Pierce Brosnan

Black Bag

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George Woodhouse in his kitchen

What does all that spying do to spies? That’s Black Bag in a neat explicatory parcel, a Steven Soderbergh movie that mixes Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with the Michael Caine Harry Palmer films – or so say Soderbergh and writer David Koepp. But there’s John Le Carré in there as well. And as this densely packed, forensic examination of the spy psyche eases onto its queasy final straight, the comparisons with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy become unavoidable. Soderbergh opens with a long, glam tracking shot following Michael Fassbender’s George Woodhouse into a bar and then down and back up some stairs where, in wham-bam plotting, Koepp lays out the whole film in … Read more

Fast Charlie

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Fast Charlie stands by a car

There’s nothing really fast about Fast Charlie, a relaxed, medium-weight saunter through thriller territory in the company of some fine people. Pierce Brosnan, now in his 70s but still with the 007 swagger and nonchalance, plays Charlie, a fixer for an aged gang boss who winds up on the wrong side of a rival gang boss in a turf war in New Orleans. The film is an adaptation of Gun Monkeys by Victor Gischler, a writer who puts a comedic spin on familiar crime-fiction material. And more information than what I’ve already written isn’t strictly necessary. You’ve seen this movie before. But the casting is good and includes James Caan in his very … Read more

Black Adam

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Black Adam

Black Adam is the superhero film for people who’ve had enough of them. Or it wants to be. Full of familiar elements given a dry witty twist, it stars Dwayne Johnson as an immortal creature who returns to his native city of Kahndaq to save the citizens of a brutally colonised Middle Eastern city in their hour of need. So far, so King Arthur, though Black Adam, whose name is Teth Adam at this point, is actually more like the mummy from The Mummy Returns (an early foray into acting by Johnson, all those millennia ago) crossed with the terminator from The Terminator. The Terminator comparisons gain weight when Teth Adam takes up … Read more

False Positive

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Adrian and a pregnant Lucy

Films, like False Positive, about a pregnant woman pressured by husband, doctor and peers into taking a particular course of action, are always going to be compared to Rosemary’s Baby. There are no satanists in director/co-writer John Lee’s slice of modern gothic horror but he’s largely happy for his film to face that ordeal. Brave man. We meet nice loving couple Adrian (Justin Theroux) and Lucy (Ilana Glazer). He’s a doctor, she’s in marketing. They can’t get pregnant so they head to a clinic run by an old mentor of Adrian, Doctor Hindle (Pierce Brosnan), a kindly, authoritative fertility expert in charge of a modern, bright, smart facility. It’s staffed by Nurses Wendy … Read more

Die Another Day

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Pierce Brosnan and Halle Berry

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 26 March AE Housman born, 1859 On this day in 1859, Alfred Edward Housman was born, in Bromsgrove, UK. Most famous for his poetry cycle The Shropshire Lad, Housman was the son of a solicitor. His mother died when he was 12, on his birthday in fact, and Alfred became a bookish withdrawn child who excelled at academic subjects. He won a scholarship to Oxford, where he failed to get a degree, thanks to a mix of indolence, arrogance and infatuation with a fellow student, Moses Jackson. In spite of a lack of degree Housman wrote and published academic works about … Read more

Love Is All You Need

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Trine Dyrholm and Pierce Brosnan in Love Is All You Need. Photo: Doane Gregory

Wedding films can be a bit like wedding cake – lots of layers, too sweet, just enough is already a bit too much, not everyone is a fan. Given those caveats, and with the realisation that for every joyous wedding-themed movie like Bridesmaids there’s a steaming pile such as 27 Dresses, let’s wander up the aisle with director Susanne Bier and her two stars, Pierce Brosnan and Trine Dyrholm. Brosnan plays Philip, the father of the groom, Dyrholm plays Ida, mother of the bride, people who have never met until, at the airport, she manages to reverse her car into his. Ida is a hairdresser recovering from cancer and from the fact that … Read more

The Tailor of Panama

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Pierce Brosnan and Jamie Lee Curtis in The Tailor of Panama

Between Bond movies The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day, busy Pierce Brosnan managed to fit in two other projects. One of them was this adaptation of a John Le Carre story about a downmarket spy (Brosnan) in Central America who uses a sweatily nervous tailor (the unimpeachable Geoffrey Rush) to gain access to the local generals, his object: to sell them all manner of dodgy information designed to destabilise the country. It may say Le Carre on the tin but there’s the definite feeling we’re in Graham Greene country here, the atmopshere of mosquito netting, insanitary plumbing and lousy tea all being typical Greene touches. Adding suitably weird supporting performances … Read more

James Bond: The Omega Man

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daniel craig planet ocean

007 first strapped on an Omega watch in 1997. Since then the once-ailing franchise has gone from strength to strength. Coincidence? Every human being on the planet, even those in Bhutan, or out in the rainforest distilling poison from tree frogs, knows who James Bond is. So ubiquitous is he that even people who haven’t yet been born have a favourite James Bond actor, a favourite Bond girl, a favourite Bond movie, Bond song, car or baddie. In fact even as I write these words images of Louis Armstrong, Daniel Craig, an Aston Martin Vanquish, Jaws and Denise Richards (wrong, I know) are flashing across my cerebral cortex. But, now that Adele has belted … Read more