It's great when you can bait and switch people - and I don't mean that in a negative way, I mean that in truth. If we were advertising this movie as a very serious indictment about the hunt for war criminals, and it's a very dark drama, it would probably get great reviews, but people would stay away from it because no one wants to be lectured.

So I like switching it up. I like that people are laughing but they don't even know if they should be laughing. I think that's interesting. I think it makes for a fun movie. And you're far more likely to be able to actually get something into someone's head if they don't quite see it coming, as opposed to delivering a very serious examination.

It's great when you can bait and switch people - and I don't mean that in a negative way, I mean that in truth. If we were advertising this movie as a very serious indictment about the hunt for war criminals, and it's a very dark drama, it would probably get great reviews, but people would stay away from it because no one wants to be lectured.

I'm not making a movie about the real people. I'm making a movie about what they did, and what happened to them. But I will create characters so that I can have the freedom to make them say and do what I want. The real-life journalists were fine with that.

I think people are a mixture of everything. I like desperate characters because they do things that most of us normally wouldn't do. If a character is a scoundrel or a liar you think you know them, but then I can bring some emotion to them and they become much fuller than you ever imagined. So what I try to do is have a story where you don't quite know where it's going, and characters who you don't quite know where they're going.

Every movie is a surprise. That's what is so fun about it. You can be planning a movie for years, and then you'd better be surprised every day, or it's going to be stale.

For me, when I see movies where I kind of know who the characters are and what the situation is, I get bored. To me, it's, "How do I tell a story that will keep the audience engaged?" A great story does that: it's not exactly what you expect.