Heavy Bondage: Thug vs. Thief

Suave, confident and sophisticated yet ruthless and brutal when required, he can switch from charming lover to callous professional effortlessly ....
- Description of the Dr. No Bond in Bond Films by Smith and Lavington

The Blunt Instrument

The first of the two schools of Bond is his role as government-sanctioned thug. Calling him a "hitman" in this role is not sufficient; it's much larger than that. One has to read between Ian Fleming's lines to see it; it didn't get stated explicitly in the books until John Gardner took the helm. "A blunt instrument" is what John Gardner has M call him in Licence Renewed, and this is the best description I've seen for this aspect of Bond's role.

The films didn't feel a need to make this explicit until more than a decade after Gardner did, which you might argue is one of many problems with the 1980's batch of Bond films (the franchise nadir); not until Goldeneye did they bother to address the question of whether Bond, and indeed British secret agents in general, have any role in a quasi-realistic latter-day setting at all. Gardner had to cope with it in 1981. Goldeneye came out in 1995.

If M's "I think you're a dinosaur" speech in Goldeneye wasn't a clue (it's the films' counterpart of Gardner's "blunt instrument" speech), at the very beginning of the next movie (Tomorrow Never Dies) we see Bond's role spelled out, as he single-handedly destroys an entire terrorist arms bazaar AND prevents a nuclear accident.

« "What the hell is he doing?" "His job."

Bond is sent in to stir up the shit (pardon my language). He doesn't have the patience or the subtlety for slow detective work or any real espionage. He comes in after the legwork has mostly already been done. His job is to poke people, irritate them, cause trouble and massive explosions. His job is to make a mess and see what happens.

One complaint I have heard many times from various Bond critics/commentators is "What sort of secret agent is this if everyone in the world apparently knows who he is?" The criticism is generally used for the Roger Moore rendition of Bond, which is a bit unfair, since there were hints of this overt aspect fairly early in the Connery era, and the gaff is blown for good by the time Diamonds Are Forever rolls around. If a small-timer like Tiffany Case knows who he is, then there's no going back. Frankly, I don't care. He doesn't have to be a secret agent to come in and create the chaos he does so well; in fact, in later films it becomes apparent that he wants to be recognized, to see who reacts to his presence and how. (I believe that Bond's "banker" identity in Tomorrow Never Dies, for example, is not intended to last more than the few seconds it does.)

Unfortunately, the Bond-as-shit-stirrer aspect comes as part of a package deal with Bond not being a very likable character. This Bond, almost by definition, has to be a very nasty, even sadistic, person from time to time - or he wouldn't be able to do his job.

Fleming tempers this by making Bond into a man with a rather dark, contemplative internal monologue. In the books, Bond often doesn't like his job much, and is notably unhappy with some things he is asked to do in the name of queen and country, and (especially in the later ones, as Fleming tired of the character) always seems on the verge of handing in his resignation. This same temperament does eventually surface in the Bond films, but not during the Connery period. Connery is cheerfully sadistic (as well as misogynistic, if not outright misanthropic), and unfortunately the audience is expected to swallow it and cheer along with him.

The Gentleman Thief

The other school of Bond, of course, is the suave master spy who slips in and picks locks and breaks codes and steals secrets and sabotages machines and wins at cards and vanishes without ever getting caught.

People who say this is a role foisted upon Bond later, one that Fleming never intended, clearly haven't read the books. The elegant aspects of Bond, the champagne-and-tuxedoes portions, were present from the beginning of Casino Royale. Bond enjoys the high life when and where he can - indeed, it's painted as being nearly the sole compensation he enjoys for a job which consists of ten months a year of tedium punctuated by episodes of mortal danger and brutality.

The problem with the blunt instrument aspect is that it calls for Bond to be dislikable; the problem with the gentleman thief aspect, conversely, is that it calls for Bond to be too likeable. Bond is not Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief or even Thomas Crown in the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair (although there are some latter-day similarities there, for obvious reasons). He can't make friends that easily; in fact, he can't make any permanent friends at all. Bond is like a superhero; no one is allowed to get too close or it will go badly (eg. On Her Majesty's Secret Service).

Thus we have a sliding scale, with Bond-the-sadist at one end and Bond-the-charmer on the other end. At the dark end, we have a brooding, mean-spirited brute that no one loves, efficient but cold; at the light end, we have a charming gadabout that everyone loves but whom is completely ineffectual.

The dark end of this spectrum is anchored by Timothy Dalton (that's right - not Connery), who has been the most unlovable Bond yet to date. When License to Kill, which is only nominally a Bond film, came out, it was shocking what had happened to Bond, but a logical evolution of the way Dalton played the character (and the way it was written for him at the time).

"This isn't a country club, 007!" »

It was the only way that Bond could go, to degenerate even further into thuggishness until he finally would be nothing but a large-scale hitman.

The light end of the spectrum is represented by the lovable Roger Moore, who (coupled with his playing the part until he was far, far too old for it) ended up as the babbling manorial uncle from a Wodehouse book, someone everyone gets along with but doesn't trust to put the cat out properly, much less save the world. Moore was reportedly written into situations where he had to be forced to be brutal, to counteract his natural urbanity; the writers and producers knew from the beginning that they had a problem to contend with.

The in-betweens are Sean Connery, leaning toward the brute end, and Pierce Brosnan, leaning toward the gentleman end. Since these two manage, to some extent, to win the brute-vs-gent juggling game, these are the two "good Bonds." Early returns suggest that Daniel Craig's Bond is very close to the Connery level - a lot of brute tempered by just enough gent. (George Lazenby is a special case for many reasons, including some surprising ones, which I'll discuss when I come to his film. He's not on this spectrum at all.)

It's significant that the film Bond was not allowed to get really glum about his line of work until Brosnan took the role (something I'm sure some viewers dislike, but which I find enriches the character). The Brosnan Bond would be a little unhappy about the thug aspects, because it's the gentleman-spy aspects he does best. On the other hand, Connery always seemed most at ease strangling someone or beating them or blowing something up, and always looked vaguely disconcerted when called upon to be inconspicuous. The Connery Bond is the correct Bond to protest that a little diamond smuggling is beneath the department's notice, too small a fish; the Brosnan Bond would probably have welcomed a chance to do what M calls "plain, solid work" and not have to save the world for a change.

Still, this two-Bonds-in-one theory doesn't really please some purists, and the fight goes on: Some people really believe that the Connery Bond is definitive and dislike all others as impostors; some believe that the Brosnan Bond is their ideal finally realized and no one else has been as satisfactory in the part.

I'm primarily of the Brosnan school, just so you know my biases. (Again, early returns for this Craig fellow are promising.) I'm not opposed to Connery, but I prefer the gentleman spy to the blunt instrument. When Brosnan announced he wouldn't be doing Bond anymore, I finally understood why some people grew disgruntled with Bond when Connery left. I felt like I really didn't care who they replaced Brosnan with because it couldn't possibly be as good. But I may yet be proven wrong.

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