By: debbie lynn elias
For Aaron Eckhart fans the world over, as ERASED’s ex-CIA operative Ben Logan, this is the performance you wanted to see from him in Olympus Has Fallen as opposed to what that film delivered – presidential Milquetoast rather than Commander-in-Chief. With ERASED, a non-stop espionage thriller, Eckhart is hard-hitting, commanding, decisive, intelligent and thoughtful, soaring as a protective father struggling to not only keep himself and his15-year old daughter Amy safe from would-be assassins and subterfuge at every turn, but also deal with rebellious teenaged angst (which as any parent can tell you, can be more daunting than any terrorist out there). Directed by Philipp Stolzl from a script by Arash Amel, ERASED is an edge-of-your-seat non-stop action thriller with surprises at every turn, including a maturing Liana Liberato who more than proves her mettle as an actress moving from childhood into adult roles.
Ex-CIA agent Ben Logan is now living what he believes to be a quiet life in Brussels. Working as a security expert for Halgate Group, a single father, Ben is trying to establish a secure home life for his teenaged daughter Amy, now living him for the first time. His former life as an agent a secret from Amy, he is finding parenting is not exactly a walk in the park what with school pick-ups and drop-offs, boys, packing lunches, doing laundry, making dinner and the requisite homework monitoring.
As if all of this isn’t daunting enough, Ben arrives at work one day to find the company gone, the offices and security design labs empty. His emails from Halgate personnel have even been deleted. Phone calls to co-workers start to lead him down a path littered with dead bodies and suspicious dealings. His co-workers were all illegal immigrants, virtually untraceable and undetectable if “missing.” But Ben is far from untraceable and now he has Amy to protect. With Amy by his side, the father and daughter are on the run trying to stay alive. The more they run, the closer they become and the deeper they delve into the espionage at play; espionage that involves traitors within the U.S. government and collusion with private European interests and death at the hands of Halgate.
Joyously, as Ben Logan, Aaron Eckhart serves up a far meatier performance here than in Olympus Has Fallen. Already a well-written character on the page, Eckhart makes the role his own, giving Ben emotional and intelligent substance. While much of Eckhart’s performance involves him running all over Brussels looking filthy and blood-stained, he more than fills the “action” shoes but also makes Ben a believable “thinking man”. A perfect combination of muscle and mind. He has impeccable pacing and timing with action-reaction and is very instinctive and organic. According to Eckhart, “This movie doesn’t rely on green screen and computer-generated images. This is us out in the streets of Europe, in the cars, I’m doing the driving, I’m doing the fighting, I’m runnning – with Liana – and Liana’s there. I think the only thing I didn’t do was go through the glass. That was the only thing I didn’t do in the movie. That’s rewarding for me.”
And doing all of his own stunts and driving required extensive training on Eckhart’s part. “I trained real hard. I did jujitsu and MMA. I had a French Special Forces crazy man named Olivier train me who inflicted great pain on me and really taught me everything I knew about jujitsu. I do all the fighting. It’s really important that I do all the fighting in the movie and be real and I know what I’m doing because this is a smaller movie. When I got there, we gotta get into it real quick. We didn’t have the time to choreograph these fights like you usually do with a huge film. So, I had to know the language coming in, the submissions, the hand holds, all that sort of stuff, which was fun. But very dangerous. Very dangerous.”
But beyond the action, Eckhart really fuels the fire and exposes a chink of vulnerability in Ben’s armor – that of being a loving father. And this is where Eckhart achieves the perfect blend within the character – his chemistry with Liana Liberato. “It’s a movie with my daughter and we have to deal with our feelings towards each other and misunderstandings.”
I really took note of Liberato in David Schwimmer’s Trust where she played daughter to Clive Owen, and again in Trespass with Nic Cage. Now, here as Amy, she just continues to grow in her abilities. Liberato is likeable, confident and has a mature air yet captures the very essence of still being “Daddy’s Little Girl.” Watching the dynamic between she and Eckhart is one of the best parts of the film, both in plot design and character growth/development. There is quite a bit of the dynamic that harkens to the Lucy Genarro “today I’m McClane” and John McClane Die Hard scenarios that gave the audience a resonating emotional touchstone reference. So engaging are Liberato and Eckhart that I would love to see a sequel pairing up this dad and daughter team. Liberato is quick to credit Eckhart with the believability of dad and daughter noting “You have to feed off of the other person obviously and Aaron’s a really great person to work with. We had a great time bonding and hanging out together. He made it so easy. We had a good time.”
Besides having her very first on-screen kiss (for which she made her mom leave the set), new for Liberato is doing her own stunt work and in ERASED that’s quite a feat. “I do my stunts but they also have a stunt girl there to do it and basically mimic what I do afterwards. But for ERASED, I would go to the production office before we started filming. My character was a photographer as well so I had a guy who would teach me how to use a film camera and we had the stunt guy come in and basically show me some of the moves. It was more Aaron’s responsibility to learn a lot of these things because his was very planned out, the certain moves that he had, whereas I’m just flinging myself on someone and hope that there was a pad that could catch me underneath. But we always had a stunt guy who hung out and taught me things and I could ask him questions.” While she downplays her skills and action efforts, she gleefully celebrates “all of these bruises on my legs but I was so proud of them. Battle scars! It felt really awesome! . . .We were slipping and sliding everywhere.”
After just seeing Olga Kurylenko in Terrence Malick’s To The Wonder where she was completely miscast and showed no acting ability whatsoever, as CIA operative Anna Brandt in ERASED, she turns the tables, delivering a strong solid performance. Although Kurylenko still needs to hone her acting skills (something which we see occurring as she moves from role to role), she more than holds her own in ERASED, giving us a duplicitous and interesting character in Anna Brandt. Beyond a strong physical resemblance here to Catherine Zeta-Jones, her performance and the character of Anna as a whole, feels like a cross between Jones in Oceans Twelve and Entrapment.
Written by Arash Emel and directed by Philipp Stolzl, who marks his return to the “action thriller”, ERASED provides numerous intrigues which Stolzl uses to best visual advantage. When executed correctly heists, cons and duplicity always make for good storytelling from both narrative and visual perspectives and for the most part, ERASED makes the best of the tools in the toolbox. Unfortunately, there are perhaps too many intrigues and plot devices which causes some befuddlement in the narrative and taking too long to get to the heart of the matter. And where the film falls short is in the narrative commentary denouncing the geopolitical misdeeds on which the story is premised, culminating in a puff of smoke rather than explosive finale. A word of warning, however, there is an airport scene which will rip your heart out. Bring tissues.
Even at her young age, Liberato knows the mark of a good director and when it comes to Stolzl, she is quick to point out, “He knew what he wanted and he had this idea in his head that he told us very clearly what he wanted and we were hopefully able to give him what he wanted. He was wonderful.” With so much action, script structure and ad-libbing always come into question. According to Liberato, Stolzl welcomed input and collaboration from the cast. “ We would just meet in the [hotel] lobby and go over the entire script. We got to change whatever it is we felt like we wanted to change. It obviously changed what we were filming. It was all very flexible. He was completely open to changing things.”
Shooting on location in Brussels with some interiors in Montreal, for Eckhart, “The main worry was the crews. How do you split a movie up and then work with European crews in an American action movie with a German director? Everybody was all over the place. [But] it was absolutely seamless. When you’re working in those big huge train stations and out on the street and having all the different languages in the cafes, it just works for the movie. Like on that train. On that train. We had 3 hours on that train to shoot the movie. That means to get on. Not 3 hours to act. 3 hours to get our stuff on, set up and shoot it so it was interesting working in that way. It only enhanced it. Plus, it’s important to play the place for the place. . .We were playing Europe for Europe.”
Love cinematographer Kolja Brandt’s tonal look of the film. With extensive handheld lensing, ERASED was shot digitally on the RED camera. Super-sharp, crisp resolution showcases the visuals which are cool, grey and icy when dealing with CIA and the corporate espionage and its personnel, but then counter-balanced with the rich color and warmth of Brussels, serving as an almost metaphoric cloak to seedy crime. Nicely done. Exceptional is Dominique Fortin’s editing which keeps the visuals moving at a rapid clip but takes time to breathe and embrace the development of the relationship between Ben and Amy.
Edge-of-your-seat, non-stop action, adventure and espionage keep ERASED from being erased.
Directed by Philipp Stolzl
Written by Arash Amel
Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Liana Liberato, Olga Kurylenko
