Tagged: Jeffrey Wright
Felix Leiter in No Time to Die
Promotional poster for No Time to Die (2021) featuring Jeffrey Wright as Felix Leiter
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Jeffrey Wright as Felix Leiter, cynical CIA agent
Jamaica, Spring 2020
Film: No Time to Die
Release Date: September 30, 2021
Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga
Costume Designer: Suttirat Anne Larlarb
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
On the 00-7th of August, let’s celebrate the return of Jeffrey Wright’s Felix Leiter to the 007 franchise in No Time to Die. Years after the events of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, Felix and his politically appointed State Department crony Logan Ash (Billy Magnussen) track down the now-retired James Bond (Daniel Craig) to his secluded life in Jamaica, hoping to recruit him into assisting them in locating a missing MI6 scientist.
“It’ll be like old times,” Leiter pitches to Bond over beers, adding that “I wanna get back to my family, tell ’em I saved the world again!” Continue reading
Jeffrey Wright in Hold the Dark
Jeffrey Wright and Riley Keough in Hold the Dark (2018)
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Jeffrey Wright as Russell Core, thoughtful and grizzled wolf expert
Alaska, December 2004
Film: Hold the Dark
Release Date: September 28, 2018
Director: Jeremy Saulnier
Costume Designer: Antoinette Messam
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
With another snowstorm predicted for this weekend, I tend to find strange comfort in dark, brooding winter-set tales. A recent search to replenish my cinematic catalog led me to the moody Hold the Dark, an under-promoted Netflix release starring Jeffrey Wright as a wolf expert summoned to a remote Alaskan town by a quietly distressed mother, Medora Slone (Riley Keough), who hopes he can use his skills to hunt the wolf she believes responsible for the disappearance of three local children, including her own six-year-old son.
Despite his doubts that the activity can be attributed to wolf behavior, Core investigates and finds himself enveloped in a bleak and brutal mystery appropriately dark for a grim place that gets less than six hours of sunlight each day. Continue reading
Quantum of Solace – Felix Leiter’s Striped Shirt
Jeffrey Wright as Felix Leiter in Quantum of Solace (2008)
Vitals
Jeffrey Wright as Felix Leiter, cynical CIA agent
Bolivia, Summer 2008
Film: Quantum of Solace
Release Date: October 31, 2008
Director: Marc Forster
Costume Designer: Louise Frogley
Background
The brilliant Jeffrey Wright was the first actor to reprise the mercurial role of Felix Leiter in consecutive Bond outings, appearing as the reliable if cynical CIA agent in Quantum of Solace two years after his introduction in Casino Royale. (David Hedison is the only actor to have played Felix twice: first with Roger Moore’s Bond in Live and Let Die in 1973, then reprising his role with Timothy Dalton’s Bond in 1989’s Licence to Kill.)
Ian Fleming wrote Felix Leiter to be the closest thing to a friend that James Bond would have, first described as a lanky Texan in the first literary Bond adventure Casino Royale. Leiter reappeared in the next novel, Live and Let Die, where he lost his leg in an incident that fans of the 007 cinematic universe would recollect from the events of Licence to Kill. Continue reading