Searching for Bond

When they picked the new James Bond — Daniel Craig, from Layer Cake, Road to Perdition, and Tomb Raider — I think I heard off in the distance some howls of protest, but that would be inevitable in any case. I'm a bit sorry to see Pierce Brosnan go - and yes, I read the gossip about his abrupt disposal; it reminded me of the similarly sudden, jet-propelled deaths of certain Bond villains, sucked out of the frame with the force of violent decompression or detonation. Then again, Brosnan's Bond, so veddy veddy debonair, was lacking in a certain bullying quality we haven't seen since (obligatory fanfare) Sean Connery - but, let's admit it, who cares?. As much of a Connery fan as I am, I'm getting tired of dragging him into the picture, so to speak. How long has it been - more to the point, how many generations - since he's toweled off, speargun at the ready? Too long to matter, I'm afraid.

To be honest, I don't worry much about Bond unless he's hogging basic cable channels, as he is periodically wont to do. I'm more interested in spotting him in incognito cameos in other movies. And I'm not talking about the long line of knockoffs, as admirable as some of them are, from Matt Helm and Our Man Flynt to Indiana Jones (and let us not forget their casting of Connery as Jones' father) and XXX, not to mention the even beefier action heroes that have come between, rocky terminators all. I am in no mood for replicas and duplicates. No, the real fun's in the sudden surprising glimpses, the non-Bonds who catch me off-balance with their sudden Bond-ness.

This started in earnest for me when I read something on Peter Dinklage in, I think, Film Comment a few years ago. Sorry I can't recall the writer, but he/she daydreamed that in an alternate-universe Hollywood, Dinklage would be the next Bond. Good call. Watch Dinklage's effortless cool in The Station Agent — in a completely un-cool situation — and you'll see a kind of grace under (everyday) fire that is pure Bond. (Even his character's name, Finn McBride, has a nice edge to it.) Dinklage would be a real contrarian's treat, perfectly off-center.

Article Author: Paul J. Marasa

Born in Philadelphia the year "Plan 9 from Outer Space" and "The Searchers" were released; grew up in NJ, transplanted to the Midwest where I toil in the fields as a writing specialist and instructor at Knox College.

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