![David Ayer On Collaborating With Jason Statham, Working With Dicey Material and That Elusive ‘Ayer Cut’ Of ‘Suicide Squad [Interview]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/27105924/David-Ayer-On-Collaborating-With-Jason-Statham-Working-With-Dicey-Material-and-That-Elusive-%E2%80%98Ayer-Cut-Of-%E2%80%98Suicide-Squad-Interview.jpg "David Ayer On Collaborating With Jason Statham, Working With Dicey Material and That Elusive ‘Ayer Cut’ Of ‘Suicide Squad [Interview]")
Filmmaker David Ayer is a man of few words. It’s not that he doesn’t have anything to say, far from it. No, like his explosive action, he’s quick, to the point and knows exactly what he wants to say and how to say it. He’s refreshing in that way, the guy who can call “bullshit” in a room of people saying absolutely nothing. Nothing reflects that mentality quite like his most recent work, “Beekeeper and now, “A Working Man.”
Having gone through the IP trenches with DC’s “The Suicide Squad” and then Netflix’s “Bright,” which felt like somewhat of an extension of that corporate ethos, Ayer’s come out the other side and rediscovered something potent. Perhaps it’s being able to get down-and-dirty with an action legend in Jason Statham, a star who’s similarly found renewed juice in these Ayer collaborations, but the man who wrote Denzel Washington to his most iconic role [“Training Day”] is in a zone that simply works. Blistering, efficient fights and gunplay are the agenda here, Statham’s grizzled mug spitting one-liners with razor-sharp economy. They reflect their director well. No fat on the bone, no frills, just rock-solid throwbacks to a style of action that once lit up our multiplexes weekly.
If the zany pleasures of “Beekeeper” left you itching for more, “A Working Man” may be what you’re after, especially while you wait for the former’s upcoming sequel from director Timo Tjahjanto. With a script initially written by Sylvester Stallone, the film finds Statham as Levon Cade, a trusted construction foreman. Unassuming and quiet, Cade is there to clock in and out, do the job and keep his head down so as to earn enough money in order to win a nasty custody battle for his daughter, his deceased wife’s father determined to keep Cade away. One day, he arrives at work to find his bosses’ (Michael Peña and Noemí González) in a panic as their daughter (Arianna Rivas) has been kidnapped. In their devastation, they offer Cade a massive sum of money to find her leaning on his shady military background, something of an open secret around the office. Initially refusing, Cade’s heroic instincts can’t help but get him involved, and what follows is a raucous, bloody descent into the Russian criminal underworld to bring her home.
Does this all sound boilerplate? Sure, but in Ayer and Statham’s hands, we’re given a delightful romp that feels like a genuine rejuvenation for the star and director. Once the heir apparent to the Stallones and Schwarzennegers of the world, Statham finally lives up to that promise. His hand-to-hand fight work in these last two films is as exciting as what Corey Yuen had him doing in “The Transporter” all those years ago. It’s the lane Statham was always meant for, and in Ayer, he’s found a new lease on a second, maybe even third, act as one of the West’s preeminent action stars.
Ahead of the “A Working Man” release, David Ayer sat down with The Playlist to discuss this newfound partnership, the action that inspires him, working with dicey material, and what lies ahead for his cut of “Suicide Squad.”
I love that your last two movies dive all the way into hand-to-hand combat. On “The Beekeeper,” you had Jeremy Marinas in fights. On this one, you have Darren Nop and Guillermo Grispo. You’ve always been more of a gunplay guy, so what are you looking for when you’re creating fights with your coordinators?
Much of it is storytelling. Most people don’t understand how much thought goes into building and shaping a fight sequence. So there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. You’ve got to have jeopardy; you’ve got to have the threat. And I don’t think people also understand how hard it is to do the choreography because even with fighting, yeah, it’s tough. It isn’t easy, but it’s always straightforward. It’s very – you’re going to hit, you’re going to get hit, but it’s a live event. You never know how that fight’s going to unfold.
With a fight choreo, you can’t hit people. You don’t want to take a hit, and it has to unfold precisely, and it has to unfold for the camera, and it has to play even, almost tougher and more intense than a real fight. You have to create those body shapes and that motion and everything. So there’s so much creativity that comes into it. until you actually start laying down a scene, it’s hard to understand how much work it takes.
This is your second film in a row with Jason. What’s excited you about working with him? He’s always been great but you’re getting something out of him that action fans like myself saw all the way back with Corey Yuen.
I love that he can do his own stunts. that’s a real thing. He has his double Tom, and most of the time, Tom’s just standing around waiting for an opportunity to get put in the game. Jason does all his work and to be able to set up a shot where you’re not hiding his face, where you’re not hiding a stuntman’s face because that’s the classic thing, you shoot it on the stuntman’s back and then pop in for the hero shot of your star. I can have Jason kicking, hitting, fighting, taking tackles, tackling people. He does it all himself. And because he has that martial arts background, and he’s so athletic, and he is a real fighter, he sells it like nobody else.
He’s an extension of those eighties guys. He’s one of the last few guys that can sell a movie just on his name alone. Speaking to that, this was a Stallone script first, how did this come your way?
It was a life coming full circle in a way because his story with “Rocky” and how he wrote that script and protected it, and it was like his baby, and he got it turned into the movie that he wanted really inspired me starting out as a writer. I had “Training Day.” That was my script. And it showed me that you can be protective of your work and have a great result by doing that. And so when I got this script written by him and the chance to direct it and write on it, it made a lot of sense for me and it was just a great script for Jason and Stallone, you’re exactly right, is part of that action legacy, and Jason’s really last man standing in that tradition that goes back to the eighties.
Who were some of the other guys from that era you grew up watching?
McTiernan, definitely. You look at “Die Hard” and that’s an action classic and really set the table for the action language for a couple of decades. And so I look at a lot of those old movies, even “Bloodsport,” all those classics just for fighting and the reality and selling it. But those are the movies I study. It’s classic cinema. They’re not just action movies to me. They’re cinema, they’re so well shot. There are characters, there’s a story, and when they work, there’s nothing like it. I mean, like “Predator,” an incredible movie. So that’s where I took my inspiration for these past two films is how I stand on the shoulders of giants and create something that feels both new and, at the same time, familiar.
I love that you say that because my whole beat as a film journalist has really been trying to get people to take action seriously. To that point, your work, even going back to stuff like “Sabotage” or “Training Day,” you’re dealing with heavy material like institutional corruption and police corruption. People love to ascribe meaning to film, especially action. I dig that your point-of-view wades into some dicier territory, politically speaking. Can you speak on that?
Yeah, I mean it’s no matter where you go, you’re going to find people, you’re going to find the human heart. And I know bad guys, quote, unquote, that are capable of amazingly good acts. And then there are good guys that are capable of some really bad stuff. And a lot of times, where people find themselves is just how they grew up, who they’re hanging out with, what life had to offer them, and what opportunities they had.
And there are good opportunities, and then there are bad opportunities in the sense that, like, hey, you may get ahead in life, but you’re going down a road, and people get trapped. People get trapped by their decisions. So, I’ve seen it all. It is hard for me to judge people and even the bad guys, even the bad guys in “A Working Man,” they have a family, they have rules, they have a code, and they’re dealing with one of their own that’s gone rogue. So that’s important to me.
You have a knack for casting striking faces, especially as heavies. You have Megan Le in that great gas station fight in “The Beekeeper,” and then in this movie, Eve Mauro just has this tremendous screen presence. Where did you find her, and what are you looking for when casting for a henchman like that?
She came through the casting agent and was a real surprise. The camera loves her. And then she’s also—she comes from a tough background. She comes from a tough place. She’s had a life and she gets, I guess, the criminal side. She understands that, again, good people can be anywhere in life, and she’s definitely not playing a good person, but she does a great job of playing a really bad person who we love to hate. And she did pretty well in the fights.
As we wrap up, I have to ask you this but what’s the status on your cut of “The Suicide Squad” these days? And are you able to speak on your upcoming reteaming with Brad Pitt on “Heart of the Beast”?
Yeah, as far as the “Suicide Squad” cut and getting my cut out there, who knows? It’s really up to DC and James and Warner Brothers, it’s their IP. I have a much better movie hidden in the vault than what people have seen. Maybe one day. [laughs] And as far as what I got going with Brad right now, let’s just say, yeah, that’s a work in progress and it’s something that he and I are going to be very proud of to collaborate on again.
“A Working Man” opens March 28 via Amazon MGM Studios.
