War Machine's director shares his recipe for 'the best action sequences'

War Machine director Patrick Hughes and his lead actor talk the philosophy behind ‘the most crazy fricking stunts of all time’

That includes a particularly rattling early scene where the protagonists are blown off of a cliff. Reacher’s Alan Ritchson stars as "81," an Army Ranger applicant whose squad of Ranger Assessment and Selection Program finalists are in the middle of their final search-and-destroy combat simulation when an extraterrestrial invader starts picking them off. There are bigger set pieces and explosions later in War Machine, but the moment where the whole squad takes a missile hit at close range, followed by a battering tumble down a steep hill, is one of the movie’s most memorable moments.

“That was really dangerous work,” Hughes tells Polygon. “That was day one, take one, shot one, I kid you not. I've got the video evidence. There weren't many light days on War Machine — we were always doing the most crazy fricking stunts of all time. But I wanted to set the tone with shot one. We called ‘Action!’ and at the same time, they let me press the button that would explode 12 actors off a cliff, with wire gags and rubble everywhere. That felt like a very fitting start to the film production.”

Ritchson says that particular sequence was “one of the rare moments” where his stunt double took the hit.

“My stunt double Ryan Tarran on that film — he took his clothes off [later in the shoot, and] it looked like somebody had spray-painted him in one even coat of purple,” he says, gesturing from his head to his hip. “There were no other flesh tones at all, his entire right side. I've never seen anything like it. That [stunt] was real, and the bumps and bruises were real. That shot was earned. So shout out to the stunt team, who really crushed it.”

Hughes says practical effects help the audience not just believe what they’re seeing on screen, but also physically feel it.

“We’re looking for opportunities to make the impact as visceral as possible,” he says.

But his philosophy on action sequences is that they have to be hooked into some form of emotional need, from the characters, the audience, or both.

“In any sort of stunt, we're breaking it down into story form, saying, ‘What is the object of desire?’” Hughes says. “We had a lot of fun crafting one sequence in particular, this insane Guardian chase.”

For that set piece, which has Ritchson’s character and his squad fleeing and fighting the alien attacker from an armored vehicle, Hughes wanted three distinct acts, where the heroes achieve moments of optimism and relief before the tables turn.

“If you look at the best action sequences, they really have a rhythm,” he says. “This huge chase sequence is very, very dynamic, and essentially plays out in the interior of this truck. We put a lot of work into that, and I think it really pays off on screen for viewers. It's quite breathtaking. It keeps going and going and going and going, right to the end, and then you go, ‘Whoa, whoa, hang on, what did I just watch?’"

Hughes considers “false victories” to be one of the strongest hooks for action sequences.

“This is going to give [Ritchson] flashbacks,” he says. “He's going to hear the echoes of what I kept screaming on set. But it's the false-victory moment. So we think, ‘Oh, OK, the heroes won!’ And then you completely reverse that, and turn everything back on its head. You're going from that positive charge to a negative charge, then back to a positive charge.”

The Guardian takes some heavy hits, rattling the actors around and slamming them against the interior.

“We used a lot of wire gags,” Hughes says. “The VFX we did use was painting out the wires that are literally pulling actors into the ceiling, or against walls. And then we had the vehicle on this huge gimbal — we built this set on a movable gimbal for the interiors, because it's very difficult shooting inside vehicles, inside of contained spaces. So it was very hot and sweaty and dynamic. There's not a lot of room in that truck.”

“There were a lot of sharp edges,” Ritchson says, laughing. “A lot of sharp edges.”

While he did let his stunt double take the fall (literally) on the hillside tumble sequence, Ritchson says he handled his own stunts wherever the production’s insurance company would let him.

“I don't really have a line [for what I will or won’t do],” he says. “It just comes down to what we're allowed to do as a production. And 99% of this, I did. So that visceral experience — that palm-sweaty kind of emotional reaction you have while watching that — comes from the fact that we're in it together, the audience and us.”

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War Machine is streaming on Netflix now.