Say it, Connery. Say I'm the best! |
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I don't care if it's the CIA, the NSA, the KGB, MI5, MI6 or even some French bureau of intelligence, if it's got three letters and it employs spies, I want in (as a side note, I am aware that the KGB has long been disbanded… or has it?). As far as I know, based on no actual research and a lifetime of watching movies about covert operatives, contract killers and double agents, the spy trade is glamorous, highly-paid and trains its employees to peak levels of fitness and killing-machine-abilities while buying them expensive suits, sleek sports cars, and cool gadgets. Well might the forces of evil, pursuing me down a cobbled alley in Marrakech, ask themselves 'Where does he get those wonderful toys?' And they'd be jealous, because there isn't a movie-going person on the planet who hasn't, at one point, wanted to be a spy- generally at the opening, middle, or closing point of a Bond movie, just as Bond is getting some action from a girl who is later either going to die or try to kill him or both.
James Bond, as a character, is probably responsible for more people signing up for a life in espionage than any mere payment possibilities or chances of overseas postings. Forged from an amalgam of creator Ian Fleming's own real-life experiences in Military Intelligence and his idle daydreams of what a gentleman spy's life should be like, Bond may not have been the first spy of fiction, but he's certainly the most long-lived, and the one who looms the largest in the collective imagination. Each actor called in to fill out 007's dinner suit brought their own particular strength to the role- Connery with his two-fisted Scottish sexuality and style, Moore's dry wit and charm, Dalton's dark obsessions, Brosnan's class and restrained strength, and Lazenby's…um… accent and… uh… lack of being a woman of some kind. The recent and duly-acclaimed CASINO ROYALE, helmed by Daniel Craig, combined the best elements of all of the Bonds (except Lazenby, who snuck his way into the part by bribing a hairdresser to let him sit next to Albert Broccoli, the producer of the films, in a hair salon around casting time) and dropped the elements of the film franchise that were threatening to weigh it down. The result was a hard and fast film that stands next to GOLDFINGER and THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS as the best of the genre.
Bond was never about anything more than entertainment; that's what makes the franchise so incredibly enjoyable. Other movies have attempted to cash in on the big-budget appeal with less success, generally failing to reach 007's cultural status simply because the appeal of Bond is nigh-unmatchable. XXX took a good crack at it- the formula is simple, and simple is good when it comes to action films. Simply take one extreme sports star and give him governmental approval. Vin Diesel at the helm of the project and a little back-up from Samuel L. Jackson rounded the idea out nicely. With the Bond franchise at the time facing the crisis brought on by its own over-inflated and overblown meanderings, XXX and its successor, XXX: THE NEXT LEVEL, looked like they could have been contenders with a real chance to the throne. But while they were entertaining enough for what they were, they just didn't manage to hit the right notes to propel them into the realm of the classic.
As sheer popcorn entertainment, TRUE LIES managed to claw out a special place for itself through virtue of the pairing of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis. There is a certain corner of everybody's heart reserved for the 
Sam Rockwell doing his best Daniel Craig impression. |
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Governator, and never more so when he's riding a horse in pursuit of a motorcycle. Bill Paxton shines, as always, as the weaselly foil to Arnie's superspy- 'I have to lie to women to get laid. And I don't score much. I got a really small dick, it's pathetic!' Tia Carrere is as sinuous and as deadly as any girl that Bond ever came up against, and Tom Arnold as the goofy sidekick plays off nicely against the taciturn Schwarzenegger. Flipping from locale to locale and following the dual plots of security both at home and abroad, TRUE LIES hit the middle ground so beloved of television executives and so became a staple of the Friday night wasteland. Not Arnie's finest hour, but a very long way from his worst.
Thanks to Bond, the spy movie is a tradition, and, like most traditions, it has its fair share of spoofs. As soon as a genre sets up conventions, someone, somewhere, has a light bulb appear above their head as they say ‘Hang on- I can have some fun with this.' The most well-known is, of course, Mike Myers's AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY. While the series lost steam as it went on, rescued only by the addition of a wickedly grinning Michael Caine to the third instalment, GOLDMEMBER, when the first movie came out it was a phenomenon. In fact, it was probably a little too popular for its own good, with catches like ‘Do I make you horny, baby?' and ‘Oh, behave' becoming more and more annoying as they gathered momentum. Nonetheless, the original AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATION MAN OF MYSTERY cut through accepted spy movie conventions with the delicacy of a scalpel. Myers is always at his best assuming a character who is more a caricature than anything else, and such was the case with Powers, the bad-toothed, hairy-chested, somehow-debonair hero.
Before Myers unleashed his box-office juggernaut the spy mythos was shattered by Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd in SPIES LIKE US. One of the many classic 80s comedies to come out of the breeding ground of talent that was Saturday Night Live, SPIES LIKE US featured Chase and Aykroyd as hapless, helpless and hopeless trainee spies fast-tracked through to become high-level operatives, blissfully unaware that they are in fact decoys, allowed into the field only to draw heat away from the real team. One part Cold War paranoia (as Chase and Aykroyd stumble from peril to peril in Afghanistan and the USSR, back home their superiors plot to give a real-life demonstration of the new Star Wars system to justify their budget) one part buddy comedy, and one part slapstick. It hasn't dated as well as similar movies like THE THREE AMIGOS or GHOSTBUSTERS, but there's still just as much value in the comedy as there is in 80s nostalgia.
Similar themes are at play in I SPY, the Eddie Murphy/Owen Wilson team-up that came about just as Murphy's star was sinking and Wilson's rising. As a team, the two work surprisingly well together, Wilson's easy-going slacker charm complemented by, rather than obscured by, Murphy's performance as a motormouthed, self-adoring boxer. While it's more a comedy based in the spy genre rather than a straight-out spoof, Wilson's junior spy, looking to make a name for himself while seducing Famke Janssen, is an excellent portrayal of a good-natured everyman who operates in a world of espionage and deceit. It's popcorn viewing, make no mistake, but that what a lot of the spy genre is about; escaping the normality of life and taking refuge in a universe that is classically (thanks, Bond) all about alluring women, big explosions, 
That's SIR Mike, Brendan. SIR Mike. |
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and wearing a dinner suit. This is what a certain calibre of spy movie seeks to deliver; nothing more and nothing less.
There is of course a flip side to this coin, movies that detail just how based in reality the world of espionage can be, especially as the world grows more complex, and as cloaks and daggers, far more so than uniforms and rifles, become the order of the day for waging war.
Philip Noyce's adaptation of Graham Green's novel, THE QUIET AMERICAN, came at a time when US foreign policy was just beginning to be questioned by a lot of people. Michael Caine plays Thomas Fowler, a British journalist in 1950s Vietnam, a man seduced both by the country and by his young mistress, Phuong. He meets Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser, demonstrating once again that he can bounce from role to role with ease- no-one who watched ENCINO MAN saw this coming), a young American whose ideals are utterly out of place with the real world. Originally, Fowler finds Pyle to charmingly different to most of the Americans in Vietnam (the movie is set as the French involvement in Vietnam is ending and the American involvement has yet to begin) but as time goes past Fowler finds that Pyle is a threat to his way of life, and Fowler begins to understand just how far he will go to reclaim his lifestyle. The OSS (precursor to the CIA) and Communist secret agents circle each other as the country plunges into hell, as Caine, in an Oscar-nominated performance, desperately tries to stave off Fraser's insidious influence, using every weapon at his disposal.
It seems that more and more Hollywood voices are getting on the bandwagon questioning the previously unquestionable, the shadowy institutions of hands-on foreign policy. George Clooney has emerged as a candidate for the voice of Hollywood reason, at the same time expanding his talents out to the director's chair. CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND was notable for Clooney's inspired take on direction, Sam Rockwell's immersive, skin-wearing turn as Chuck Barris, a game show host and assassin for the CIA, and the engrossing story. Apparently based on a real-life story (Barris made the claims in his autobiography) it details Barris's rise from an obscure television industry worker to the creator of massively-rating television shows including the Dating Game and the Gong Show, and, along the way, being recruited by CIA operative Jim Byrd (Clooney, preparing himself for SYRIANA) as a contract killer.
Spy movies can be the basis for a lot of fun, because one of the best forms of comedy is taking down a subject that is meant to be serious. Lightweight comedies can plunder the spy genre for material over and over again and still come up with fresh ideas. And with the fate of nations hanging in the balance, as they so often are, spy movies can work as an action format as well, especially when you have some licensed-to-kill superspies who've been trained by experts in a hundred different ways of how to kill a man; your James Bond, your Jason Bourne. They can be masterpiece thrillers of intrigue and mystery as well- BREACH and THE GOOD SHEPHERD, while based on real-life events, aren't halfway as mystifying as some of the deception and double-crossing that went on during the Cold War. And spy movies can be a grim picture of the world today and what goes on behind the scenes of politics, in situations like SYRIANA, where webs are spun and tangled with lies and false clues. The only common thread linking the ideas is that when they're handled well, they make for some excellent movies.
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| Simon Smithson |
Simon was crushed when he found out that 'Ghostbuster' was not an actual vocation, and so went with the next best thing - writing columns for Internet movie sites. He's working on a proton pack of his own, but it's going to take some time.
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