's more of uh he likes to keep people off camber you know he likes to keep everybody guessing and the more
comfortable he is I think other than Alejandro everybody else starts to feel like obviously something's going to happen and it's probably not going to be good and it keeps people sharp you know I mean he's using her her character obviously but I think it's kind of like Deni in a way he keeps laying down crumbs and even though he looks kind of smart aliy and he has that grin on his face there's something that is uh unnerving and intriguing about it at the same time I think I mean that's what I got when I that
wasn't the mention but that's what I got when I saw the movie which I heard is pretty good it's very good as a viewer it also uh it keeps you off guard also but it it makes you feel as if that's kind of keeping him sane too Matt in the midst of all this that sort of of intellectual distance is keeping Matt sort of on the from from going all the way to the edge right yeah and I always saw you know we've talked about this more now than ever but I always saw his personal
life being so separate from his professional life that he was able to be these two characters you know I always saw him as a great family man and a great husband and running around with his kids in the backyard but he doesn't bring that side of himself into this I remember hearing about the Iceman once you know the famous um I don't know if he was a serial killer or whatever but that you know he do the things with his kids and he'd put toys together and then he'd go and kill somebody and then he'd
come back and finish Christmas and he had kept it so separately that when you look at the the the interviews with these guys it's kind of amazing I don't know if it's sickness or if it's just the ability to categorize you know compartment yeah compartmentalize um so yeah I it it with that with taking the sickness out of it that's how I always saw this guy you know I have a professional thing that I have to accomplish and then I have this personal thing that has nothing to do with anybody Roger I think I probably
speak for everyone uh in the theater here when I say I wish I had every frame of every film you ever shot on my wall as art uh just to confusing just CE uh what challenges were there in this film um and I'm thinking of two scenes in particular one is the scene in the caves at the end uh through the night vision and through the with the different varying lights and also the the scene with with John Bernthal and Emily where it's a love scene SL fight scene um there's an intimacy to both of
those moments that I feel like probably presented unique challenges am I correct yeah but no more than anything really I mean sometimes the no everything has its own challenge is you know um sometimes the simplest little closeup is just as difficult I mean a challenge of any film photography of any film is is sustaining the look and the atmosphere and not breaking out of that so if you go into you know I'm going to the night scene and going down to the tunnel we we discuss that at length because the normally you would go into
you a scene like that and you would look at objective shots of what's Happening but in that case they're wearing these night vision systems because it's so dark they can't see well if you do a Hollywood kind of moonlight look then it doesn't make any sense so we took that kind of conversation and and and also the over overall approach to the film was this kind of personal perspective we were EI with Emily or with bicio you know um so we took that to say well we'll we'll do this whole night sequence from the perspective
of the through the night vision systems so you know you take that and kind of use it to your advantage in a way you know you both have uh you and deny both have a background in in documentaries I'm curious about if that informs some of the things in this film in terms of the visual look of it the the documentary sort of feel or especially sort of the bigger action scenes or the or the scenes of uh more Mayhem did the uh did a documentary field come into it at all from my point of
view I should say uh coming from there is just the that there's a uh uh a will uh to be as accurate as possible I mean I wanted from like uh everything involving uh military uh behaviors or vocabulary or uh or the way they were endling weapons or I it was very important for me that it would be as real as possible the same thing with the Mexican culture uh it was something that so from there there's the and the uh from the start uh I think Roger and I agreed right from the start that
there will be a naturalism the light would be very naturalistic embrace the brutality of that son and not try to fight it but embrace it and uh um so yeah I think that there's a a how can I say that in English we want it to to be as authentic as possible so the more it will feel authentic the more the movie will feel powerful and scary in the same time yeah speaking of authenticity Emily you train did you train I read with uh with SWAT teams and with some some uh either ATF or or
FBI agents right in that area talk to me about anything trenchant that they may have given you in terms of that that help the character um that yes I I did weapons training and you know tactical training with local FBI and uh DEA guys predominantly for that initial uh SWAT team assault that you see at the beginning of the film which was the first thing I actually shot and um there were also a couple of EX Navy Seals there and so there were different law enforcement departments teaching me uh how to how to do it
and they'd all sort of uh squabble about what the best way of of doing a SWAT SWAT assault was but um but I I I got there in the end you know we we made a decision but um yeah it was it was incredibly helpful actually to get into the mindset of the character because um you can see how meticulously planned that is just how efficient they are these FBI SWAT teams as they go through a house and um and when I spoke to about four women in the FBI you know to get a more
internal sense of the part um I think none of I think maybe one of them had had to fire her gun everything is so meticulously strategically planned that it's rare that a gun goes off um and so they all said it's disconcerting cuz you you get nervous cuz as you go through that door you never know there'll always be the risk but they've been monitoring and surveying this house for so long they know exactly where everyone sits where they hang out what rooms all of that it was just very interesting to understand the mindset of
of how um how Law Abiding and also how how meticulous they are and therefore understanding why she's completely thrown by being in a world where people just spray bullets everywhere uh as soon as she starts working in this makeshift task force
