One Mile’s Ryan Phillippe & C. Thomas Howell Talk Challenging Shoot of New Action Movie & Sequel

ComingSoon spoke to One Mile: Chapter One and Chapter Two stars Ryan Phillippe and C. Thomas Howell about the survival action movie and its sequel. The duo discussed their characters, filming the two movies concurrently, and the movies’ unique release schedule. Both films are now available to purchase.

“Ryan Phillippe stars as a former special forces operative trying to reconnect with his teenage daughter during a college road trip. When an unexpected detour puts them in the sights of a secretive, off-the-grid community, his daughter is taken, and the trip erupts into a high-octane fight for survival. Alone and outnumbered, he’s forced to use every skill he has to track them down, take them apart, and bring his daughter home,” says the official synopsis.

Tyler Treese: Ryan, your character is former Special Forces. You’re snapping necks here. There’s a brutality to this film that kind of sets it apart from your standard action movie. What really appealed to you about the action of One Mile? Because you’re no stranger to kicking ass, but this kind of takes it to a next level.

Ryan Phillippe: Yeah, it does. Also, the fact that we were shooting the movie and the sequel concurrently, both packed with action, made it extra arduous physically. But I trained as much as I could in the lead-up to doing it. I put on about five or 10 pounds of muscle and was really intent to make all of the tactical elements of it accurate. You’re gonna get some bumps and bruises and some little minor injuries along the way when you take on a role like this, but I was kind of prepared for that. Those last a little bit longer these days than they used to.

C. Thomas Howell: You still hit the ground the same, it just takes you longer to get up.

Phillippe: Exactly. But also this movie has a lot of heart. The father-daughter element of it was something that really appealed to me and spoke to me. Also, interestingly enough, no guns. So much of it is hand-to-hand combat. His crew is using bow and arrow, so it’s something unique in that way as well, where you’re not just using the typical firearms and everything happening from a distance and people being taken out that way. This was a lot more hand-to-hand and in-your-face, person-on-person action.

Thomas, it’s really fun seeing you play a cult leader. What did you look to draw from for playing this role? Because your character has a bit of magnetism to him, but you’re never over the top, it’s still a pretty grounded performance.

Howell: I appreciate that. One of the things that I dislike the most when I’m watching a film is when somebody playing the bad guy knows that he’s not gonna die until page 90 and he’ll run through a hail of bullets laughing. I really love playing a flawed character and trying to inject some humanity into him when it is appropriate, and something that I think our characters shared in common is the fact that we’re both trying to take care of our own people.

Even though I’m doing something despicable by trying to kidnap his daughter, it’s for the good of the whole, from my perspective, and my camp. So, I really liked the, the juxtaposition of that. What’s really bad and what’s really wrong, and it was important to me to stay grounded, and when I could be kind and gentle and loving instead of just being some hardass tough guy all the time.

Phillippe: I think there’s a couple moments where you’re kind of funny too, like darkly funny.

Ryan, I was really impressed by the young actress who plays your daughter, Amélie Hoeferle. There’s a nice arc that you alluded to, which is the heart of the film, where the father is reconnecting with his daughter. What impressed you the most about working with Amelie? Because it seems like we have a bright young star.

Ryan Phillippe: Yeah, I think she’s great. We did an exhaustive search to fill the Alex role. We saw over a hundred girls. I was also a producer on this film, so I was able to weigh in, in regards to the casting. When I first saw her audition tape, I knew right away she was the one. The character’s meant to be angsty teen, who’s hiding the fact that she wants to be an artist. Amelie was authentic to all of that. In fact, she is an artist, and we used some of her actual art in the movie.

She reminded me of my daughter in a way, too. I think that was part of the appeal, in regards to casting her that I felt a familiarity there. But yeah, I think she’s got a tremendous career ahead of her, and she worked her ass off. She was tough and her character has agency. She’s not just a damsel in distress. She fights back. She collaborates with her father. She learns from him tactically, which I think is an important thing for young women to see.

C. Thomas Howell: And put into some very difficult, physical, tough situations from a stunt aspect, and never complained. Never. That’s what I really loved about her. When we were doing scenes where I had to grab her by the hair, carry her out, she never resisted that stuff. Ryan and her would climb out of freezing cold waters and roll down rocky hills and beaten up together. She just was a champ. She showed up every day on time, prepared, and excited to go to work. That really is, for me personally, probably the most important thing of building a young career.

Phillippe: Yeah. I remember being so impressed with her physical ability because we would have to be running full speed through rocky terrain and uneven terrain, and she was so graceful about it and so tough in her own way.

Thomas, Ryan kind of talked about some of the difficulties of shooting back-to-back with getting banged up. But what, what were the positives for you having these two shoots, you know, right back together and knowing what would happen in the sequel so you could, you kind of knew what was, uh, you could kind of chart your character progression better. I, I assume,

C. Thomas Howell: Well, also very exciting to have that opportunity. I’ve been doing this for 45 years, and it was the first time I had the opportunity to do a sequel simultaneously. One of the challenges of that, and Ryan and I were speaking about that earlier, was the fact that, you know, you would use the same location for both movies and you might have to run and change into a different wardrobe and remind each other, “Okay, wait, that’s movie number two, this movie number one,” and there’s a certain arc that we go through during this process and a different mindset for both of us. So, from that aspect, it was challenging. But when you get the opportunity to do something like that, I’ve never been offered back-to-back movies, that would be released at the same time. I think it’s good that they made that choice because it really is one movie broken into two halves. So, I’m really happy that they decided to release it the way that they did.

Ryan, you mentioned producing this. You also directed a movie about a decade ago, Catch Hell. Is there any desire for you to direct again, or are you just kind of looking to produce more often going forward?

Ryan Phillippe: Yeah, there’s definitely a desire to direct again. I’ve also directed a few music videos for Post Malone and one or two other people. I think that’s something I’m looking into over the next year. There’s an opportunity or two that I might take on that way. I love directing. I think it’s something that I’m kind of even more comfortable these days with than acting, but it’s tough, man. Getting movies made, especially small ones, it’s a real fight, and it can take up so much time. So, you really have to be strategic about when you’re gonna. Doing Catch Hell was a year and maybe two months where I couldn’t work as an actor, so you’re giving up quite a bit of your time to do a film that way.

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Thanks to Ryan Phillippe and C. Thomas Howell for taking the time to talk about One Mile.

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