Fast and Furious' Johnny Strong Makes His Own Cinematic Mark With Warhorse One

The new military drama Warhorse One may be actor Johnny Strong's directorial debut, but the star of Black Hawk Down and The Fast and the Furious films says he's been headed toward becoming a director all of his life.

"I've been working on Warhorse One since 2019, but in general I've been working towards making this film since I was a kid," Strong says. "This is the kind of movie I always wanted to make since I was a kid growing up in the movie business."

Strong wrote and directed the film, which was shot in Texas and tells the story of a Navy SEAL master chief (played by Strong) helping missionaries evacuate Afghanistan as U.S. forces pull out of the nation's 20-plus-years-long involvement. Insurgents shoot down his helicopter behind enemy lines, and as he tries to get back to his base, he discovers a 5-year-old child (played by Athena Durner), the only survivor of one of the local missionaries. He'll have to fight his way through a gantlet of enemy fire to get both of them safely home again.

Warhorse One premieres on video-on-demand and streaming platforms on Tuesday, July 4.

Strong's work in film goes back to his childhood. His parents worked in the film industry and helped him start an acting and modeling career at the age of 5. His family and career enabled him to spend time with some of the industry's biggest names, including Marlon Brando. Director Francis Ford Coppola introduced him to the future of digital cameras, and his advice also came in handy in Strong's music career — he had a post-grunge band called Operator in the 2000s. 

"When I first started making music, in order to make a record, you had to pay $700 an hour for a studio in Hollywood, and all of a sudden in the late '90s, Pro-Tools comes out on home computers," Strong says. "So you no longer have to pay that crazy price. Now film equipment is the same way."

Films such as The Glimmer Man and Get Carter helped Strong build his own film career around his band's decade-long run. By the time he started making his movie, he had scored roles in Black Hawk Down as Medal of Honor winner and Army Sgt. First Class Randall Shughart and in Fast 5 and Fast & Furious 6 as the mysterious fan favorite Leon. His film success gave him the opportunity to work on indie projects until he got the bug to make his own movie.

"I just woke up one morning and said I was gonna make my own movie, and that was that," Strong says.

Strong says he already had the idea of a soldier who goes missing in action just as forces are pulling out of a war-torn region, since he knew the never-ending battles in Afghanistan could only come to an unfortunate end thanks to the lessons we never seem to learn from history.

"I kind of knew what was going to happen in Afghanistan," Strong says. "If I knew anything about Vietnam, I knew that was going to happen. Once that does happen, it's going to be a nightmare for people to try and get out of there. I wouldn't say it was inspired by — I knew a lot of the circumstances from soldiers fighting that war and people who were stuck there during that conflict and I wanted to make a film about individuals who still have the courage to risk everything to protect innocent lives." 
The filmmaker cast Durner as the innocent girl his character is charged with protecting, a child he knew through her family, because "there was just something special."

"It's hard to explain, and I had that idea of like I'd love to make a movie about this guy rescuing this little girl," Strong says. "I knew she would be great at it. We did some screen tests and she was so natural."

Having his own project gave Strong the chance to work on every aspect of the film — from shooting to post-production. It's a lesson he learned from movie maven Roger Corman, who taught his crews how to do everyone else's jobs so they could work cohesively through productions.

"I love that mentality," Strong says. "It's important also for the respect level, where if you know how to do somebody's job on the set and you know how hard the job is, you fucking appreciate it."