Premise:
Modesty Blaise is working as right-hand-woman for a casino owner in Tangiers, Morocco, being his eyes and ears at the tables, supervising staff, and working as a croupier if needed. When an armed gang is setting its eyes on her boss’s money, Modesty needs to employ all her bluffing and gambling expertise in order to keep the upper hand.
Background:
This direct-to-DVD film is based on the famous British comic-strip character Modesty Blaise, who had received only two previous film treatments: a 1966 comedy thriller, and a 1982 TV-pilot that was never picked up.
Apparently, Miramax had planned to do a “big” Modesty Blaise film, but could not find a script they liked; and in order to be able to hold on to the rights for the character they decided to instead do a small, low-budget film for the time being. So Lee and Janet Batchler provided them with a script that is sort of set in a time when Modesty was younger than when the readers first met her in the novels and comic strips. That way Miramax could do this film without getting in their own way by using up any of the Modesty Blaise stories.
For these reasons, this is a low-budget straight-to-DVD film, and no-one should expect it to be more than that. Still, in a weird way, the film’s script is rather ambitious, and somehow it seems to pitch for a standard that the final film then fails to live up to.
Production & Editing:
There is no information on how low the budget actually was, but many aspects make this film look like an average TV-movie. Especially the camera work is very much “TV-style”. The sets and the physical action are limited; and while those few fight scenes that are in the film are in some ways “looking” good, they are a long way away from actually “being” good. That is to say they have some well-intentioned choreography, but the wished-for result could apparently only be achieved through frequent cuts in relatively short intervals; and not all of these cuts are as smooth as they should be. Speaking of the editing: in a “what-the-hell?”-moment, there is a completely unnecessary flash-back showing us an event less than seven minutes after we have originally witnessed it happening.
Credits & Music:
The opening credit sequence is “cost effective”, but interesting, as it attempts to pay homage to the spy films of the 1960s and 1970s; it comes with a theme music that is reminiscent of a traditional James-Bond score (score, not title theme). Unfortunately, none of this actually fits the style of this film.
My Name is Modesty’s score music is neither here nor there and mostly non-intrusive, but there are extended flash-back scenes from Modesty’s childhood, supposedly taking place in the Balkans and around the Mediterranean, and at least one of those is scored with ludicrous music that sounds like it has been taken straight from 13th century Western Europe.
Casting & Acting:
The casting is solid: you basically have only two central characters, played by Game of Throne’s Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and British actress Alexandra Staden (as our heroine Modesty Blaise). The film has also a small number of great supporting performances, with the only known face belonging to Raymond Cruz, who plays Julio Sanchez in nearly 200 episodes of The Closer / Major Crimes.
The plot is not nearly as action-filled as one might expect. Rather, it is intended as an intense psychological cat-and-mouse game. Such a cat-and-mouse game is something that needs great actors bringing their A-game.
I know Nikolaj Coster-Waldau has what it takes, and he seems to bring close to 100% in most scenes, but there are some scenes in which one or two additional takes might have led to something even better, but I guess this production had no time for that.
Alexandra Staden also seems to be a very accomplished actress, but this plot rests so overwhelmingly on the shoulders of the female lead character that it would have taken outstanding writing and outstanding acting for this to work. Unfortunately, here we have solid writing, and solid acting on Staden’s part, but none of it is enough to pull off what would have been needed here.
And these two points of criticism are not only valid for that central cat-and-mouse game, but also for the rest of the film. The dialogue is at times pseudo-philosophical. And Alexandra Staden cannot carry the film as a lead in this particular case: The writer and the director have chosen to centre this film entirely around the character of Modesty – it is basically 30% origin story and 70% character study; and apart from talent, there is a lot of time and work and preparation necessary for such a role - all things this low-budget-project probably couldn’t provide. For example, Miramax chose to throw director Scott Spiegel totally unprepared into this project, calling him exactly one week before shooting began.
So what we have here is a pretty solid script suggesting a tense stand-off, but it does not work in the film, for all the reasons just mentioned; but also because (and that may be the main reason) the plot repeatedly requires Modesty to talk extensively about her past in that scene (illustrated with flash backs). And such lengthy tales, whether provided through mere dialogue or through flashbacks, just get in the way of the tense atmosphere needed for the “cat-and-mouse game”. Thus these tales/flashbacks do not allow any tension to build up sufficiently during this stand-off, and so the entire set-up does not work as intended.
On top of that, Staden chose to give Modesty a subtle, nondescript accent. Fitting for the character – but through its subtlety and inconsistency all this accent achieved was to oftentimes make Staden sound as if she was mumbling. Not a good thing, given the fact that Modesty was also providing the narrator’s voice in many scenes.
Franchise Shadows:
As I said, this film is so pre-occupied with the character of Modesty that the overwhelming impression you get watching this film is that of watching a TV-show pilot. It has that kind of pacing, and that kind of “weighting” of its various elements. “Don’t worry about all that character introduction, next week the show will start in earnest” – that’s what this film seems to say to us. You can do this with a TV-show pilot (though it is rarely satisfying), but you cannot do it with a film, no matter how much you believe in the chance of a future franchise.
Upsides & Conclusion:
On the positive side it has to be said that there is nothing in this film that is totally horrible. And you can see what the filmmakers were trying to achieve (though they largely failed) and you get a pretty good idea what kind of woman Spiegel’s version of Modesty Blaise is supposed to be. And the film sort of inspires you to want to check out more Modesty Blaise, either in book form, or as graphic novel.
And for not being a very good film, My Name Is Modesty at least has the good sense not to needlessly steal too much of your time. If you exclude the opening and end titles, this film is a mere 70 minutes long.
Imdb’s current rating of 4.6 out of 10 seems fair, but I am willing to round that up to 5, just to acknowledge the effort.
PS:
There are DVDs of the film out there that also contain a very long interview with director Scott Spiegel and Quentin Tarantino. Spiegel and Tarantino are friends, and Spiegel had previoulsy directed the mediocre From Dusk Till Dawn II. In the interview, Tarantino talks about his love for the character Modesty Blaise, having presumably been the driving force behind Miramax’s original interest in the source material. This 40-minute interview has its own imdb entry (A Conversation with Quentin Tarantino & Scott Spiegel), and interestingly a much higher rating than the film.
PPS:
After this film had piqued my interest in the character Modesty Blaise, I went and listened to two BBC Radio adaptations (each consisting of five 15-minute episodes). I was not really happy with them. I do not know much about the original comic strip, but the radio version of Modesty was often dependent on coincidence, or on being saved by others. That’s somehow not how I like my heroines. I have yet to check out the comics or the novels for myself, but having recently been reading a bit of Ms. Tree I did not want to immediately continue with a female hero who is cut from very similar wood.