Big Ben

Aussie actor BEN MILLIKEN talks about playing a good guy with a dodgy past in the action thriller Run & Gun…

Channelling the dusty desert set crime sprees of No Country for Old Men and Breaking Bad, sun-bleached noir Run & Gun, formally known as The Ray, is an ultra-violent calling card for Ben Milliken who, after making a name for himself in shows like police procedural drama Bosch, has been given his own piece of the action. Milliken plays the previously titular Ray. When we first meet him, he has a noose tightly wound around his neck hanging over an open grave. After escaping this near-death experience with neck-slashing aplomb, he vows to leave his life of crime behind him. However, even as a reformed good guy enjoying a quiet family life in the ’burbs, he cannot escape his violent past. Blackmailed into one last job to collect a mysterious package, he is double-crossed, wounded and finds himself on the run from ruthless assassins who will stop at nothing to get what he has. As his loved ones are dragged kicking and screaming into this murderous mix, Ray finds himself fighting for his life by drawing from his perilous past.

Born in Manchester in the UK but raised in Sydney’s Northern Beaches, it was Australia where Milliken honed his craft. Run & Gun marks the culmination of a dream run for the Aussie actor who started his career in the 2008 surfing drama feature Newcastle that also launched Xavier Samuel into the world. After a role in McLeod’s Daughters, the actor headed to Hollywood and landed parts in the Melrose Place reboot and CSI: Miami. His US career hit the big time when he won the role of criminal Carter in Season 5 of Bosch. Milliken had a ball playing pill shill running stooge for the drug organisation led by Dalton Walsh (Chris Vance). “And also, not just a fun show to be on but a great show. Period!” Milliken explains when we spoke to the actor from his Stateside home. “An amazing group of people. One of the best crews ever. That was one of my most memorable jobs.”

Despite his success in Tinsel Town, acting wasn’t always on the agenda for a young Milliken as he explained when discussing his early days in Australia. “I was always fascinated by movies. All I used to do is watch and watch and watch movies. And then after I finished high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do for a living. When I was a kid I wanted to be a boxer and then after that, I had no idea. I didn’t even really realise that taking up a career in acting was actually an available option until I travelled around Europe and I saw how big the world was — I saw how you really can do anything that you want to do. And then something clicked for me. So, I went home and I thought I am going to take an acting class. So, I started acting classes and that was it. I was in love.” The actor did spend 10 years training in the ring and the pugilistic physicality of the sport no doubt aided him during Run & Gun’s more physical moments. And the film has plenty to test him.

“I didn’t expect to be that sore at the end of each day,” he laughs. “It was really fun. I got to do a lot of my own stunts which was amazing, and it was — I don’t want to say that anything was challenging about the shoot because in all honesty, this is the best job in the world. You get to play dress-ups for 10 hours a day and run around in the dirt and then you go home.” His stunts involve bullet shots, bear traps, fist fights and, in a moment that would make Indiana Jones proud, being dragged behind a car. “Which I did!” exclaims Milliken. “I got dragged behind the car! At 20 miles an hour! I had a pad under my shirt. Elbow pads. Other pads. And all of that kind of stuff.”

Milliken’s co-stars in this heady mix are Mad About You and A Serious Man star Richard Kind, Mark Dacascos who is best known as the Iron Chef America chairman and for his role as the assassin Zero in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and Brad William Henke from Orange is the New Black. When promoting his film, The Magnificent Meyersons, Kind, who plays Grayson, the paranoid gang boss obsessed with conspiracies who sets Ray on his new life of crime, hailed Milliken, “a wonderful actor,” and praised his work ethic and his willingness to rehearse. “Coming from someone like Richard,” interjects Milliken, “that’s really humbling. It was just a joy to be on set with him, let alone act,” he continues. “The thing about Richard is that he is so passionate and dedicated to the craft. And it is so important to him. Like it should be. When you show up with the same kind of enthusiasm you can really make magic together.” Milliken also had a great off-camera relationship with Henke who spends most of the film trying to kill him as the reclusive psycho Billings. “Brad is awesome!” exclaims the former Bilgola Beach resident. “One of the coolest guys. One of the best experiences I had working with another actor was with him.”

Filmed in a ramshackle deserted factory on the Salton Sea in Albuquerque, New Mexico; the battle of wits between Ray and Billings, a loner who, in a desperate act to make something of his life, decides to destroy Ray’s, is brutal and relentless with bloody splashes of pitch-black humour. “I think the thing is we got along so well, and we were able to bounce off each other. It was easy to get into a good flow with him. He is so talented and free. He brings so much to the story. It was fantastic just to be able to work with someone like that. We just played off each other very well.” And letting those distinct personalities behind-the-scenes bleed onto the screen is all-important to Milliken. “I think that it is the way with everybody. You’ll never see the same Hamlet twice. Each person brings their own individuality to the role. I think not only is it important, but it is essential to portray any kind of truth.”
While many moments in the film play with what is the truth and tried and tested genre tropes, there is one line of plotting that transforms Run & Gun from a standard cat and mouse thriller into something completely different. The dark parallel universe subplot that circles the “The Mandela Effect” is a rug pull that’s as hilarious as it is surprising. “I automatically started googling when I read the script,” laughs Milliken, discussing the distorted memories.

The phenomenon refers to a situation in which a large mass of people believes that an event occurred when it did not. For example, did you know that the Monopoly guy didn’t ever have a monocle, or that Darth Vader never says, “Luke, I am your father!” or that not once did Hannibal Lecter utter, “Hello, Clarice!” before discussing eating a census taker’s liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti. “The Darth Vader thing was the one that got me. And the Monopoly man… I swore that he had a monocle! So, it was really interesting. I started going down YouTube rabbit holes all about it,” he adds. “It’s just fascinating.” ■