Cut to the Chase

Running Stunt

In the opening credits for Casino Royale , the latest James Bond movie (and what stylish credits they are, the sort that Saul Bellow used to revel in creating), there’s a listing for a Running Stunts. At least that was what I read at the cinema, although IMDB doesn’t have such a listing among its stunt artists.

Never mind, it impressed me enough to look out for whatever a running stunt was, and man, is there a Running Stunt with Capital Letters in Casino Royale . It comes near the beginning, when Bond begins to chase Mollaka the Bomb-Maker, a black man with a badly scarred face. Mollaka is carrying a bomb in his back-pack, and though I’m not entirely clear what he was planning to do with it (presumably Bond knows, which is why he gives chase), he certainly isn’t intending good.

Parkour

Mollaka is played by Sebastian Foucan, who has appeared a few times in movies before, as a stuntman rather than an actor, but whose main fame comes from his ability at the urban sport known as Parkour , in which people aim to run continually through an urban environment overcoming any obstacles in their path. Foucan is one of the main publicists of the sport – or is it an art? – and in this movie, even though he’s playing a villain, he gives the sport huge publicity.

Bond, of course, is obliged to keep up with him in order to catch him, and between them they run through streets and markets, and even an office. (The only place missing is a disrupted kitchen, the joy of action-movie makers). But most of the action takes place on a building site – a widely-scattered building site, one that is close to a wonderfully wide blue sea.

These two runners sprint up and down ladders, jump into sand pits, leap over things, through things – there’s one breathtaking moment when Foucan does an amazing feet-first leap through an opening almost above his head. Bond just breaks through the wall!

They eventually get themselves high up onto a crane, and have some fisticuffs, and do some of the usual swinging off the edge of it. But more interesting is the running along the top of the crane. That takes some nerve.

Eventually Foucan leaps off the crane – onto another! Totally impossible, but superb in execution. He bounds down, down, down over various levels until he reaches the ground again. (I can never understand quite why people in movie chases always want to go up things – it seems far more difficult than just running along the flat!)

I won’t tell you how the run finishes, because it would spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen the movie.

But I can’t wait for the DVD to come out, so I can watch this run over again. It’s a highlight of recent filmmaking.

Another Classic Chase

Which reminds me: in The Fugitive there was a marvellous scene where several prisoners were trapped on a bus that veered off the road into the path of an oncoming train. It’s an action-packed sequence, and survives repeated viewings. The most wonderful moment is when Harrison Ford, having managed to get off the bus just before the train crashes into it, tries to outrun the now-derailed train - still shackled. This huge, spectral machine looms up behind him, like a dragon about to eat him alive. I’ve watched it over and over, and never quite get over the almost childlike joy of a different kind of chase. Voila the movies!

You can find more about Parkour on the Wikipedia site, at this address: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkour