To say that Denmark’s Nikolaj Coster-Waldau embraced the monumental darkness that is Friday’s extremely violent, intentionally disturbing “God is a Bullet” is an understatement.
“God,” based on Boston Taran’s acclaimed 1999 debut novel, charts the lengths Detective Bob Hightower is willing to go to rescue his teenage daughter who was kidnapped by a merciless cult after they murdered her mother, his ex-wife.
“God,” Coster-Waldau, 52, made clear in a Zoom interview this week, was not chosen merely to do something different after his romantic role opposite Jennifer Garner in the popular AppleTV+ hit series “The Last Thing He Told Me.”
“I wanted to do this because of Nick Cassavetes. I really admire him as a person, as a director. We did a movie 10 years ago, which was also so different to ‘God,’ called ‘The Other Woman.’
“He showed me back then the script he’d written,” an adaptation of “God.” “I thought it was the darkest thing I’ve ever read.”
It took Cassavetes, best known for “The Notebook” and the son of legendary filmmaker John Cassavetes (“A Woman Under the Influence”) and actress Gena Rowlands, another decade to get financing.
“I responded to this because I felt this story would be made with an incredible passion and desire,” Coster-Waldau continued. “Nick took me to a world where I knew I was going to be spending two and a half months thinking about the most horrible things that any parent can imagine, something against your child.
“But I also knew that he’s a very strong guy and a real artist. He’s a very sensitive and poetic man and I know that he focused on creating a movie that was disturbing but also had a heart at the core of it.
“He believes that even in the darkest darkness, you can still find light. You always find it in the most unlikely places. But you will always need someone to help lead the other and that’s Maika Monroe as Case.”
Bob Hightower begins “God,” he said, “At a low point in his life, an existential crisis. He’s not valued and doesn’t value himself. We get, through this journey, that he learns something about himself and discovers a different kind of truth.
“He connects to Case, a person he never imagined even knowing. I guess the classic saying is, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover,’ in a classic story of opposites forced together.
“Through that, they are able to help each other to maybe find parts of themselves that they didn’t know existed. At the end, I would hope that there’s an honesty.”
“God is a Bullet” opens Friday