It seems half of the sites on the Web this week are bracketed by ads for the new movie Defiance. That would be the new Daniel Craig vehicle in which he stars as a Nazi-fighting Jew.
This isn't the first time Craig has appeared as an ass-kicking representative of The Chosen People, and though he's not actually a member of the tribe, it would be so cool if he was. A Jewish Bond? Imagine the possibilities: From Russia With Guilt, say, or You Should Be So Lucky As To Live Twice or A Quantum Of Matzoh. If nothing else, it would be a nice memorial to Ian Fleming, a not-so-veiled anti-Semite.
Leaving out the whole Judaic angle, just the notion of a movie in which James Bond fights Nazis is enough to take me to Fanboy Heaven. The ads even show exploding Panzers, which--wow! My inner eight-year-old is practically wetting his pants in anticipation.
But then there's this unfortunate tagline: From The Director Of The Last Samurai. Oh, right! Thanks for the reminder! This is an Edward Zwick film, and as his filmography (The Seige, Glory, and the unintentionally hilarious Legends Of The Fall) makes clear, there's no potentially interesting subject matter he can't reduce to boring middelbrow Oscar bait.
I guess what I'm saying is, if Zwick can make a boring movie featuring a Jewish James Bond fighting Nazis, his Directors Guild card should be torn up and he should never work again.
