Runner follows a former soldier who is thrown into a brutal race against time when a critical medical delivery makes him the target of a ruthless cartel. With betrayal closing in from every side, he must survive the chase and deliver his cargo before an innocent child runs out of time.
The cast includes Owen Wilson, Alan Ritchson, Rodrigo Santoro, Leila George, Kate Box, Peta Sergeant, Geraldine Hakewill, Cecilia Toussaint, and Scarlett Crabtree, while Need for Speed and Expend4bles' Scott Waugh directs.
We caught up with Santoro and Waugh to discuss Runner, including Damian's sinister qualities, Santoro's intense fight scenes with the formidable Ritchson, and why the chemistry between the movie's leads immediately clicked when the pair arrived on set.
Ritchson and Wilson are an unlikely pairing in Runner, but that's what makes the action thriller so much fun. As Waugh explains, the movie draws inspiration from the classic buddy-action films of the '80s and '90s, with Ritchson's brute force providing the perfect counterpoint to Wilson's more laid-back, smooth-talking style.
While Hank and Ben are on the run, Santoro's Damian is determined to stop them, and he's a very different kind of villain from the imposing Xerxes actor previously played in 300: Rise of an Empire. Santoro brings a dangerous unpredictability to the character, and the actor reveals that his villain's motivations were key in making him more than a conventional antagonist.
Check out the full interview in the player below.
Rodrigo, Damian is somehow an even more sinister villain than Xerxes in 300: Rise of an Empire, which is a favourite of mine. But what was key for you in making this guy so dangerous and unpredictable?
Rodrigo: Well, you said it. Those are two objectives that we brought to the character to make him three-dimensional and less of a conventional villain in the movie. I think this film has a lot of heart. From the get-go, when I read the script, that’s what caught my attention. I’ve done action films before, like 300, but I was never involved in a lot of action, like stunts, myself. This time I got to play that. But I really enjoyed the fact that the script and Scott here gave a lot of room and were very interested in trying to figure out this character.
So he would come out unpredictable, dangerous, threatening, but I couldn’t just try to match Alan Ritchson’s size — that’s impossible. So it wouldn’t be about buffing up and being “hey dude, you want to fight.” We had to build Damian, and it was great. It was a process. It didn’t come out like that, but we worked on him. On the day, also on set, we were able to work on those qualities, and he has a strong motivation that we’re not going to talk about because that’s a spoiler, but he has a strong motivation to do what he’s doing.
Scott, on the other side with the film’s heroes, you’ve got Alan, obviously a bona fide action star. You’ve got Owen Wilson, who’s a real comedy genius and has those dramatic chops as well. But what was it about their chemistry that made them right for Hank and Ben for you in this film?
Scott: You know, you grew up in those ’80s, ’90s action movies — at least I did — where it’s just Midnight Run and Lethal Weapon, the Jackie Chan movies, Shanghai Noon and stuff like that with Owen and him. And you just need the yin and the yang, right? You need those polarity differences. And you’re not going to get much different than Alan and Owen as the brute force and the very slow, fun, smooth-talking Owen Wilson. And I guess in your head you hope that the chemistry is going to be as magnetic as you have in your head. And that day one when they showed up together, it just was magic. It just was. And these two are really, really magnetizing when you watch them. They’re magnificent.
Rodrigo, you mentioned Alan being a big guy, and he is a very big, formidable guy. So how do you feel you really held your own against him in those fight scenes? And it must have been some pretty tough days on set.
Rodrigo: Yeah. I did a lot of my stunts, and he was very helpful because he’s been doing it for a while, and he’s really good at it. So I remember there’s a moment where I had the knife, and I was trying to stab him, and I would go like, one, two, three, four. It’s a choreography, of course, but you’ve got to use your body language to really sell it. There’s technique, and there’s also acting with your body. So he was very helpful in that way. He would work with me, and he’s pretty huge. He’s huge. I’m not a small guy, but he’s huge.
And I’m like, well, how are we going to do that? And I’m like, I guess I gotta be very quick. I gotta be just unpredictable. I gotta be a little crazy. I had to find ways to get in there. But we had an amazing stunt team, and Scott was always great, just giving us not only time, but talking us through. And it wasn’t just the fighting — the stakes were very high for both of those guys. The motivations for Damian which is pretty high, and for Hank at that time. So there was a lot going on, but it was fun, too. It was fun. It was new to me to be doing all that.
Runner arrives exclusively in theaters on September 11.