Now pay very close attention, 007. The James Bond films have had an extensive range of villains and henchmen, and 007 has often had to contend with baddies who have had global ambitions (such as Stromberg and Drax), or are supremely greedy (such as Goldfinger), or are driven more by complex psychopathic obsessions (such as Scaramanga).
The Pierce Brosnan four-film era (1995-2002) saw James Bond come up against some pretty ghastly examples of this, and none more so that Victor ‘Renard’ Zokas, otherwise known as ‘The Anarchist’. The very welcome news that acclaimed Scottish actor Robert Carlyle will have a role in the next series of the smash-hit BBC TV police investigative series Line of Duty, a revelation that was given extensive headline publicity in the UK’s media recently, was music to the ears of fans of Pierce Brosnan’s third 007 movie, The World Is Not Enough (1999).
Robert Carlyle, of course, had a key role in TWINE as the cold-hearted shaven-headed kidnapper and villain Renard, an international terrorist and a particularly brutal killer with a long record of assassination operations, and whose background lay in the bloody civil wars of the 1990s in the Balkans area of eastern Europe.
In a sense, Carlyle already had considerable experience of playing frightening and unpredictable characters, having played a psychopath in the TV drama Cracker (opposite Robbie Coltrane) and as the sadistic hardman Francis ‘Franco’ Begbie in Trainspotting (1996).
In light of Robert Carlyle’s latest, and very welcome career move, the JBIFC takes the opportunity to look back on TWINE in (00)seven bullet-points and to explore the motivations of the ruthless Renard and his circle of mercenary killers.
007 and Counting…
001: As the world waited for the dawn of a new Century back in December, 1999, Bond was back – with a Bang! The World Is Not Enough hit cinemas in many parts of the globe and soon achieved new cinema-going records. As many Bond fans know, the movie, directed by the late Michael Apted (1941-2021), was Pierce Brosnan’s eve-of-the-millenium movie, and made use of a number of themes and constructions associated with the year 1999, including a reference by ‘Q’ to the so-called ‘Millenium Bug’ and, for a key sequence, the film also made use of (what was then called) the ‘Millenium Dome’, located by the River Thames in London’s east end Docklands area. Apted’s first movie had been The Triple Echo (1972), followed by That’ll Be The Day (1973), and he was known mainly for his award-winning social documentary work in the UK, so he had been something of a surprise choice to direct the new 007 film. But he was very pleased to accept the offer to direct the latest EON production, as he saw it as an opportunity to prove to studio bosses that he was still a highly bankable director, something he was to prove again with the wartime-based movie Enigma (2001). Apted was especially keen to place an emphasis on ‘character’ in his 007 film as well as action, which was met with strong approval from Pierce Brosnan. And this was certainly evident in the interplay between Renard and Elektra King (Sophie Marceau).
002: The title of the movie, of course, was taken directly from the Ian Fleming novels, as the author had taken the words and made them into the Bond Family’s motto. In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (OHMSS), James Bond visits the College of Arms and learns that Sir Thomas Bond’s actual family crest had the motto ‘The World Is Not Enough’. This very Fleming-esque title seemed a great choice for the 19th EON James Bond movie. The core idea for the plot of the new movie came from Barbara Broccoli. She was flying to Miami not long after the opening of Tomorrow Never Dies and, as part of the inflight entertainment, was watching an edition of Ted Koppel’s Nightline broadcast in November, 1997. The programme was devoted to the Caspian Sea and included discussion of the area as a key region for oil in the next century. Oil would be the driver of a new wave of economic development. Broccoli began to wonder what would happen if a villain tried to assert complete control of the ‘black gold’ and place pressure on the West? When she later mentioned the idea to her EON co-producer Michael G. Wilson, he immediately saw the potential of the topic for a Bond movie plot.
003: On the recommendation of Simon Mathew, a development executive to the two EON Bond producers, the British screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade were recruited and set to work on the new movie. The relatively unknown pair were seen as highly talented and upcoming writers, having scored a big critical success with the crime drama Let Him have It (1991). They created the cold, unfeeling villain Renard (French for ‘Fox’) (played by Robert Carlyle), who would be slowly dying from a bullet lodged in his skull by MI6 agent 009. At the same time, Purvis was also keen to have a female villain alongside Renard for TWINE: hence, Elektra King (played by the excellent Sophie Marceau) was created. Interestingly, the screenwriting pair later revealed that they drew some of their inspiration for the strong characteristics embodied in Elektra from Diana Rigg’s performance in OHMSS. The two writers were also determined to have more emphasis on tense interaction between key characters, something that Pierce Brosnan was enthusiastic about and Apted fully supported. Moreover, Apted believed it was crucial that cinema audiences would not immediately guess that Elektra King was really the main villain of the film, not necessarily Renard.
004: Principal photography on the new Bond movie commenced on 11th January, 1999, at Pinewood Studios. This involved an internal explosion at MI6 HQ. Apart from work at Pinewood, key locations for the new Bond movie included France, Spain, Scotland and Turkey. While Michael Apted mainly concentrated on working with the First Unit, the movie’s Second Unit spent a long period of time utilizing the famous River Thames in central London, including the Embankment area just outside the real-life MI6 HQ at Vauxhall Bridge, where a Q-Boat (with a dummy Bond) was catapaulted from the shore just outside the Secret Service HQ and into the river. A number of the key bridges across the Thames (including outside Parliament), were also used, together with the main River area outside the Millenium Dome in East London. Action sequences were also shot on the various waterways of the East End’s Docklands, many of them with the ‘Q-Boat’.
005: After high praise for his work on the score for Tomorrow Never Dies, composer David Arnold returned for TWINE and – this time – was also given greater control over the choice for the main theme tune. Working with veteran lyricist Don Black, the two men had written the song even before the main filming on the movie commenced. Arnold also made the bold choice to enlist singer Shirley Manson and her rock band Garbage for the main theme. It was an inspired choice. Arnold later explained that the title song was written very much from Elektra’s perspective, mainly to capture her duplicitous nature. And duplicity was evidently a major theme in the movie’s storyline. In a delicious turnaround, the manipulative Elektra King, when she had been originally kidnapped by Renard, had seduced and ‘turned’ Renard, and he had clearly become infatuated with her.
006: Robert Carlyle was arguably a superb choice for the role of Renard. Interestingly, in interviews he recalled going to the cinema in the 1960s and 70s and being in awe of the first James Bond, fellow Scot Sean Connery. Ironically, another fellow Scot had, in a way, played a part in Carlyle being considered for the role of Renard: EON co-producer Michael G. Wilson had seen Carlyle playing the murderer Albie opposite police psychologist Robbie Coltrane in the acclaimed TV series Cracker, and had been very impressed. Wilson felt that Carlyle could easily bring some of that acting power to the part of a Bond villain. Interestingly, in relation to the role of Renard, as Carlyle acknowledged: ‘I have a reputation for playing a lot of villains. The whole thing seemed to go hand-in-hand, so it was a very easy reason for me to say yes to the part’. He also conferred closely with director Apted. As a result of 009 having managed to get a bullet lodged in Renard’s brain, he is slowly dying. This means he has lost all feeling, and is impervious to pain, although he still retains some emotional feeling for Elektra: however, although he wants to, he cannot really physically satisfy the sexually confident Elektra King. What renders Renard especially frightening is that he is not afraid of death, because he knows he’s already dying. He is preapred to take things to a suicidal level. Carlyle was keen to have some background information about Renard, to equip him with some idea of the assassin’s psychology and motivations. He revealed in interviews that he had imagined Renard to be of Bosnian descent, a former military man who had become desensitized to human suffering by all the horrors of war and was now effectively a pitiless gun-for-hire, with a small loyal circle of equally heartless thugs to help him in his nefarious crimes.
007: Compared to all the difficulties and location pressures that cast and crew had experienced on Tomorrow Never Dies, TWINE was evidently more relaxed and satisfying to make. Pierce Brosnan clearly enjoyed himself more on the movie than on his previous outing. He commented in one interview: ‘It’s fun and I’m more relaxed’. He also relished some of the acting challenges built into the script, which brought out some of the complex, darker and morally ambiguous sides to Bond’s character. Robert Carlyle was equally happy with his time on the movie. He was especially impressed with Pierce Brosnan: ‘Working with him has been a breath of fresh air. I didn’t know what to expect but he made me very welcome. He’s a terrific actor as well and I think he deserves every credit. It’s a very difficult job he does’. In another interview, he told the film critic Iain Johnstone: ‘This type of work is entirely different from what I’ve been involved in. It’s a wonderful, wonderful fantasy. It’s about look and effect and the fact that from scene one this is the bad guy’. Carlyle was also pleased that he was able to make Renard a psychologically more complex type of villain, a baddie who was genuinely frightening and more suited to the new Millenium, in contrast to the ‘innocence’ of the earlier villains of the 1960s Bond films. Carlyle explained this with reference to the climax of the movie: ‘There’s a moment at the end of this film – the final confrontation between Bond and Renard – where Bond tells Renard that Elektra is dead and my reaction is one hundred per cent absolute rage. It looks as if Renard is going to basically beat him to death. It should look like this is the last Bond movie’.
Did You Know?
Spanish actor Javier Bardem was seriously considered for the role of Renard and was approached, but played hard to get. In fact, EON had sounded him out on a number of occasions on whether he would be interested in playing a Bond villain. It was not until Skyfall (2012), directed by Sam Mendes, that EON finally managed to secure his services.
Renard was seen looking over Bond’s shoulder in the main TWINE poster.