Noyce, a laconic 60 year old Australian who first worked with Jolie 10 years ago in the serial killer thriller The Bone Collector, assumed that the intricate, hazardous set pieces in his $130 million film would require a stunt double with nerves of steel and the extensive use of CGI.
You can see why. Salt’s action sequences include a spectacular scene where she edges out on to the windowsill of a Manhattan apartment building, 11 stories up and 90 feet above the ground.
Another sees her character plunging bungee style out of a Black Hawk helicopter hovering 60 feet above the ground. And one of the most dramatic episodes features a motorway car chase where Evelyn Salt is desperately trying to escape from her pursuers, including jumping 30 foot from
a motorway bridge on to the roof of a truck and then leaping from there on to another.'At first I thought, the insurance company is never going to allow this so we’ll be dong it with CGI,' says Noyce. 'But then Angie comes up to the top of the building during pre-production and looks down – and it was a long, long way up - and says, "No, I’ll do it, I’ll go out there..." I couldn’t believe it.'
Noyce admits that it was nerve-wracking watching Jolie at work. Salt is the second collaboration for Noyce and Jolie. The Australian director first directed her in The Bone Collector in 1999
'Terrible thoughts go through your head because I have been there when accidents have occurred and near misses have occurred, ' he said.
The director made Clear and Present Danger with Harrison Ford, another actor who likes to do as much of his own stunt work as possible. It very nearly cost him his life.
In one scene, he says, Ford ignored his advice and insisted on driving a car that, in the story, come under attack from a rocket launcher. He dives out of the car as the rocket hits a shop nearby and explodes.
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| 'I said, "You don’t have to do it," but he wanted to,' he recalls. 'And so our experts set a small explosion – and in those days we used real explosives – to blow up the shop front as he went by. 'When we looked at the tape afterwards we saw that this huge chunk of wood from the shop went right by him – six inches to the right and it would have decapitated him.' | |||
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'Angelina has had a lot of experience with action films, she has matured in the way she approaches stunts and action and by matured I mean she has become more foolhardy in a sense, less fearing,' says Noyce.
