CASINO ROYALE’S PARKOUR CHASE
Casino Royale was the 21st Bond movie and the first to feature Daniel Craig as cinema’s greatest spy. New 007, new action: the 2006 franchise reboot opted to kick off by getting in on the burgeoning parkour craze courtesy of a fast and furious foot chase across, and above, a Madagascar building site. “We wanted to establish the new Bond is gadget-free, raw, slightly crazy, very physical and incredibly brave,” said screenwriter Neal Purvis. Job done.
The explosive pursuit sees everyone’s favourite MI6 agent hoof it after bomb-maker Mollaka, played by real-life free runner Sébastien Foucan, star of 2003 documentary Jump London. While Mollaka hightails it with great grace – “Sébastien does it like a ballet,” said second unit director Alexander Witt – Bond pursues like a force of nature, tearing over scaffolding, leaping between cranes, and barging through masonry.
“CGI is a great tool, but I will fight tooth and nail to do something for real,” stressed special-effects supervisor Chris Corbould. Craig agreed, saying, “It was important to me that I do as many of my own stunts as possible, for authenticity. I wanted to be seen jumping from crane to crane, physically exerting myself. I didn’t get fit just to take my shirt off.”
And get fit Craig most certainly did, training five times a week for several months with Simon Waterson, the ex-Royal Marine who’d trained Halle Berry for Die Another Day and Jake Gyllenhaal for Prince Of Persia. Pull-ups, squats, barbell curls, bench presses, and more, much more… Craig piled on “functioning muscle” to give himself the strength and speed of an athlete.
The scene was actually shot in the Bahamas on the site of a hotel, now derelict, which producer Michael G. Wilson had become acquainted with during the filming of 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me. Dressed with steel girders and three cranes, the location was ready for Craig to perform his own stunts… 100 feet above the ground.
“I’m not going to rush up there again in the near future, but I definitely put some demons to bed,” the actor said. Impressively, the leap from one crane to another and then onto a roof was achieved in one shot, and while the actors wore safety harnesses and there was a small landing platform, all of which was digitally erased in post-production, it made for a hair-raising stunt. So good, in fact, it won a 2008 Radio Times poll to decide the greatest
Bond stunt of them all, beating such iconic showstoppers as the Union Jack parachute jump in The Spy Who Loved Me, the car barrel roll in The Man With The Golden Gun and the speedboat leap in Live And Let Die. JG