‘Russell Crowe is one of the best actors I have ever worked with in my life.’
– Burt Reynolds
Just before work started on L.A. Confidential, Russell starred in the Australian road movie Heaven’s Burning – a kinetic and Tarantino-like thriller. (It would be dubbed Reservoir Dingos by film critics.)
Russell got goosebumps while reading the script, but admitted that he was shocked at just how complex and convoluted it was. By the time he got to page 46, he remembered thinking, ‘Damn, so much has happened and there’s still another 50 pages to go.’
The film’s producer, Al Clark, said, ‘It’s a road movie, yet it veers from being a traditional film of that genre. It’s a thriller that doesn’t feel an obligation to continually thrill, and it’s a touching film about the way people can collide at a moment in their respective lives. The inherent poetry of the piece – which blends humour, excitement, romance and violence – stimulated all involved from the outset.’
Russell would play a petty getaway driver who ends up on a crazy adventure with a Japanese bride, played by Youki Kudoh.
The actress recalled she had an ‘OK professional relationship’ with the actor, adding, ‘We spent very little time together on-set. He can be very difficult and certainly arrogant. When he’s in a good mood, he’s your next best friend, but on a bad day he’s not easy to be around.’
It would be more than a year before Russell embarked on another film. ‘I went through 71 scripts before I decided to do this one. It was over a year, from finishing a film called Heaven’s Burning, before I found a script that had some sort of originality in it.’
He would add, ‘Everyone wanted me to play a cop with De Niro, a cop with Michael Douglas, a cop with whoever. There’s a rule of thumb that says, “It’s really not how much is coming to the door, it’s how much money is attached to it.” But that’s not why I’m in this. I thought, “I’m going to pull back a little bit. And just see what’s out there.” I just felt that there was progress to be made and if I just kept examining only what was being offered to me I would be able to make that progress. I ended up not working for 14 months!’
Eventually he ended up plumping for a role of a sheriff who refuses to carry a gun. ‘I just thought it was very ironic for me to, after 14 months, play a lawman that holds conversation above the law. I’m a great fan of irony.’
Mystery, Alaska told the rousing tale of small Alaskan town getting behind their amateur ice hockey team after the New York Rangers agree to play a televised exhibition match against them.
‘There’s a great journey my character [John Biebe] has to go through in this film,’ Russell said. ‘For 13 seasons he’s played in the Saturday game, then suddenly he’s 34 years old, and a 17-year-old kid who’s a better skater comes along and Biebe is taken off the team. As soon as he’s removed from the game, the biggest hockey event Mystery has ever known happens when the New York Rangers come to play the town team. Internally he’s falling apart, but he has to maintain the appearance of self-assurance.
‘He doesn’t wear a gun and doesn’t carry handcuffs. He’s not a violent person. He’s elected the sheriff of the town, and it’s something that he just does because he knows that, given this particular group of people, he can stay balanced. The only thing he gives up to the fact that he’s an officer is he wears a badge sometimes. That’s it.
‘The other people who work for the sheriff’s department – they’re loaded, man. They have access to the weaponry, they use the weaponry, they wear the weaponry. He doesn’t want to do that because in his mind his job is a totally different thing. I mean, he does have a rifle in the truck, because you never know when a polar bear’s going to be doing some bad shit. But he’s just not the sort of man who’d carry a pistol. A different kind of bloke.’
Directed by Jay Roach, with a script written by Ally McBeal’s David E Kelley, Mystery, Alaska saw Russell starring with Hollywood icon Burt Reynolds. To bond during the film, the pair went out on a drinking session. However, Reynolds revealed he had to cheat to keep up with his young actor. ‘I could drink pretty good, but I used to cheat. Like when I filmed Mystery, Alaska with the Aussie. One night I said to the girl behind the bar, “Here’s $100. Give me a vodka and tonic with a lime, but after that, alternate with water and lime.” On the tenth round Russell grabbed the glass and took a swallow. Thank God it was the vodka. He said, “You’re all right, mate.”’
Roach would say about working with Russell, ‘It’s a kind of poetic approach to acting. That’s what makes it so powerful. He’s very controlled and disciplined about the externals – timing, blocking, choreography. But in addition to that he has a way of connecting to his subconscious that adds all these other layers of subtlety and nuance to what’s on the outside. A four-second reaction shot from Russell can be equivalent to a full minute of dialogue. He can be supremely articulate without words.’
Mary McCormack, who plays Russell’s wife in the movie, said, ‘I just was so excited when I found out he was attached and I read the script. I just couldn’t wait to go in and meet for it because I just think he’s phenomenal.’
Disney decided during post-production to make the film less Russell-centric – something which Roach was unsure about. Surprisingly, Russell agreed.
‘There was a debate, and Russell backed me up entirely. He felt like he had signed up for something that was an ensemble… He saw that the film would be better off if he was not elevated above the other characters. He became the kind of defender of the greater good.’
The film’s small-town charm seemed to have an effect on the film critics. ‘Consistently entertaining,’ said the San Francisco Chronicle, while the New York Times said Russell’s ‘Rock of Gibraltar machismo anchors the film in decent common-sense values.’
Mystery, Alaska would also prove to be a financial boost. ‘It wasn’t until 1998, when I signed on to do Mystery, Alaska, that I went from the deepest red into the black,’ Russell said. ‘I’d stayed out of work for 14 months, because I wanted to do something important [slight giggle] after L.A. Confidential, and I got a 710 per cent pay rise between those two gigs, you know. And that’s really important, that you [laughter], that you’re patient enough to back your own talent at a certain point when it becomes real.’