00:03Amigos de Diario de las Américas, me encuentro con Rick Roman Wu,
00:07director de Shelter, la nueva película de acción protagonizada por Jason Statham.
00:12Mason isn't just an assassin, he's a precision instrument.
00:18Rick, we're living in a TikTok era where everything moves as a fast pace.
00:23And one of the things that I really like about Shelter is how much time you let the story breathe.
00:29The entire first act is dialogue-free.
00:32You can really enter in the life of this character.
00:35How did you, as a director, approach finding the right rhythm in this story?
00:42It's a great question.
00:44I think, you know, we live in this world today because of streaming where we front-load stories
00:50where in the first 60 seconds of the movie, I know everything about the character, everything about the plot.
00:55I'm in this blitzkrieg of information.
00:58And then everything just slows down.
01:00But I already know what's coming.
01:01And I love that this story unfolds in a much more organic and natural way.
01:07It reminded me of A Man on Fire.
01:09It reminded me how much that story took its time for two characters that are dealing with their own form
01:15of exile,
01:16dealing with real trauma, found family in one another.
01:19And then your inciting incident takes it in a whole different direction.
01:23And you're suddenly going into a revenge movie, right, until you can find a young girl.
01:28And in this case, it was really about finding out that this mystery man was really representative of the biggest
01:36theme of the movie,
01:37which is very apropos today, which is about what is justice?
01:41Where's our line in the sand with our own morality?
01:44You know, what is right or wrong?
01:46And it's a global problem that we're dealing with right now.
01:49And we meet this guy that we realize was the guy that carried the gun that was out there to
01:54do the greater good
01:55until he realized that line in the sand got so blurred that am I doing the greater good
02:00or am I doing somebody else's bidding for their own agenda?
02:02And he took a stand and it cost him.
02:04I love that.
02:05I love that moral conflict, you know.
02:07And then the second moral conflict of how do I protect a young kid that is suddenly cast in my
02:13dark shadow?
02:14And keep them under shelter without losing them at the same time.
02:19Why is that?
02:22Most people just say thank you.
02:25Don't ever come up here again.
02:26You have a lot of action sequence, the lighthouse, car chases in the forest, hand-to-hand combat,
02:32fights in a very tight and crowded space.
02:34But Mason never really tries to kill anyone.
02:38What was your biggest challenge, staging and directing those action moments?
02:43Because it feels like very dangerous, but also he's always calm.
02:49Yeah.
02:50One, you know, Jason plays everything in such an authentic way.
02:54But it was also when the hounds are coming at you, some of them aren't there for the right reasons
03:02or they don't know what the right reasons are.
03:04So how can you deal with them in a non-lethal manner?
03:06Or when it's killed or be killed, it's the tragedy of having to fight to the death, you know, with
03:11certain individuals.
03:12And we love that every opposing force coming at him, we got to play with that sense of morality, right?
03:19Like the nightclub sequence of who deserves to be killed and who are you trying to spare,
03:25but yet still get to a girl that you've lost and trying to desperately get her back.
03:30So those those kind of quick decision moral plays were really fun to to examine.
03:43What did Jason and Bodhi bring to their roles that maybe wasn't on the script?
03:50It was chemistry.
03:52It was the fact that they both have this great spirit about them.
03:55I mean, Jason is definitely a larger than life presence when he's when you're around him.
04:00And Bodhi just had this great energy and spirit to her that came from a real place.
04:06She wasn't trying to be tough.
04:07She wasn't trying to remember her lines and just be rehearsed.
04:12She was just doing everything from the heart, you know, and from this raw talent.
04:17And so what you get is this great chemistry.
04:19It's undeniable.
04:19I mean, you and I have been to those movies where we know that everything feels fake in front of
04:24us
04:24and the chemistry is not there.
04:26And but when it is, when it when it feels real, then you got something magic.
04:32And that my job was just to get out of the way and let them dance.
04:35You're gone.
04:37I'm gone.
04:38Unshackled.
04:44The story explored a lot of dualities.
04:46All versus young, isolation versus connection, past versus future.
04:50What do you hope audience take away after watching the film?
04:55It's really the two fundamental things for me is how we all put ourselves in a form of exile,
05:02especially today, you know, whether it's through loss or disconnect to the world around us,
05:08to global catastrophes like the pandemic and how much we really need each other.
05:13You know, we live in a very divisive world and we need each other.
05:17We're social creatures.
05:18And on top of it, it's trying to get back to like just the common sensibilities of what is right
05:24or wrong.
05:25You know, where are our where is our morality today and how do we understand the difference with one another?
05:32I mean, these are all bigger themes.
05:34But my my job is to let you escape for two hours, hopefully put a smile on your face.
05:39But the things that we're talking about now can be part of a conversation on the way home, you know,
05:45and it reminds me of why I love movies like Sidney the Met Maid and other great auteurs that transport
05:51us into places,
05:52but had a social kind of relevancy to them that also allowed me to have a conversation about them.
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