FILM CONVERSATION Brie Larson takes aim
The Oscar-winning actress discusses her new film, the ensemble shoot-em-up ‘Free Fire’
In the wake of her wrenching, Oscar-winning role in “Room,” Brie Larson opted for a change of pace and signed up for three back-to-back action movies, including the spring hit “Kong: Skull Island” and the upcoming “Captain Marvel,” in which she plays the title role.
First up is “Free Fire,” an indie from Britain’s Ben Wheatley, that has garnered some of the year’s best reviews. Variety called it an “almost cartoonishly over-the-top action movie [which] crosses the irreverent cheekiness of Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Reservoir Dogs’ with the ruthless spirit of 1970s B-movies.”
Larson is the lone female in the cast and, to her credit, she plays a character who’s as tough – if not tougher – than her male co-stars.
Set in 1970s Boston, “Free Fire” begins with Justine (Larson), a mysterious American businesswoman, and her snarky associate Ord (Armie Hammer) arranging a black-market weapons deal in a deserted warehouse between an IRA arms buyer (Cillian Murphy) and a shifty South African gun runner (Sharlto Copley).
What starts as a polite if uneasy exchange soon goes south when tensions escalate and shots are fired, quickly leading to a fullon shoot-out in which it’s every man (and woman) for themselves.
“I think this was the first physical role I’ve ever done so just exploring that in itself was [exciting],” says Larson. “I essentially was just like dragging myself across the floor for a month and [I remember thinking], ‘Well, I definitely haven’t done this before.’
“I don’t know if I ever will again. It’s really hard ... Everything I had done before was really mental. It was very heady and emotional and this one was the opposite.
“Ben’s whole objective every day was to make sure that we always felt super confused and that we didn’t know what was going on. It wasn’t about crafting some sort of perfect performance. It was about throwing it all out the window and just being panicked and confused.”
Larson isn’t complaining, exactly. In fact, she enjoyed getting down and dirty alongside her costars.
“I think one of my favorite memories is just Ben being like, ‘All right, everybody get in positions,’ and everybody went to their part of the warehouse and then you just watched all of us start rolling around on the ground to get covered in dirt to match everything else that we had done.
“It’s just such a weird thing to see, to see a group of ten people all rolling around in dirt, doing dirt angels on the ground to try and get ready to shoot. “
Amazingly, Larson was given only one costume. Over the course of the production, the pantsuit began to fray along with her character’s nerves.
“Later in the movie, the dirt became mud and that brings on a whole other layer of just feeling gross,” she says. “So, this was a whole new level of just stench.”
Not surprisingly, the close quarters led to Larson and her fellow actors becoming a tight company of players. To this day, the actors still exchange phone calls and emails.
“There’s something great about the intimacy of just being in one place, on one set,” says the actress, 27. “A lot of time is wasted on a set when you’re moving to a new location and grappling with a new space, and this was home.
“It also meant that we could have a clubhouse there. We had a ping-pong table and a dart board and listened to music, and so it was very homey there.”
Among Larson’s co-stars in the movie are 30 assault rifles, but the actress admits she wasn’t crazy about being up close and personal with so much firepower.
“I don’t think I realized how uncomfortable I was with [the guns] until I started shooting and realized that it’s a piece of equipment that I feel odd holding in my hand.
“I’ve never experienced that
“It’s important, as a woman, for me to say, ‘Guess what? We’re lots of different ways,’ and I’m going to do my best to show all the different sides that I can portray. I hope that other women pick up where I’m leaving off, because I can’t do it all.”
— Brie Larson