The one thing Werner Herzog hated about working with Tom Cruise: “The stories were too stupid”
Werner Herzog is not the kind of guy you want to piss off.
If his own accounts are to be believed, he is one of the hardest motherfuckers ever to take on Hollywood or life, more broadly. There was the time he got shot with an air rifle during an interview and barely skipped a beat except to breezily say that it was “not a significant bullet”, the time he pulled Joaquin Phoenix from the wreckage of a very real car crash in Los Angeles before disappearing without so much as a “Don’t mention it, mate”, and the time he absolutely refused to take the brace position on a flight that seemed to be headed for a premature encounter with the ground.
Those stories don’t even get to the extreme lengths the director has gone to for the sake of filmmaking. Whether he’s compromising an entire film crew to plunge ever deeper into the Peruvian rainforest or hypnotising the entire cast of Heart of Glass, there are few things that Herzog will not do to see his vision through to fruition.
It’s no wonder he’s stumbled into a flourishing side gig playing villains. Between his unforgettable voice and air of hard-earned invincibility, he’s a better man for the job than Mads Mikkelsen or Anthony Hopkins. Speaking to iNews in 2020, the revered director and accidental movie star was characteristically unburdened by modesty. “I’m particularly good when it comes to dysfunctional characters,” he said. “Violent, debased and hostile or outright frightening and dangerous. I’m good at that.”
This was particularly evident in the 2012 film Jack Reacher, starring Tom Cruise. In it, Herzog plays Zec Chelovek, a ruthless former Soviet prisoner who turns out to be the story’s arch-villain. There is more than a hint of comedy in Herzog’s performance, if only because the screenwriters seemed to know exactly what they’d be getting from him. In one scene, he confronts a cowering henchman and tells him, in his usual husky, thickly accented voice, about the time he spent incarcerated in Siberia.
“I spent my first winter wearing a dead man’s coat,” he rasps. “A hole in one pocket. I chewed these fingers off before the frostbite could turn to gangrene.”
It’s a perfect piece of casting in an otherwise unremarkable action flick, and that fact was not lost on casting directors or on Herzog himself. Following his role in the film, he said that he receives “about 10 offers a week” to play similar roles. But don’t expect him to switch sides of the camera any time soon because the director has no interest in the films he’s offered. “I declined because the stories were too stupid,” he said.
Jack Reacher is no masterpiece, nor are many other grungy thrillers of its ilk, but that would almost certainly change if Herzog just accepted the roles he’s offered. Bond villain? He’d out-perform them all. Marvel movies? He’d make them watchable. Paddington 3? He’d win an Oscar. Sure, he might have better things to do, but as far as audiences are concerned, it would be an incalculable contribution to the medium.
