Crane Fight
Bond is now going toe to toe with Mollaka. It’s a Crane Fight to the death 200 feet up in the air.
Bond seems to have a few tricks up his sleeve with regards to martial arts. There are a couple of blocks and a kick to the back of the knee. However, Mollaka gets the better of him and wriggles free as Bond is left hanging on. Mollaka then jumps from one crane to another, then to a soft sand roof atop of the construction site. In the Blu Ray commentary for Casino Royale. Daniel Craig said in a behind the scenes doc,
You’ve got to work hard to get it right, or drill it to get it right. There’s no time to have a fear of heights, you’ve got to get up there and do it. It was borderline fun and fear. You have to lonely figures jumping from one crane onto another crane. There was no way to fake it. You just have to do it. I’m not fantastic with heights, I don’t know many people that are. But I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it. I think the fights should make you wince a bit, look like they hurt.
Stunt coordinator Gary Powell said in a behind the scenes doc.
Martin’s brief was we had to get the shot in one. So he jumps from the top crane to the middle crane, climbs over and jumps to the roof in one. We had a limit of 12 mile on the wind. We couldn’t jump more than that. The cranes couldn’t operate more than that.
From Alex P Lamas on Instagram.
Fighting in Casino Royale is all combination of Krav Maga and Kali. Daniel Craig trained with one of the founders of Krav Maga, Darren Levine. And then he worked with Gary Powell for the fight scene on the crane. Powell also was one of the fight choreographers for the Jason Bourne films.
Screen writers Purvis and Wade said in the Blu Ray Commentary:
We originally wrote 2 pages of construction chase, but we weren’t aware what the Sebastian could do and what the stunt team could do so they just took that environment.
Check out the podcast
Bill Koenig and I break down Minute 15. Check out the individual minutes , thoughts and discussion points here. Listen on iTunes or Spotify, or the player below.
All images for Casino Royale (2006) are the © 2006 United Artists Corporation and Danjaq. Just putting this here as a disclaimer because I’m not wanting any red letters in the post. Ta.