Bad Samaritan is a terrifying cautionary tale of two thieves uncovering more than what they bargained for when breaking into a house.
The film is a thrilling cat-and-mouse story of a petty thief who stumbles upon a woman being held captive,” says the film’s director Dean Devlin.
“I had been wanting to work with Brandon Boyce (screenwriter) ever since he wrote the screenplay for Apt Pupil. So when he sent me his script for Bad Samaritan and asked my advice, I told him to sell me this script immediately and ‘let’s make this together.’”
Devlin says that he immediately fell in love with the story after reading it. “I was drawn to the ethical dilemma of our lead character. While his ethics are loose in his everyday life, he still believed he had a moral code.
“But after he discovers a woman in mortal jeopardy and leaves her behind, he’s mortified with himself for making such a horrible decision. He can’t live with the idea that he is a horrible coward who would abandon an innocent person in danger. When it comes down to it, he’s willing to risk everything, including his own life, to rectify his terrible decision,” shares the director.
In the end, the biggest driving force behind this movie was passion. “We were lucky enough to not need a studio to back us; we were simply able to say, ‘We love this movie, we love these actors, we’re going to make it,” says Devlin.
“Bad Samaritan takes everything we’ve been building at Electric Entertainment and focuses it on one project. This isn’t a studio film, it doesn’t have a giant machine behind it. It has the people in this building and on set who put their blood, sweat, and tears into making this picture.
“I got my dream cast and got to film in my home away from home in Portland. It’s like rooting for your family to succeed and it holds a great deal of emotional weight for me,” he says.
SMOOTH CRIMINALS
The storyline: Sean (played by Robert Sheehan) and his friend Derek (Carlito Olivero) hold honest jobs as valets at a local restaurant in Portland, Oregon.
At least, that’s what they tell people. Their real money comes from a scheme they run on the side. When a customer shows up in an expensive car, one of the friends will keep an eye on the customer in the restaurant while the other uses the car’s GPS to find the customer’s house.
And then they rob it. Nothing crazy — an old piece of jewellery, a couple of cheques from the chequebook — things that the customer wouldn’t miss right away. And by the time they do? It’s too late. The unknowing victims probably don’t even remember those nice valets.
Things run smoothly until one night when a particularly nasty customer rolls up in a flashy Maserati. The driver is Cale Erendreich (David Tennant), who is self-important, rude and extremely rich, which makes the two crooks eager to rob him.
Sean follows the car’s GPS to Cale’s house. There he finds a no-limit credit card and a gold Rolex and thinks he has struck jackpot.
He’s about to leave when he notices something strange: a huge door with multiple heavy locks. Sean instinctively knows that there must be something valuable behind it.
Sean picks the locks and finds a woman, gagged and bound to a chair with chains, in a pitch-black room.
The terrified woman, Katie (Kerry Condon) begs him to release her. He searches the house for something to cut the chains but Derek calls him in a panic saying Cale wants his car.
Sean is in a dilemma. Does he stay and help the woman? He makes his choice, clumsily replaces her gag and promises to call the police.
But Cale is no ordinary psychopath. By the time the police show up, Cale has invited over a lady friend to create an alibi for himself. He has already moved the bound woman and cleaned up any trace of her.
With the police out of the way, Cale turns the tables on Sean. He not only finds Sean and gets him fired from his job but also goes after his parents and wreaks havoc with their employers. He hacks Sean’s bank account and drains his life savings. He finds naked photos Sean took of his girlfriend and posts them on social media. This guy is determined to make Sean’s life a living hell and he’s frighteningly good at it.
Reeling from these attacks and racked with guilt over the awful choice he made, Sean must not only deal with the consequences but must also find and rescue the captive woman.
What follows is a thrilling and life-threatening pursuit, where Sean’s role of hunter soon changes to the hunted.
PLAYING KATIE
First seen in the Oscar-nominated 1996 movie Angela’s Ashes, Irish actress Kerry Condon has been garnering praises for her numerous roles in Hollywood productions.
Her most talked about movies include The Last Station, which was nominated for two Academy Awards.
She also brought the ancient city of Rome to life in Bruno Heller’s HBO series Rome in two complete seasons. Playing Octavia of the Julii, she helped the show win four Emmy Awards in 2006 and a Golden Globe Nomination in the category of Outstanding Television Series - Drama.
She has also been recurring for four seasons on the hit AMC series Better Call Saul as Stacey Ehrmantraut, and starred in 2012 HBO show Luck opposite Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte, directed by Michael Mann.
Condon has also lent her voice for the role of Friday for Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Spiderman: Homecoming and the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War.
Besides Bad Samaritan, her other recent films include roles in Indifferent Women and Dreamland.
Below, Condon shares more about her involvement in Bad Samaritan.
WHAT DREW YOU TO THIS PROJECT?
I like the idea of playing that part. It seemed kind of fun to do, and also Tennant being a part of it. Again, because if the person opposite me was somebody I didn’t really think was that great, I wouldn’t have done it because it just would be too hard and it wouldn’t be good.
A big thing was Devlin had his own distribution company and knowing that was a big point too.
DID TENNANT MAKE YOU FEEL THE FEAR THAT YOU’RE PORTRAYING ON THE SCREEN?
To be honest, it was more a mix — really hating him and the fear starting to turn into something more...
CAN YOU SHARE ABOUT WORKING IN THE COLD AND WORKING IN PORTLAND... ESPECIALLY HAVING TO BE IN CHAINS AND TIED UP?
Getting in the chair everyday, I thought I was just going to zone out. Once I was in it, I had to be in it for ages too. So my mind went, “God, I can’t have coffee, I can’t have water.” - Courtesy of TGV Pictures
Bad Samaritan opens in cinemas on May 3.