Raquel Laguna/ SUCOPRESS. Actor Frank Grillo stars in the movie Long Gone Heroes, directed by John Swab. In this interview, Frank talks about his character in the film and about playing action roles. He also talks about the experience of working again with director John Swab and with the cast. In Long Gone Heroes, Gunner Jackson, a special forces soldier who has witnessed the darkest side of country and combat, is forced back into the field of battle to save his niece, who is being held in South America. As the fight intensifies, Gunner and his team discover that her disappearance is part of a corrupt private operation that hits way too close to home. Andy Garcia, Juan Pablo Raba, Melissa Leo, and Josh Hutcherson also star in this non-stop action thriller.
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00:00attracted me was I it was a new take on you know the genre
00:04because it was really a politically charged and family
00:10oriented film story and I thought I could do something
00:13with this there's a lot going on with this guy and I also
00:17knew that I could bring in some great actors to play those
00:21roles at which you know John Suave being the director he is
00:24was able to attract that kind of talent and yeah, I was it
00:28it was it was really exciting putting the film together in my
00:31life at this age now, you know I've had I've had a big family
00:35and we've had a lot of risks.
00:38And during those risks sometimes a couple of times the
00:41family members have passed away.
00:44And I remember thinking man if I could just get back 20 seconds
00:48to say what are we doing like you know what's important is
00:51that we love each other and you know we were we're here a
00:54limited amount of time and that kind of resonates with me with
00:57this story, it's like I'm running out of time and she
01:00Melissa Leo says something to me.
01:02She said you know
01:05you were a certain kind of man soon you're going to be an old
01:08man.
01:09And that and that's that resonates because I'm at the
01:12age now I think about death a lot.
01:15And I'm thinking
01:17I got I got to really be a better person I got to be a
01:20better person to my kids to my to my friends, my family,
01:24I want I want to reconcile all that nonsense and I want to do
01:28the right thing and that's kind of again that was kind of the
01:31building blocks for gunned for gunner
01:34movie started in Puerto Rico and it went down because of
01:37money problems and then we got to do it again.
01:40But we went to Columbia.
01:42And so part of the difficulty was
01:46getting the cast in line again, putting them back together and
01:50getting the same feeling we had when we started the movie and
01:53that was that was I credit, John Schwab to really holding
01:55it all together.
01:57So the difficulty for me in this film was was
02:01with keeping everybody together I was more of a
02:04a producer almost trying to keep the family together
02:09to get this task done. And it really by the way going to
02:13Columbia made it better for us because we were in the jungles
02:15in Columbia,
02:17not on the beaches of of Puerto Rico and Columbia and
02:20Venezuela are very close. So it wound up, you know, sometimes
02:24you see obstacles is just obstacles. But sometimes the
02:27universe is giving you that obstacle because there's
02:29something better on the other side and I think that was the
02:31case with this movie.
02:32What I learned from gunner is
02:37tolerance
02:38to you learn I had to learn how to be tolerant of what I didn't
02:43understand and that's those people and that's that place I
02:46say it in the movie, I don't care about that as well care
02:49about Russia, I don't care about I don't watch CNN.
02:52But the truth is
02:54given somebody cracked his heart open which she did I did
02:58care about those things and you know what my children in my
03:01life have taught me to open my heart and open my my brain to
03:06what's around me and not just worry about myself and my my
03:10own family, but people and that's again that was the
03:13themes that we were looking to explore.