Gerard Butler: Playing the Top Cop in Den of Thieves

By Gill Pringle

In the new thriller Den of Thieves, Gerard Butler is the leader of an elite LA County Sheriff’s Department team, who goes head to head with a professional bank-robbing crew under the command of Pablo Schreiber’s marine-turned-criminal. We caught up with the Scottish actor to learn how he handled the mean streets of LA.

Tell us about your character. He seems very conflicted, he doesn’t seem all good, or all bad.

Yeah, and that’s kind of the nature of this movie, you have these two tribes, they both fall in a very close line on each side of the law, but in a lot of ways, our guys, we’re no better than the bad guys in this movie. In fact, in some ways, their code of honour is stricter than ours.

And my character, he’s a fantastic policeman, but he is very conflicted, he’s probably an addict, he parties way too much, he has such a myopic view of this world, he lives for his work and that danger. It’s all about winning, being the alpha male, the top dog. And he will do anything to get ahead. In some ways, he’ll do more than the bad guys to win, so it becomes this psychological warfare, in terms of tracking them down, and it’s also us fucking with each other, and that’s when my character comes into his own. Nothing will stop him, and no matter what anybody does, he’s worse. And he’ll break any rule to get the job done.

It makes for a very entertaining kind of character, but you question, is this tactical, or is he really suicidal? Because some of the decisions he makes are so dangerous that you kind of go, ‘well, where is he going with this?’ I feel like he operates in a different kind of dimension, where, if you’re playing a game of chess, you move your pawn, I burn your house down. You play your queen, I fuck your wife.

How did you get into character?

You start to dress like him, walk around like him, hold your shoulders like him, and have that cocky attitude. And you find yourself fucking with people the way he does, and kind of enjoying that space. I started hanging out with cops, undercover cops, and then going to the LAPD sheriff’s department and actually hanging out with undercover cops, spending time with[author and former ATF agent] Jay Dobyns, who is in a lot of ways the character that Big Nick is shaped after, and spending a lot of time with him. And then doing boot camp, where I really got to know my other guys.

I haven’t bonded like that in a movie forever, and that’s been invaluable in helping to build Big Nick’s character as well. Trying to be their kind of natural leader, and one of the guys, and letting them get to know you in a way. It happens in such few places, one of them being with those undercover cops, because what came out of my conversations with them is how much time they spend together, how much they get to know each other. And they will literally, with somebody’s wink, change everything in the moment when they’re on a deal, which is threatening their life, or perhaps making their own decision, trusting their partner’s instinct and going with just a moment, just a twitch, and realising that nothing is as they thought it was. And you hear these insane, terrifying stories, but almost, in a way, inspiration, in terms of their friendship, their loyalty, and how much they live for each other.

We didn’t just do a boot camp, but we also did fun things, like paintballing, ropes, escape rooms, which I’ll never forget. We walk in like ‘what the fuck are we doing here?’ the door closes, and by the end of it, we knew each other so much better! Again, it was just all different ways of our shortcut, to get to know your buddies, and get closer, and learn to trust each other, and think and work out things together.

What do you do with the energy and anger at the end of the day?

Well, I don’t think you fully get rid of it until the end of the movie. Ambien often helps me a lot during the movie. I can be an insomniac, but you also get used to it, you learn to switch off, you read, you watch a movie, I like to meditate. But to me the problem comes at the end of the movie, and no matter how much I work in this business, you always have issues, because you say goodbye to people you’ve spent time with.

I like to have my days eaten up, I like to have that pure focus – you come in, you have a character to play, you have scenes to do, you finish the movie and suddenly you’re thrown out into the big wide world, like ‘okay, what do I do?’ And also, you’re kind of casting off the skin of that character, and it can screw with you. And even though every time you go, get ready, you find yourself in the middle of it going ‘I feel weird – oh right, that’s because of that’. So to me, it’s not about each individual night, it’s about the end of the movie. That energetic change, transformation back to yourself.

How much does costume help you? Looking at you, with the rings, and tattoos –

By the way, he has a huge tattoo of a cross with the Virgin Mary, and like, dude, I want that. But I also have my kids’ names tattooed, I have tattoos everywhere in this movie. This huge one on my chest, kids names up by my neck, and then I have another one up here that’s not on today.

 

Christian Gudegast is a first time director, but you worked with him on London Has Fallen, which he wrote. Is that when he gave you this story?

 No, not at all, I’ve worked on a few projects with Christian, we’ve been friends for many, many years, and he first told me about this project back in 2012. And he’s a great scriptwriter, we’ve developed scripts together, he has another couple of scripts that I love.

With the realism of this film, how does that compare to some of your other action choices?

I think this is much more reality based, this really tries to climb into that vibe of South Bay [Los Angeles], and cop life, gang life and criminal life there. We always delve a little more in Olympus and London into the ridiculous, and that’s part of the fun of it, like really if you stand back and look at it, you go ‘seriously? Is this happening?’ With this, Christian, this is one of the things that I love about him, he gets so embroiled in the world – to him, fact is always more interesting than fiction, he does so much research and spends so much time with the people involved in the story, whether it’s the cops, or the people in the feds, and working out how these systems go. You’re living a truth, and an interesting truth as well, and in every scene he makes it easy for the actors, because the characters are so rich in terms of the world that they live in.

Christian told us that he took you into the Federal Reserve, where there was like half a billion dollars. How did that feel?

Wait, there wasn’t half a billion dollars, there was one room that had trillions, at least a trillion dollars in there. It was interesting to go through there and see all the safeguards they have there, and even though they know we’re there making a movie, they never once let us out of their sight. They had to have a guard behind us to make sure none of us were looking at the wrong things.

Did you look at the wrong things?

Listen, I’m a bad boy, I’m always going to look at the wrong things. I wanted to sneak away and go down a corridor. But it was just incredible to see that amount of money, and that amount of processes for everything, to count the money, to check the money, to look for impurities and imperfections, the amount of money that’s destroyed every day…

What are your favourite cops and robbers movies, and do any of them, in your mind, connect with this film at all?

Yes, they do. I loved Heat, and that has a lot related to this movie as well. The Town, I loved, and again, the grittiness of that and the world they’re in reminds me of this movie. Older movies, though, French Connection, that really, to me, when I think of Gene Hackman in that movie, that’s Big Nick. He’s just off, you know? Loves fucking with people, goes too far, can’t really help himself. But he gets the job done. And even Dog Day Afternoon, it’s another one that I feel as a relative of this movie.

Den of Thieves is in cinemas from February 2, 2018.