STACK Issue 151 May 2017

14 / 92

14 MAY 2017
visit CINEMA FEATURE
FIREFIGHTIRREFIGHT IR F GH
Essex-born Ben Wheatley
is part of a select group
of British filmmakers –
which includes Edgar Wright,
Neil Jordan and Peter Strickland
– whose distinctive, offbeat
films are defined by a love of
genre and attract a strong cult
following.
Wheatley’s trademark is the absurd
perspective and black humour he brings to the
most serious of subjects, from serial killers in
his 2012 feature Sightseers to the breakdown
of social order in his recent adaptation of J.G.
Ballard’s High-Rise .
His latest film, Free Fire, is an absurdist
take on the siege movie set within the
confines of a seedy Boston warehouse,
where a botched arms deal erupts into a
sustained shootout between a high calibre
cast that includes Cillian Murphy, Brie Larson,
Sharlto Copley and Armie Hammer.
Wheatley took Free Fire on a tour of the
UK prior to its release to gauge audience
response. “I did a similar tour with
High-Rise and the end of the
screenings were always good,
and also a bit ‘what the f–k was
that?’ But with Free Fire there
was a lot more cheering and
everyone was happy, so that was
a relief,” he tells STACK.
After the tough job of adapting
Ballard, was he looking for something a
little less complicated for his
next project?
“I wanted to do
something action-related
that was more straight
visuals,” he says. “High-
Rise had the heavy weight
of dealing with lots of
characters and lots of weird
geography – it was a hard
film to make and Free Fire
was a bit more genre. I
always have a lot of scripts
on the go at any one time,
and it was a script I’d been thinking about for
years.”
That’s not to say making Free Fire didn’t
come with its own set of challenges, not least
creating the protracted firefight that occupies
most of the movie.
“It has to be really specifically written
because it’s not just people shooting,
it’s a tight structure of mini-missions and
objectives," he explains. "Also the way people
British writer-director Ben Wheatley’s new film, the action-thriller Free Fire, pays homage to
John Carpenter and enlists the services of Martin Scorsese. He spoke with Scott Hocking.