'Black Doves' Proves One Thing: Ben Whishaw (AKA Q) Could Play Bond
If we’re counting from the moment when he got atomised by Her Majesty’s finest on 30 September 2021, then at the time of writing there has been no James Bond for 1,168 days.
Yeah, Daniel Craig was still sort of in post for a bit afterwards – perhaps doing the kind of MI6 busywork you do when your notice is in, spending a good 45 minutes in Q’s stationery cupboard and not even trying to hide the fact he’s now using the office mailroom for his Vinted parcels – but he was out of there fairly sharpish.
And since then: nothing. Nyet. Double-oh-nowt. There was the 20 minutes when everyone thought Tom Hardy was about to be announced, and then a week or so when Aaron Taylor-Johnson was absolutely nailed on to get it. But all we’ve heard is that he’ll be a man, in his thirties, and, according to Barbara Broccoli, “whiteness is not a given”. So, basically, the same thing that we knew 1,168 days ago.
But what if the next Bond was right there in front of us this whole time? What if he was on the other end of the phone when Bond took a Storm Shadow to the knee? What if he also loves marmalade sandwiches?
I’ll cut to the chase: what if it’s Ben Whishaw?
Yep, look, fine. Obviously not. You can’t have Q turning into Bond. At 44, he’s too old. And then there’s whether he’d want to be bothered with the palaver that could come with casting a gay man as Bond.
However.
Whishaw is currently starring in Black Doves. Of the many dozens of spy thrillers which have blossomed in the Bond interregnum, Black Doves is definitely one of the most fun and most deeply Bond-y. Where Slow Horses, for instance, has a cynicism and sleaziness which lands it closer to John Le Carré, Black Doves’s faintly impenetrable plotting, cast of genuinely excellent supporting players (Williams and Eleanor, assassins of the brat summer, are the pick of the bunch) and loving eye for a shabby-chic neon-lit London that make it feel a lot more Bond.
But through it all the bit of Black Doves that really makes sense, the bit that feels like it expands way beyond where you think it can go, is Whishaw’s Sam, an emotionally compromised hitman.
A world-weary triggerman with daddy issues and a neat line in wry badinage, you say? Reminds me of a certain someone! A certain international man of mystery! Naming no names!
And for sure, Black Doves proves Whishaw has the Bond basics nailed. He looks good firing a gun. He wears clothes beautifully. He can convincingly throw a car around a bit.
Black Doves is funny too. There’s lovely lightness to the way that Whishaw plays that funny: a little snippy and petulant, a little droll, a little exasperated.
Even his frame feels like an interesting way to take Bond: wiry and taut, rather than the size of a minibus.
But Whishaw does some really gorgeous, heartbreaking work here too, and that’s where it most feels like a Whishaw-type Bond could be an expansive and exciting new kind of 007. There’s a couple of moments toward the end of Black Doves which feel like a crack opening into an alternate Bond-verse.
Think of him meeting his ex Michael (Omari Douglas) for the first time since his return to London. Sam is lost, and empty, and freefalling away from what he’d hoped the conversation would be. But he never breaks, never shows his hand fully, pushes it all down and staggers away.
Then there’s a flashback where Sam guides Michael (Omari Douglas) down a fire escape to safety – sort of – while taking out several bad lads with ruthless efficiency. And yet by its end, Sam is already trying to reckon with the wreckage his killing and lying left behind; Whishaw’s barely contained guilt and desperation are beautifully played.
Even if Whishaw isn’t going to be Bond, there is a poise and an emotional rawness to those two scenes that feels like a waymarker for whoever gets the gig. By No Time To Die, Craig’s Bond was a simmering mixture of pride, regret and psychic scars. And people loved it. Bond has never been bigger or more successful. So why not go a little further down this road before turning the DB5 around?
Whishaw started playing Q in Skyfall, his slippers-and-Earl-Grey approach to international spycraft a nice foil to the hulking, limping, old school Bond of the second half of Craig’s run. He impishly made the point that the world was changing. And now he – well, someone in his mould – could do the same thing again.
It’s not going to be Whishaw. There are a million reasons why it could never be. But maybe – maybe – it really should be.
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