Daniel Craig’s Best Non-Bond Roles

Photo Credit: 007.com

It was announced yesterday that despite his very public complaints about continuing on as James Bond after 2015’s Spectre, Daniel Craig will do exactly that in the 25^th Bond film slated to open in 2019. I have mixed emotions about the decision. Craig has been fantastic in the role, but an actor that doesn’t want to do a movie rarely turns in his best performance. Add to the mix that Christopher Nolen has voiced an interest in directing a Bond film if he could cast Tom Hardy as the lead and I’m kind of leaning toward that new direction. We’ll see how this one goes.

In the meantime, I thought I’d write a bit about Craig’s best non-Bond film roles. Like his predecessors, Craig has been typecast but like the best of those earlier Bonds, Sean Connery, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t had a few other juicy roles anyway. Here are his best.

Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

Okay, the premise of the film, an alien invasion of the old West, turned out to better than the film itself, but it was still entertaining. Outlaw Craig plays opposite Harrison Ford’s grumpy Civil War veteran who team up to defeat the aliens and protect the good townsfolk of Absolution.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

While not as good as the original Swedish version of this book adaptation, Craig does a nice job of putting his own stamp on reporter Mikael Blomkvist as he works a cold case with the coolest and most vicious of computer hackers, Lisbeth Salander.

Munich (2005)

Now we’re getting to the really good stuff. Munich is a Stephen Spielberg film based on the Black September aftermath and the Mossad assassins who were assigned to avenge those terrible murders. What could have been a straight-forward action movie is much more and Craig is one of the best in a stellar cast.

Road to Perdition (2002)

True, Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, and Jude Law are the real stars of this film, but Daniel Craig’s portrayal of spoiled, treacherous Mafia son Connor Rooney helped establish him as a star-in-the-making. He held his own against those cinematic heavyweights and showed audiences how murderous and evil he can be when asked to play a well-written bad guy.

Layer Cake (2004)

Finally, this is the role that probably did the most to get Craig the part of James Bond. Starring alongside a great cast including the aforementioned Bond-in-waiting Tom Hardy, Craig plays a young drug dealer that realizes he’s in over his head with a back-stabbing boss, an intimidating potential new mentor, an assassin on his trail, and a sexy new girlfriend who might be the most trouble of them all. This film is smart, stylish, and proved to be a perfect showcase for what Craig can do as a man of action surrounded by others that would do him harm.