It’s hard to believe when looking back on it now, but when Daniel Craig was initially cast as James Bond, there was a widespread backlash. Of course, the doubters were all proved wrong from the moment audiences saw Casino Royale and realised that the entire franchise needed to be reinvigorated with less kitsch and more Bourne.
Craig was unexpectedly shown to be the perfect face for a darker take on 007, but 13 years and nearly five films later, could it be time for him to do something radically different?
In short, could Daniel Craig be the great comic actor we never knew we had?
Don’t laugh. Actually, no, laugh, that’s the point. Because based on Knives Out, his latest, and Logan Lucky, in which he played a role as far away from Bond as is possible to get, he may have found his true calling.
Craig may have a reputation as one of the most serious A-listers in the business, previously starring almost exclusively in grittier dramas when away from Bond, but he has always been aware of the outlandishness of his most iconic role.
His mastery of the droll one-liner is every bit as accomplished as that of Sean Connery or Roger Moore, and even though his films were part of a darker franchise reboot, he has shown impeccable talent as the comedic straight man, even when it has required him to, say, star in a skit escorting the Queen to the Olympics opening ceremony. But the comparative seriousness of his Bond outings compared to those of Moore has meant that his comedic skills have largely gone unnoticed, save for a dryly comic line reading here and there.
This is where Steven Soderbergh comes in. For his 2017 heist film Logan Lucky, the director cast Craig against type as a southern explosions expert named Joe Bang, with the actor even credited within the film and marketing as “Introducing: Daniel Craig”. Of course, this is just a simple gag to highlight that one of the most famous movie stars in the world has opted for a supporting role within an ensemble cast – and yet, in many ways, it’s every bit the revelatory performance it’s billed as, showing a new side to the actor that suggests his greatest strength may not be personifying the suave secret agent.
The performance largely works because Soderbergh gleefully subverts every aspect of Craig’s screen persona. Out goes the refined MI5 accent, in comes a trailer trash drawl, out go the Savile Row suits, in comes a prison jumpsuit. Did we mention the peroxide crop haircut? Or the tattoos?
But the real strength is Craig’s comic timing. When Joe Bang is first introduced, as Channing Tatum and Adam Driver’s bar-owning brothers visit him in prison to enlist him for their heist, his talent for deadpan is on full display. He may be great as Bond, but he’s even more impressive when managing to keep a straight face as he complains about his time in prison and being made to wear a pink onesie. Logan wasn’t particularly lucky at the box office, flopping despite its all-star cast, and is still yet to find a second life as a cult movie. But it hasn’t deterred Craig from chasing his true calling as a comedy actor, doubling down on playing southern American archetypes as he stars as “last Gentleman detective” Benoit Blanc in Rian Johnson’s wonderfully funny new film Knives Out.
Granted, as with Soderbergh, Craig has clearly been cast so Johnson can subvert the idea of a mysterious and highly revered character in the same mould as Bond. In fact, the smartest joke in Knives Out may be that Benoit Blanc is fully aware of his own hype. As Johnson’s film introduces us to the extended Thrombey family as they’re questioned by police following the unexpected murder of patriarch Harlan (Christopher Plummer), Blanc sits in the background, ominously hammering piano keys to bring attention to his supposedly mysterious presence. Naturally, each time it’s greeted by the bemused characters asking, “Who the fuck is that?”
Benoit Blanc is more than just a pitch-perfect parody of self-mythologising detectives like Poirot – it’s the role where Daniel Craig lives up to his earlier promise as a comic actor. At the moment, his comedic screen presence largely relies on him subverting expectations of what we expect from the stoic secret agent.
In Knives Out this involves giving rambling monologues about his methods for solving cases (ranging from taking inspiration from books he’s never read to viewing every case through an elaborate doughnut metaphor), all delivered in a broad southern accent described by another character as “CSI KFC”.
On the press tour for Knives Out, he told the i newspaper that he was the first actor in the stacked ensemble to sign on because “funny scripts are as rare as hen’s teeth in this town”.
He added, “It was one of the biggest joys of my career, quite frankly.”
It’s perhaps telling that Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge was brought on to punch up the screenplay at Craig’s request, with Craig calling her “one of the best English writers around”.
The knives were out for him when he first signed on as Bond, but he proved the world wrong. He reinvented himself – from a respected character actor to a licence-to-kill leading man. On the evidence of Knives Out, he might be about to do the same again.
Knives Out is out now.
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