Tag: Octopussy (1983)

Charade (1963): Cary Grant’s Bond movie?

10 JULY 2023

JBC rating: *****

James Bond Connections (1):

  • Title sequence designed by Maurice Binder (Bond titles, various, 1962 – 1989).

Director Stanley Donen’s superb comedy thriller Charade is frequently (and justly) referred to as the greatest suspense film Alfred Hitchcock never made. Less discussed, Charade also displays key influences from the then new James Bond franchise, and not just Maurice Binder’s Dr No-style title sequence featuring familiar flashing colours (below). Most intriguingly, the film stars screen legend Cary Grant, famously United Artists preferred choice as James Bond in 1962 (and Cubby Broccoli’s best man during his 1959 wedding). Grant plays a government agent who, in a departure from his usual civilian roles, carries (and fires) a gun during his mission to protect Audrey Hepburn’s wealthy jet-setter Regina ‘Reggie’ Lampert as she’s pursued across Europe by a rogue’s gallery of villains.

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The Fourth Protocol (1987): Pierce Brosnan plays 007, Soviet-style

25 MAY 2023

JBC rating: ****

James Bond Connections (4):

  • Starring Pierce Brosnan (James Bond, 1995 – 2002) as Soviet spy Major Valery Petroski.
  • Featuring Julian Glover (Aris Kristatos in For Your Eyes Only) as British intelligence official Brian Harcourt-Smith.
  • Director of Photography Phil Meyheux (DOP, GoldenEye and Casino Royale [2006]).
  • Production designer Allan Cameron (Production Designer, Tomorrow Never Dies).

In the late 1980s Irish-born leading man Pierce Brosnan famously became a near-Bond when contract issues with his Remington Steele producers led to him being unable to succeed Roger Moore as 007 in The Living Daylights (1987). However, in the same year Brosnan starred in another spy thriller, The Fourth Protocol, an adaptation by blockbuster author Frederick Forsyth of his own best-selling 1984 novel. Brosnan stars as a Soviet villain plotting to weaken NATO by detonating a nuclear device near an American airbase in England. Ironically, The Fourth Protocol helped Brosnan keep his EON ambitions afloat as, even while playing the villain, the young and impossibly handsome actor clearly remains a potential future James Bond.

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