Chris Tucker was director Brett Ratner's ticket to fame. After casting him in comedy misfire Money Talks, he decided to couple him with Jackie Chan in a cop movie and the Rush Hour franchise was born. Between sequels, Ratner also helmed Nicolas Cage comedy drama The Family Man and Hannibal Lecter thriller Red Dragon. His latest is Bahamas-based crime caper After The Sunset, starring Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek.

The heist caper has been done so many times in so many different ways, How did you go about keeping it fresh?

I've done some very complicated, difficult films and I think this was probably the most difficult for me, only because I'd never done a heist movie before and most heist movies tend to be very earnest and take themselves very seriously. My take on it was to infuse comedy into the genre and it was also a mixture of several genres - it had romance, it had elements of a buddy comedy, it had suspense because of the heist - so it was very difficult for me to walk that fine line and say, 'Okay how much comedy are we going to put into this movie and how much romance?' because we don't want it to be overly sentimental or corny.

How did you try to get that balance?

I tended to do a lot of takes. I was telling Pierce [Brosnan] that this is the most expensive student film ever made because I was literally learning as I was doing it and trying to figure out how far to go. I shaped it in the editing room to create the tone and make sure that it was consistent. I really wanted you to care more about the characters than anything else. If you forgot about the heist that's fine, as long as you care about the characters and where they end up.

Are you always more attracted to characters than story?

Yeah, but aside from being character driven, what I love is relationships and humanity. My favourite director growing up was Hal Ashby because his movies had so much heart and so much soul and just tremendous humanity and great relationships, so I look for that. I never expected to get offered a movie like Red Dragon because I don't do dark movies, but the relationship between Ralph Fiennes' character and Emily Watson's character had a tremendous amount of heart. Even though it was ugly stuff there's humanity in a guy who's doing horrible things. This movie had the same thing: heart. It's not really about the heist, it's about the characters and the relationships between the characters and that's why I was attracted to it.

Did you stick to the ending as it was originally written, or did you change it?

Actually it wasn't the original ending. I'd finished the film and... When I first came on board I'd hired this guy Phil Alden Robinson and then I got these guys named [Brian] Koppelman and [screenwriter, David] Leviene who wrote Rounders to come in and they did a great job and I completed the film. For me the script is God but I showed the film to a very close friend of mine - and the guy who wrote Rush Hour 2 and Catch Me If You Can - this guy Jeff Nathanson. He hadn't worked on the movie at all and I wanted some fresh eyes so I showed him the movie and he said, "You know, I have a great ending for you." And I'm like, "Well, let's hear it." And he pitched me the ending that's in the movie and I was like, 'My God, why didn't I think of that?' Because it pays off what's in the beginning of the movie and I said, "Can you write that ending for me and I'll go to the studio and ask them." So he wrote it out and I went to the studio and they game me the money to go shoot that and I was so happy he came up with that. You'll see the alternate ending on the DVD, but it's very different to what ended up on the screen.

You had to contend with some awful weather in the Bahamas. How did you work around that?

Yeah, you know it wasn't easy but, thank God, with the technology we have today... There's this thing called the digital intermediate where we could change the skies. You don't always get the chance to shoot an entire scene in one day and you have to spread it out over several days so one day we were shooting and it was completely sunny and the next day there were grey clouds. We were able to take the grey clouds and erase them and put sunny sky in there - it's incredible what you can do. Believe it or not there are 200 visual effects shots in this movie. We did things as simple as erasing a person. I didn't like how this guy looked in the background, because his shirt was too bright and he was taking attention away from the actors.

Pierce Brosnan said there were moments he lost faith in the project. How did you convince him you had a handle on it?

I think he was probably talking about a time before I came on board because there was another director attached originally. The truth is he really convinced me. When I was doing Rush Hour he came to Vegas - he just showed up to have lunch with me. He'd called me and said, "I want to meet you", and flew out just to ask me to do James Bond. It was shocking because here's James Bond asking me to direct James Bond! I had to pinch myself, but of course the Broccoli's [producers] said they didn't want to hire me because I wasn't English. Then when I got this other opportunity to work with him I took it, because rarely does an actor come after a director.

You were on board to direct Superman at one point. How did you feel about missing out on that opportunity?

You know, I really believe in destiny and what's meant to be is meant to be and I don't look back. It was a childhood fantasy of mine but it wasn't meant to be so I let it go. I look forward to what lies ahead.

After The Sunset is released in UK cinemas on Friday 19th November 2004.