Terrence Howard, right before he told us about his love scene with Oprah in The Butler, talked to Movie Fanatic about his new thriller, Dead Man Down. Howard portrays a villain who is torn in many ways. Colin Farrell plays someone who is in Howard's crew that nobody suspects is really a snake in the grass, waiting patiently to strike with his revenge.
It seems that a year before, Howard's character ordered his subordinates to fire at Farrell's home in hopes it would scare them to move. His wife and child were killed. This villain is driven by money and he wanted all tenants out of the building so he could re-build it for higher rent.
Howard saw the man, although he leads a crime syndicate, as a businessman. In a way, he said in our interview, that is how we all are, really. "Everyone at the end of the day is a businessman because we have to deal with commerce in order to survive," Howard said.
"He has this aspiration of being accepted within general society. He wants the accolades of being on the Fortune 500. That gave him a better dynamic than just being a street thug. I loved his choices."
Howard didn't see the film as a revenge tale, as shown in the Dead Man Down trailer. It is something quite different. "I love the idea of recompense," Howard added. "It's not revenge. It's the making of justice."