The Mechanic's Ben Foster on Gun Porn, Producing and Pedophile-Baiting

One look at the gun-crazy poster for The Mechanic and you know what you're in for with this week's hit-man thriller: Lots and lots of gun porn. Pairing Jason Statham as a calculating, composed assassin and Ben Foster as his boss's loose cannon of a son, director Simon West remakes the original 1972 Charles Bronson flick of the same name with a greater focus on his characters. But the initial appeal, as Foster tells Movieline, was the prospect of getting to "blow sh*t up" with Jason Statham.

Movieline spoke with the 30-year-old actor about his role in The Mechanic, fetishistic action, and a little something we like to call "the pedophile-baiting scene." Also on the docket: Foster's upcoming slate, his indie vs. mainstream philosophy, and the production company he formed with Messenger director Oren Moverman. [Minor spoilers follow.]

What was it about this volatile, angry and sort of masochistic character that appealed to your senses?

Is he masochistic?

I think so.

I was doing a little film called HERE, which is at this year's Sundance, and it was such a quiet, lovely little experience, a life experience. We shot it for $1.5 million, and were just traveling from village to village [in Armenia]. At the tail end of that I was told that they wanted me to play this role in The Mechanic. They asked me if I wanted to blow sh*t up with Jason Statham, and I said, "Sure!"

I completely understand the appeal. The Mechanic is basically you buddying up with and squaring off against Statham; how did you two get to know each other and build your chemistry before filming?

Time is, of course, the most valuable asset we all have. Spending time with Jason, it's easy. He's a terrifically funny guy, he's an incredible athlete. I was a fan of him in The Bank Job. I hadn't seen all of his movies but he did some great work in that picture. You know, we're getting to know each other as the film as the film progresses, so that kind of took care of itself.

Did you film in order to let that relationship unfold naturally?

We jumped around a bit, but in films like this it's really about getting right to the gun porn, which is what everybody's after.

All right, you said it! But no, that brings up an interesting conflict; in a movie as action-heavy as this, where the action is so fetishized, you and Jason are doing some uncharacteristically sophisticated character work for this kind of movie. How did you, Jason, and Simon elevate the material beyond its action-genre trappings?

That's a well-phrased question. Simon has a great appreciation for the moments and improv and we worked a lot in pre-production to understand who these men were, and then take out as many lines of exposition as we could. There's a tendency in these films to overstate who these people are and why they're doing what they do, and our belief was that yes, we were making an action-thriller, but if we do our homework we can sense who these people are without having to be beaten over the head with it. The intention was to take these human beings and the situations that they're in that link these tentpole scenes of fetishized violence and root them in the people of it all.

Did you improvise many of your lines? In the film, there are moments that, even looking at your face and your eyes, suggest that you're taking your character well beyond the page. Beyond, frankly, what most actors do in these kinds of films.

Well, the situation he's in is a difficult one. To try to understand that, or feel it, I suppose is the job at hand. It's really a difficult situation, as all dramas or stories are, there's always going to be conflict. Simon was interested from the beginning to allow these characters to breathe a bit in between all the excitement.

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