Director Robert Lorenz Interview: The Marksman

The Marksman, starring Liam Neeson and directed by Robert Lorenz, made headlines earlier this year when it managed to gross a surprisingly strong $15 million at the domestic box office. While that total wouldn't normally be anything exceptional, it was an exceedingly strong showing for a modestly-priced thriller released when a great many theaters across the United States were still closed due to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic.

The Marksman follows a cynical, alcoholic, depressive rancher forced to take care of a Mexican child whose mother is murdered by a villainous cartel. The film is much more soulful than the burgeoning friendship forms the backbone of the whole film. The Marksman is also aided by skillful direction from Lorenz, who accentuates the intimate moments between believable characters while building up a palpable tension before the bullets start flying. The result is an immigrant story that feels distinctly realistic while still including a degree of crowd-pleasing action and righteous justice.

While promoting the home video release of The Marksman, director Robert Lorenz spoke with Screen Rant about his work on the film, including the opportunity to direct Liam Neeson in a deep and ionate role that's more complicated than a basic action hero. He discusses the process of editing the film down to a PG-13 from its original R-rating, and reflects on how some of the movie's themes have become more profound in the wake of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic.

The Marksman is out now on Digital, and releases on Blu-ray and DVD May 11.

I watched your movie, The Marksman. And I loved it!

Thanks man, I'm glad to hear that!

Maybe I'm just at the right time in my life right now, with whatever drama's going around me that's nothing that you need to worry about, but I needed a little bit of righteousness, a little bit of justice, a little bit of, "Hey, this is your responsibility, you said you'd take care of him."

Hmm-hmm.

That scene in the church, I cried my eyes out. Like, genuinely, I was sitting by myself and just weeping, I thought it was beautiful, so thank you for that.

Thank you for that. I'm glad it moved you.

It really did. So tell me, how far back does this go? Has it been a nugget in the back of your mind for so-and-so amount of time, or did the script come across your desk?

The script came across my desk in a little bit different form, several years ago. Let's see... This was 2017, maybe. There were a lot of things I really liked about it. Sort of this Western aspect it had that I really liked, and there's a road movie aspect, which I liked. As a filmmaker, those are fun movies to make. So I kind of got excited about it. At the time, the characters weren't quite what I liked, so it's how I got involved with Chris Charles and Danny Kravitz, the other original draft writers. I worked with them in redoing the characters to a point where I could really embrace them and want to live with them over the course of the year of making this movie. I thought, at the time, it was a timely subject in that it deals a little bit with immigration and the border issues and so forth. So I thought, well, it's got a lot of things that I think make sense, and so I got involved in it and wanted to direct it.

I haven't shown it to her yet, but my mom is from Honduras, which gets name-dropped, so at some point in the near future, I'm going to show it to her, and I think she's really going to enjoy it, too.

I tried to read a lot about all the folks that are coming across the border, trying to make that part of it as authentic as possible.

Yeah.

A lot of folks from Honduras are coming across the border, and understandably so.

I can definitely, just by watching it, I can tell you did your research. It's very authentic. Was it always going to be Liam? How did that process go, of casting?

The role required somebody who could be both fearsome and tough to where you could believe that, but also kind and understanding to where you could believe that, too. Liam is just a master of being able to move between those two personalities, those two characters. I thought he was ideal for the role. He liked the idea of playing a character who is his age, so as far as I was concerned, I was thrilled to get him. I feel he's underrated as an actor. This was, for me... I didn't see it as a typical "Liam Neeson action movie." I saw it as a character drama that was a thriller, and so did he. That's what we set out to make. I think we succeeded in that. And it's different than a lot of the movies that he has made of late, which are mainly shoot-em-up and fisticuffs. This has a little more character drive to it.

Definitely. There's movies that, whether they're great or not, you can see if the actor can do it on auto-pilot. And there's more than enough meat on this guy's bones, on the character's bones... You can see it, you can see Liam really diving in. It's great, it's a great performance.

Thank you. He's terrific, he's a wonderful actor, great to work with. I was thrilled to get him.

I have a question about a scene. It's a little specific.

Okay.

The woman at the gas station.

Oh yeah.

Does she have, like, a more explicit R-rated fate? Is there a missing there? Is there something you can share? If not, you can just say "."

No, that's pretty much it... There was sort of a slightly more violent version of it that we cut back, but no. That role... Liam's character comes in asking for an atlas, and she doesn't quite know what that is, because she says that everybody just Googles things on their phone. So I wanted to find someone who was young enough that they might not be familiar with atlases. I was looking for a young actress to play that part, somebody who was vulnerable, that you would feel could be threatened by the villains. That's how we ended up with Amber. She's terrific. And she went on, from this movie, the next movie she did is The Ice Road, with Liam. And she has a much bigger part in that movie.

You kind of hinted at it, but tell me about that editing and settling and compromising and fighting to get the PG-13 versus the R, and the cutting before and after, and how much of the blood can you show... Is that just a mindscrew for you, or is it just part of the deal?

I've been through it a lot on movies I've produced with Clint. We had a lot of battles. Actually, the last movie I did, Trouble with the Curve, they gave me an R rating on that movie when I first turned it in. I couldn't believe it! There was just a silly little joke in there that they felt turned it into an R. It was a joke that I thought went right over the heads of anybody young, but I had to cut it out. On this one, I shot it as an R film. It read as an R film, and so that's the way we shot it. Then, when we got done, we realized we were actually not that far from a PG-13, and that might open it up to let more people see it. So we went ahead and made some cuts to bring it in to a PG-13. We had to go through several rounds of cuts to get it just right. Just kept shaving off more frames and more frames until they said, "Okay, that will work."

I don't suppose there's any plans to release a longer version, or is that just for parties at your house?

It's not drastically different, I don't think anybody would really get anything out of it.

Sure, it's just a couple of frames here and there.

Yeah. Yeah.

It hits hard. It always feels like a weird thing to say, and it's usually in the context of horror movies, but you've got some good kills in there.

I wanted the villain to seem ruthless and threatening and dangerous. Even when he's not on screen. For so much of the time, they're apart. So you're with Jim, Liam's character, and the young boy, or you're with somebody else, and so I wanted to be sure that you knew this danger was lurking out there. So when you do see him, he has to be really tough and ruthless.

It justifies our... Maybe it's just my male lizard brain of paying evil unto evil, but even the movie itself kinda says, "Ease on that mindset." It's really provocative in its storytelling in that way, in deconstructing that macho ideal.

Even in of the villain in the end, too, and understanding his motivation and so forth. There's a little twist there, for people.

I do want to talk about the little boy, the child actor actor whose name escapes me right this second.

Jacob Perez.

He is fantastic and I just want to give him a big ol' hug. How do you build chemistry between him and Liam? Do they hang out in between takes, or is it just acting?

They definitely hung out. He was such a find. He hadn't made a movie before, so I got some resistance from the producers, of casting a kid who really had so little experience, but he had a swagger to him, and I just felt like I could believe this guy could... He was young and youthful and innocent, but at the same time, I believed he could endure this kind of trauma and still come out on top at the end. I was excited about him. I showed his audition to Liam and told him I had some concerns because he hadn't done anything, but Liam said, "No, no, I really like this kid as well." Liam assured me, he said, "I'll help you get the performance out of him. We can work together to do it." Having that was terrific. They spent a lot of time in that truck cab together, and I could hear them on my comm, and Liam giving him little notes and telling him, "Speak up here and emphasize that." It was really helpful throughout.

That's great. I'm thinking about how this was one of the bigger pandemic hits, pandemic successes. It's a movie that was, like, "Hey, this was at #1 for how many weeks?" It's still not blockbuster numbers just because of the pandemic, but in an industry that's almost literally on life , I think it's definitely a hit.

Yeah, two weeks at #1, and I think it was, like 12 weeks in the top ten, which is pretty remarkable. That's a testament to Liam. He's just... He has a great fanbase, and people enjoy watching him, and he's just a good actor.

There's one line in particular that I think hits so much harder than you maybe expected when you were making it. Maybe you've gotten this before, but when the little boy says to Liam, "I wish we could have had a funeral for my mother," I think there's a lot of people in the past year, myself included, who wish we could have had funerals for our loved ones.

That's really... It hadn't even occurred to me. That's an interesting observation. I can see how that would hit... It's also funny, because we almost cut that line out, a couple of times. We were concerned that it might hit a little too "on the nose." We found a way to keep it in there, but that's a remarkable thing. The whole experience of releasing this movie during the pandemic has been really bizarre and a little bit frustrating. I'm excited that it's finally coming out on VOD and DVD so that more people can see it. So few people, it feels like, have actually seen the movie.

I think this one is gonna have long legs. It had long legs at the box office, such as it was, and I don't see why it wouldn't extend to this new ecosystem of everyone watching at home.

I hope so. I hope people take the time to look at it and know that it's not just an action shoot-em-up, but there's a story to it that could appeal to a much broader audience. I hope more people take a look.

Totally. It's got some great shooting, but it's also got a lot of heart, a lot soul, a lot of character. Just like the rest of your movies!