Men who make me happy #5: Craig, Daniel Craig

[gwyn]

After watching my friends list erupt with squeeing over the new James Bond movie, Casino Royale, and consequently his new actor, Daniel Craig, for over a month, I finally got to see the damn thing this weekend. I've been a fan of Craig's for a long time, and I was deeply distressed when they named him the new Bond. See, I hate James Bond movies. Loathe, despise, abhor.

I wrote about all the reasons why in a review I did of the last one, which I went to see primarily because Will Yun Lee from Witchblade was in it and Lee Tamahori (Once Were Warriors) had directed, but the condensed version is: wink-wink-nudge-nudge misogyny up the wazoo; smug, above-it-all, cooler than thou suavity rubs me the wrong way; no human character to speak of, as Bond is uber-human and that's just boring; stupid gadgets and chases that go on for fucking ever; no consequences. I loved the beginning of Die Another Day, because Bond gets thrown in prison and tortured. Finally, I thought, consequences. But then he got out and the movie turned into another piece of crap. The only movie I ever liked in the franchise was On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which is widely reviled, because again, there was heartbreak and loss and consequences and a super tight plot that didn't waste a lot of time with stunts.

So you can imagine my distress when one of my favorite actors, who's always taken unusual roles and flown under the radar for most people, was getting stuck in that horrid franchise. It was heartening to hear that they were planning to reboot it, but I still had doubts. Not about Craig, though -- I think he's just one of the most amazing actors around, and he can be such a chameleon that I knew he could do anything. Plus, he singes my eyeballs with his hotness, and so I figured that at the very least, it's a couple hours of him looking good at my local theatre.

I know not everyone thinks he's hot (some critic described him as having the quality of a dyspectic Steven McQueen) and of course, you're nuts, but the thing that makes me happy is that even those who aren't swept away by his sexayness have talked about what an amazing actor he is.

There are still a couple movies to go on my Netflix list, which I keep pushing back for one reason or another (like, I just don't want to watch another talky political drama as in Archangel just now, and I'm not up for yet another loony obsesso guy like he sounds in Obsession, so I've just kind of kept them back a bit, and I will get around to Infamous when I can), but I've seen most of his work that's available here across the pond, and so thought I'd do more than just wax rhapsodic about an actor I adore, and tell you, in case you're thinking it since you now want to write and read James Bond fic and Daniel Craig is your new BSO, about his canon. Because I gotta tell you, some of the movies should come with warnings. Seriously. Henceforth my gift to you: Daniel Craig-o-rama.



I suggest you start with the performance that popped him into official stardom, Layer Cake. This Brit gangster thriller is in the best tradition of movies like Mona Lisa and The Long Good Friday, full of violence and swagger and cool, but without the Guy Ritchie tricks of recent years. Craig is absolutely brilliant as he tries to navigate through a world he thought he knew, but he's in over his head. And he's also the sexiest man who ever wore a simple grey T-shirt, jeans, and leather jacket. He's suave and cool and mysterious, and you can totally see why it was the performance that led the Bond producers to Craig.

Munich is among his most recent work, and while I don't think the movie is all that great (there is some amazing stuff that is undermined by a lot of less amazing stuff), he's a total powerhouse throughout. He looks different than he has in most movies, almost like a big guy, and the '70s clothes he wears have never looked sexier, which is peculiar when you consider that no one looked sexy in '70s clothes. He *rocks* his aviator shades, and he creates a really magnetic character that you wish had more screen time. He's also a master of accents, and his South African one here is flawless.

Tomb Raider. Um, yeah. Well, at least it got him a kind of international star level, briefly. But I still kind of... um, yeah. There's not a lot here if you want to see what an amazing actor he is, but he's definitely, definitely eye candy.

There are two movies that I think should both come with huge, blinking red signs for people like me, who can't handle anything embarassing or humiliating and who cringe in terror at people making asses of themselves, or being made asses of, on film: Enduring Love and The Mother. If you have even the tiniest embarassment squick, do not, for the love of god, watch either of these. Yes, he's astounding in them both, and yes, he's sexy as hell in both of them, too (for glasses fetishists, he wears glasses through a lot of Enduring Love), but both movies are predicated on these excrutiating plot lines that had me running from the room every five minutes. Enduring Love also has an incredibly gruesome scene -- and as someone who doesn't get squicked about gore or violence, I'm warning you that even I cringed in horror. In the first film, Rhys Ifans plays a man who becomes romantically obsessed with Craig after they both witness a horrific hot-air balloon accident, and in the second, he plays the object of an older, affectless widow's sexual obsession who's more than happy to indulge her if it means he might get money to pay off his debts. Really, both of them put me in agony.

Also fairly recent was The Jacket, a little mind-fuck of a movie that tanked and got bad reviews, but which I actually liked quite a bit (I think I really want to vid it). Craig's role is small and you almost wouldn't recognize him with boot-black hair and his face wrinkles, especially on his brow, really emphasized. He's crazy as a loon, but he's again fairly mesmerizing, though I had a personal problem with it in that he looks exactly like my beloved Uncle Floyd. This guy I've been lusting over for years... looks like my favorite uncle. Aiiieee!!! I'd recommend caution on this one if the reason you want to see him is for his looks rather than his acting; I'd also urge caution if you're squeamish or hate torture, especially mental torture. There are moments in this movie even I found disturbing -- I like disturbing, but not everyone does.

A lot of people I know never made the connection between him in recent roles and his role in Road to Perdition. He plays Paul Newman's son in it, and he's such a chameleon that people are completely surprised when I tell them that. I remember thinking all through the movie that it was wrong to like someone so weaselly and cowardly and selfish, and yet, I was all over the guy, as usual. Even though the movie didn't get great reviews, critics singled him out in this over and over for a standout performance. But I thought the whole movie was fanfrakingtastic, so there.

Love Is the Devil -- what can I say but full frontal Daniel Craig? It's not on screen a lot, but hey... Though he's nekkid in an awful lot of things (and why not, with a bod like that?), he doesn't do full frontal that often, but I'm not sure this is worth it just for that. It's an odd, disturbing movie about painter Francis Bacon, and for that alone I wanted to see it because I adore his bizarreness, but unless you're a Derek Jacobi fan, a Francis Bacon fan, or want to see everything Craig's ever done, it might not be worth it. One of those movies I'm glad I saw, but wouldn't to watch again.

Similarly disturbing, but in a less highbrow and good quality filmmaking way, is Love and Rage, an extremely bizarre movie set on an Irish island maybe around a century ago, and Craig is weirdly creepy and by that I mean, creepy not in a fun way. He does obsesso boys very well, sometimes maybe a little too well, and you can totally see his evilness up front here, so it's hard that no one in the movie seems to get how evil he is. Dramatic irony is tough to pull off even from the best writers and directors, and this doesn't work.

The Trench and Sword of Honour are two similarly themed war movies, though different wars, both with Julian Rhind-Tutt from Keen Eddie. The former is a WWI story, very much like Gallipoli in many ways, and it has this young creamy cast of actors who've generated a lot of fan interest lately. For myself, besides Craig and Rhind-Tutt, there was Paul Nichols, who I only discovered recently on Hustle, and who I'm madly in love with. Sword of Honour, though, I couldn't even get to the second disc on, my frustration with the story was too great. Based on a book by Evelyn Waugh, it has none of the spark and fine molding that took Waugh's Brideshead Revisited from the page to the TV screen with such perfection. It's like the bastard Waugh adaption, and you'll need to be a big fan to want to sit through it, I think.

Sylvia and Copenhagen. IMO, the only thing good about this story of Sylvia Plath was Craig as her husband, poet Ted Hughes. He's a bastard, just as we always thought to poor perfect pure Sylvia, blah blah, but he's still mesmerizing in his charming brutishness. And in Copenhagen, he helps make the play come to life for the screen, but it's still a very... quiet and slow story of the wartime meeting of Werner Heisenberg and Nils Bohr. Physicists. Yeah. Still, Craig always looks good in period era clothing, if you ask me.

ETA: Obsession I had avoided this for a long time because I figured it would be another Craig as nutball sexual predator, but it's actually not quite that intense. It's more strange than anything else: Weird in the way that only eastern European movies can be, god love them. DC's pretty charming for someone obsessed with a woman who's already in love with her boyfriend, and the opening and manner in which they meet is quite... odd, but it settles down into a little love triangle and there's a little bit of unclothed Daniel, which is always good. Best part comes down to a look -- at one point, he's wearing a long black flowy coat, grey turtleneck, and jeans, and OMG he looks beyond stunning. (Just do yourself a favor and fast forward through any scenes with the lead chick's band, please.)

Craig's been really busy so a lot of his newer stuff hasn't come out yet, but I imagine he must be riding high on the critical and box office success of Casino Royale. I've only ever bought, oddly, a handful of his movies, and I never thought I'd say it, ever, even with a gun to my head, but I will definitely be buying, and rewatching, Casino. He really epitomized to me what Bond should have been all along and never was, and the movie, even though it went a little long to me, still held more thrills and interest than the entire canon put together. No matter what kind of movie Daniel Craig makes, it seems I'm destined to watch it.

Comments

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

Oooh, this is awesome; thank you for this post.

Also, what a beautiful icon. :-)

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Isn't that a lovely icon? After the movie, I of course went right out and corrected my grievous "no Daniel Craig icons" error. Fortunately, his newfound fame made it a lot easier!

[sdwolfpup.livejournal.com]

Huh. I've seen a couple of those movies and didn't realize he was in them. I'm not sure I can re-watch Tomb Raider with that in mind, though. It was awhile ago, but I remember it being awful. Just that there was a really hot guy in it. Heh.

And, yes, I loved the Bond movie where he got tortured (or at least that part of it) because it made the character vulnerable and interesting to me, but the rest of that movie fell flat. Casino Royale is fantastic. I've seen it twice, and I'd watch it again in a second.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I can't say everything he's done is a keeper. ;-) Jo and I have wanted to vid Layer Cake since we saw it in the theatre, but someone beat us to the song. There might be enough time that's lapsed now, but I think a lot of people will think it belongs to the other vid... maybe with his new fame, though, more people will be familiar with Layer Cake enough that they wouldn't think it was just a lame version of the same song.

[merricatk.livejournal.com]

Because of the new Casino Royale, my mother developed an interest in Bond movies, & I was ordered to Bring Her Some. (She had never seen any, & was unaware the original CR was a spoof. I didn't mention this.)

I took her Dr. No & the orig. CR. Her assessments:

Dr. No: "Good car chases. Stupid people. I don't need to see any more of these."

CR: "Woody Allen is in it? It's a comedy--your father would have loved it." (so, so true.)

When it comes out on DVD, I'll take her the new CR. I bet she likes it. *g*

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

She sounds like a very sensible woman. ;-)

I definitely think she will like this much more -- there aren't any real car chases (praise the lord) and the foot chase at the beginning is really incredible -- largely because even though Bond just won't quit, he really takes a pounding trying to get hold of the guy he's chasing.

[vonniek.livejournal.com]

I loved The Mother. It was hard to watch at times, but god, what a movie. It managed to be both compassionate and absolutely pitiless, and I felt for the lead character so acutely, it hurt my chest to see her go through what she did. (I do think their earlier encounters had some wonderful warmth to them, despite her delusions and his selfishness.) Craig was mesmerizing in that flick, even in his callousness. I probably won't be able to watch it again though.

Layer Cake... sigh. In my mind, Layer Cake: Daniel Crag = The Croupier: Clive Owen.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Hah! I love your equation. I think if DC and CO made a movie together at this point (where I think both are at their handsomest) I might explode.

I definitely agree that The Mother was a good movie. I just have such a low embarassment threshold that it was agonizing (and yes, pitiless is a perfect word for it). I loved the beginning of their relationship, the way they just talked, but after that I was huddled into a fetal ball.

[morgantree.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the Daniel Craig filmography, and I totally agree about the hotness factor; but, but .... you never told us what you thought of Casino Royale! I would really like to know!

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Hah, yeah, I guess I didn't say much about that. In a word, loved. I would have liked some of the poker stuff to be shorter and maybe cut the chases down a bit, but overall, I loved it, especially because Bond was both a relentless, nearly thug-like being who just wouldn't quit because that was his job, but also because he was tender and vulnerable at times. Even though he was smiling, you could tell that Vesper had wounded him in their first encounter with her analysis of his character.

And I loved his relationship with M. They were just fantastic together (and I can see why people want Bond/M fic! I certainly would never have said that about Brosnan's Bond) and I loved that little twinkle in Dench's eye when she was reassessing what she thought of him, and how flirty he was with her at times. They both have each other's numbers.

And of course, this was filled with consequences. Even that chase in the beginning -- Bond keeps falling, hurting himself, he pushes and pushes, not unlike the Terminator -- he just won't stop until he gets what he wants. He knows he's a "blunt instrument" but he also has a self awareness that he's meant for something more.

Maybe most of all, I loved that he wasn't a super smoothie, above it all with the lame wisecracks and such. When he makes jokes to Vesper, it's like he's laughing at his own leering playboy quality, and when he laughs at Le Chiffre as he's being tortured, he is not being super smooth -- he's nearly hysterical and suffering and that's the only way he can keep going and endure. God, I loved that he suffers, because I was so tired of the perfection of this character beyond human ability.

I even loved that for once, the villian wasn't this "take over the world" guy and that he's undone by his own actions, not by Bond.

But the best thing? No talking killers. No one is left in a room tied up with sharks at their feet, or dangling from a rope over a pit, or whatever. People just walk up and shoot you, or torture you without a lot of fanfare, or stick a live body in front of your car, or drug your drink. God, that made me SO HAPPY. I hate talkng killers, and Bond movies have been the absolute worst about that (ref. Austin Powers), and there was just none of that to be found.

[klia.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the recs! I'm way behind in my DC stalking watching; slowly but surely.

Want to hear something pathetic? I'm trying *really* hard not to get all excited over DC's upcoming movies with Jeremy Northam and Ewan McGregor. I don't know if my brain can handle the extreme level of hotness that would be created by DC and either of those guys together in the same frame. Guh.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I know, I know, I'm totally handwaving it. I'm like, la la la, not going to happen, it'll be bad or never come out...

If he and Clive Owen made something right now at this point in their lives, I think my panties would explode so badly that I'd start a fire in the theatre.

[klia.livejournal.com]

Or Nathaniel Parker... or James Purefoy...

*runs off in search of ice*

[beck-liz.livejournal.com]

I have always disliked the Bond films too, although not as much as you, I think. They've just always been so plastic for me. Casino Royale is so much realer. But I think that the true Bond fans love the plasticness and hate the real, so there you go.

If you have even the tiniest embarassment squick, do not, for the love of god, watch either of these.

Oh, god. I was thinking about watching Enduring Love, but I thought my embarrassment squick might get a workout. Nice to know I wasn't wrong. Yikes.

I really enjoyed Copenhagen. He was excellent in it. As for Sylvia Plath... I will admit to losing interest in any scene he wasn't in.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Plastic is such a perfect word for them. I think it's that quality combined with the misogyny that has been so hard for me to take.

The worst part about Enduring love is that it's a really interesting movie, but I have rarely been in such mental pain, either. Same could be said for The Mother.

[kassto.livejournal.com]

The first time I saw Daniel Craig was in an amazing British TV series 10 years ago called Our Friends in the North, which followed four friends from Newcastle through from the early '60s to the present. It also starred Christopher Eccleston and was one of the early big breaks in both their careers. Craig has always been to me another in the Sean Bean mould — thinking woman's bit of rough from the north. He was also great in a British TV thriller called the Ice House where he played a police sergeant helping solve a murder. Actually prefer him in the TV stuff to his movies.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I envy you so much having had access to that series. It's one of the few things I can't get my hands on, and its impossibilty makes it even more tantalizing to me. ;-)

I like that, thinking woman's bit of rough from the north. Yes, yes indeed.

[kassto.livejournal.com]

You can get it here at Amazon UK

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Our-Friends-North-Christopher-Eccleston/dp/B00004CUCF

Daniel Craig's character, Geordie Peacock, has such an awful time, you just want to weep for him.

And those lovely Geordie accents.... One of the reviewers at Amazon UK very rightly describes it as a drama about how Britain struggled to get out of the mini Dark Ages it fell into in the middle of last century, through the eyes of these four friends of course.

[rainkatt.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for this list! This was the first Bond I've gone to see on purpose; I didn't know much about Daniel Craig before, but I was completely mesmerized--I loved him, I thought he was hot, I loved this incarnation of Bond, and I loved the chemistry with M, which was just so much fun. There was much to love, although, like you, I found some parts a big draggy.

I'm definitely going to add a few of these to my queue.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I just added Obsession to the list -- a very very weird little German/English movie, but it does have him looking mighty sexy in a long flowing black coat and charcoal grey turtleneck at one point, so I suppose it's worth it just for that!