The dangers of shooting a high-octane, action film packed with stunt driving are obvious in the new 3D Nicolas Cage movie, “Drive Angry.”
But it was the effect those eye-popping sequences would have on audiences that really concerned Canadian director Patrick Lussier.
“It’s odd that you have to work in a format (in which) you have to worry about hurting people,” Lussier said in a recent interview from Los Angeles, noting that quick-cutting 3D can strain the eyes of viewers.
“Because we had so many fast-cut action sequences we had to be very careful how we set the 3D so that when we were rapid-cutting it wouldn’t try and rip your head in half.”
The over-the-top effects in “Drive Angry” explode from the opening sequence, with Cage roaring onto the screen in a speeding car that careens toward the camera.
His hell-bent character, Milton, proceeds to methodically gun down the anonymous low-lifes in his way, pointing the barrel straight at the audience as he fires, sending discarded shells flying toward the screen.
Meanwhile, saturated colours ramp up the heightened reality even more, but push the boundaries of how much an audience can take.
Lussier said he used a “shallower” version of 3D for a fight sequence that takes place inside a moving recreational vehicle, knowing that too much of the effect would overwhelm the viewer.
“It was all very specifically designed to create a painless experience,” Lussier said of his approach.
But that didn’t spare the B.C.-born director from suffering the effects of intense 3D.
“You hurt yourself more because you see it all unfixed as you go,” admitted Lussier, who first toyed with 3D in the 2009 horror “My Bloody Valentine.”
“You fix it and correct all the little things in the colour timing process and the digital media process but up until that point there are plenty of Advil days.”
Lussier, who co-wrote the revenge thriller with his “My Bloody Valentine” partner Todd Farmer, said he unabashedly sought the most outrageous effects and stunts he could think of to take advantage of the in-your-face technology.
But he applauded 3D for offering an impressive depth to the film’s quieter moments, noting he especially loves the way the hair of co-star Amber Heard — who plays a hard-done-by waitress who teams up with Milton — flips around in the fight scenes.
“Even just a dialogue scene where they’re on the side of the road and the wind’s sort of blowing her hair and the three dimensionality of that is, I think, sort of utterly beautiful,” he said.
“3D can be a total roller coaster, stuff flying at you, this and that, but it can also just be so visually mesmerizing. It can make the simplest thing incredibly beautiful.”
Still, much of what unfolds in “Drive Angry” is downright ugly. The story follows the mysterious Milton as he travels from one southern truck stop to another, looking for a band of Satanists that killed his daughter and kidnapped his grandchild.
“I ain’t never telling you where they’ve taken her, never!” one wimpers in the opening scene as Milton approaches, firearm in hand.
“I know,” he intones solemnly before blowing the sucker away.
Lussier, 46, said he was inspired by ’70s-era movies he loved as a kid, including “High Plains Drifter,” “Race With the Devil” and “Dirty Mary Crazy Larry.”
“A lot of those films were sort of forbidden fruit (for me),” said Lussier, who grew up in Vancouver and Prince George, B.C.
“But my sister who was older than me, eight years older than me, she would go and she would come back and she would tell me about them in detail — go on and on about all the horrible events that happened and how amazing they were and I would just sit there completely mesmerized by it and sort of became obsessed with them.”
The Canadian films that stood out for him growing up were “Murder by Decree” and “Silent Partner.”
“‘The Silent Partner’ to me was more interesting than ‘Bay Boy’, not that ‘Bay Boy’ is not a good movie but I think its appeal for an audience is narrower,” he said.
“There was a time when (Canadians) made really commercial movies and they were really good and could compete at very much a commercial level, not just an artistic level, and not just stories about Canada and things like that. They were really impressive stories and I don’t know if that exists quite as much anymore.”
Lussier noted that he had to leave Canada to launch his career. He cut his teeth editing Canadian TV shows before landing a job on “MacGyver.” Things really took off when horror master Wes Craven hired him to be his editor on the “Scream” trilogy.
“I always wanted to get into cutting features and things like that and in Canada, nobody was going to give me a shot and made a point of that,” he said.
“They would even bring Americans in. It wasn’t until I left and came to the States and started working in the U.S. that I would get calls from Canadian filmmakers saying, ‘Hey do you want to come back up and edit our feature?’ And it was like, ‘Um, no I don’t, because you wouldn’t hire me before. Why are you suddenly hiring me now? Because I got street cred?’
“I always remember that sort of bugged me, I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand why you had to go somewhere else to be recognized in your own country. But I would gladly come back and make more Canadian-oriented films.”
“Drive Angry” opens Friday.
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