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Free running with James Bond
March 14, 2007
I was so taken by the first extended action scene in Casino Royale (which was released on DVD yesterday by Sony) starring Daniel Craig in his first appearance as James Bond, that my interview with the film’s director, Martin Campbell (pictured), quickly zeroed in that sequence. It finds Bond chasing a
terrorist through the steamy jungles of Madagasgar, climaxing in a furious fight atop a derrick elevated some 200 feet above the ground.
“It was important to get a sequence that was unusual and different,” Campbell told me. And it’s a foot chase—it’s simply two guys, one chasing the other.”
It may be only a foot chase, but the sequence moves with the breakneck pace (and grace!) that comes from weeks of rehearsal and choreography. The scene is variation on the physical art known as “parkour,” better known on these shores as free running, a discipline that involves running, jumping and flipping in an attempt to move from point A to point B as efficiently and quickly as possible. The baddie that Bond pursues in the scene, Mollaka, is portrayed by Sébastien Foucan, one of the world’s great free-runners. Not that Daniel Craig didn’t hold his next to him.
“Daniel is extremely good at action—he looks very impressive, he moves very impressively and he handles himself quite well,” said Campbell, who used two units to film the free running sequence. “It was quite a relief to see that!”
Posted by Laurence Lerman on March 14, 2007 | Comments (0)
