Caffeinated Clint
Imagine sitting around a table eating breakfast with your family when police storm through the front door, arresting your husband or wife of murder. This is the situation that John Brennan (Russell Crowe) finds himself in, in Academy Award winner Paul Haggis’s new film ”The Next Three Days”.
John, wholeheartedly believing his wife Lara’s (Elizabeth Banks) claim that she is innocent, persists desperately for three years to have his wife acquitted until her final appeal is rejected. When the situation is intensified, the film follows John who is no longer willing to accept the fate dealt to his family, meticulously plan to break his wife out of prison and the three days that follow.
Tim Johnson spoke to the film’s stars Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks ahead of the film’s release in New York and asked the pair about the on-set car accident they were involved in, which aspects about filming in jail they found eerie, but first asked Crowe about his character’s credibility in pulling off such a huge heist.
“If the audience see this guy believing in what he’s doing then they flow with it. They might not agree with what he’s doing, but he’s obviously got an unshakable belief in his wife … and when he hits those hurdles and things don’t work out properly and the mere fact that he that he keeps going, that’s the transformation.”
Crowe says he drew inspiration for his character’s devotion to his wife from his own parents.
“On the 10th of November my parents celebrated their 49th wedding anniversary, so I’ve been very lucky and blessed in that way that I’ve sort of grown up in a household that’s all about commitment through hard times and the good.”
While filming Crowe found a line of similarity between himself and his character, John Brennan.
“I was away from my own family for 87 days in order to make this film and … there was a big distance between me and my own family, so that made a lot of things that we were doing in the script a reality.”
Elizabeth Banks who plays opposite Crowe as John’s wife Lara, says she began researching for the role as prison convict by turning to the internet.
“I remember having a discussion with Paul (Haggis, director) who told me that you could just Google ‘How to break out of prison’ and like, 400,000 things come up,” Banks recalls. “The fact of the matter is that people do break out, it happens all the time. It ultimately comes down to; it’s all about the bravery of doing it. ‘Am I brave enough to actually risk it, do it and risk the consequences of making it happen?”
Crowe jumps in half joking, “I would just like to have a disclaimer that we’re not recommending anybody tries anything that they see in the film!”
When the reality of filming inside a prison hit, Banks explains there were some hairy moments.
“I was put in a cell and they closed the door and after about two minutes I was like, ‘I’m good. I got it, I see why I would never want to be in here.”
Though Banks admits that filming in jail was a walk in the park compared with performing a car chase stunt with her co-star. “It was the scariest day of my life.”
Crowe agrees. “Yeah, when you’re halfway through a tunnel at 65 mph and you realize the tunnel actually has a curve.”
As reported in the media at the time, it was a stationary car that delivered the real life drama on set involving the pair.
“We were back at the number one position for a shot we had done a number of times already and were just sitting there waiting for the police to tell us when we could go on another circuit,” Crowe recalls. “And then next thing you know this fire truck comes up from behind us and … takes out the front of the vehicle, literally took off the whole front. We were in this little SUV and he was in a fire truck, so who’s going to win?”
Crowe says he and Banks walked away unscathed from the accident. “We spent an hour laughing!”
While he may not be fazed by stunt driving or a fender bender, Crowe reveals it is his family life and distance that has the most influence on his decisions.
“Since becoming a dad it definitely is part of the equation every time … This year for example there was possibly some things that I might have had a second conversation about but having been away from Australia and away from the family as much as I was last year, I just didn’t want to do it this year.”
”The Next Three Days” is now playing in cinemas.
