Gareth Evans

“I want to do an American crime gangster movie.”

“I have a amazing soft spot for 'Mean Streets' - I just think there's something incredibly raw and energetic about that movie. But I think 'Raging Bull' just shocked me to my core.”

“When I was in Indonesia I had made a short horror film called 'Safe Haven' for the 'V/H/S/2' anthology with Timo, a friend of mine. When we did that it was a real fun experience, it was a taste of what it's like to make something in the horror genre.”

“I grew up watching cowboy movies with my dad all the time.”

“I want to do a Yakuza movie.”

“There are moments in 'The Raid 2' where I wanted to use the camera to question screen violence.”

“I loved, like really, really loved, the humor in Jason Eisener's 'Alien Slumber Party.'”

“My dad's weekend treat to me as a kid would be to get me the latest Jackie Chan or some old Bruce Lee classic from the video rental van when it came up our street - I couldn't get enough.”

“A Field in England' to me was a mind blowing experience. It's such a special tone.”

“It's true. In hotels I do always look at what you could rip out to use as a prop. The nicer the place, the more I want to destroy it.”

“I get really involved with my choreography team and my stunt guys so I know what the process is for what they're doing, so when I am setting up shots I know how to show the complexity of it and I can show it in a way where the camera becomes the eyes of the audience.”

“Good action should tell you things about your characters.”

“When it came time to design the action for 'Gangs' I knew that there'd be a level of expectation. What I wanted to do was play into some of the tropes that you would expect from a show called 'Gangs of London.'”

“Assault On Precinct 13' was amazing - a big influence. 'Escape From New York' as well.”

“Whenever you make a film, all you really want is for an audience to connect with it in some way.”

“When people talk about this idea of being a Welsh guy from the Valleys who travelled off to Indonesia to make martial arts action movies, on paper, it sounds really bizarre. But because everything happens in real time for me, it's just been a smooth process, it hasn't been weird.”

“Merantau' was my attempt to infuse drama with martial arts. It was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I'm super proud of it but I can see the strain of some things in there too. It was our first film.”

“The film 'After Life' by Hirokazu Koreeda. I remember when I first saw it, just being totally blown away by every single frame of it. The honesty of it, the fact that it celebrated life, the fact that it was so unbelievably profound and spoke volumes about living life to the fullest and cherishing every moment.”

“When people look too perfect, it's not cool.”

“My wife is Indonesian-Japanese... and what happened is, she found me doing a documentary on pencak silat. And through the process of doing that documentary I had fallen in love with silat and learnt enough about the culture that I could comfortably live and work in Indonesia.”