Wes Miller has only been directing films for about a decade, but from the handful of movies that he’s made — the bulk for which he also served as a writer — what’s immediately interesting is the ways in which he utilizes the action genre to expose the cracks in the institutions that largely make up American culture and society.
Even more impressive is the fact that Miller does so without flagrantly hurling judgments towards the place he calls home. No, there is, underneath the pulpy action sequences of his films, a sensitivity to his movies and especially his characters, who are the soft, beating hearts of that which Miller is ultimately trying to say.
Significantly, Miller was a civil rights attorney before he gave up his practice to pursue a career as a director. Jumping from one industry to another is not without its risks, particularly in a creative field like independent filmmaking, but the switch is clearly paying off. Indeed, it’s likely because of his legal background that Miller is able to translate the complexities of American political and judicial systems of power into his movies, specifically, action cinema.
In A River Runs Red, for example, a respected judge (Taye Diggs) takes the law into his own hands in order to serve justice to the two cops (Luke Hemsworth and Gianni Capaldi) who murder his son during a routine traffic stop. In Atone, former special ops agent Laura Bishop (Jacqueline Fleming) must take down a team of terrorists who have taken her daughter hostage during a hi-jacking of a megachurch. His last film Hell on the Border tells the true story of former enslaved man Bass Reeves (David Gyasi) who became the first Black deputy U.S. marshall west of the Mississippi River in the late 1800s. And, now, his latest movie A Day to Die tells the story of Connor Connolly (Kevin Dillon) who must pay a $2 million debt to Tyrone Pettis (Leon) and asks his old military ops crew to help him before his loved ones pay the price.
“A friend brought the screenplay to me, and it was straight action,” Miller says in our interview. “But I really wanted to try to imbue it with something a little deeper and explore things [that speak to] where we are in the world today. With all these divisions that we have, what would [the story] look like?”
On Jumping From Law to Directing Leon and Bruce Willis
“Every day,” Miller says when asked if he ever felt a sort of pinch-me moment on set, knowing that, a little more than a decade ago, he was an attorney and, now, action veteran Bruce Willis, Leon, Kevin Dillon, and Hell on the Border collaborator Frank Grillo are on his set and performing his words. “It’s humbling. They all pushed me to be better, and I feel like they trusted me with the material.”
If there was one actor of the bunch that had a longer-lasting effect on Miller, it’s Leon. “Leon was probably the one I was most scared to work with. Being a Black filmmaker, you know who Leon is. You remember him [as] David Ruffin [in 1998 miniseries The Temptations]. You remember him from Cool Runnings. He’s somebody that I looked up to.”
Miller’s filmmaking style is expeditious, which is necessary when, for a film like A Day to Die, you only have 22 days to shoot. “We don’t have [time for] rehearsal and all that stuff. I shoot [with] multiple cameras, and then I take a period to dial in, run the scene a few times, make and tweaks and adjustments, and then watch [the actors] find the material, find the words — that’s the sweet spot. Through all the drama of financing and logistics, [that] is the moment I want to protect.”
Getting to this point in his professional journey, of course, was not that easy, particularly after leaving a career in law. “The switch was hard. I’m not just talking financially hard, but emotionally hard. When you become a lawyer and go through law school, being a lawyer is [synonymous with] your identity. ‘Hi, I’m Wes Miller. I’m a lawyer.’ Then, all of a sudden, what you were holding on to — that identity of who you are — now becomes ‘I’m a budding filmmaker, but not really a filmmaker.'”
Reflecting further on that career jump, Miller says: “I would absolutely make the decision again. I am happier now in my professional life than I have ever been.”
On Finding His Voice as a Black Filmmaker
“One thing that [Leon] really taught me — when we did our first interview [before shooting A Day to Die] — he asked me, ‘What kind of filmmaker are you?’ I said I wanted to make cool stuff that people would remember when I’m gone. He said, ‘No, that’s not good enough.'”
This is how Miller dug deep to figure out who he was as a filmmaker. “As a Black filmmaker, you’re always working to figure out what your voice is [and] your place in the world. As a former civil rights lawyer, [social and political] issues have always been close to my heart,” the director says. “As a filmmaker, though, you can’t always make ‘message’ movies. They don’t, a lot of times, make a lot of money unless they’re Oscar-worthy. And when you’re at the infancy of your career, and you’re learning and growing your craft, it’s hard to make movies at that [Oscar] level, especially without Oscar-level producers to guide you.”
“I’m a filmmaker that makes socially relevant action films,” Miller says, gesturing towards the revelation he took away from his conversation with Leon. And one need only look at A Day to Die to witness the director coming into his own. The film takes the ideas of good-versus-bad, police-versus-criminals, and power-versus-people and offers a story that encourages you to reconsider the political and social traditions America has created, perpetuated, and, more importantly, weaponized against its people.
Needless to say, A Day to Die, for Miller, is a step in the right direction. “It’s only recently that I felt like I was able to fully let go of that disconnect of not being a lawyer anymore and not letting it be part of my identity. ‘Hey, I’m a filmmaker, and I’m here.'”
A Day to Die is available to select theaters and VOD March 4, 2022.
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