Adam Cassidy (Hemsworth) is a recent college grad, trying to get ahead at his entry-level job at Wyatt Corporation. When the CEO (Oldman) enlists him as a company spy for his rival (Ford), Adam becomes a pawn in a corporate game bigger than he could have ever imagined. He must find a way out from under his ruthless boss who will stop at nothing to win a multi-billion dollar advantage.
Expect her movie review this week.
On Technology:
LUKETIC: I was in Las Vegas yesterday and I lost my iPhone and I didn’t have a passcode on it. It’s a whole thing that’s going on right now. Sorry, you guys are all protected. [Laughter] Honestly, I’ve been an earlier adopter of technology since I was a kid. It’s always been part of my life. It’s always been there. This movie really sort of spoke to me. It’s something I’ve been thinking about since Twitter, since Facebook, since all these – since all this sort of data gathering, data farming. When I read the script, I was like, “Oh my god. This is so timely.” We didn’t realize how timely it was given what’s happening with Snowden and all that sort of information. I realize now how powerful it is. It’s interesting.
HEARD: I don’t think we’ve caught up with regards to mechanisms to protect information at the same rate as our ability to gather that information. We haven’t caught up with a way to protect it and harbor it nearly as quickly as we’ve learned to gather it and I think that’s interesting. It could not be relevant in today – in what’s going on with Snowden and Dessange and the whole idea of personal privacy and liberty and how that can conflict with a more omnipotent system of gathering and what that says about individual liberties and how its protected.
LUKETIC: Everything we’ve ever written in an email is now in a database – which was just uncovered this morning. If you read this morning’s news…. It’s horrifying.
HEARD: That’s what’s so scary about it. Our personal liberties are always going to be in somewhat conflict with our necessity to be protected. Those two can kind of serve as enemies to one another. As you see right now with what’s going on with Snowden and it’s an interesting question – it’s relevant right now.
FORD: One of the things the film talks about which I think is to me the most interesting, because I’d always presumed there was no such thing as privacy, is that if you offer people something or create a perceived need or value in a service that you offer, people will forget about – they will want that newest wrinkle in technology and will give up freedoms and personal privacy in order to have it. That’s the nature of marketing or this kind of device or devices.
HEMSWORTH: I think it’s interesting, too, that the biggest threats these days is cyber warfare and how dangerous that is. They talk about terrorist groups now hacking into power plants and all these things that are now run by computers and everything’s connected. We’re all so connected by this whole – the internet and all this stuff – and all the sudden, we don’t have these things in place to protect it. We’ve advanced our technology so quickly that we haven’t thought about all the repercussions with it.
On Working With Gary Oldman:
FORD: Well, I worked him, I guess it was 20 years ago, on Air Force One. When I knew that he was attached to this film it was a big part of the draw. I’d enjoyed very much working with him in Air Force One. I was looking forward to the opportunity to work with him again. He’s fun. You never know what he’s going to do, what he’s going to look like, who he’s going to be…. I enjoyed it. We had a good time.
HEMSWORTH: It was great to sit there and watch Harrison and Gary go head to head, particularly in those last few scenes when they’re in the room together. In the scene my character watches, and in real life I watched. It was very exciting. You don’t know what either of them are going to do.
LUKETIC: In that face-off scene, there’s tension in the air and it’s very very palpable. It was fantastic. Highlight of my carrer.
FORD: So far.
On How Ford’s World View Differs From His Character’s:
FORD: The character’s perceptions about competition creating innovation are appropriate to the story that we’re telling and the world that he lives in. This doesn’t apply [to me]. Acting isn’t about competing. Acting is about cooperating. Acting is about collaboration. It’s about utility or usefulness – your capacity to add to the work that’s already been done, will be done. You’re just part of a team. So I never feel competitive about acting.
On Hemsworth Taking A More Adult Role:
HEMSWORTH: This is completely different from the – from anything I’ve done before. I think what I initially related to was this kid has something that everyone can relate to. He’s trying to climb the ladder. He’s starting at the bottom and he’s been at the bottom for a while and he’s kind of fed up with being there. He’s at a point where he’s got big ideas and big hopes and they don’t get him anywhere really. All of sudden, he’s caught in a position where he’s being told to do something that he wouldn’t normally do. Then he starts going down this road and he starts buying into it, I think, the whole life and power. He gets a taste for it. I liked that he had something that everyone could relate to. From the beginning, he wants to climb the ladder, he wants to be successful. He gets pushed down a road that he wouldn’t normally go down. He finds himself in a place – a pretty dangerous position – but I’ve always liked thrillers like this. I try to find characters that I think are going to challenge me and this is definitely one of those.
On Success:
LUKETIC: For me, there’s very much is a generation, as we say in the movie, was promised a lot of things. Went to college, gonna get a great job. As we’ve seen with the economic downturn, and the greediness of certain sections in the corporate world, it’s not so. We had to sort of – they call that “lost generation” – they call it whatever you want. But there is a youth, there is a movement I think wants to very much offer hope and promise. I think the moral in our movie is not to go to the dark side because ultimately, because going to that sort of cut-throat ruthlessness is ultimately not going to service you on a spiritual level. Ultimately, don’t do what those have done before you. It’s what sort of moral is this, this is Adam’s character for me.
HEMSWORTH: I think in the end, Adam realizes that he’s gotta get out with his wit and with his intelligence, but also he has to do the right thing regardless of the consequences. You would like to hope that when you work hard at something you get somewhere. I guess it’s not always the case. Sticking to good morals and good values is the key to it.
On Ambition:
LUKETIC: It’s tough. I believe that and I approach my work and what I do as a good person. I like people who that good and have good intentions. I believe you can be successful without having to sacrifice that. That’s the sort of character I was attracted to in this piece. He makes moral decisions. He betrays who he is. Essentially, [he] gives up everything that’s anchored him in the world, that’s supported him in the world. He gives that up for this sort of fantasy, illusion of what life on the other side of the river would be like. It was an interesting dichotomy of all those things. It’s a complex question.
HEARD: I don’t think that ambition and morality are mutually exclusive. It would be pedantic to assume that we need to choose between them. We’re compelled to characters who have to face such decisions.
LUKETIC: And who make mistakes and are not black and white.
HEARD: Exactly. You have to struggle for everything, including your characters, they have to struggle as well. I don’t think ambition and morality need to be mutually exclusive.
On What Drew Them To This Project:
HEARD: I was drawn to Emma because she’s independent. She desires a future for herself that she, and only she, is responsible for. I love that she’s trying to prove herself in a world that’s not necessarily set up to accept her or accept her easily. She’s going into a field that’s still very much a male dominated world and she’s doing so and relying on nothing but her own strength, her own wit, her own ability to succeed. Nothing else. She’s not coping out in any way. I love that about her. Strength, independence are always something I’m drawn to in all my characters no matter how different they are from one another. Strength and a sense of independence both in their character and in their position in the movie – those are pretty much the standard things that I look for. So I was drawn to Emma for that reason. Plus, she was in a – I felt with Robert, who has a history of directing women that stand on their own two feet no matter what their individual characters are, they’re all women that are not determined by how the male characters around them receive them. He has a history of protecting his women, so I felt like I was in good hands.
FORD: For me a character is made up out of those things that help tell a story and my own experience which helps me string it all together. This is a character who’s preceded in his appearance on screen by a body of opinion about him, and who he is, what he is, how he’s behaved in the past. So I wanted my first appearance on screen to complicate that. Robert was wonderfully collaborative about things like that. When I showed up with a shaved head, he was OK with that. When I said I wanted to wear blue jeans and a t-shirt to my fancy house back yard party, he was ok with that. Those are the kinds of things which I use to help describe and complicate a character. The guy’s bad to the bone, but there’s no fun in seeing that presented that way. So I thought there were interesting opportunities in the construction of the script and the sophistication of the filmmakers that would allow me to create a character different to what I’ve played before.
On Their Tech Savvy:
HEMSWORTH: When I found out I was going to do this film, my character has a scene where he takes apart a number of phones and does numerous things to them. So I got some old phones and I took them apart and that’s about all I did. I took them apart and couldn’t even put them back together. So I wouldn’t say that I was as smart as Adam in that way.
FORD: I grew up in the Stone Age. I don’t want to be a slave to electronic devices. I don’t want to be “connected” to my friends. I don’t want to send snapshots of my dog and cute pictures of my family life to my friends and family. I don’t want to be “liked” by pushing a button. I use all of this technology to basically replace devices that I had in the past which worked just fine.
HEARD: Like smoke signals. [Laughter]
FORD: I don’t really use it – I like books. I don’t like to read things on the internet. I don’t have much of a connection I guess.
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