Steve Mouzakis: the man you need to know this week

It’s a big week for movie openings, from the hilarity of Minions to the tragedy of Amy, the documentary about the late Amy Winehouse, and the triumph of Nowitzki: The Perfect Shot, the salute to one of North Texas’ favorite adopted sons. But there’s one deserving of some love that’s flying so low and hidden under the radar that it’s like a new-generation stealth plane. Blink and it’s gone, a filmic phantom that most wouldn’t even know existed.

That would be a shame because the darkly shaded, noir-influenced, dialogue-heavy Australian thriller The Suicide Theory — opening in a single North Texas location on Friday though it will also be available through video-on-demand as well as iTunes, Amazon, and YouTube — is the kind of movie that comes out of nowhere, saddled with no expectations, and turns out to be one of the year’s most impressive films.

Tautly directed by newcomer Dru Brown and smartly written by Michael J. Kospiah, this tale of a hit man, Steven, hired by a suicidal loner, Percival, to finish the job is gripping and surprising, constantly veering off in new directions until reaching its satisfying conclusion. As it appears that Percival physically can’t die, the two become friends of sorts, bonded in blood and pain through their brutal business deal.

It’s what might happen if hard-boiled writer James M. Cain, Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, and Ex Machina director/writer Alex Garland collaborated on a project together and decided to set it in Brisbane. It’s also further proof that you don’t need car chases and explosions to put the “thrill” in thriller.

It won an Audience Award at last year’s Austin Film Festival and was the grand jury award winner at Los Angeles’ Dances with Films festival.

Central to The Suicide Theory’s success is the knockout performance from Melbourne actor Steve Mouzakis. He’s the haunted hit man who’s beginning to have doubts about his chosen profession, a man worn down by life and circumstance, until all that’s left is a frayed nerve. When we’re introduced to him in the opening scenes as he’s beating a guy to death with a tub of ice cream — someone he wasn’t paid to kill — we know the man has some serious, serious issues and that he would be a feast for any actor to play.

“I read the script and said, ‘Wow, that’s different.’ It wasn’t something I wasn’t expecting,” says Mouzakis by phone from Melbourne. “When I started reading it, I didn’t know where it was going to go. With the title, you think it’s some gruesome horror film and it’s not that. I kept thinking, ‘Where is this headed?’ As I kept turning the page ... all these things started catching me off guard.”

Mouzakis, 41, brings a palpable sense of edgy desperation to the role of a man being pushed inexorably to the brink. While much of his resume is filled with a decade’s worth of Australian film and TV, Mouzakis isn’t completely unknown to American audiences as he’s appeared in such films as Where the Wild Things Are and I, Frankenstein. But The Suicide Theory offers him the kind of performance that should have Hollywood sitting up and taking notice.

He’s coming here in the wake of the latest wave of Australian actors like Jai Courtney and Jason Clarke (both in Terminator Genisys), Rebel Wilson (Pitch Perfect), Mia Wasikowska (Madame Bovary), Sam Worthington (Avatar), Joel Edgerton (Zero Dark Thirty), Margot Robbie (The Wolf of Wall Street), Ben Mendelsohn (The Dark Knight Rises), Ryan Kwanten (True Blood) and, of course, the Hemsworth brothers, Liam and Chris, landing on our shores.

Mouzakis, who plans to spend more time working in the U.S., says Australia is a great training ground for actors but that the market is small. “You’ve got to leave if you really want to work and you’ve got to go where the work is,” he says. “We have to work hard to exist as actors [in Australia] but that’s the case everywhere. There is the sense sometimes [in America] of ‘Not another Australian actor!’ They say, ‘what’s going on with you guys?’ ”

In fact, his next film hitting theaters is an American film, Sugar Mountain, about two brothers who fake a disappearance in Alaska, only to find that faking it comes with its own dangers.

For now, he’s concentrating on getting the word out about The Suicide Theory. “I’m hoping people have a look and enjoy it and it leads to bigger things for Dru and Michael,” he says. “It’s tough to get people into the cinemas but it might grow, particularly with the online platforms, and find an audience. It’s kind of feeling like a cult film.”

He remains glad that he fled his first field of study, civil engineering, for acting while still in college. “I never became one [a civil engineer], thank God,” he laughs. “I think the Australian public is safer for it, to be honest.”

‘The Suicide Theory’ opens Friday at the Studio Movie Grill Spring Valley, 13933 N. Central Expressway, Dallas.

This story was originally published July 8, 2015 at 9:21 AM with the headline "Steve Mouzakis: the man you need to know this week."