Best of British or licence to sell?

6:36pm Monday 27th October 2008

By Faith Eckersall & Jeremy Miles

James Bond is back! Tomorrow sees the premiere of his new outing, Quantum of Solace and Daily Echo feature writer Faith Eckersall can’t wait...

THE markets are falling, the terrorists are threatening, our government is STILL rolling over for the bureaucrats of Brussels.

Firemen get told not to go up step-ladders, men who defend their families against yobs get arrested, and some poor, dozy women have been so addled by decades of creeping metrosexuality they actually believe that Russell Brand is a sex-symbol.

Thank God, then, for James Bond. Cometh the hour, cometh the man, and we have never needed him – or his like – more.

As the nation goes the shape of the pear, Bond, in the granite incarnation of Daniel Craig, is a reminder of what the best of British should be, and that’s why I love him. He’s strong, brave, implacable and drop-dead gorgeous precisely because he isn’t some pretty boy out of High School Musical.

From him you know there will be no excuses, no compromise and no bull. There’ll be no Islingtonesque “moving on” from the vicious betrayal of Vesper, his beautiful, dead wife, well... not until he has blown the head off the person responsible because the new film takes up the tale just one hour after Vesper’s death in Casino Royale.

In Quantum of Solace Bond will be jumping through flames, shooting down helicopters, sticking it to the bad guys and generally saving our national bacon. And he will be doing it without faff or fuss, without fawning over millionaires on yachts in Corfu, and he will be looking divine in the most exquisite dinner suit that money can buy.

Ten years ago this kind of thing was looked on as terribly old-fashioned and far too macho. Remember, 1998 was the year David Beckham stepped out in a sarong and Bond, as personified by Pierce Brosnan, had what looked suspiciously like a blow-wave and was still churning out corny one-liners.

But that was before 9/11 and the two horrific wars which have given us all a hideous reality check. Now women as well as men have to fight abroad, as hard and as daringly as 007 against enemies that are all too real.

We’re in a different, darker era now, financially and politically, and the territory and the way ahead is uncertain. We don’t need a pretty boy to look after us, we need a proper bloke old enough to look like he knows what he’s doing.

I don’t think it’s any co-incidence that more women paid up to watch Casino Royale than any other Bond film and it wasn’t just for those swimming trunks, either. It’s also no co-incidence that the charity that will benefit from the glittering premiere is Help For Heroes, which assists serving men and women injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Daniel Craig’s Bond has seized the zeitgeist and our imaginations. He’s meaner and tougher than ever before. And we can’t get enough of him.

Entertainment editor Jeremy Miles feels 007’s oh-so-cool image is under attack – not from Blofeld but from ubiquitous product placement...

IT always used to be 007’s licence to kill that set him apart. Now it seems it is his licence to sell.

Forget the fact that Quantum of Solace is expected to gross more than £12 million when it opens this weekend.

For this, his latest and most lucrative movie outing so far, James Bond has already earned a reported £50 million simply through product placement.

The plugs have become increasingly brazen, with Bond wearing this, drinking that and waving his wristwatch and phone around in between bedding beauties and killing baddies.

It’s a far cry from the days when Ian Fleming originally created Bond’s image. His lifestyle choices: the cigarettes he smoked, the bourbon he drank, the watch he wore, were purely indicators of the kind of man he was.

The notion of a super-fit action hero smoking 40 a day and drinking whisky by the half-bottle just does not add up any more.

He has also changed his chosen brands to those prepared to pay top whack to the film’s producers.

Who can forget the scene in Daniel Craig’s 2006 Bond debut, Casino Royale, when doomed love interest Vesper Lynd noticed his watch and asked: “Rolex?” (The watch he wore in the original books). “No,” replies Bond, and points out it is an Omega that is getting what is almost a close-up of its own on the big screen.

Of course the world has changed immeasurably since Fleming first invented Bond more than half a century ago.

His not-so-secret agent loved hugely expensive cars. One can only imagine what Fleming would think if he could see 007 being driven around Panama in a Ford Ka, as he is in Quantum.

On the other hand it hikes the ruthless law enforcer’s green credentials no end.