Daniel Craig and Alexa Davalos share a kiss in Defiance 2008Image via Paramount Pictures
As the world prepares to welcome a new James Bond, it’s worth remembering that the job isn’t without its drawbacks. In addition to the frenzied attention that actors cast as Bond attract, they also find themselves typecast for the first few years of their stints. It’s only after they retire from the role that their experiments are appreciated. Daniel Craig was embraced as Benoit Blanc in the Knives Out movies after playing a similarly over-the-top character in Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky. His three other attempts to headline a potential franchise-starter — The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Golden Compass, and Cowboys & Aliens — didn’t work out. His indie project, Kings, grossed less than $1 million and received a 10% score on Rotten Tomatoes. But one of his earliest non-007 movies released during his tenure as Bond is currently available for fans in the United States to discover on Paramount+.
The film was released in 2008, the same year as his second Bond movie, Quantum of Solace. It was directed by the journeyman Edward Zwick, who’d previously made Blood Diamondand The Last Samurai. Unlike those films, however, Zwick’s project with Craig wasn’t a box-office smash. Nor did it excite critics. Set during World War II, the film tells the true story of four Belarusian brothers who worked together to rescue Jewish people. The movie also featured Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell, and George MacKay.
Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
🔧John McClane
🎭Ethan Hunt
01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
Here’s How Long You Have Left to Watch Daniel Craig’s WWII Movie on Paramount+
We’re talking, of course, about Defiance. Produced on a reported budget of $32 million, the film grossed a little more than $50 million at the worldwide box office. It now holds a 58% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Professionally made but artistically uninspired, Ed Zwick’s story of Jews surviving WWII in the Belarus forest lacks the emotional punch of the actual history.” Defiance will be available on Paramount+ until September 1. Craig will next be seen in Greta Gerwig’s mega-budget Netflix film Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, and in a mysterious new project directed by Damien Chazelle and co-starring Cillian Murphy. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
