Renny Harlin stands as one of my favorite action directors of all time. One of the kings of nineties Hollywood action flicks, his filmography is insane, with him having shot The Adventures of Ford Fairlane and Die Hard 2 back to back. He went on to make Cliffhanger and two forward-thinking, underrated cult classics starring his then-wife Geena Davis, Cutthroat Island, and The Long Kiss Goodnight. I was excited when the opportunity came up to talk to him about his latest film, a globe-trotting heist thriller called The Misfits, which stars Pierce Brosnan (in what seems to be a variation on his role from The Thomas Crown Affair), Jamie Chung, and Nick Cannon.
During our Zoom interview, which you can see above, Harlin must have noticed the James Bond poster behind me on my wall. When I kicked off our interview, Harlin let me in on a cool secret. He was approached by EON to direct a James Bond movie in the early nineties! For him, the only issue is that it would have been one that would have starred Timothy Dalton. By then one of the biggest action directors in Hollywood, Harlin turned them down saying that he wasn’t keen on Dalton in the part. As he remembers here, he suggested Pierce Brosnan, which was shot down by Barbara Broccoli. As he tells the story, sometime later he’d heard Brosnan was signed and the rest, well, Harlin himself tells the story right off the top of my interview with the man, which, I must say, stands as one of my favorite interviews ever.
A truly nice guy, Harlin was happy to discuss loads of his movies! Check out the interview above for his thoughts on Cutthroat Island finally getting some respect, working with Andrew Dice Clay on The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, ejecting Bruce Willis from a cockpit in Die Hard 2: Die Harder, and perhaps most exciting of all, his pitch for a Long Kiss Goodnight sequel.
Harlin’s latest film, The Misfits, hits theaters on June 11th, and VOD on the 15th! Check out the trailer below!