Bana relishes delving into dangerous territory
TORONTO — Presented with the chance to play either a troubled ex-boxer eager for redemption or a volatile psycho-killer with a hair-trigger temper, Eric Bana saw little choice at all.
He leaped at the opportunity to let loose as the volatile villain in Deadfall, a morally bereft robber named Addison whose crime spree reaches its apex in a tense Thanksgiving day standoff with Jay, the fallen fighter.
Bana notes both roles were open when he was given the screenplay for the lowbudget thriller. His agent thought he’d prefer the more sympathetic character but Bana says he was immediately drawn to Addison’s dangerous complexities.
“It was the most interestingly written character as far as I was concerned,” Bana said.
“I really loved his dialogue, I loved the predicament he was in and knew that it would be a great challenge.”
It helped that there were multiple layers in his personality to play with, says the 44-year-old Australian.
“It was really well-written and very descriptive and I actually found it quite humorous as well. In a sort of twisted way,” adds Bana, who adopted a deep Southern U.S. drawl for the part.
“I felt like there was real humour there without it being deliberately so.”
Such levity is key to balancing a simmeri ng brutality that pervades Deadfall, he a c know l - edges. The story follows Addison and his younger sister Liza as they scramble towards the Canadian border in the wake of a botched casino heist.
They are forced to split up and proceed on foot just as a blizzard descends — creating near-whiteout conditions that provide a stark visual backdrop as each sibling entangles unwitting bystanders in their escape.
Things get complicated when Liza hitches a ride from Jay, played by Charlie Hunnam, who is en route to a Thanksgiving homecoming with his parents June and Chet, played by Sissy Spacek and Kris Kristofferson.
Meanwhile, Addison leaves a trail of destruction as he trudges through the remote Upper Peninsula of northern Michigan, attracting attention from the foolhardy Sheriff Becker, played by Treat Williams, and his downtrodden deputy daughter Hanna, played by Kate Mara.
It all comes to a head when everyone meets at June and Chet’s remote farmhouse, where Addison’s dark proclivities are fully revealed.
“When you’ve got a character like Addison who has an internal kind of moral compass that’s unflinching, I think that always makes those characters a bit scarier because you know that you can’t reason with them and that they have total conviction in the fact that what they’re doing is the right thing,” he says.
Bana, whose diverse credits include playing a tortured super-hero in Hulk, an idealistic Mossad agent in Munich and a loopy rugby fanatic in Funny People, says he relished the chance to explore a monstrous mind.
“I’ve been lucky enough to be able to jump around a bit and haven’t been grossly pigeonholed, which has been nice but also a kind of conscious thing,” he says, adding he will continue to seek as varied roles as possible.
Bana says Deadfall was shot last winter in rural Quebec, about an hour from Montreal. He notes temperatures dipped down to minus 20 C.
“It was beautiful. It was freezing cold, obviously, but I’d much rather be cold and have a convincing set than trudging around in fake snow being comfortable,” says Bana, who lives in Melbourne.
Deadfall opens in Toronto, Calgary and Montreal on Friday and is expected to open to wide release soon.