Karl Urban is no stranger to physically challenging film roles-- between the Lord of the Rings films, Star Trek and The Bourne Ultimatum, he may be better at it than anyone-- but there's a difference between charging a field full of Orcs and entering into hand-to-hand combat with John McClane. In Red, the new action comedy based on the graphic novel, Urban plays the stern, no-nonsense spy trying to track down Bruce Willis's character Frank Moses, who hasn't just been labeled "Retired: Extremely Dangerous" by the U.S. government, but is assembling a team of his fellow retired spies to uncover one of the government's deepest secrets. Urban, a loyal government employee, sets out to take them down, but he's the kind of villain we find ourselves rooting for, even though when we first meet him he's faking a man's suicide while talking to his kid on the phone about soccer practice.

Red is being sold on its cast of A-list older actors-- Willis, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Ernest Borgnine and Richard Dreyfuss-- but Urban represents the younger contingent, and as he told me when we talked last week, preparing for a fight against Bruce Willis is still no easy feat. We talked about Red, the movie's mix of comedy and action and how "the reality of filmmaking is trench warfare;" I also asked him a bit about his upcoming lead role in the new Judge Dredd film, plus what he's looking forward to about playing Bones again in Star Trek 2. Check it all out in the 10-minute interview embedded below. RED