
Michael Polish on the balancing act of his latest film “Alarum”
Creative Chemistry
Jan 25, 2025
Web Exclusive
“Chemistry is everything, right?”
A movie trailer might be filled with the action scenes. A film’s draw might be its exciting premise. But acclaimed director Michael Polish knows as well as anyone that he could lean on all the bells and whistles of the genre, but without a casting chemistry that really sells, the work… well, it won’t work.
“You can have as many explosions as you want,” says Polish. “You can have a lot of gunfire, but if those two don’t take off together, then we’re going to be fighting that the whole time.”
Alarum is Polish’s latest film, a taut, exciting spy thriller about a married pair of spies on the run from an international intelligence organization intent on hunting them down in search of a stolen hard drive. Given the set-up, the casting was critical which is why Polish was so glad to work with Scott Eastwood (Fast X) and Willa Fitzgerald (The Fall of the House of Usher) as his principal actors. With a strong supporting cast that includes Sylvester Stallone, D.W. Hoffman, and Mike Colter, Polish knew he had the personnel to pull off his vision to infuse a genre flick with his dramatic emphasis.
“I come from a more dramatic background, meaning my movies bring more drama. So my intention is let’s see some good acting because the bombs are going to be the bombs, right?” adds Polish with a laugh.
When working with such veteran actors, Polish says his role is more about the atmosphere than it is about giving any particular direction. “I just want to have them relax, not have to rush through what they’re doing, and make sure there’s not a stopwatch in their scenes,” he says. So it’s having them feel relaxed and start when they want to start. They’re pros, so my idea is to let them feel comfortable.
Over 25 years have passed since Polish first broke through with the Sundance favorite Twin Falls Idaho. From there, while often working with his brother, Mark, Polish has also brought audiences a wide range of films from The Astronaut Farmer to Northfork and Big Sur to Force of Nature. Even with such extensive experience, however, Polish is forever a student of his craft. So when trying to take on a spy thriller, Polish found himself immersed in the genre’s history.
These genres are the genres I grew up on,” says Polish. “I went back and learned from who did them, who did them really good, coming out of the ‘70s and the ‘80s. “It’s going back and looking at some of the Stallone films, [John] Frankenheimer films, things that were intense and how they do them. I don’t know when I’m going to stop learning.”
Polish admits that a film like Alarum isn’t exactly in his wheelhouse—at least to others—but he relishes the challenge and hopes to infuse it with a bit of his own ethos. That meant making sure he wasn’t leaning on the film’s effects or pacing or suspense to carry the film.
“[Thrillers] aren’t the movies I make. The movies I make are more like Krzysztof Kieślowski. They’re very slow in one sense or interdependent in terms of characters. We don’t have a lot of bells and whistles to hide behind. Sometimes you can throw a bomb and get away with the plot twist or plot hole. You can blow things up, whereas these movies should be entertaining. That should be at the top.”
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