For three decades, Daniel Bernhardt has been fighting his way across the big screen. From stepping into the ring with Bloodsport II to battling Keanu Reeves in The Matrix Reloaded, taking on John Wick and trading blows with Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde, Bernhardt has built one hell of an action résumé. Now, he’s back on the wrong side of the fight in Man of War.
Directed by William Kaufman, Man of War sees Bernhardt playing one of his most sinister villains yet, opposite LaMonica Garrett in an explosive military action thriller.
“I’ve never played a villain like this,” Bernhardt tells Movieland. “He’s pretty bad.”
Bernhardt was filming Nobody 2 in Canada when the opportunity arrived. After speaking with Kaufman and reading the screenplay, he was immediately interested, although there was one considerable challenge: much of his dialogue was originally Russian.
“I said to Will, ‘I have three weeks to prep for this. It’s not possible.’” Bernhardt recalls. Kaufman instead reworked the character, allowing him to speak predominantly English with a Russian dialect.
The change gave Bernhardt room to explore the villain beyond the traditional action-movie bad guy. For one particularly disturbing sequence, he approached a killing almost like a love scene.
“I didn’t want to be this bad guy who twirls the moustache,” he explains. “I thought, what about if I almost make love to him while I kill him?”
The unusual approach earned the approval of Kaufman, and apparently made Bernhardt almost too convincing. “His wife cut the movie, and she said that she’d never seen a more creepy bad guy.”
Of course, a Daniel Bernhardt movie needs a fight, and Man of War delivers a brutal showdown between Bernhardt and Garrett. Originally scheduled to shoot across a single day, the sequence impressed the producers enough that they granted the team additional time to finish it.
“LaMonica killed it, man,” Bernhardt says. “That’s LaMonica and me in the fight. We had doubles for a couple of falls, but he was a trooper.”
For Bernhardt, the film is another chapter in an action career that began unexpectedly with Bloodsport II. At the time, he was a successful male model working between Paris and New York and had no established acting career.
“When I got offered Bloodsport II, I was not an actor,” he remembers. “But I took the chance.”
Following Jean-Claude Van Damme into the franchise was no small assignment, and the production proved physically gruelling. Yet thirty years later, Bernhardt sees it as the opportunity that changed everything.
“When somebody opens a door and gives you an opportunity, I step through it and take the chance.”
Perhaps no opportunity was bigger than The Matrix Reloaded. After three auditions and months of training, Bernhardt became Agent Johnson and found himself battling Laurence Fishburne atop a speeding truck and facing Keanu Reeves.
“The Wachowskis came up to me and said, ‘You’re at the Olympics. It’s the Olympics.’ And I gave everything I had.”
Seeing the finished movie for the first time proved surreal.
“I remember sitting in the movie theatre, and I don’t even remember what happened because I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m in The Matrix.’ It was almost like an out-of-body experience.”
Thirty years after Bloodsport II, that enthusiasm clearly hasn’t disappeared. Whether he’s the hero, villain, stunt performer or fight coordinator, Bernhardt simply loves making movies.
“I’ve always said it doesn’t really matter to me what I do on the film. You can hire me as the lead actor, the bad guy, stunt guy number five, fight coordinator. I love it all.”
And for audiences preparing for Man of War, Bernhardt has a simple promise.
“You won’t be disappointed. Incredible fights, incredible action, incredible martial arts, gunfighting. Everything’s in there.”