The “men on a mission” movie gets a modern facelift with Triple Frontier. Directed by J.C. Chandor (All is Lost), this action/adventure story follows a squad of hardened soldiers who strike out for themselves and set out to rob a South American drug kingpin.

The squad of soldiers are played by some of the hunkiest men in Hollywood: Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Garrett Hedlund, Charlie Hunnam, and Pedro Pascal are a veritable mountain of machismo, and the film makes a grand showing of balancing the emotional journey of these characters with a non-stop barrage of action, adventure, and white-knuckle tension.

During a New York City press junket for the film, we spoke to the stars of Triple Frontier, Charlie Hunnam and Garrett Hedlund. The Sons of Anarchy and Tron: Legacy stars, respectively, shared with us some behind-the-scenes details of the film, including finally sharing the screen together after years of friendship and discussing their training regimen; particularly, being forced to take swimming lessons for insurance purposes.

Screen Rant: You guys, this movie. So… so many words… It’s manly, but it’s emotional. It’s an adventure. It’s like The Guns of Navarone meets Treasure of the Sierra Madre. You guys function as such a unit in this movie. How well did you and the rest of the cast know each other before you started production?

Screen Rant: So you’ve worked together a lot. Did have any bonding exercises that you did in rehearsals or anything, or was that in itself the bonding exercise?

Charlie Hunnam: Garrett and I have known each other and been very dear friends for fifteen years, and that’s how we ended up becoming brothers in the film. Initially, J.C. (Chandor, director) hadn’t intended for these two characters to be brothers, but he was looking at us both, and feeling like there was too much similarity physically, and just our vibes were too similar, that he felt like it would be distracting, it would ask too many questions if we weren’t related. So he was trying to figure out which one of us he would hire and which one he wouldn’t, and then he had this eureka moment of realizing he could just change the script and write us as brothers and have us both! It required very little for the two of us to create a brotherly bond…

Garrett Hedlund: …But it’s been a long time in pairing. And Oscar and I, this is our third film together, so we’ve known each other for ten years and been super close pals. You know, to jump on this and go on this journey with them, especially with this story that’s so involved with brotherhood and camaraderie, it was a perfect fit.

Screen Rant: You mentioned military training, and this movie is so intensely physical. Can you talk a little about the physical intensity of climbing mountains and carrying all that equipment?

Garrett Hedlund: We took swimming lessons together.

Charlie Hunnam: It’s true.

Garrett Hedlund: We wrestled on the beach. Charlie and I would wrestle in the gym. He’s a big fan of Jiu-Jitsu, so he was trying to teach me a few things. We trained together. We did tactical stuff together with the SEALs and military supervisors that were on the film. I mean, all these things add up, so we spent some time together.

Charlie Hunnam: Yeah, we probably… In terms of the way films are made, generally, it’s a trajectory of truncating rehearsal time because it costs money to get everyone together, but on this, we actually had, like, two and a half weeks, or three weeks of time. And really, they stack those days for us. So we were all together doing military training, horse training, and, Garrett said, swim lessons, which was kind of unnecessary, but, you know, we had fun!

Garrett Hedlund: Insurance, man! Gotta cover it.

More: Triple Frontier – Pedro Pascal Interview

Garrett Hedlune: A lot of the equipment we had in the gym were pieces to deal with the elevation and stuff like that; certain treadmills that were testing your oxygen and stuff like that, and everyone’s endurance. There was so much climbing and stuff, and the Sierra Nevada was treacherous, I think we were shooting at, like, 13,000 feet. The stuff in Bogota was at, like, 12,000 or 13,000 feet. Just overall, the scenes, the action, the crashes, you know, got to be a lot!

  • Triple Frontier Release Date: 2019-03-13