Tasker gets to do all the things you’d expect in a Bond pastiche – he wears a dinner suit, meets exotic ladies, and makes pithy quips after shooting bad guys. In James Cameron’s True Lies(a remake of France’s La Totale!), Schwarzenegger plays the particularly brawny Harry Tasker – a covert operative who pretends to his wife and daughter that he’s a computer salesman. While the James Bond series took an extended break from 1989 until the mid-1990s, Hollywood megastar Arnold Schwarzenegger stepped in to fill the breach. Surrounded as he is by an armored billionaire, a god from outer space, and patriotic super-soldier, Coulson provides the link between the realm of superheroes and the (relatively) everyday. One of the major reasons for this is Clark Gregg‘s easygoing performance Coulson may be an agent for one of the most powerful organisations on Earth, but he’s essentially a likable everyman. He may not have superpowers, but Agent Coulson has rapidly become one of the most popular supporting characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Mortal enemies at first, then reluctant partners, their constant rivalry – and spark of chemistry – is the defining element in Ritchie’s glossy reboot. From the USSR we have Armie Hammer‘s Ilya Kuryakin, a towering, angrier version of the character once filled by heartthrob David McCallum. we have the vain, calculating Napoleon Solo, played by Robert Vaughn in the U.N.C.L.E. ‘60s TV series and played by the four-square Henry Cavill in Guy Ritchie‘s movie revival. They’re from opposing sides of the Iron Curtain and forced to work together for the greater good. Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin – The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015) Just look at how high Coburn can kick, and try to imagine Roger Moore doing the same thing… 23. Coburn gives Flint an easy charm, and he’s highly effective in his combat scenes. Coaxed out of retirement because a superior agent isn’t available (“0008”), Flint’s a quintessentially ’60s spy – unflappable, flirty, and handy with a karate chop. It has a crazed criminal organisation, mad scientists with a dangerous device (in this instance, a weather-altering machine) and, of course, a suave secret agent – James Coburn’s Derek Flint. Long before Top Secret!and Austin Powers, there was Our Man Flint, a send-up of the whole swinging ’60s craze for spy movies. The film’s lightweight stuff, but Chan’s gleeful take on the genre is infectious – a scene where he’s frantically trying to get his high-tech trousers on while simultaneously fighting an army of bad guys is a particular highlight. The underlying joke is that charismatic spies like Bond get their miraculous powers of combat and seduction not from years of training and the kind of lingering self-confidence you get from going to expensive schools, but from wearing special tuxedos. Jackie Chan affectionately sent up the spy genre with The Tuxedo, in which he plays an ordinary taxi driver who’s transformed by a feat of technological magic into a suave secret agent in the James Bond mold.
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