He may have steered The Fugitive into the blockbuster realm of Hollywood, but action director Andrew Davis has yet to make a film that equals that movie's commercial and critical success. Perhaps his latest film, Collateral Damage, starring superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger, will be the one to outdo Davis' more famous thriller. The film tells the story of family man and fire-fighter Gordon Brewer (Schwarzenegger), who is plunged into the complex and dangerous world of international terrorism after he loses his wife and child in a bombing credited to Claudio "The Wolf" Perrini (Cliff Curtis). Frustrated with the official investigation and haunted by the thought that the man responsible for murdering his family might never be brought to justice, Brewer takes matters into his own hands and travels to Columbia to track down the terrorist. Is there a place for such films in the post-September 11th world? Davis spoke to Paul Fischer in Los Angeles.

Paul Fischer: How disappointed are you that it took so long for this to come out?

Andrew Davis: It hasn't been that long. Normally, people finish a movie and it doesn't release the next day. I've generally been in a situation where they are ripping it out of our hands and saying, 'Let's put it in the theater.' The Fugitive was in the theater seven weeks after we finished shooting. I think it was appropriate that this film was delayed. I think it has more resonance now and more significance now than if it had come out either before the events of September 11th or immediately thereafter.

PF: The climate is ripe for this film?

AD: I think there has been chance for reflection and a sense of evaluation of what the world is about and how it works or doesn't work. I think people can see this film and be surprised how close some of the images and the events are to what happened and if we would have waited longer it would have seemed like we made this film because of those events. Now it just seems like it was just sort of a parallel kind of story that happened to coincide with the events.

PF: Do you feel it's ironic coincidence that your film is about a heroic fireman and now firemen are seen as heroes?

AD: I think it certainly makes it more interesting than if he would have been just a basketball coach which is what one draft had. Lionel Wigram, one of the executives at Warner's, recommended Arnold become a fireman when he was cast, and I think it was appropriate. I didn't want to do a movie about a guy who had been to Vietnam and carried a gun and knew all the tricks of the trade. This is a movie about a man who saves lives who gets turned into a guy in a revenge mission who, along the way, realizes he may be becoming his nemesis.

PF: He never carries a weapon throughout the film. What was the thinking behind that?

AD: As I said, he's a lifesaver.

PF: He does take a life.

AD: He does, but he's very specific in doing that. He's not willing to kill a bunch of innocent people in doing that. I don't believe he had access to a gun once he was in Colombia that easily and he probably could have found one. But, you know, you're not allowed to walk around with a gun in the guerilla zone unless they want you to have one and they certainly didn't want this mechanic to have one. I consciously did not want to see Arnold Schwarzenegger running around spraying bullets. That's not the movie I wanted to make and the studio was supportive of that. We were going to be trying to make a more realistic, more emotionally connected story about a man who doesn't have those tools but is driven by his own sense of resolution and closure as to what happened to his family to go find this guy.

PF: Were the Colombians always the bad guys?

AD: Originally this film was set in Libya.

PF: Why Colombia?

AD: I had worked in Colombia as a young cameraman in the mid-seventies. I worked with José Ferrer in a remake of Oliver called Paco. I fell in love with the country and I had many friends who I had left in Bógata who told me it was not safe to come there and I felt it was a tragedy because it's a gorgeous, beautiful country with lovely people. When they offered me the picture, I said, 'I'm interested, but I don't want to do another Arab-bashing movie.' I felt it was a cliché. Arnold had done movies like that. I was interested in sort of pointing a light on what was going on in Colombia, because it's a country that the United States is involved in in many ways, and I don't think people are aware of what's happening.

PF: What edits were made due to September 11th?

AD: There wasn't a frame changed, there wasn't a bit of sound changed from the version we were going to release prior to September 11th. We felt that to start opening up the can of worms that would talk about relating this event prior to September 11th, I think most people know that this film was made before that. It was delayed because of those events and we didn't want to try to... it would have changed the nature of the whole movie had we incorporated the realities into trying to revise the movie.

PF: How'd you get John Leguizamo for such a small role?

AD: I had seen his work and appealed to him. I told him he was going to be able to do what he does so well, which is to bring a lot to the table as an actor. I'd worked a lot with other actors that way and I'm very happy he did it.

PF: Do audiences want to see the good guy win?

AD: Audiences have always wanted to see the good guy win. They may have gotten tired of the clichés of who the good guys were and who the bad guys were and I think there's a certain cynicism amongst young people today that maybe we didn't have when we were younger, but I think that's always going to be the case. People want to believe in each other, they want to believe in triumph over evil. But this is not such a simplistic story in the sense that Arnold realizes that he is becoming his enemy. He realizes the events that motivated this terrorist to become a terrorist are parallel to his. A man loses a child, he becomes a monster. I lost a child, I may be becoming a monster. It's a question of how you balance these things.

PF: There are a lot of emotional moments for Arnold. How do you direct that?

AD: I got to know Arnold fairly well. I've known him for years, but not personally that close, but just in the course of preparing the movie, having conversations with him, trying to reach into his innards. I mean, here's a guy who spends a lot of time working for kids in the inner city and I don't think he does it just for the publicity. His father never saw him win a competition as a body builder until he was a world champion and at that competition he thought that the black policeman from Chicago should have won because he had a job and he was a cop and so was Arnold's father. They had an outhouse in the back of his place. He came here with Franko Columbo and they pulled down chimneys. They were laborers. He's the real Horatio Alger. He started with nothing and he's married to the queen of the Kennedys. So, he cares about the little guy trying to make it, even though he's become Mr. Establishment. So there is a heart there and a consciousness of working hard and making it, (which) I tried to pull out of him. And he was very responsive as an actor. I said, 'Arnold, you don't have to act tough. You are just strong and tough being who you are. You don't have to have big facial expressions. Less is more.' And he understood that.

PF: Did you have any preconceptions of working with Arnold and did those change while making the movie?

AD: I was aware of his prior work and why he had become a big star, but I treated him as an actor. I didn't try to model this as an Arnold movie. This could have been played by Robert De Niro or Harrison Ford or a lot of other people could have played this part. I thought it was appropriate that Arnold as a fireman, a man going for revenge, could have an interesting kind of ironic quality when he realizes that he is becoming his enemy. Who better than someone who has this kind of physicality in this action audience to raise our consciousness.

PF: Can any satisfaction be gained from revenge?

AD: This is about being human. We are born as animals and every generation of babies has to be taught to be human. If the parents aren't there, or the morals aren't there, or the teachers aren't there, we're animals. So, we have to learn from these events. You think about what's happened in the news over the last few years with Bosnia, and the Middle East and Southeast Asia and South America, it's pretty tragic stuff and I would hope that these violent action movies would tell people this is not necessarily the solution. Let's try to figure out how to not get each other so mad at each other so these events don't take place.

PF: Will there be a change in Hollywood action movies after September 11th?

AD: It's interesting. I have not seen Black Hawk Down and I've heard mixed messages about the movie. The one thing I did hear, one of my camera operators took his son to see the movie, he's a teenager, and after the movie he said, 'Okay, son do you want to go to the draft board and register?' So if you can make movie that says war is not glamorous, and it's not so heroic to be involved in a situation where you are devastated and are devastating, I think it's pretty positive.

PF: That and yours were made before September 11th, what about in the wake?

AD: I don't know if historical pictures will be the appropriate way to deal with some of these issues. The contemporary can't handle it right now.

PF: Do you see yourself heading in another direction, or sticking with this genre?

AD: I was a journalism major and I sort of fell into being an action director because I made a film early on in my career that made money, called Code of Silence. It was interesting. It was about a police cover-up of a murder, it was about, actually, Colombians dealing drugs and the Mafia trying to rip them off. I've tried to have themes in my films that deal with social issues. The Fugitive was about a drug protocol that was being covered up. The Package was about a conspiracy between the Soviet and American military to continue the Cold War. I like the fact that these action films let me talk about themes that are interesting to me. I'm starting a picture based upon an award-winning children's book called Holes by Louis Sacker. It won the Newberry Award and the National Book Award.

PF: Is it different?

AD: Well, it is different, but it's about an unjustly accused kid. It's about a kid who gets sent to a prison camp and he didn't do it. Just like Harrison Ford didn't kill his wife. It's about racism, it's about a family fable that's gone on for many generations from Eastern Europe. So it relates and yet it's for young people, and I hope it allows me to work in an area like that. I mean, my first film was about my teenage brother who was an eighteen year-old kid who was a musician on the south side and that's how I became a director. Like I said, when you make money for people doing something they want you to keep doing it. I made a film called Steal Big, Steal Little after The Fugitive. It didn't do very well, but some people liked it and had it done really well I'd probably be doing Capra-esque type comedies still.

PF: Under Seige 3?

AD: Three people have asked me about it today. I haven't talked to the studio about it. I did the first one. I didn't do the second one. I have to find out from my agent and Warner Brothers if it's real.

PF: Were there any concerns about Arnold's health while making the film?

AD: No and I asked upfront what are the restrictions and he said, 'I'm fine.' He's in really good shape. I mean he fell off his motorcycle a few weeks ago, which was tough, but he's in great shape and he stays limber and he works out at lunch and he tries to do as much as he possibly can. So having lifted all the weight he's lifted on those hips all those years, he's in amazingly good shape.

PF: Do you feel you have to top The Fugitive?

AD: Somebody said, a friend of mine from high school who said, 'Well I know the guy who directed The Fugitive.' And the reply was, 'Well he ought to retire, because he's never going to beat that.' I just feel lucky to have been a part of that film. I would love to make a film that is received as well or does as well some time in the future, but it's not the end of the world. But that was a film that was sort of magical. It wasn't a great script to begin with. It was a combination of a lot of improvisation and a lot of people caring how it got made. It happened very fast.

PF: Do your read the reviews of your films?

AF: Generally I do. Please give me a good one.

PF: Why the R-rating for this film?

AD: I think, you know The Fugitive was PG-13. I think it's a different time. I think the ratings are tougher these days. It was very hard to depict the realities of Colombia and this bombing and stay within the guidelines of what it would have had to have been. I've seen some films lately that are PG-13 and I go, 'Wow that's pretty violent.' But if you don't show the blood and you don't swear you can do a lot of things.

PF: Are you under any criticism for the violence in the film?

AD: Some of that, I was probably under some influence to keep it at a certain level based on (what) the expectations are from Arnold's audience. I personally don't like that stuff. I don't go out of my way to say, 'Isn't it great what we did there?' There are a few moments in the film that are a bit strong. Some parts of the audience like that stuff, some parts of the audience don't like that stuff.

PF: Do you think about the DVD when you're shooting the film?

AD: You know, I'm so busy making the movie generally. Truffaut said that you start a movie and you have these dreams about what it's going to be and by the time you're into it a few weeks you just want to know you can complete it. This was a very physical, tough movie to make. We had to go and create a war in Mexico. I guess in the future, if I had the opportunity, there are things that I would put back or insert into the movie. I don't know whether Warner's wants me to do it or not, or whether I'm willing to fight for it.

PF: On Nick Meyer?

AD: I never saw or met Nick Meyer on this movie. I've met him in the past. He was involved with this story being developed with David Foster and Ron Roos.

PF: How did you do the hallway explosion?

AD: It was done (in) a water treatment plant in Sylmar and we had permission to do some initial propane blasts and then it was enhanced digitally.

PF: Francesca didn't have a hair out of place after that.

AD: Actually she did. We did mess her up, but with the lighting and everything...

PF: Who came up with the idea of the snake torture scene?

AD: Lorenzo Di Bonaventura. This was in post production. The scene initially was not as graphic. It was a different scene and the desire was to, in terms of trying to make Cliff's character stronger and more outrageous and more despicable, was to do that. It was a very simple scene before, he sort of slapped him with a magazine and walked off. So we were doing some pick-up shots, so it was part of another set and we just went and did it. It was no big deal.

PF: Why didn't Chain Reaction work?

AD: I don't know... it was crazy. Keanu is too fat. The film opened up against Independence Day and another Fox movie. It opened up the weekend of the Olympics. Keanu had said no to Speed 2 or 3. I don't think they were supporting the picture very well. But I think in terms of what is going on with the world and energy, it's a pretty relevant movie. I loved working with Morgan (Freeman). Once again, there's a situation where I wanted Keanu to play an Everyman. He was just a kid who was a mechanic who happened out in a laboratory, who got a career going, who had some genius. I had met guys like that.

PF: Do you worry about people's safety on an action film?

AD: Yes. Tommy Fisher did this movie. He did Under Siege with us, he did Titanic. He's probably one of the best special effects guys in Hollywood. I just respect his abilities. Something can always go wrong and I've been very lucky that I've never had anybody inured. I mean, minor, minor injuries, but nothing like has happened to other filmmakers. It's not worth it. It's only a movie. That's part of being professional. You just try to not get yourself in a situation where things can go wrong.

Collateral Damage OPENS ON FEBRUARY 8