Of course,it can’t hurt to have the wife of Chris Hemsworth as your leading lady. After all,Hemsworth has a four-picture deal with the streamer,and while this film sits outside that he is an executive producer,and makes a cameo as a stoner shop assistant in an electronic goods store,who watches the carnage unfold on an array of large 4K screens.
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“I think it’s a big factor,of course,” says Reilly with refreshing honesty. “I mean,it’s Hollywood. Netflix is in the Chris Hemsworth business,and they obviously want to do the right thing by him. But you don’t go making Chris’ wife’s movie just to keep Chris happy. They’re nice,but they’re not that nice.”
Madrid-born Pataky has lived in Australia for eight years,and starred in the not-terribly-well-receivedNetflix seriesTidelands,but generally has focused on raising the couple’s three children while hubby went to work with his hammer.
She always wanted to do action,she says. “I used to watch Indiana Jones movies with my dad and I wanted to be the female version. I was always a tomboy,very competitive with boys,trying to be stronger,do it better than them.”
At 45,she admits,“maybe it could have come earlier in my life,so recovering would be easier”,but she was excited to be able to challenge herself,to transform her body,and especially to do her own stunts.
For all the punching,kicking,rolling and dodging bullets,the most impressive feat by far is Pataky swinging one-handed along a set of monkey bars on the underside of the floating platform high above the sea (in fact filmed in a former ABC studio in Artarmon).
‘Netflix is in the Chris Hemsworth business,but you don’t go making Chris’ wife’s movie just to keep Chris happy.′
Matthew Reilly
“That was just all me,” Pataky says with justifiable pride. “We had three takes,one really good one,and then Matt was like,‘We have to do a fourth one’. And my shoulder was really sore,and I was like,‘Matt I can’t do one more,that’s it’.”
Hemsworth was shooting the latest Thor adventure at the same time as Pataky was makingInterceptor. They would occasionally see each other in the gym,then again at night when they got to spend some precious moments with the kids before crashing in mutual piles of exhaustion.
“Sharing that with him was such a good experience for both of us,” she says. “I’ve seen how hard he works,and how difficult it is,but it was good to have the same experience of working at the same time.”
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Interceptor is a popcorn movie – and Reilly has already written the sequel – but there’s meat on those action bones,with plotlines about white supremacy and sexual harassment. “When you get a little older you’re not just writing an action story,you want to give it something more,” he says.
For Pataky,getting to play a woman who has had life experience – not all of it positive – was a big appeal. Her character is no superhero,but she is super resilient,both mentally and physically,and that mattered.
“I feel I can be an inspiration for women,” she says. “There’s a lot of men that are 60 years old doing action movies;why can’t women do it? I wanted to show that we actually can do it at whatever age,if you’re prepared to do it. You can do the same as any man can do.”
Interceptor is on Netflix now.
Email the author atkquinn@theage.com.au,or follow him on Facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on Twitter @karlkwin
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