Is James Bond an assassin?
Ornithologist
BerlinPosts: 586MI6 Agent
I think we have no reason to believe that he is a member of a medieval, weed-smoking Islamic sect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassins), so why do people keep calling him an assassin (this is done repeatedly in SPECTRE, but earlier as well, e.g. in Octopussy).
Of course the word has another (wider) meaning which arose from the former:
According to Wikipedia, an assassin is also one who commits a targeted murder or assassination.
But is this really what Bond does?
Yes, he has a license to kill (whatever that would mean in real life...)
Yes, he has killed a lot of people (especially in the movies, where Pierce Brosnan holds the record with 18 per movie, on average).
There are also some rather "cold" kills.
However, aside from the PTS in Casino Royale where "it takes two" and TMWTGG, which features an assassin as the villain, has it ever been targeted, in the sense that killing somebody was Bond's mission?
I like to (still) see him primarily as an intelligence agent, who is sent into "the field", usually to investigate, and who kills (a lot) because people constantly try to stop him by killing him.
So he kills in order to do his job. Killing, however, is not his job.
Am I wrong?
Of course the word has another (wider) meaning which arose from the former:
According to Wikipedia, an assassin is also one who commits a targeted murder or assassination.
But is this really what Bond does?
Yes, he has a license to kill (whatever that would mean in real life...)
Yes, he has killed a lot of people (especially in the movies, where Pierce Brosnan holds the record with 18 per movie, on average).
There are also some rather "cold" kills.
However, aside from the PTS in Casino Royale where "it takes two" and TMWTGG, which features an assassin as the villain, has it ever been targeted, in the sense that killing somebody was Bond's mission?
I like to (still) see him primarily as an intelligence agent, who is sent into "the field", usually to investigate, and who kills (a lot) because people constantly try to stop him by killing him.
So he kills in order to do his job. Killing, however, is not his job.
Am I wrong?
"I'm afraid I'm a complicated woman. "
"- That is something to be afraid of."
"- That is something to be afraid of."
Comments
Puskin and, In TMWTGG Roger Moore states that those he kills are themselves
Killers and he only kills on the orders of the government.
In my mind Bond can be an assassin when needed but will disregard his
Orders when he thinks it unwarranted, as with the sniper in TLD, who he does
not kill, but merely disarms.
Bond being an assassin is also a big part of The Living Daylights, and Bond refuses to kill the two targets he was assigned to kill.
On the other hand, a big part QOS was that Bond was not an assassin and should arrest people rather than kill them.
And this is what M and C argue about in SPECTRE: Drones could not / should not replace agents entirely, because although they may be soldiers following orders, the latter still (in the ideal case) follow a moral code.
So with regard to killing, I agree that
but it's not the only or even the most important one.
"- That is something to be afraid of."
James Bond is a secret agent with a licence to kill in the line of duty. He is a troubleshooter, provocateur, a spy, an investigator, a saboteur...and an assassin. He is a blunt instrument wielded by Her Majesty's government. Therefore, IMO the term 'assassin' is an oversimplification; like calling a doctor a stethoscope user.
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
I can't imagine him having a back office job in an embassy, attending parties and getting foreign diplomats drunk and then getting them into a compromising situation that requires secrets to be passed in return for pictures to be kept hidden.
I had a chum who was in MI6 once who said that he had a huge stash of whiskey for a certain doorman at a prestigious hotel in another country which will remain nameless but once had an East and a West part.
I think the term Secret Agent fits Bond better as he gathers information, investigates, and kills if he needs to. An assassin, I would imagine, would just go out and kill people.
Yes and no...Killing is on occassion his job on specific missions. When it is he is uncomfortable with it and reluctant to do it in cold blood (Dent was attempting to kill him remember ) I see him more as an Intelligence operative in the main.
Spot on. Wish I had seen this before posting my own feeble effort to clarify.
I totally agree.
"Do you expect me to talk? "No Mister Bond I expect you to die"
Really, has it all ready been so long that people are forgetting CR PTS?
Besides; why would the requirement for being qualified for 00-section be 2 confirmed kills in the line of duty (extra curricular activities do not apply) if killing in cold blood is not part of the job description?
Bond in the novels is "sort of a Licensed trouble shooter" who may or may not kill on the job, depending on what is required to achieve the goals set for the mission. As the lone man out on the field, he retains the authority to make that judgement call. This is ofcourse not counting the cases where he is sent out to kill, in cold blood, as in the Living Daylights.
-Mr Arlington Beech
Quite right, he's a senior civil servant.... 8-)
-Mr Arlington Beech
In both cases, he didn't fire his gun until the other person tried to kill him.
I prefer assassin to "super spy" at any rate.
Sounds good to me
Bond has indeed been assigned to simply kill people (twice in TLD), so that makes him an assassin.
he has. But like it has been pointed out before, it's merely a part of his job and not his main task!
That still doesn't mean he's not an assassin. And his main tasks in TMWTGG and TLD are to be an assassin. It's like people who smoke only a few cigarettes a week saying they're not smokers. Just because smoking isn't a main part of their lives doesn't mean they're not smokers.
he's a spy
In TMWTGG and TLD, Bond is merely a gun for hire. He's not assigned to do anything else. Just calling him spy isn't accurate either because not all spies are killers. Bond is a 00 agent. That means he's an assassin and a spy, amongst other things.
Though you have to remember that Vivienne Michel co-authored that title with Ian Fleming, as Kingsley Amis pointed out in his classic literary Bond study The James Bond Dossier (1965)!
- Chiun, Master of Sinanju
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS