Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham and James Franco discuss taking a story from a novel to the cinema
Former drug enforcement agent, Phil Broker (Statham) is a family man who moves off the grid with his daughter, to a seemingly quiet bayou backwater to escape his troubled past. However, Broker’s world soon becomes anything but quiet once he discovers that an underbelly of drugs and violence riddles the small town. Soon, a sociopathic methamphetamine kingpin, Gator Bodine (Franco) puts Broker and his daughter in harm’s way forcing Broker back into action in order to save his family and the town.
Homefront is released on DVD and Blu-ray on 31st March and features exclusive extras including making-of featurettes and a selection of deleted scenes.
British hard man Jason Statham takes on Hollywood heavyweight James Franco in the action blockbuster Homefront.
Based on the acclaimed Chuck Logan novel of the same name, Homefront stars Jason Statham (Fast & Furious 6, The Expendables 2) as Phil Broker, a former DEA agent who retreats with his family to a quiet town in order to escape his unhappy past. Unfortunately his past has other plans…
With Homefront making its way to Blu-ray and DVD this month, we hear from Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham and James Franco…
SYLVESTER STALLONE
• “I had the story sitting around for a few years and I thought it was a really excellent script but I was going to do it time and again but thought I’d outgrown it, I mean physically I was just too old to do it. And I was doing the Expendables in Bulgaria and Jason was talking about something he wanted to do and I was like ‘why don’t you try reading this script?’ and he fell in love with it. Then he began to remind me: ‘I want to do it, I want to do it, I want to do it’ and after about the fifth time, I figured, ‘ah, he’s here’.”
• “Broker is a transplant from overseas and he was doing work for the American government and actually became part of a group of very brave guys that infiltrate motorcycle gangs. He played the role for many years and then he finally hit his breaking point and he quit. He also quit around the time his wife died too, so he had a double reason for quitting. This is a man who is trying to regain some of his past, through entertaining his daughter , giving her everything she wanted and trying to be a stay at home dad, which he’d never been. He was more interested in criminals than his own blood and now that’s all been reversed and he doesn’t know how to do it really, he’s just feeling his way through it. His daughter is as sensitive and alert as he is and nothing gets by her and they build this really wonderful relationship until something very trite, very small and I love stories like that when just two kids in a school yard goes from that to a whole salacious, epic battle of good over evil to the very end.”
• “Jason has a lot more talent than he gives himself credit for and it’s just he needed someone that knows him professionally, like I do, and knows that he can pull this off. It’s breaking ground – I know that when you do a series of action films, you’re called upon to play the strong silent type and you’re not supposed to be that emotional, it’s just not that kind of character. And now he had to let it out and its nerve wracking, its unchartered waters and the director got his confidence and just worked his way through it.”
• “James Franco is a guy that has multiple levels and he can be very disturbing by his calmness and his unflappable attitude which I think is very intimidating as opposed to someone that’s just grinding their teeth, white eyes, always bristling with a glistening forehead.”
• “Kate Bosworth, again, fantastic. When I wrote the part she’s exactly the person I had in mind who has that volatility. She has that explosive side that is completely irrational, dangerous and hysterical but she can also wind down and be very, very sympathetic.
• “Winona Ryder has a vast repertoire of emotions to pull on, she’s not a one-trick pony.”
• “Audiences should expect a drama, that they’re entertained and taken into the world of these particular individuals where they are surprised by Jason entering into this genre. It’s very similar to when I did Cop Land and I was pretty much stereotyped as one sort of character and I was like let me just play in their back yard and we’ll show you what we can do. And it worked out nicely. This is the same thing where you take Jason who is thought of as one kind of actor and you put him into a different element, surrounded by really great actors, and what you have is a unique blend of talent, energy and drama.”
JASON STATHAM
• “I had an instant reaction to it: one because it’s Sly, who’d written it and I love the way he writes but it had something really emotional about it. Sly said to me, he said I want you to play this part. He said I was going to play this myself – it’s truly the greatest compliment I’ve ever had.”
• “The characters have a lot of heart and you really care about the characters. You want them to succeed no matter what kind of situation they’re in, you kind of root for them.”
• “This is a story about a guy trying to live and trying to experience things that he’s not had – he’s suffered a tragedy, he’s lost his wife and his main focus in life now is his daughter. So he puts them in a very picturesque, small town with not a lot of interference. There’s an incident that happens at the school with his daughter.”
• “It’s something that I really thought would be different and challenging, all the things that come with playing a dad. I never get to have a good time on screen, I’m always playing the miserable tough guy and you actually get to see a sweeter side of myself.”
• “He’s not a stereotypical bad guy; he gives a quirky sort of eeriness to this guy.”
• “I think you’re going to get a fair amount of action, because I’m in it! You’re going to get a story that has some meaning; it’s going to have a lot of heart.”
• “You get the action, you get the fun, you get the thrilling suspense, you get situations that people themselves that might be able to connect and relate to.”
JAMES FRANCO
• “The fun of figuring this character out was really how to make him human – it came down to a couple of key human things where he’s doing what he’s doing not because he’s evil, not because he wants world domination, not for any evil reasons. He has a reason that I think anybody can understand, he just wants more, he just wants to make something of his life. He’s given this opportunity and the opportunity happens to involve harming other people – I think anybody can follow him so far. I like that you can follow his reasoning and at least understand it, even though not all of us would do what he does.”
• “My character (Gator Bodine) is a local who runs a boat repair shop but on the side he’s involved in methamphetamine manufacture. He also kind of polices the area, for his own purposes, he’s trying to keep out the competition. He’s worked it out with the local Sheriff so that if he helps police some of the other sellers in the area then he’ll be able to sell his own stuff. ”
• “It looked like a really fun part, something that I hadn’t really done before. The movies was directed by Gary Fleder, who I’d known and talked to years ago about a movie based on a book by Jerzy Kosinski called Pin Ball. So Gary and I had talked about working together for a while and it just seemed like a good fit.”
• “Gary is very collaborative, very enthusiastic about what he does and from the start he said to me ‘I don’t want your character to be a clichéd villain so let’s do everything we can to make him multi-dimensional and human and he really stuck to that.”
• “I’ve known Stallone for a little while and it’s cool! I kind of think him in that way – good old fashioned American movie-making!”
HOMEFRONT IS OUT ON BLU-RAY AND DVD ON 31ST MARCH