The Swedish James Bond

With its insatiable appetite for male orientated action films. Movies4Men chews its way through countless Jean Claude van Damme and Steven Seagal pictures, not to mention an apparently endless procession of spaghetti westerns and Italian war movies (and the odd Yugoslavian war movie, to boot) and lots of those cheap Sci Fi channel direct-to-DVD films.  In the midst of all this schlock, they sometimes turn up something completely unexpected, which, in addition to providing a new viewing experience for a couple of hours, also opens up a whole new world of pop culture hitherto unknown to oneself.  This weekend, for instance, I caught a 1998 film called Commander Hamilton, of which I knew absolutely nothing.  The cast and credits, (which included US actors like Peter Stormare and Mark Hamill and a Norwegian director), told me that it was an international co-production, rather than a Hollywood product.  It turned out to be an action/espionage epic which hopped from Sweden to Russia to the Middle East and took some strange turns - the climax feature the PLO as the good guys, helping the titular hero to foil an American millionaire villain's plot to detonate a stolen ex-Soviet nuclear warhead.  Surprisingly, not all the Russians were bad guys: just the ex-KGB and Russian mafia guys - the Russian cops were sympathetic characters who assisted the hero.

As it turned out, Commander Hamilton was a Swedish movie, which was clearly designed to be a break out production aimed at an international market, based on two novels by Jan Guillou which are themselves part of a long-running series about the 'Swedish James Bond', Carl Hamilton.  Of course, being Swedish, Guillou's character, despite being as ruthless and violent as Bond, has leftist and pro-Palestinian sympathies: the Israelis and Americans seem as likely to be the villains as the Russians or Chinese are in western spy stories.  On the basis of the film I saw and from what I've found out about the original books and other movie adaptations, Hamilton is also a much more complex character than Bond, with his stories posing various moral and ethical dilemmas as to the role of espionage organisations and secret agents when they operate within a democratic framework. 

The fascinating thing is that, before seeing this film, I had no idea that the Hamilton character even existed, despite the fact that he is huge in certain parts of continental Europe.  The non-English speaking parts, to be precise. It is another example of the cultural parochialism of the English-speaking world. There are vast swathes of non-English films, TV and literature out there which we are completely missing out on because we 'can't speak the language' and reading sub-titles is apparent 'too difficult'.  Hamilton is a prime example of tis: it turns out that, like James Bond, there have been numerous adaptations of the Jan Guillou novels since the late eighties, on both film and Swedish TV.  Stellan Skarsgaad was the first Hamilton, Mikael Persbrandt the most recent.  Indeed, the first of Persbrandt's two films as Hamilton was a massive hit across Europe.  But not in the UK or US.  (Unfortunately, it was rapidly followed up by a vastly inferior sequel which killed the prospect of any further films in the planned series.  A new TV series, however, with yet another lead actor, is due on Swedish TV this year).

As for the film Commander Hamilton, I have to say that, whilst quite slickly made, it did feel a little disjointed, which might have something to do with the fact that it was also released, with much additional footage, as a TV mini-series.  It actually demonstrated the same flaw as many Bond movies from the sixties and seventies, with the constant changes of locale leaving the viewer sometimes scratching their heads as to just why we're now in yet another exotic location.  Some of the dialogue feels clunky, which is a always a problem in this sort of international co-production, but most of the action scenes are pretty well done.  Overall, performances are also decent, although Stormare seems slightly odd casting for the lead, but delivers a degree of edginess which suits a trained assassin, while Mark Hamill seems to think that he's playing the villain in a Roger Moore Bond movie, it is, nonetheless, a very enjoyable performance).  Anyway, to wrap up and just for the hell of it, here's a selection of the many faces of Commander Hamilton over the years: