Jack Kilmer On Shooting 'Detective Knight: Independence' In One Week & Working With Bruce Willis
Eight days. That’s how long it took for the latest Bruce Willis action thriller, Detective Knight: Independence to film. While the seasoned actor is obviously no stranger to chaotic production schedules, it was an entirely new experience for his co-star Jack Kilmer.
In an exclusive interview with FilmSpeak, Kilmer says that wasn’t even the craziest part of the shoot. He describes the way in which he joined the project as “one of those dream situations where you get a call one day [saying] ‘We want you to be starring in a movie with Bruce Willis. Can you show up tomorrow?”
Kilmer, who despite being the son of another iconic actor, had never met Willis and leapt at the opportunity - and this was before he found out that the film had a strictly planned eight-day shoot. Like most actors, he admits that he had his doubts at first, but after speaking to director Edward Drake he felt confident that it could be done. And it was.
The third film in Drake’s Detective Knight trilogy, the film follows Bruce Willis’ titular hero cop as his last-minute assignment to an Independence Day shift turns into a race to stop an “unbalanced ambulance EMT” (played by Kilmer) from imperiling the city's festivities.
On the surface, it’s a simple story about good versus evil, but Kilmer believes that the psychology behind his character makes it a much timelier tale of misguided patriotism. He refers to his character as an “incel” and an “anti-hero” of sort inspired by Joaquin Phoenix’s recent take on the Joker and films like Taxi Driver. He says, “This is a character that's unfortunately in the news a lot recently, in this day and age. And I imagine some of these extreme cases, [incels] think that they're American heroes, and they think that they are doing something that's right in line with their God in their country. And that's what we wanted to portray.”
Courtesy of Lionsgate
The fact that the film is set on Independence Day is no coincidence either as Kilmer also cites the January 6 United States Capitol attack as inspiration for the film’s story as well. Despite the politics at the heart of the film, Kilmer states that there is an overarching message about finding unity beyond division. He says, “Something that I've been thinking about is [how] bringing people together no matter what their political views are and listening to people that are different from you are important traits for you to be an American.”
Now, over the course of the film’s brief shoot Kilmer unfortunately had no time to really soak in the fact that he was working with a living legend like Willis. As some may recall, last year the actor was diagnosed with a disorder called aphasia which impacts a person’s ability to speak, listen, read and write. When asked about how it felt to be working on one of the actor’s final films, Kilmer said that he didn’t even think about it. He describes feeling so fortunate to be in the actor’s presence. “My memories of him are how he works,” he said. “I'm still tripping out that I was in a movie with Bruce Willis!”