HIS AIM IS TRUE
Michael Douglas hopes to make a good point by playing a bad guy
michael Douglas’ latest film role has given the longtime gun control advocate plenty of ammunition. In “Beyond the Reach,” opening Friday, he plays a business tycoon who accidently shoots someone while on a hunting trip in the Mojave Desert, then tries to take out his young guide (Jeremy Irvine) to cover it up.
“If there was going to be any redeeming value to this movie other than [that it’s an] exciting thriller,” Douglas tells the Daily News, “it would be pointing out the idealism of the young man ... versus the corruption of somebody who’s basically bribing everybody left and right just to get the biggest (hunting trophy) that he can.”
The two-time Oscar winner’s entitled weekend hunter could be the meaner cousin of Gordon Gekko — who Douglas played in “Wall Street” (1987) — triggering a whole chain of events by irresponsibly firing off his rifle and accidentally bagging two-legged game.
Douglas was so enamored of the adaptation of the Robb White novel “Deathwatch” that he doubled as a producer on “Beyond the Reach.” The left-leaning 70-year-old screen legend wanted to deliver a message while portraying a gunwielding character.
“I’m a strong advocate of gun control and I’m always conscious of how it’s going to be perceived,” Douglas says. “My thing has always been, you’ve got to make the drama of the movie work first.
“In (the 1979 thriller) ‘The China Syndrome,’ I just got involved with a monster movie — the monster being this nuclear power plant that’s out of control,” he adds. “But unless you make the thrill part work, then your subliminal messages don’t come across. You can’t hit anyone over the head; they’re not going to like it.”
More recently, the cause that’s been closest to Douglas’ heart has been fighting anti-Semitism. Last month, he published an op-ed in the L.A. Times chronicling the pain of watching his 14-year-old son Dylan reduced to tears during a European vacation last summer after a stranger hurled insults at him at a hotel pool.
“I remember just looking at him in the [hotel] room, because he had recently gotten bar mitzvahed and someone gave him a Star of David, which he wore around his neck,” recalls Douglas. “I remember thinking, ‘This can’t be,’ and I went back down, but sure enough it was."
The actor credits Dylan, one of his two children with wife Catherine Zeta-Jones, with bringing spirituality into his life.
Like his son, Douglas is the product of an interfaith marriage — his father, actor Kirk Douglas, is Jewish, while his mother, Diana Dill, was raised in the Church of England. And his advocacy has earned him Israel’s 2015 Genesis prize, awarded to individuals who have been an inspiration to the worldwide Jewish community.
“I’ve always kind of jumped into the fire in opening my mouth on a lot of different issues,” says Douglas, who famously claimed two years ago that his throat cancer may have been caused by oral sex.
“Just based on the response (the open letter) has been getting, it needed to be said.”
His family, after all, is his priority — and one of the reasons he enlisted in the Marvel cinematic universe with a major role in “Ant-Man.” Nothing is cooler for his two youngest kids than having a superhero for a dad.
“For a long time, most of my movies, my kids could never see,” says Douglas. “For a long time they thought all Dad does is make pancakes.”