Is director Marc Forster the man with the golden touch?

22-Jun-2007 • Quantum Of Solace

The director of the next Bond movie is a surprising choice, but he could still deliver the goods, says Mark Monahan in The Telegraph.

'What on earth are they thinking?" Such is one's inevitable reaction to the announcement this week that Marc Forster is to direct the 22nd, as yet untitled, Bond film, which begins shooting at Pinewood in December.

Forster's two most notable movies to date are Monster's Ball, a pungent depiction of a relationship between a white, racist man and a black woman, and Finding Neverland, the account of how JM Barrie dreamt up Peter Pan.

A respectable pair of pictures? Certainly. But they're also as un-Bondish as can be, entirely lacking the multiplex-friendly scale, gloss and action that are the screen-Bond hallmarks.

Admittedly, the Bond movies have always belonged first and foremost to their producers (who tend to avoid A-list directors), but even so, the men who have directed them in the past have generally had more relevant pre-Bond experience than Forster.

Terence Young (Dr No, From Russia with Love) and Guy Hamilton (Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die, The Man with the Golden Gun) were both established thriller directors before producers Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli knocked on their doors; Martin Campbell (GoldenEye, Casino Royale) already had a host of expensive TV dramas to his name, including Edge of Darkness.

And Peter Hunt (On Her Majesty's Secret Service) and John Glen (the last three Roger Moore outings, and both of Timothy Dalton's) had extensive editing and second-unit experience on the Bond franchise before they were trusted with the top job.

It might be tempting to seek reassurance about Forster's 007 prospects in the example of Lewis Gilbert. When Saltzman and Broccoli hired him, he was riding high after Alfie, which was Bondish only in its casual misogyny, and yet Gilbert went on to make the three grandest films in the entire 007 series, You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. Before Alfie, though, Gilbert was already a seasoned maker of war films.

And then there's Lee Tamahori. In fairness, he was saddled (in Die Another Day) with a screenplay of excruciating awfulness, but the fact that his most notable pre-Bond outing, Once Were Warriors, was a chamber-piece (however glorious) does not augur well for Forster.

Of course, in returning Bond Daniel Craig, the German-born director does have an ace up his sleeve. And one could perhaps take a shred of hope from a man who has so far never made a Bond movie. Before he thundered into Middle-earth, Peter Jackson's biggest movie was Heavenly Creatures, which was essentially a two-hander, and yet he serenely raised his game for the magisterial Lord of the Rings.

Here's hoping Forster manages to follow his example - and, for that matter, that the producers one day break with their "no A-listers" tradition and turn to Jackson himself. Now, that would be a sight worth seeing.