Cleaner trailer breakdown: Andor director Benjamin Caron teases his twisted con-thriller

After directing several episodes of the best TV show of 2022 (Andorobvs!), director Benjamin Caron shifts gears with Crook – a darkly comic drama that clearly hopes to keep you guessing. Directed from a screenplay by Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka (who made the 2020 ‘Black List’, the annual poll of the best unproduced screenplays) and starring Julianne Moore, John Lithgow, Sebastian Stan, Justice Smith and Briana Middleton, is a twisty, sneaky little poker game of a movie, about trust and betrayal and mysterious sexual politics.

Now that the first trailer has just arrived, Caron spoke to him Empire to break it down into forensic detail and reveal some of its delightful secrets, while hiding many.

catch me if you’re stan

When we first meet Sebastian Stan’s Max, he’s trying to con his new billionaire stepfather Richard (John Lithgow) out of a thousand dollars. It’s a film in the microcosm, says Caron. “The deception is probably the hallmark of this film,” she says. Empire. “Crook he’s probably less interested in crime specifically and more interested in how people talk and flirt and lie and impersonate and collude to get what they want. Everyone in this movie seems to be on some sort of misdirection, but Max takes it to the nth degree. “Max is a pretty tempting proposition,” Caron continues. “He IS bold, intelligent, inventive. But he is also somewhat vulnerable and unpredictable. Sebastian has this amazing ability to inhabit all of these things.

Followed by a hedge fund

The man (almost) defrauded by Max is John Lithgow’s Richard Hobbes, an extremely wealthy businessman, who laughs at Max’s poor attempt. “If you’re going to fly,” warns Richard Max, “fly a lot.” He’s not nice either, then? “I wouldn’t feel so bad if that guy got mad,” Caron said with a smile. Richard, he explains to her, is “a hedge fund billionaire, a narcissistic financier. Basically, he used his innate cruelty as seed. He is a socially acceptable apex predator who despises weakness. He looks like a lovely boy! (Caron was thrilled to work with Lithgow again after directing him as Winston Churchill in Season 1 of Crown. “She won an Emmy for it,” Caron says proudly, “and we’ve been looking forward to working together ever since.”)

How to marry a billionaire

Now, we’re not saying she’s a gold digger. But Julianne Moore’s Madeline seems to have one thing in mind. “Of course I like her,” Madeline says in the trailer. “He’s a multimillionaire.” (Remember Mrs. Merton’s famous question: “What first attracted you to millionaire Paul Daniels?”). Infidelity can take many forms, including romance, says Caron: “I’ve always been interested in the idea of ​​a romance scam.” he says, “porque creo que explora temas más profundos de cuánto afecta el afán de lucre en todos los aspectos de nuestras vidas, desde el sexo hasta la salud fisica y mental, la familia, el trabajo y la politica, y no menos important, el love”.

Transform and explain!

The con romance perhaps extends to the character of Sandra, played here by newcomer Briana Middleton. Caron remains silent about whether she really is like that (“I’d rather anyone who went into this field knew anything at all,” she says diplomatically), but she promises that nearly every character’s perception of her will likely change. “I really like the idea of ​​transformation,” she says. “The idea of ​​escaping from one reality and entering another is fascinating: it is the realm of fairy tales. Cinderella goes to the ball, Eliza inside Pygmalionvivian inside Pretty Woman…we are conditioned to respond positively to stories of reinvention. The transformations into Crook they are delightfully ruthless and cunning.

They got together

Let’s see here Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdomit’s Justice Smith as Tom, who falls for Sandra in what Caron says will be the film’s opening scenes. “It’s almost like Richard Curtis did it Notting Hill in New York with a little more independent sensibility,” he says. “We started in a bookstore. It’s that classic moment: a man in a bookstore, a girl walks in, they fall in love.” There’s also the disappointment that comes from the filmmakers: if you didn’t know anything about the film, there’s an almost cold feeling. “That’s the feeling I wanted the audience to have when watching this film, taking it in a certain direction, because after about 20 minutes it changes drastically.”

It’s the season

To authentically hit those rom-com vibes, Caron went with an authentic Nora Ephron vibe. “We filmed Crook for three seasons in New York,” he says. “I wanted to use the seasons to set a tone and a feeling. When we meet Tom and Sandra, it’s spring in New York, a kind of classically romantic season and the perfect time to fall in love. But again, all is not as it seems; the film is constructed in a way that misleads you a little. “It doesn’t show well in the trailer, but the film has a non-linear narrative,” says Caron, “in a way that echoes the tricks of the story. That’s what I want when I go to the movies: I want to be constantly surprised and questioned and slowed down a bit where I think I am.” The only thing you can expect, it seems, is the unexpected.

Sharper will hit UK and US cinemas in a limited release and streaming on Apple TV+ from February 17th.