Mein Name ist Modesty

If you are a Modesty Blaise fan, you will know if you have watched this film its miles better than the strange sixties one! but it is a rather low budget film, well almost a no budget film in fact.

The problem that Miramax the owners of the rights to make a Modesty Blaise film had was they could not agree on a script for the big budget film version of Modesty and their rights to make a film were about to run out. In order to keep the film rights they had to make a film, and this is it.

In the past such a film would get shown for one night in the middle of nowhere to show it had been made and shown, and then they would bury it in the film company's vaults never to be see again. The only one they wanted you to see was the big budget version they hope to make soon as they had a script they could agree on. However with with DVD rentals and sales, their is alway the chance to make some money on a DVD of the low budget version however little it cost to make (and this one was shot in 18 days with a director hired one week before shooting !!).

However I like it, its not the film of Modesty Blaise I would have expected to see, but it sticks to Modesty's history reasonable well, and for fans the icing on the cake is a 40 minute interview with Peter O'Donnell in the DVDs extras, as well as an annoying one with Quentin Tarantino and his buddy the director at their most infantile. By the way, Quentin Tarantino hopes to direct the big budget version when, and if ever it gets made.

Unfortunately many consumers who write reviews for IMDb equate low budget with not good. Whatever else this movie might need, more budget really isn't part of it. Big sets and lots of special effects would have turned it into another Lara Croft movie. What we have here is a step or two better than that.

The nearly unknown Alexandra Staden is captivating as the enigmatic Modesty, and this is crucial for this movie to work. Her wise little smiles and knowing looks are formidable, and you find yourself wishing that the camera won't leaver her face. It makes it workable that the bad guy Nikolai, played by also little known (in the U.S. at least) Nikolaj Coaster-Waldau might take an unusually cerebral interest in her, something Modesty can exploit. She is able to divert his raping her with just a shove and spitting out "stop wasting my time!" then storming off between his heavily armed yet suddenly diffident henchmen. Making a scene like that plausible doesn't happen by accident.

Probably the biggest problem I have with the rail-thin Staden playing Modesty is it just isn't very believable for her to go hand to hand with an athletic and muscled looking guy like Coaster-Waldau and beat him. She just ain't a Peta Wilson or a pumped-up Hilary Swank type actress who can throw a convincing punch. Coaster-Waldau letting himself be overpowered by Staden looks like he's just roughhousing with his little sister.

Since this is not really an action film, this isn't a big flaw. I just hope they do better on that if and when they make sequels.

I just saw the DVD and ask myself why Quentin Tarantino agreed to have is name mentioned as "Quentin Tarantino presents"? Alexandra Staden is so bad as Modesty Blaise that you spend most of the time wondering why the chief gangster doesn't kill her immediately to make her shut up. And, by the way ,Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, the actor playing the "bad guy" looks too good looking for that part. Never witnessed such a stupid casting. The film is about a hold up in a casino. Hostages are taken and what do we get?... The girl telling the boring story of her life.

I actually enjoyed the Modesty Blaise adaptation from 1966 more, even though it was extremely campy. The reason spells W.i.l.l.i.e. G.a.r.v.i.n.

This movie takes place before Modesty started her organization "The Net", and thus before she picked Willie off the streets. It offers an interesting tale of her childhood, but a Modesty without Willie is just *wrong*. The dynamic between them has always been one of the most compelling things about the original, and without it this movie isn't as interesting as it could have been. That being said, it's still a decent watch, especially for those who have wondered about Modesty's past.

The casting is alright, but Alaxandra Staden looks too fragile to be entirely believable as Modesty. Nikolaj Coaster-Waldau, however, does a great job as the blood-thirsty Miklos. Lookwise he could have been a young Willie Garvin.

Hopefully Miramax will do a follow-up because Peter O'Donnel's novels and comic-strips is a great source material for a movie script. But next time they've better include Willie.

Rented and watched this short (< 90 minutes) work. It's by far the best treatment Modesty has received on film -- and her creator, Peter O'Donnell, agrees, participating as a "Creative Consultant." The character, and we who love her, are handled with respect. Spiegel's direction is the best he's done to date, and the casting was very well done. Alexandra Staden is almost physically perfect as a match to the original Jim Holdaway illustrations of Modesty. A terrific find by whoever cast her! Raymond Cruz as a young Rafael Garcia was also excellent. I hope that Tarantino & co. will go on to make more in the series -- I'm especially interested to see whom they'd choose to be the incomparable Willie Garvin!