With Law Abiding Citizen coming to DVD today (April 12th, 2010), we spoke to action-man Gerard Butler about playing the revenge-driven Clyde Shelton, and what it was about the thriller that stood out to him. Plus, what he felt about having to be naked.

You’re also a producer on LAW ABIDING CITIZEN, so the script really must have had an impact on you.
I was originally pretty engrossed by the script’s punchiness. It hits you in a way that most thrillers don’t – it’s completely unexpected. You’re engaged from the beginning, right from the start when there’s this kind of horrific event happens and you’re with this character, you think this is your guy, but suddenly you swap over and you’re siding with someone else. Your hero comes from another place. It’s a very engaging, intense scary story but yet at the same time something that fills you with a lot of empathy and emotion for both characters.

Tell us more about your character, ‘Clyde Shelton’?
This could be anybody. This could be me or you and how would we behave in that situation? He’s not a villain- he didn’t ask to be in this situation. If this hadn’t happened to him he wouldn’t be where he is and he wouldn’t be exacting the revenge or being as violent or as brutal as he is. But unfortunately, like I say, the randomness of life has left him in that situation. So, for me it was interesting to create this character who in the end you’d be terrified of- but he’s not a stock bad character.

Whose choice was it for Clyde to be naked when he is arrested?
Well it wasn’t mine, I think that was in there from the start, or shortly after so it was there for a couple of years and I couldn’t wangle out of it.

Did you want to? How did you feel about it?
I mean that’s the thing, that’s why to be honest I wouldn’t have got rid of it because it’s a really cool moment. Like so many moments in this movie, it takes you by surprise, but it makes complete sense as well. He’s being arrested and he has a huge plan so he’s got to play safe and show that there’s nothing else going on. It also was a chance for me to get really cut and shredded! I was inspired by De Niro in TAXI DRIVER, and often when you see psychos and you see all those muscles and they’re being all sinewy it’s quite menacing. It suggests how much extra work and effort has been put into this plan.

Explain the progression from law-abiding citizen to criminal mastermind?
They messed with the wrong guy. There is a switch in Clyde and somebody turned it on. Unfortunately for everybody else, he has the talent, capacity and tenacity to basically ensure that he brings the person that was supposed to help him – Nick Rice – and the system, to its knees.

Some people say ‘never play a crazy person crazy’ because crazy people don’t know they’re crazy. How did you approach this with Clyde, is he crazy is he not crazy?
Well I don’t think he’s crazy. I think with Clyde in some ways there’s a complete detachment. In order to get where he’s extremely sane about what he does. There’s so much planning and calculation that’s gone into this and he’s an absolute genius. There’s a lot of reason behind this as well, he’s not barking mad. All the stuff that’s happened to him would explain why he’s doing this, so I think there’s a large element of revenge. I think the only part where that would be slightly insane, perhaps, is where he’s cut off the morality of what he’s doing.

In your research in this role did you find anything that surprised you about the justice system? Was there some truth to this movie.
Yes, there’s definitely some truth to this movie. Initially the way it was written was one of the killers gets off completely free and I always thought against that because I didn’t believe that just by grassing on the other person you would get off scot free. In the end it didn’t but what I did realise was how often that happens, or even that there is a possibility for that to happen. Basically just by grassing on other people, you can hugely reduce your sentence. So sometimes it feels like there is a huge lack of justice in this system and how much this plea bargaining goes on and how little say the victims have.

Tell us about Jamie Foxx and his character ‘Nick Rice’?
I’ve learned a lot from Jamie, he’s a very, very smart guy and talented. He makes Nick smooth, charismatic, he’s intelligent, he’s witty. But at the end of the day he’s a good man as well… He’s a good family man.

The film’s pretty intense, did you have fun on set?
I think most of the fun I had with Jamie was in going out. We could always have a laugh together, but once we got inside this cage it was pretty serious but I mean when we went out on the town we had some fun stories.

When I watched LAW ABIDING CITIZEN there was a lot of reaction to some scenes in this movie. Do you think that’s because some of theses scenes are just so shocking people are blown away?
It is going be a pretty memorable experience for the audience. There’s just something that’s a little tweaked which is unusual as well as the great cast, it’s been brilliantly directed and shot so cool, you just want to sit there and watch it. But on top of that it has got this really unusual story that kind of turns everything on its head and then the way especially myself as a character, the things I do, it always cuts ahead of what you expect. This movie has so many shocking and surprising moments, it’s gripping and you never really know what is going to happen. I’ve been into a couple of screenings and you can literally feel the audience grasping onto their seats and even applauding. It all comes from a true yet entertaining place. I think that there’s a lot of mind-blowing stuff, it never fails to disappoint.

CLICK HERE to read our interview with co-star Jamie Foxx

Momentum Picture releases Law Abiding Citizen on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK on April 12th, 2010

“A circus ringmaster – yeah, I’d never thought of that but I like it.” The director of British religious-swap comedy The Infidel Josh Appignanesi is trying to describe what it was like to control his cast of British whites, Asians and American Jews, and likes the above suggestion. The chatty, likeable Brit with a multi-cultural mix of his own, admitted it was sometimes difficult to match up all the different cultures on display in the film, but a challenge he enjoyed – although he never actually used a whip.

The film stars Omid Djalili – a British-Iranian, raised as a Bahai – as Mahmud Nasir, a British Muslim who works in a London cab firm. He is not the strictest Muslim – he likes his football and the odd drink. He then discovers he was adopted – his birth parents were Jewish, and his real name is Solly Shimshellewitz. He befriends rival cabbie Lenny (Richard Schiff) and tries to learn how to ‘be Jewish’.

It’s funny stuff, but Appignanesi admits he was trying for something more than the cruder comedy the set-up suggests. “This is new,” says the director, “Because it’s really about how us Brits have coped with ethnicity and adopted it. When you’ve accepted something, the next step is to laugh at it. We laugh at Islam in the film – why not, Islam is funny, most things are. It’s a sign of how far British society has come that we can have a good laugh at cultural clashes.”

The Infidel Filmmakers: Writer David Baddiel, actors Richard Schiff and Omid Djalili, and director Josh Appignanesi

Appignanesi admits though that Schiff for example, a fine American actor famous for West Wing, has a completely different approach to Djalili, and his job as director was to make it work. He explained: “Richard is highly trained, hits his mark every time and is very disciplined – it’s part of the reason he is so good. Omid is all over the place, in the sense that he has a line but he will do it differently every time you do a take. So Richard has to respond to that while still doing his thing. There was no safety net.”

He is helped a lot by Djalili’s remarkably relaxed, charming screen presence – not easy when you’re overweight and bald. Appignanesi said: “He just has a great warmth, which is so important over 90 minutes of a film. We could have made him a very hard-line fundamentalist who discovers he is Jewish, and that would have been funny – for a 2-minute sketch. For a film you need much more, you need to be on his side, to feel for him even though he is a fat idiot sometimes. To do that you need his brand of mad charm. The great thing about Djalili is he wants you to like him, and he’ll do anything to make that happen.”

Among the funniest moments in the film is when Djalili reveals to Schiff he is actually not Muslim but Jewish, and his name is Solly Shimshellewitz. Schiff’s deadpan response is, “Why didn’t they just call you Jewey Jew Jew Jew and be done with it>” The line appears in the trailer and film, but still raises a laugh on the sixth or seventh viewing and Appignanesi thinks he knows why. Schiff is carrying a glass of whiskey, and the director said: “One of the things I learnt about comedy is people carrying things is funny. It’s like Richard can’t bear to be parted with his whiskey. I also made sure Omid was eating in almost every scene, he is always carrying things like a bag of chips – it’s just funny.”

The director is very confident The Infidel will prove to be a breakthrough British comedy, the first to poke fun at all organised religions without offending anyone. He explained: “All American comedy is Jewish comedy, from Woody Allen to Curb Your Enthusiasm. In Britain we love that but all of our comedy is based, more or less, on class. This film is also about that, and fitting in, but it is also about what happens when we aren’t who we think we are. We all play roles in society, but when it cracks what happens? Omid thinks he’s a Muslim but is revealed to be Jewish, so what happens? He becomes a bad father and a bad husband as well, because his identity and role-playing has gone.”

One of the huge strengths of the film is the high quality of the British Asian actors on show, including Archie Panjabi as Djalili’s wife, Mina Anwar and Amit Shah as his long-suffering son. Appignanesi agrees Asian talent is beginning to get noticed in mainstream British culture: “There is so much depth there, but it is starting to be recognised. My cast here were just fantastic – Mina had to create a character with a burka so we can’t even see her, and Amit is just great. I love the fact that although he is just a boy he towers over his mother, it’s just funny. And Archie is one of the best actresses in the world, she can make a film with Anjelina Jolie (A Mighty Heart) and this and gives just as much.”

Even if your religious knowledge is minimal The Infidel is still funny, but Appignanesi did allow himself one slight in-joke – but for a good reason. When we meet Djalili’s Mahmud Nasir he is wearing a Tottenham Hotspur shirt, because he loves his football and lives in north London. Spurs are of course a Jewish club, hinting at what the plot might bring, but it also gave Appignanesi a helping hand with the look of the film. “Spurs have dark blue and white in their colours,” he explained, “also the colours of the flag of David. Richard Schiff’s flat is blue, all the Jewish scenes are blue, it’s a cold, unwelcoming colour. All of the Muslim scenes are in green, orange and gold, because that is their colour. So when we see Omid in a blue scene we get tense, because he’s not where he should be and he might not get out of there. It’s my way of exteriorising the film. Exteriorising? Is that a word?”

It is now, Josh.

Writer: MIKE MARTIN

The Infidel is released in cinemas on April 9th. CLICK HERE to read our review.