One of the things that most drew actress Odeya Rush to “Dangerous Waters” was how the story develops and ends. In the film, now available on demand, Rush — plays Rose alongside Eric Dane and the late Ray Liotta.
Rose’s mother Alma (Saffron Burrows) drags her daughter along on a sailing trip with Derek Stipes (Eric Dane), Alma’s new boyfriend. The plan is to chart a course to Bermuda, but things go wildly wrong along the way. Rose first grows suspicious of Derek because he has guns stowed on his boat. Unfortunately, some of his old colleagues, now seemingly enemies, raid Derek’s boat and shoot Rose’s mother.
“It was complicated because Rose has really good instincts and she’s seen her mom get hurt. She’s taking the parental role. Rose smells out Derek from the beginning and she still wants her mom to be happy,” Rush told TheWrap in a phone interview, thanks to the SAG interim agreement that “Dangerous Waters” obtained. “That tension [between Rose and Alma] came from Rose having to be the parent and Rose having to be the protector. As soon as he meets Derek, the alarm goes off in her brain and she’s very not open to trusting him as I was as the reader.”
After he survives the attack, Derek reveals his backstory to Rose. He and several other corrupt police offers became involved with “The Captain” (Ray Liotta), a man who did unspeakable things for work.
“It fell into a thing where he’s nurturing me and taking care of me and you also bond with people more when you’re in crisis mode. For me to lean on someone, a bond can be formed really quickly and she saves him and she thinks he’s saving her,” Rush said of Rose and Derek’s relationship. “So all that manipulation goes into it into this. You can’t think straight when you’re trying to just survive. The lesson there is if we sense the danger in the person, I think we should trust that.”
Derek turned out to be using Rose in hopes of finding favor with “The Captain,” who likes young girls. Eventually, Rose is discovered by his henchmen, and she learns that many young women were being drugged and held hostage on the bigger ship that “The Captain” operates.
“That’s part of the reason I took on this project. There’s something so powerful about the fact that at first, this journey is all about me surviving. And actually when I see those girls for the first time in the room, and they’re being held captive, that’s the first time that it doesn’t become about me anymore and that it gives me even more fuel to keep going,” Rush said. “The fact that I do it all for them makes the story so much more impactful and important. It’s a real issue that we’re dealing with in this world. I feel like it’s an important thing to show and it’s also an important thing to make it my character’s motivation to keep going to save those women. I think that’s also important rather than just a movie about survival.”
To save the young women, Rose resolves to kill The Captain. Rush reflected on this high stakes scene with Liotta. “Dangerous Waters” was Liotta’s last film project before he died.
“We took all day to shoot that scene and it was towards the end. It was super important for us — ‘Ray’s coming into town and we have to make sure that we allocate a lot of time to the scenes.’ What I took away from Ray is the fact that he gave me more on my coverage than he did for his coverage,” Rush said. “The second the camera turned around to me, which he was fully aware of, he made sure that he’s given me a lot, and not every actor does that. And it was so selfless and beautiful that he gave me more on my stuff than he gave himself. And how much of a team player he was and his selflessness and generosity. That is something that every actor should learn from, and that’s how I remember him just being the most generous, kind and caring actor. That’s what I took away from working with him.”
The opening shot of the film zooms in on a bloody and beaten Rose after everything she’s been through. An exchange she has with the man who records her story plants the seed for a sequel, or at the very least, more to her life story.
“This little nugget for me and [director] John [Barr], planned for [a] sequel, whatever it be is that maybe she goes off and works at the CIA or she goes and uses all these skills and all of this knowledge that he’s acquired to do good and she realizes that there when there’s something bigger than her and more important than her, that fills her and that’s how she can continue surviving,” Rush said. “She’s very smart. She’s very quick to learn and she also has a lot of knowledge from what just happened, that she can help an organization like the CIA, FBI, special defense or whatever it be. She’s going to put those skills to help save more people. That’s what we had planted there for ourselves.”
Watch the “Dangerous Waters” trailer below: