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Behold, my first official Empire feature.
20 March 2009
The Spies Who Loved
Undercover - and under the sheets
At the double-crossing heart of cool caper Duplicity (which hit our cinemas this week), Julia Roberts and Clive Owen play spies in love. Well, spies who try to love but find their professional distrust getting in the way. This emotional espionage inspired Empire to pay tribute to other secret agent affairs of the heart……. Maxwell Smart and Agent 99 (Get Smart, 2008)
An odd couple, to be absolutely certain. She’s graceful, flexible, intelligent and super hot. He is none of the above. She looks great in tight, sequined dresses. He does not. Yet, somehow, this pair gradually fell for each other while saving the world from terrorist organisation KAOS. As they say, nothing brings a bumbling spy and a smokin’ spy together like the discovery a warehouse full of yellowcake uranium. (What, you’ve never heard that expression before?)
Austin Powers and Vanessa Kensington (Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, 1997)
Loving a man whose rampant sexuality leads him to many a tumble between the sheets is one thing. Another thing entirely is to love a man who may or may not have bedded your mom in the ’60s. To say Miss Kensington is an incredibly understanding girlfriend would be an understatement, for sure. Much to everyone’s surprise, she actually manages to subdue The International Man Of Mystery’s free-loving tendencies and tie the knot with him. Shame she turned out to be a fembot.
Gregorio Cortez and Ingrid Cortez (Spy Kids, 2001; Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams, 2002; Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, 2003)
Far from killing each other, like they were supposed to, these spies got married and settled comfortably into family life long before their film trilogy even began. What’s most enduring in this love story is that their children, Carmen and Juni, learned by example and became an unstoppable spy duo as well. We applaud their success at turning espionage into a family affair.
Dylan Sanders and Eric Knox (Charlie’s Angels, 2000)
Dylan Sanders and Seamus O’Grady (Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, 2003)
We know good girls always fall for bad boys, but sassy Angel Dylan hardly fits the “sugar, spice and everything nice” profile. You’s think the reformed wild child would be able to spot a troublemaker when she saw one. Her tryst with Knox ended with her hanging out a second-storey window and flashing a group of teenage boys. That was nothing compared with the damage dealt by her Irish mafia ex, Seamus O’Grady, a man so deadly he forced Sanders into the witness protection program. We hate to say it, but these guys make “The Chad” seem like boyfriend of the year.
Ethan Hunt and Julia (Mission: Impossible III, 2006)
Living a double life is not so easy, especially once you find the woman with whom you want to spend the rest of your life. Entering merrily into wedded bliss when there’s a deep, dark secret looming over you is tough. Thus, super-duper secret agent Ethan Hunt decides to come clean with Julia about his unusual profession. Unfortunately for him, she gets kidnapped by a black market mega-dealer before he has the chance to tell the truth. Fortunately for them, she survives the ordeal and promises to love him all the same. Aw.
Jason Bourne and Marie Kreutz (The Bourne Identity, 2002; The Bourne Supremacy, 2004)
Just to be clear, Marie is not a prostitute. She may have been offered outrageous amounts of money by amnesiac assassin Jason from time to time, but she IS NOT A PROSTITUTE. She’s just a girl who happened to be in all the wrong places at all the right times. She and Mr. Bourne have that in common. Her “act now, think later” attitude makes this a match made in heaven, which is why we were all so heart-broken when an assassin gunned her down.
Harry Tasker and Helen Tasker (True Lies, 1994)
Unaware that her husband is a real spy, Helen Tasker is tempted into an extra-marital affair with a fake spy. This so infuriates Harry Tasker that he blackmails his wife into posing as a spy. Her super-secret mission? Perform a sultry striptease for an enemy agent. The catch? The so-called enemy agent is actually Harry playing some sort of sick, perverted joke on Helen. We have to believe a few sessions of couples counselling would have been better but, hey, to each their own.
James Bond and Pussy Galore (Goldfinger, 1964)
James Bond and Vesper Lynd (Casino Royale, 2006)
Let’s face it: the women of the world simply cannot resist the charms of the ultimate spy/lover, James Bond. His sexual conquests are far too numerous for us to pay tribute to them all, but we couldn’t help mentioning the Bond girl with the best ever porn star name. We mean, of course, pouty pilot Pussy Galore, whose saucy sobriquet has our minds permanently in the gutter. Also worth an honourable mention is the beguiling Vesper Lynd who was, it seems, the very first femme fatale to lend her services to 007. And he was never the same.
Sam Barbosa
