The violence you witness is Denzel doing it and we're taking some visual effects and doing some things and you see something happen it's happening in front of you as opposed to cutting away and doing a bunch of tricks. It's in front of you. So it's hard not to make it a hard "R" if you see a guy get punched and teeth wind up in someone's knuckles.

You could call it that [urban Western], I guess, you could certainly call it that. A lot of these types of films are, really, if you get down to the core most suspense thrillers in this genre, the Western is sort of the birth of it all.

So it's hard to be an artist and be true to the reality of the world you want to create and also make it entertaining and successful financially.

I don't think the audience goes and thinks of the movie as a piece of art - there are some independent people who may go and have a higher appreciation for filmmaking. It is a great art form, but I don't think you look at a painting and a movie with the same eye.

I became a director just for the love of movies, because of the power of cinema.

I just think you can't shut your life off to just, you know, one thing. You gotta be open-minded. Explore things. Feed your artist.

I started studying mythology, just on my own. Joseph Campbell, mysticism.