by James Mottram in Malta
Renny Harlin is back in Malta, some thirty years since he was last here, overseeing the box office disaster that was Cutthroat Island. Starring his then-wife Geena Davis, this pre-Pirates of the Caribbean swashbuckler went wildly over budget, swelling to anywhere between $92 million and $115 million depending on who you believe, before its global return of $16 million saw to the end of Carolco, the company behind it. For the Finnish-born Harlin, the experience of shooting in Malta wasn’t easy.
“The place was developing,” he reflects. “There was very little crew base, there was very little equipment, very little experience. Not to be speak ill of anybody, but even just getting extras to be the pirates of the ships… we hired people… we thought that we would give them a helping hand, get some unemployed people involved, and hire them for the movie, and two days later they were gone, as we had just completed their costumes and everything… they thought it was too much work!”
Now Malta is very different. The island’s capital Valletta is thriving with restaurants and tourists, while the film industry here is equally buzzy, with studios and streamers bringing blockbuster productions here (Gladiator II, Jurassic World: Rebirth, Enola Holmes 3). Then there’s the Mediterrane Film Festival [MFF] – an annual showcase, now in its fourth edition, that’s designed to not only screen new(ish) movies to the public but to show off Malta to incoming directors and producers, who may wish to shoot here.
Harlin has come to MFF with his film, Deep Water, a lean plane crash thriller that sees survivors land in shark-infested waters. It’s been an emotional few days. Yesterday, he took part in a masterclass, looking back on some of those nineties action classics he made like Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger and The Long Kiss Goodnight, and got a little teary. The day before, at the screening, he was also moist-eyed, as he noted he could never have made this until he’d understood the meaning of family.
In the audience sat his second wife – and producer on Deep Water – Johanna, the mother of his three young children. “You would say this movie is a disaster movie, and there’s a plane crash, and there are sharks… but in my heart, this movie is about people and about love,” he said.
He calls Deep Water his take on The Poseidon Adventure, the 1970s disaster classic that he loved as a kid. “The characters were so interesting, and following the journeys and their stories was really moving. I always dreamt that I could make a movie like that one day.”
Harlin filmed the movie at Kumeu Film Studios, just outside of Auckland, New Zealand, utilising the vast soundstages and water tanks. The editing and visual effects were meant to be completed in Australia, but the production ran into a problem. “The idea was that the shooting of the movie would take place in New Zealand, and then postproduction in Australia, and somehow we would combine the tax credits, and that would help a lot in the financing of the movie,” Harlin explains.
Once postproduction began, however, “it became apparent that we were not getting the tax benefits that the production had counted on,” he adds. “And I honestly have to say, to this day, nobody’s given me the clear answer why that happened, and what were the circumstances, but of course it hurt us, because we talked about millions of dollars in benefits that we didn’t receive, plus the millions of dollars we spent traveling all the way across the world. We could have done it in Malta, or like we did [Harlin’s 1999 shark thriller] Deep Blue Sea in Mexico. Many other places.”
It meant Harlin had to take a break on the production, until he could find partners to come in and help finance the post-production, including some elaborate shark-based visual effects shots. In the end, Adrián Guerra of Spanish company Nostromo stepped in. “He was already interested in the film, but wasn’t really heavily involved, but he came to New Zealand to watch the shoot with his wife, and they were on their way somewhere on a sailing trip, but they thought ‘We’ll stop in New Zealand for a few days’ and he ended up coming to the set.”
Wisely, Harlin edited together a teasing glimpse for Guerra to see the film’s visceral plane crash sequence. “I showed it to him and his wife, and I said, ‘This is how the movie is going to feel’, and he really, really liked it, and then ultimately, when we got into all that trouble, he said, ‘Okay, I’m willing to step in and help you guys finish this, because I like the film’.”
Certainly, the finished movie has seen Harlin get some of the better reviews of his up and down post-nineties career, which recently included a six-year, three-film sojourn in China and the 2024-26 trilogy of horror films, The Strangers.
Dubbed “Harlin’s most lavishly scaled production in quite some time” by Variety, Deep Water also gives Aaron Eckhart, as the grimly courageous First Officer, one of his most substantial roles in some time.
Like Harlin, Eckhart’s career has, somewhat surprisingly, suffered of late – arguably his last great film was a decade ago, Clint Eastwood’s true-life drama Sully, in which he also played a pilot. In that wilderness period, he worked with Harlin on the forgettable CIA drama The Bricklayer, but the director admits that he’s surprised why an “incredible actor” like Eckhart has floundered. “It’s really hard to sometimes figure out why somebody is as huge as they are, and then somebody is not. But he’s kept working and I don’t know if part of it is that he lives on his ranch in Montana, and just loves taking care of it, and living in nature, and having that very, very down to earth life,” he says. “He’s somebody that you would never catch in a Hollywood party… with those leading men who have the model girlfriends and flashy lifestyles – not to take anything away from their talent, but they stay in the public [eye]… they are part of the zeitgeist, I guess. But if you’re in Montana on your ranch and you just show up to do a role, then maybe it’s not the same.”
Talking of reunions, the 67-year-old Harlin has just made The Beast, with his Deep Blue Sea star Samuel L. Jackson, who plays the President. Due in October, it begins at a summit of world leaders as a militia of unidentified hostiles launches a terrorist attack. “It’s never really explained what the terrorists are, what nationality they are, anything like that,” notes Harlin, “but there’s an attempt on the lives of several presidents, and the movie starts from the fact that they have to get Sam Jackson into ‘the beast’, which is his safe, bulletproof, explosion-proof vehicle, and get him the hell out of there before he’s killed.”
Harlin further reveals that the film plays out from the interior of the vehicle, with Jackson starring opposite Joel Kinnaman, who plays his wounded security guard. “This is my fourth movie with Sam, and the relationship between him and Joel is exceptional,” says Harlin. “I’d like to think that this movie is really going to make Joel’s career. I think people are going to be stunned when they see his performance.” He smiles. “I’m so proud of this movie… it’s a very exciting, very action-packed, very unusual movie.” Just how he likes it.
Although it’s been released in most territories around the world, Deep Water should be released in Australia soon.
