Beyond Bond, Connery characters funny, fierce

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This article was published 03/11/2020 (2098 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When I was a kid, many of my peers collected sports cards. I collected movie cards, starting with the 1965 run of James Bond 007 cards put out by the good folks at Fleer.

At that point, only three Bond movies existed: Dr. No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963) and Goldfinger (1964). (Thunderball would be released later in 1965.) The cards were basically productions stills of Sean Connery’s Bond in action, with appropriate captions: “Hunted by a Helicopter” as seen in From Russia With Love, or “The Incredible Laser Ray” or “Oddjob’s Deadly Derby” from Goldfinger.

So the news of Sean Connery’s death over the weekend had a kind of visceral effect, as it would on those of us who valued movie heroes over champions of the gridiron or baseball diamond. Connery, who lived to the ripe age of 90, presented a different kind of hero than the TV do-gooders of the era, a fact announced in an early scene from Dr. No when Bond cold-bloodedly kills a would-be assassin after he’s emptied his own pistol. “That’s a Smith & Wesson, and you’ve had your six.”

Connery played Bond a total of seven times, and while he was undoubtedly the best of the Bonds, only a few of the movies hold up. Connery is certainly phoning it in in Diamonds Are Forever (1971), for example, letting his character devolve into self-parody. But his quest to escape the Bond brand resulted in a few interesting roles, including The Anderson Tapes (1971), in which he played a career criminal with a conscience (sans toupée), or Zardoz (1974), a delirious post-apocalyptic fantasy in which his primitive warrior goes up against a race of immortal intellectuals.

But in putting together my five essential Connery films, it struck me that all the non-007 films chosen either reflect his Bond beginnings, or at least offer a kind of commentary on the franchise, good and bad.

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963)

This is the Bond movie I put in the Blu-ray player on Saturday afternoon. It shows Connery getting comfortable in the Bond persona in his second go-round, confident with the requisite sexual overtones in his romance with a Russian spy (Daniela Bianchi) and the unusual camaraderie he shares with a Turkish spymaster (played by the delightful Mexican actor Pedro Armendáriz). But it also shows Connery in top action form in a climactic fight aboard the Orient Express with psychopathic SPECTRE assassin Red Grant (Robert Shaw), still one of the most gripping action scenes in any Bond movie.

ROBIN AND MARIAN (1976)

This film by Richard Lester casts Connery as an aged Robin Hood opposite Audrey Hepburn as Maid Marian, living the life of a nun before the combative Robin “rescues” her from the clutches of the Sheriff of Nottingham (Robert Shaw again). This is the most romantic of Connery’s films, reaching its zenith when Marian confesses to Robin: “I love you more than God.” But the romance is soured by Robin’s adherence to violence. Connery’s acknowledgement of middle age also results in a harrowing climactic duel between Robin and the sheriff, in which Connery’s usual physical grace goes utterly AWOL.

THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987)

Connery won his supporting-actor Oscar for his work as Malone, a tough Irish cop who seeks some kind of redemption helping Kevin Costner’s Eliot Ness bring down all-powerful gangster Al Capone (Robert De Niro) in a hopelessly corrupt Chicago. It’s one of several “passing-the-baton” movies he made, wherein his character shows a younger man the ropes when it comes to taking care of the bad guys. But within those parameters, Connery is funny and fierce, stealing the movie with the sleek aplomb of a cat burglar.

INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (1989)

It was said that Steven Spielberg had always wanted to direct a James Bond movie, but with this third Indy movie, Bond came to him as Harrison Ford’s distracted academic dad Henry. With his character dragged into an adventure involving the search for the Holy Grail, Connery again gets to exercise his comic chops, while a climactic scene, in which he fears his son has been killed, allows him a moment of surprisingly touching drama as well.

THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER (1990)

Connery returned to the espionage business a few times, in the underrated The Russia House (1990) and Michael Bay’s The Rock (1996), in which his character was a long-imprisoned master spy. But Connery was perhaps most effective playing a rogue Russian sub commander who decides to defect to America in possession of the revolutionary new submarine of the title. In most of his movies, Connery did little to disguise his Scottish burr, and that was particularly obvious in a film in which he plays a Russian. But we went with it. Because, in that period, very few actors could deliver this kind of authority, humour and sheer physical presence.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing