Action star Jai Courtney has begun to see more opportunities, in recent years, to flex his dramatic chops along with his muscles, utilizing his Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) theater education. Known for projects such as “Spartacus,” “A Good Day to Die Hard,” “Terminator Genisys,” and “Suicide Squad,” Courtney has recently expanded both genres as well as the depth in his choice of roles with “Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later,” “Storm Boy,” “Buffaloed,” and “Semper Fi,” his latest film directed by Henry Alex Rubin (“Murderball“).
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A thrilling action-drama produced by Karina Miller (“To the Bone“), “Semper Fi” sees Courtney as a police officer and member of the United States Marine Corps Reserves struggling with an ethical conundrum when his younger brother, also a member of the Marine Corps Reserves, faces serious prison time.
Ahead of “Semper Fi’s” release, I spoke with Courtney about bridging his own close interpersonal friendships in his life with that of his character in the film, Rubin’s documentary background, his love for theater, his upcoming miniseries with Cate Blanchett, his to work with James Gunn in “The Suicide Squad,” and more.
What initially intrigued you about “Semper Fi?”
What intrigued me was the relationships, really, between these guys, and that’s the real hero. It’s a film about brotherhood and about loyalty on different platforms, on different levels, and wrestling with what that means within us what we stand for. It’s a world I understood, in that sense, so an emotional kind of responsibility that I understood. My best mates in the world are guys I’ve known for 25 years, and we really have that kind of bond, that history, that rich kind of love that’s thicker than blood, even. And so, I just was excited to get into that world and step into those shoes, and obviously, it’s always an honor to portray someone who’s in the armed services. It felt like something that was familiar but also a really great story and a great movie.
The chemistry between this group of friends is electrifying. How much time did you have during preproduction to bond with your castmates?
It’s quite funny, actually, because, obviously – and I appreciate you saying that – it’s something that was 100% necessary for the film to work. If you don’t buy the connection and the love and the trust between these guys, you don’t really buy what’s at stake. So, it was something that was essential and something that we wanted to put a lot of emphasis around and create something that felt really organic and authentic. And due to the nature of the scheduling and a small-budget independent movie, we wound up meeting each other for real on a Saturday and we rolled cameras on a Tuesday. It was like speed-dating to build 20 years of trust with a bunch of guys.
We got lucky, man, because we grew bonds in a short amount of time. I love them all and respect them all as actors. I think they’re really highly gifted, and Henry [Alex Rubin] needed to assemble a group of guys that could find that in each other. It just wasn’t going to work otherwise. And Finn [Wittrock] and I had met years ago on a film called “Unbroken” which we did together. We’ve been friendly for the last few years. He’s been a good mate of mine. Obviously, people are all over the globe. You don’t see someone too often, but we’ve always kept in touch. And Beau [Knapp] and Arturo [Castro] met on a film as well. So, there was a little bit of a head start, but we had to we had to establish something really quick. And there was pressure to do it, but it didn’t take any work because they’re just a great group of guys. Everyone’s super funny and loving, tender dudes, as well. We just went out and had a few drinks and broke the ice. And everything else just fell into place.
The characters in “Semper Fi” carry themselves with a particular physicality, some of their behavior leaning on the side of extreme masculinity. The excessive fighting, clashes with authority, etc. Do you think there might be a higher correlation between this type of behavior and those that enlist in the military, go through horrific experiences, and then have to reintegrate back into society?
Yeah. The transformation on the other side is something that is common throughout. And I got a lot of friends who are veterans. And you can’t really touch that experience. It doesn’t even have to be a horrific one to leave a person with stories and scars from that sort of stuff. It changes an individual for sure. In the context of this film, Cal feels like he needs to do [be] above the law to reset the kind of balance in his world because of events that happened on deployment that really have shaken his core and forced him to question what he stands for and what’s important. And if one thing can be swept under the rug, how can he feel like there’s real justice in the universe when his brother’s been hard done by?
That’s really more about him seeking inner peace and trying to seek a different kind of justice. Even though he might be ethically questionable, it’s the right thing to do in his world. I don’t think he ever thinks he’s going to get away with that. It’s really about having to suck that up and actually pay the price himself.
Given Rubin’s documentary background, does he operate in a different manner on set than a typical narrative feature director?
Yeah. Every director you work with has a different approach. But definitely, Henry’s documentary experience led him to the way he shot the film and the way he takes roles on. There’s a lot of improvisation in the movie. We didn’t throw the script out at all. Sean Mullin wrote a great script. But we did use it as a blueprint, at times, because part of having that relationship between the guys feeling organic meant that there’s a lot of ad-libbing and riffing on certain things. It has to feel real and conversational and, stylistically, that was spread throughout. You can tell with Dave Devlin‘s cinematography, there’s a lot of zoom lenses, which is a particular taste, it might not be for everyone, but it gives an interesting POV and it helps it feel like it has that kind of documentary, in-the-room feel sometimes. It’s a lot of dirty frames, a lot of looking through spaces into another space, and that perspective definitely was something that Henry carried over from his documentary work.