'Casino Royale' stunt special

Chris Tilly visits the Bond set and talks to stunt co-ordinator Gary Powell.

Nov 20 2006

Visiting a James Bond set has got to be the dream job for any film journalist/geek, so when the invitation arrives to watch real-life Bond stunts on the set of 'Casino Royale', you don't turn it down. Unfortunately, said stunts weren't taking place in the Bahamas (they'd wrapped there) or Prague (ditto) but rather Dunsfold Airfield, deep in the Surrey countryside. But you take what you can get, and so in the middle of a balmy July night, I found myself watching a series of spectacular car crashes lighting up the night sky.

As everyone knows by now, 'Casino Royale' is a re-invention of the franchise, a more realistic take on proceedings that very much takes the character back to basics. So in effects terms there aren't any invisible cars or CGI surfing Bonds, but rather real stunts being done by real people.

My evening therefore consisted of anticipation followed by quick bursts of adrenalin and then amazement and astonishment as police cars, jeeps and tankers smashed into each other at high speeds.

Cars explode, stuntmen leap about the place, and I even get a look at the film's 'money shot' – an Aston Martin crash in which the car spins over and over and over again, straight towards camera. It's jaw-dropping stuff, and during a break between set-ups, the film's stunt co-ordinator, Gary Powell, talked me through the action and the progress of the shoot.

Time Out: So what am I seeing tonight?

Gary Powell: Well you're looking at what is supposed to be Miami Airport, and Bond is chasing a bomber named Carlos because…details deleted for fear of spoilers…and they crash through baggage trains, bendy buses, aeroplanes, police cars – pretty much everything you'd find at an airport really. We've been here for six weeks already and it's a really big, expensive sequence.

Full of dangerous stunts?

We have had to put stabilisers on one of the tankers because at one stage it goes on two wheels with Bond hanging onto the side of it. So we've got to make sure it doesn't go over because the guy is wired to it and he'd be crushed.

How has the shoot been going in general?

Very well. This is my fourth Bond, and my first as co-ordinator. It's quite a big responsibility as we are going off in this new direction. If it was a continuation of the Pierce Brosnan films we'd follow the trend that they've already set. But as this is a brand new style, the challenge is greater.

How will it be different from the Brosnan films then?

They want to go back to how it was originally, with Sean Connery, when it was a little bit rougher. It's very down and dirty and quite brutal. The fight scenes are totally different to previous Bonds, they are very vicious. He gets beaten up as good as he beats other people up. He gets cut up and bleeds and bruises. So there is a notable difference in that area.

How has Daniel Craig been getting on?

Fantastic. He put a lot of work into it beforehand and was 100% ready to come into it, both mentally and physically.

What do you think of all the criticism he has had?

Pierce had done a great job and he had huge shoes to fill, but everyone was on his case straight away, criticising him for no good reason. It wasn't as if he had done a Bond film and they were saying it was bad, they just had a go at him from the word go. But I think people will be pleasantly surprised when they see him – doing the action, the drama, delivering the one-liners. I think he's fantastic.

Can you tell us a bit about the amazing Aston Martin roll we saw earlier?

That's a good one because there are no cuts. You'll see the initial turnover but the car rolling towards camera is one shot and you'll see it turn over several times. In a normal film you see a car turn once and then it cuts to another angle and turns again because realistically the cars only gone over twice, but this one has gone over seven times and it’s all kept in one shot.

And what about the free-running sequence that everyone seems to be talking about?

I have worked with free runners before, so my team went out to the Bahamas a month before we got there and blocked out a route where we could go. When we got there we zoned in on the big jumps, and that sort of thing has never been done before. Most of the time you'll see a single jump and then a cut, but we've done a 140 foot jump followed by a 120 foot and then a 100 foot, all in one shot.

Using wires I take it?

Yup, we use wires and a stunt double. It's a really dangerous stunt – because we were 140 feet up, and being next to the coast it was quite windy. So the cranes were moving the whole time. Even though we rehearsed it, it was constantly swaying so the distances were constantly changing. So if the stunt guy overshot it, he overshot it, but if he undershot, he could quite easily smash his face on the cable works. It was a very technical stunt, and there was lots of rigging and a helicopter shot, so everything had to be spot on. But yes, we did use wires, and CGI will be used to get rid of them, though it won't be taking over in this film. It's back to basics – stunt people doing real stunts.

Has Daniel been doing a lot of his own stunts?

Daniel has done more stunts than Pierce Brosnan and on the construction site we had him running up the crane, across girders, driving the JCB. He does 95% of the fight stuff and we had him here doing a lot of the fights inside the tanker. We've got him here next week outside the tanker being dragged along so he has done a hell of a lot more than we are normally used to and he is very capable of doing it.

So will these be the best Bond stunts yet seen?

You want to better yourself, but you have to do it to what's in the story. There's no point in having a weird and wonderful stunt that doesn't fit in the rest of the story. You have to keep it in context. All of a sudden two planes flying down doing acrobatics wouldn't make sense, so as much as we'd like to make it bigger and better, you have to push it in the right way so it all fits in. You just want it to be realistic really, and that's the aim of the film.

With that Gary headed back on set to co-ordinate yet more automobile carnage while Time Out watched it all open-mouthed, impressed at the scale and realism of it all and relieved that, after a brief period of stagnation, the Bond franchise is back and looking as spectacular as it has ever done.

'Casino Royale' is released on Friday.

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