The Night Manager (And a rant about James Bond)

I think I heard about The Night Manager when it first aired. I don't have regular cable so I wasn't able to check it out then. But I did say that I wanted to check it out because it had two actors that while I'm not totally familiar with a lot of their work, I've loved everything they're in, Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie.

I also had a short time frame where I told myself I wanted to read the book before I watched the show but I had a hard time doing that. So when it came on Amazon Prime, I decided to check it out.

The first thing to note is that the first episode, while pretty good, isn't as suspenseful or I would argue interesting as the rest of the season. It mainly sets the stage for Jonathan Pine (played by Tom Hiddleston), a British veteran from the Iraq war who is now a night manager for a luxurious hotel in Cairo in the midst of the Arab Spring.

He becomes aware of a woman staying at his hotel as well as the illegal business she and her boyfriend are involved in. He also starts hearing the name Richard Roper.

Eventually, tragedy strikes and Jonathan leaves the hotel in Cairo for another position, but not before he sends on some information about the dealings of Richard Roper (played by Hugh Laurie, a philanthropist who secretly is a notorious arms dealer.

Eventually, Pine crosses paths with an officer in British intelligence (played by Olivia Coleman) and they devise a plan to implant Pine into Roper's inner circle and bring the weapons dealing racket to a halt one way or another.

The rest of the series is a tense undercover story as Pine infiltrates Roper's business, becomes closer with not only him but his girlfriend Jed (played by Elizabeth Debicki). He also has to put his life at risk by winning the trust of everyone in Roper's circle, including his right hand man (played by Tom Hollander).

Strangely enough, this series focuses less on the international intrigue action that you might see in a James Bond film and more on the trade craft and relationship building as Pine shows his worth, his Tom Hiddleston-like charisma, and the romance that builds between him and Jed as she becomes more trusting of him and less of Roper.

The Night Manager is a very slow burn. For a series that felt like an audition tape Tom Hiddleston was putting forward to convince people he could play James Bond (which I'll talk more about later) the series is a lot of talking and deception rather than gun play. Don't get me wrong, I still really enjoyed it. It's one of those situations where I think I was expecting something different and when I realized it wasn't that I probably enjoyed the show more because I knew what it actually was. Just don't go into it thinking this is going to be James Bond or Jason Bourne-style action because it's not.

 The show is really propelled further by the solid actors that give great performances. It's a mini-series so episodes were sometimes longer than an hour, giving the cinematic vibe multiple times over the course of 6 episodes.

Hiddleston and Laurie of course are going to give great performances because they produced the show and they're A-List actors. They're going to give their best performances no matter what. But the lesser known actors, Debicki, Coleman, David Harewood (it was fun thinking that David Estes from Homeland was working on a joint operation with MI6 the entire show), and Tom Hollander give really good performances as well.

The cinematography and music were also really great. I think they wanted to draw people in by giving it the music and somewhat of a feel of a Bond style spy thriller, but then the acting and story hits you with a slow burn espionage drama thriller.

One thing I will say is a strike against the show is that I keep on mentioning that it felt like a James Bond audition tape for Tom Hiddleston. I think that the story and performances do stand on their own and yes the Bond feeling does go away a little bit later in the series, but it was a little bit distracting. I don't know if its going to feel that way in 5 years when all the external context of Hiddleston seemingly wanting to play Bond is old news, but it was kind of apparent in the cinematography, the music, and the way they they built Hiddleston as this debonair, suave, very Bond-like spy.

Some other issues came with the relationships that Hiddleston had in the show.

The big relationship is that between Jonathan and Jed but I didn't feel like any of the relationships/hook ups Jonathan has throughout the series felt very genuine at all. Maybe that's the point that Jonathan isn't really a guy to be hung up on attachments, but they feel so quick that they fail to really create stakes that I buy him making some of his decisions over. Especially with the weird sense of time this show has, these hookups feel very rushed and they don't have the impact they need to have.

And the relationship that is supposed to be the most important is that between Jed and Jonathan and there doesn't seem to be a real sense of chemistry between them. Again, both give a good performance, but I didn't buy them getting together in the first place. On top of that, there doesn't seem to be a real tactical purpose to it when they finally do hook up. I was wondering to myself, why are you doing this? You're playing with fire by sleeping with the targets girlfriend. If it was like I mentioned before that he doesn't really do attachments I would have understood because it was a means to an end, but when they attempt an actual meaningful relationship, it just seems odd.

Another small, kind of nit picky thing I noticed was the shows sense of time. First off, you need to be paying attention quite a bit throughout the series. Because it's a show that relies on talking, there are some things that are mentioned in conversation, not in action. But furthermore, a lot of stuff happens in what I guess is a long period of time. But on the other hand Olivia Coleman's character is pregnant the entire time and if it was the amount of time you'd think it would be, she probably would have had the baby by that point.

I get it, it's a mini series so they only have so much time to actually execute necessary parts of the story so accurate passage of time probably wasn't the biggest priority, but it was kind of noticeable especially with Coleman being pregnant and Jonathan Pine being injured but getting better and gaining Roper's trust in a weirdly fast amount of time.  

The last thing I will mention is somewhat related to the timing of the show and the limited amount of episodes they could furnish. I understand the circumstances but I did notice that there were seldom any moments where you felt like the bad guys were going to get away with what they're doing.

Maybe I am characterizing the show wrong but I originally thought, especially if you get big names like Laurie and Hiddleston that this was going to be a game of wits between Roper and Pine.

However, there's really only one moment where the bad guys outsmart good guys and it's a very short lived moment. The fact that throughout the mini series I felt as though the good guys were going to win no matter what kind of threw off the balance of tension. They do a good job at showing Roper as a vicious person but on the other end of things, Jonathan Pine is a really smart (almost super human-like) character and I never really felt like his life was really at any risk.

So what we end up with is Pine being really smart and outsmarting Roper almost at every turn and while Roper seems competent, the entire series culminates with him just seeming like he got duped. I never really got that game of wits that I thought was going to happen. And unfortunately, the more I think about it, that's kind of a big deal as that's kind of the dynamic that was expected for the show.

I still really enjoyed the show and maybe that's just my observation. I still recommend you check it out and see what you think for yourself. 

So this show came out in 2015. To give a little bit of context, this was the same year that Spectre came out and Daniel Craig was looking like he was on his way out of his position as James Bond. I don't really remember if Hiddleston said he wanted to play Bond but I think I remember it being rumored. So while I didn't love the subtext behind this show, it did feel like an audition tape for Bond. Bond 25 is coming out in a year staring Daniel Craig again so this conversation doesn't feel timely but I think it is worth commenting on at least.

Would Tom Hiddleston be a good James Bond? Given the evidence from this show I’m still a little bit on the fence. The great thing about this show is that it shows that Tom Hiddleston can do more than Loki. He’s a really talented actor and I believe he can pull off the suaveness of James Bond as well as the action. He’s oddly lanky but the truth is, if you read into the description of James Bond from the original books, he actually fits the description of Bond pretty well as a lanky, homely looking guy.

I think the biggest thing hurting Hiddleston’s chances of becoming James Bond are the timing, who he’d be taking over from, and the roles he’s played in the past. Too many people see Hiddleston as Loki, and while I feel this series changed that perspective for me, not everyone is going to watch this show or any other movie Hiddleston is in to get a better idea of his range.

Personally, I feel as thought Daniel Craig is tired of Bond and frankly I'm a little tired of his Bond as well. I feel like Daniel Craig perfectly personified what Bond needed to be in a post 9/11 world but 12 years after Casino Royale I kind of feel like it might be time for a change. Now that might change with Bond 25, but if it were up to me I would have changed actors after Spectre which seemed like a decent send off for Craig.

Whoever takes over from Craig is going to have a difficult time. I think Daniel Craig's Bond films have overall been pretty great (with only a few missteps with Quantum of Solace and some of Spectre). But I think whether it's Hiddleston, Elba, or whoever, I think James Bond needs a revitalization beyond just a character change. I think that's why people are pushing for Idris Elba because they feel like that would be enough of a change whereas Hiddleston might look and feel like a lot of the same thing. I have no issue with Idris Elba being Bond, I think it'd be cool. But I feel like the change that needs to occur is more than skin deep (pun intended). Bond needs to go through a change the same way Brosnan's Bond needed to change. Craig's Bond seemed to be a reboot of the series and somewhat of a response to the Bourne series but at this point we've seen so many Bourne-like spy movies that it might be time for something else. Now I don't think people know what that change is yet. A post 9/11 spy thriller seemed like the obvious step for Bond and now it's hard to tell what direction it should head. And I don't know the answer to that.

Honestly, I'm not really that excited for Bond 25 for a lot of reasons. I wish I was. Again, maybe that will change when I see a trailer but I'm looking for a change. Maybe a more subdued Night Manager-like feel is what is needed. Double down on the realism. But I don't really think that's what is needed. I'll leave that to the people who get paid for this stuff.

Well that was a much longer rant about James Bond than I intended for a review about a miniseries that in reality has nothing to do with James Bond. I hope you get the picture that I really liked The Night Manager. I also hope you get the sense that I'm looking to the future for what a post-Daniel Craig Bond/spy thriller world is gonna look like. It's going to be interesting.

But those are my thoughts? What are yours? Did you like The Night Manager? Who do you want to see replace James Bond? Where do you see the franchise going? Do you think it relates? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films, miniseries, or shows I should watch in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading.