David Ayer is 6ft 2½in. Built. He looks, you might say, like a character in one of his movies – a corrupt cop, perhaps, or the leader of a street gang. His narrowed eyes exude don't-mess-with-me authority. They've seen it all. And we don't just mean the highs and lows of Hollywood, from Denzel Washington winning a Best Actor Oscar for one of his first screenplays, Training Day, to Warner Bros. shoddily reworking his ‘dark, grounded, soulful’ Suicide Squad into a crappy comedy. This guy lived with his cousin in South Central LA when he was kicked out of his Maryland home, and spent his teenage years tussling with cops. He joined the US Navy to escape street life, working as a sonar man on a nuclear submarine.
These life experiences pour into his work. Jobbing as an electrician when he left the Navy in the late 80s, he shared some of his stories with a screenwriter whose house he was wiring. The enthusiastic response encouraged Ayer to turn to scripting. Screenplays for sub movie U-571 and 2001’s The Fast and the Furious, focused on the subculture of LA street racing, opened doors, and then his spec script for Training Day attracted Washington.
Ayer was good to go. Screenplays for Dark Blue and S.W.A.T. came next. He directed his own scripts for Harsh Times and End of Watch. All four of these movies leaned on what he knew, and continued his ascent. Arnold Schwarzenegger comeback vehicle Sabotage, about an elite DEA task force being taken down one by one, was his first critical mauling. He bounced back with uncompromising World War Two action drama Fury, starring Brad Pitt and Shia LaBeouf in a Sherman tank.
Then came Suicide Squad. Warners loved the dailies… until quippy Deadpool opened to major box office and sombre Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice tanked. ‘Hollywood is like watching someone you love be fucked by someone you hate,’ Ayer would say about having his movie turned inside out. The injustice was intensified by critics aiming their scorn at him.
Since Suicide Squad, there's been a sense that Ayer's been winged. Fantasy action thriller Bright and crime thriller The Tax both misfired, and now he's directing , a Jason Statham action vehicle, from a Kurt Wimmer script. Wimmer wrote 2008 Ayer movie , but his more recent fare (, , )… Well, let's just say they're not .
