Alan Ritchson may not have been able to recently celebrate it, but he couldn't be prouder of his work of Motor City. On August 30, the Reacher actor had to miss the forthcoming film's premiere at the Venice Film Festival due to his filming schedule for Reacher's season 4. However, he is hoping to make a quick getaway for its Toronto Film Festival premiere — the Venice premiere marks his first-ever film as an actor to premiere at a major festival — and in the meantime, opening up about what makes the action movie so "super-unique."
Speaking with Variety, Alan said "there's nothing like" the Potsy Ponciroli directed movie, which has almost no dialogue, instead relying on highlighting the physicality of the stunt performances and action sequences along with heavily stylized visuals and an immersive soundtrack. "It's a super-unique and super-artistic film. Obviously it's a huge choice to not rely on dialogue, but I want this to be commercial, I want everybody to enjoy this and it not just to be for a tiny niche audience. And I think we did it."
© Getty ImagesThough he confessed it was "really tricky" to take on a virtually dialogue-free movie, he said: "I love the tool that language provides us in conveying emotion. I guess sometimes we use it as a bit of a crutch. Sometimes we overuse it for exposition. But it's such a reliable, trusty tool and to not have that in the toolkit is a little scary. But it was exhilarating to go, all right, can I try to create that same kind of magnetism without that tool."
He didn't "really" find himself having to make adjustments to his acting technique for it, but he further shared: "There is something I like to do when I'm in any scene and that's to feel the electricity coursing through your neurons and synapses and body. I can feel when it's turned on. It's like shoveling coal into the furnace. And sometimes I didn't feel that thing turned on because I rely on the dialogue. So I had to check in with that every single time. As long as that fire was burning, felt like we were dialled in and doing what we had to do."
Motor City also stars Shailene Woodley, Ben Foster, and Pablo Schreiber, and is set in 1970s Detroit. It follows Alan's character, a stand-up blue-collar guy, who is pulled through the ringer after losing his fiancée (Shailene) and being framed by a corrupt cop (Pablo) and local drug lord (Ben), subsequently embarking on an action-packed revenge spree.
© GettyFurther discussing how he tackled conveying all of the emotions his character is going through without dialogue, he said: "With this kind of emotionally supercharged character who's lost everything, is on his heels, has been betrayed over and over again, and wanting vengeance, it's all an internal conversation fueled by contempt and rage and shame and guilt and frustration. So I think the temptation is to lash out in a physical way."
"But I think a composure, where we're trying to keep the lid on, that is more interesting. For me, this film was more about the duel between the stillness in the in the internal rage and that wanting to percolate outwards," Alan, who is also a producer of the movie, added.
© GettySpeaking of being a producer, Alan said he signed on "as soon as I got the script," and noted he immediately wanted to make sure he put his fingerprint on it. "I think I know how to do this. In fact, I think I know how to do this better than anybody. I know how to make action better than anybody. It's what I like."
"People don't know that yet because they haven't seen my movies," he admitted, but continued: "Reacher is sort of like a testing ground for ideas, a playground. It's where I get that 10,000 hours. But when I do do these movies, I've realized when I work with stunt coordinators, fight designers, when I shoot this stuff, I understand it in a way that most people don't. And I think it creates a super visceral experience. The violence is hyper, hyperrealistic and visceral. And it's a fun, exciting, poetic kind of language that we use with a camera. There's a unique DNA to it. And this is a good example of that. And there's a lot more coming."
