There have been a handful of Vietnam War films over the decades, including a recent Zac Efron effort, but none have really focused on the tunnel rats that played a pivotal role in the war. Enter Ambush, an intense, gritty, and action-packed Vietnam War epic starring Aaron Eckhart (The Dark Knight) and Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Vikings). The unique new film hits theaters, on demand, and digital on February 24. Without giving too much away, the thrilling storyline focuses on a small outpost that gets ambushed during the war, prompting a U.S. Army squad to take the battle below ground on a high-stakes mission. It’s a new type of warfare, the likes of which they have never seen.
We recently caught up with the film’s writer and director, veteran filmmaker Mark Burman. He dished on working with big names like Eckhart and Rhys Meyers, the film’s unique musical score, and his future projects including a film to be directed by Antoine Fuqua.
Blending Genres for a Vietnam War Film
MW: What inspired you to write and direct a film about the Vietnam War? How did it all start?
Mark Burman: It really comes from two directions. One was, I grew up in LA, and I grew up around [film] sets since I was in my single digits. And so, I’ve always had it in my blood. And I also was able to grow up during the late ’60s to the early ’80s, when what I called “dramatic action films” were at the forefront. And those were films like Deliverance, The French Connection, and Sorcerer. And they really were tales about extreme men in extreme circumstances, and the hero or the antihero may die at the end. They may lose at the end, which you don’t see in cinema today. And I said, “Let’s bring that back.” And also having a deep interest in history. I was doing research about the tunnel rats [of the Vietnam War], and I said, “No one’s done a good movie about the tunnel rats.” There’s been like one low-budget horror movie, and that’s it… So I said, “Let’s go backward and go before the tunnel rats were formed, and have that first wave of American military that have to go into the tunnels for a mission.” So it starts as a combat war picture and then moves more into a Hitchcockian thriller. It was a blast to make. We shot it down Columbia. We shot on a tight schedule of 20 days. And we shot in the jungle. The majority of our effects, the explosions were practical. And you know, we tried to get as much authenticity as we can.
MW: What it was like shooting the actual tunnel scenes?
Burman: Those scenes were not as easy as they look, because the tunnels were tight, and people were actually getting claustrophobic on it, which is the whole effect you want to be filmed? As you’ve seen the film, our production designer, Carlos Osorio, did a wonderful job. [The scenes] are really authentic, and we were able to get the right lighting to it, to give it that stylized look. And just to go on a side note, I went back to the early ’90s with my DP, Dan Frantz, and we went to the old lighting of Jan de Bont when he was a DP of that early-’90s look, like The Hunt for Red October and Flatliners. And he had a very distinct way… the lenses they use back then and the lighting technique, and we applied that to the interiors.
MW: What was it like working with Aaron Eckhart and Jonathan Rhys Meyers?
Burman: You know, it was a pleasure working with them. They treated me like a king. They are really professional. You know, they’re from both stage and screen, big screen, small screen. And they’re seasoned pros. I mean, Aaron’s been nominated for Golden Globe, Jonathan’s won a Golden Globe, and they got really into their character. They really played it. And the unsung cast, the ensemble was fantastic. A lot of these guys, I mean, they absolutely gelled together. A lot of them would come on their day off to help just work or just observe, but you know, brought that whole camaraderie. And they lived together in the jungle in these, like, compounds, really nice, beautiful compounds out there. So they were a really, really tight unit.
Unique Musical Score and Future Projects
MW: The soundtrack for Ambush is very unique. Could you talk about how you went about scoring the film?
Burman: We had fantastic composers. I worked with them on a film I produced, a Paul Schrader film called Dog Eat Dog. And I asked them to score this. And a lot of it was from Tangerine Dream influence… I went back to the soundtrack from Sorcerer and Thief to bring that kind of vibe. And I thought it’d be interesting to have this. You’ve never seen it really, a synthesizer-type score in a Vietnam film, which I thought would give it an interesting vibe and build the suspense, etc.
MW: Was there a particular scene that was the most challenging to shoot?
Burman: It was the helicopter landing because it was raining that day… and you’re just sweating it out because these helicopters are used for Narco-terrorism, counter-terrorism, and counter-drug eradication. And so they just can go off at any time. And so, I really fought to get that. Whenever you’re printing the budget, everyone says, “Let’s just do the CGI.” And as I said, I really tried to keep to the old-school practical effects. That wasn’t challenging so much to shoot it, it was just waiting it out, putting it out. And then being in the jungle was crazy. I mean, it was raining like you’ve never seen it rain. And then all of a sudden it was 100 degrees with 100-degree humidity. And then, you had pumas darting by, big snakes. And literally, you’re in like three feet of mud every day. But you know what? It added to the scenes when you’re in the exteriors in the jungle. There was no faking, and what you see on screen is real.
MW: Are there any other projects you’re currently working on, that you’d like to share?
Burman: There’s a film that I’m going to direct this year called Eye for an Eye, and it’s a multiverse crime thriller. And it’s kind of Heat meets 12 Monkeys. I’m producing a film that probably won’t go into production for about another year and a half. But Antoine Fuqua is directing, Roger Avary wrote the script, and it’s [based on] a book called The Devil Soldier by Caleb Carr. Tom Cruise had this book many years ago, but that didn’t work out, and I was able to get the rights to it.
Ambush comes to us from Saban Films.
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