Posted on Tuesday, May 23rd, 2017 by Alex Riviello

Here’s something that slipped under the radar – actor Barry Pepper posted a YouTube video last December in which he showed off his previously unknown blacksmithing ability. What’s more, he used this hobby to craft a knife he personally designed for his character in the upcoming Maze Runner: The Death Cure.

We always knew Pepper was an intense performer ever since his breakout performance in Saving Private Ryan, and he has always managed to play characters that have plenty of use for a knife. This has apparently turned into a bit of a passion project for him, in which he tries to personalize the role by designing items for his characters, either with the aid of the movie’s prop master or by himself in his smithy.

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And yes, Pepper does offer a tour of his personal forge in a video that you can watch below.

1. Knives obviously aren’t as effective as guns, and maybe that’s the reason why wielding a knife as one’s weapon of choice is so bad ass. There are plenty of knife fights and stabbings in movies, but there aren’t too many characters that carry a knife regularly.
2. “Knives Out” crackles visually, although regular collaborator Steve Yedlin never allows his cinematography to get too showy to distract from the mystery or ensemble. It’s a film that works because of Johnson’s palpable love for the genre, but never becomes too meta or referential.
3. The Knife, Soundtrack: Cashback. Take a look ahead at some of our most anticipated superhero series arriving in 2021 and beyond.

Sometimes that ends up being a ring or a necklace, but it seems he has an affinity for knives. In the video, we are given a quick tour of his previous creations, including Lucky Ned Pepper’s knife from True Grit, Jackson’s blade from Saving Private Ryan, and Captain Fuller’s saber from The Lone Ranger.

But for a good portion of the video, we see Pepper crafting the weapon that will be used for his character of Vince in Maze Runner: The Death Cure, which he rightfully calls a “badass post-apocalyptic knife.” It’s appropriately forged from an old railroad spike that he heats up and flattens on his anvil.

He sharpens it to a point (I hope the other actors now know to be careful around him) and snaps a homemade handle on it, admiring it as something his character Vince would be able to create by himself in the mountains.

“This isn’t very advanced blacksmithing, but I’m not a very advanced blacksmith,” he says. That may be the case, but it’s still pretty damn impressive either way, and shows a dedication to character that few other actors show.

During the video Pepper also shows off designs for a saber he’s crafting for a series he’s developing called Trail of Blood. If all goes well, he will produce and star in the series, which is set in post-Revolutionary War America. He will play a frontier preacher whose only child is taken by the Harpe brothers, a real-life duo who are infamous for possibly being the United States’ first serial killers.

So yes, a knife would definitely come in handy for the role. Pepper has a long chunk of steel ready to craft into a saber for it, so hopefully he’ll shoot a video showing us the process.

For now, Pepper is currently filming Maze Runner: The Death Cure in Africa, and documenting his experience there as well.

Knife From It Movie

Knife From It Movie Trailer

Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is a wildly successful mystery writer and he’s dead. His housekeeper Fran (Edi Patterson) finds him with a slit throat and the knife still in his hand. It looks like suicide, but there are some questions. After all, who really slits their own throat? A couple of cops (the wonderful pair of LaKeith Stanfield and Noah Segan) come to the Thrombey estate do a small investigation, just to make sure they’re not missing anything, and the film opens with their conversations with each of the Thrombey family members. Daughter Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis) is a successful businesswoman with a shit husband named Richard (Don Johnson) and an awful son named Ransom (Chris Evans). Son Walt (Michael Shannon) runs the publishing side, but he’s been fighting a lot with dear old dad. Daughter-in-law Joni (Toni Collette) is deep into self-help but has been helping herself by ripping off the old man. Finally, there’s Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas), the real heroine of “Knives Out” and Harlan’s most trusted confidante. Can she help solve the case?

The case may have just been closed if not for the arrival of the famous detective Benoit Blanc, played by Daniel Craig, who spins a southern drawl and oversized ego into something instantly memorable. Blanc was delivered a news story about the suicide and envelope of money. So someone thinks this is fishy. Why? And who? The question of who brought in Blanc drives the narrative as much as who killed Harlan. Johnson is constantly presenting viewers with the familiar, especially fans of the mystery movie—the single palatial setting, the family of monsters, the exaggerated detective—but then he subverts them every so slightly, and it feels fresh. So while Blanc feels like a Poirot riff, Johnson and Craig avoid turning it into a caricature of something we’ve seen before.

Craig is delightful—I love the excitement in his voice when he figures things out late in the film—but some of the cast gets lost. It’s inevitable with one this big, but if you’re going to “Knives Out” for a specific actor or actress, be aware that it’s a large ensemble piece and your fave may get short shrift. Unless your favorite is Ana de Armas, who is really the heart of the movie, allowing Johnson to imbue “Knives Out” with some wonderful political commentary. The Thrombeys claim to love Marta, even if they can’t remember which South American country she comes from, and Don Johnson gets a few razor sharp scenes as the kind of guy who rants about immigration before quoting “Hamilton.” It’s not embedded in the entire piece as much as “Get Out,” but this “Out” is similar in the way it uses genre structure to say something about wealth and social inequality. And in terms of performance, the often-promising de Armas has never been handed a role this big, and she totally delivers.