NICK POWELL LIVE BY THE SWORD

words and shutter ALAN ZIELONKO

While working on the set of Cinderella Man last year in Toronto, I found myself more interested in the new face that had arrived than the more obviously familiar ones like Russell Crowe and Ron Howard. Nick Powell came to the set to choreograph the final boxing fight between Jim Braddock (played by Russell Crowe) and Max Baer (played by Craig Bierko). Nick was called by Ron Howard upon Russell’s request, as Russell and Nick’s history was a successful one; Nick was the fight coordinator for Gladiator. After looking up his credentials on imdb.com and seeing movies like Braveheart, Gladiator, The Mummy, The Bourne Identity, 28 Days Later and The Last Samurai on his resume, it was pretty obvious this guy was on top of his profession.

Nick has a sort of infectious calm about himself, a truly happy and positive spirit from deep within, who graciously reciprocates any conversation with those curious enough to engage with him. So how do you become one of Hollywood’s most sought after fight/stunt coordinators? Born near Birmingham, he moved to Sheffield at the age of 11 and started taking Karate. At 16 he took things more seriously and tried Lau Gar, a rare form of Kung Fu, and competed for South Yorkshire’s B Team. Different styles began piling up—Ishin Ryu, Aikido, Ju Jitsu, Kendo, Tae Kwon-Do and of course Wushu. Nick reflects on his fervor: “It was sort of six months of each. I’d do a tasting, take a grading, move on to the next style, just so I got a basic grounding in each one.”

Eventually through his favourite, Wushu, Nick became quite prolific with weapons and competed with the British Team, placing second in the European championships. After doing some stage work, he began his training as a stuntman, learning other skills required to get on the stunt registry like fencing, trampoline, acrobats, high board diving and stunt driving. “Initially, it was a case of trying to make some money to pay the rent,” he explains, “and once I started to realize that it was actually quite an interesting, challenging and well-paid job, I took it more seriously and started training harder; going out, renting an airbag and a fire tower, and jumping out of different windows at different heights to get skilled at the high falls.Renting cars and going out and practicing 360s and everything else…and that’s the way the guys learn.You get onto a job, you see other guys doing good work, and you learn from them.”

In time Nick began stunt coordinating TV shows and odd projects until he received a phone call from friend and colleague Simon Crane…regarding a film called Braveheart. As Nick recalls, “Simon was sort of forward thinking, and wanted to present the fights in a different way, and they liked that idea. We knew each other and he asked if I could handle it, and I said I could…so, that was the first real break for me”. “Break” is an understatements—Nick choreographed 60 fights in the movie, including all the fight scenes with Mel Gibson.

After the incredible success of Braveheart, Nick was offered Zorro, starring Anthony Hopkins, Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta Jones…only to turn it down! “What happens a lot in Hollywood is they pigeon-hole you.” He says plainly, without any regret, “I didn’t want to get labelled as a sword guy. I wanted to keep as wide a variety as possible. It’s great fun doing sword work, but after a few months of having a sword in your hand, doing the same thing over and over, I longed to get into a car chase or a martial arts fight, you know, a guy jumping off a building, setting himself on fire, big explosions, machine guns…anything!”

Gladiator was going to be the first film of its kind, with advanced CGI technology. No one would ever witness second-century Rome on the big screen quite like this, but Nick still wasn’t saying yes. “I got the call from, I believe the first assistant director at the time, to come in and have a chat with Ridley and read the script. Again, I was a little slow to take the job. I had been stunt coordinating since then for four or five years, over and above Braveheart, so I wasn’t sure about taking another job as a fight arranger at that point, but it was a good script, and working with Ridley was such an opportunity. It was a lot more realistic and violent than what had gone before in that vein. I considered it for a few days, almost turned it down, and then had another chat and decided to do it.”

Now Nick was faced with the intimidating task of choreographing a style of fighting no one has ever realistically seen before, including the opening battle sequence in the film. “You have a look at the research, what they have to say about the period. In the end, no one really knows, because no one was there. You look through the weapons books, some of the books that tell you what people said about war at that point, and sometimes it’s better to take the simple direction and go for things not aimed at intellectuals, because a lot of that stuff is completely theoretical. Sometimes just putting the sword in your hand and thinking ‘what would you do with this sword?’ You know, you pick up the gladius, which is the Roman sword, and you sort of think, it’s good for cutting, it’s not much good for thrusting…a lot of it is organic.You pick up a Japanese sword; it really has to be two handed in order to be effective. You pick up a Gladius, it’s a single-handed sword and the way that you wield it, doesn’t matter whether you’ve had Chinese training, Japanese training…but as long as you’ve had the whole lot and you know the range of difference, then you can do what you really need to do with it. In order to make it more dramatic— this is as far as I can go, without it looking silly.

And so it wasn’t before long, after the enormous success of Gladiator, that director Edward Zwick came for Nick’s expertise for his period piece The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise. This time Nick didn’t need as much convincing to accept the offer, as his love for Samurai history and the Kitana ran deep through his soul. “We wanted a realistic and authentic way of fighting. Given a very small amount of dramatic license, we played with that as much as we could. I think I got away with as much as I could without anything looking silly. You’ve got to give dues to everybody that that was there, that instead of wanting to make it cool for the sake of making it cool, we made it as real as we could and tried to add the cool to it as far as what an audience might really enjoy…but it was first and foremost about realism.”

Which led to a question I couldn’t resist asking, as to which of the big named actors he’s worked with, including Matt Damon’s brilliant fighting in The Bourne Identity, had the best ability overall to learn these complicated manoeuvres. “You know it’s impossible to do it on a wide shot and make them look good, so you do the best you can do, and I mean the best as opposed to getting through it. You try and shoot around any of the things that might not be quite right or things that aren’t achievable with three or four years of work. I mean, you can’t teach someone to do in six months what’s taken someone else five years or sometimes 20 years to do. So you have to shoot around some of the inadequacies that some people have.”

As he thinks for a moment, the answer comes with assurance. “I think Tom Cruise is the most driven and most professional actor that I’ve ever come across as far as learning his trade. We spent seven months before Last Samurai, three months sort of on and off part time, and then four months of pretty much six days a week to get him to the stage where he needed to be. And then to speak to someone who’s learned to do what they can do and then say “no, I shouldn’t be this good at this point,” and for them to appreciate it and not have the ego to say “I want to look better.” It’s about the character, it’s not about them as a person, and they’re all aware of that. Anyone will notice straight away, that they’re fully aware of the journey of the character rather than their journey as an actor.”