Siege mentality

6 DAYS I London’s infamous Iranian Embassy showdown abseils into cinemas…

It’s such an iconic moment for UK history,” director Toa Fraser (Dean Spanley) tells Teasers. He’s talking about the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege. The moment when black-hooded SAS men stormed into the building in London’s Princes Gate, after 26 people had been taken hostage in the embassy by an Iranian-Arab group demanding the freedom of political prisoners.

Now the subject of Fraser’s new film 6 Days, it stars Jamie Bell as SAS team member Rusty Firmin (who wrote a book about the experience) and Mark Strong as Max Vernon, the Met Police chief inspector who led negotiations. With Abbie Cornish playing on-thescene BBC reporter Kate Adie, the film takes viewers through the tense six-day siege before the SAS step in.

“It’s not like a straight-out action movie,” says New Zealand-raised Fraser, who promises the film gives voice to both sides of the struggle, with Ben Turner starring as Salim, the main negotiator for the gunmen. “We’re on the outside at the beginning and then we go in,” continues the director. “At least when Max makes the connection, we become more on the inside and it’s maybe not what we expected.”

You might think Fraser would identify with Cornish’s battle-hardened journalist (his Fijian-born father worked for BBC Radio 4 during the

siege). It was in fact Strong’s character that most resonated. “The idea of this cop who had never dealt with a man with a gun before, literally… he was thrust into this incredibly high stakes situation,” he says. “Max told me himself he felt like a failure, having not managed to achieve a negotiated peaceful solution.”

Recreating interiors in a warehouse in New Zealand, the production then decamped to London to shoot at Princes Gate. “It was an eerie feeling,” says Fraser. “You can still see the cracks – the footprint of something having gone down there.” Yet in his eyes, the siege represents an ugly – but very real – truth. “There comes a point in our history where, if we want that stuff [peace, tranquillity], we need to engage with our shadow side, which for me is what the SAS represents.”

ETA | 4 AUGUST / 6 DAYS OPENS THIS SUMMER.