The most “complete” character Sean Connery ever played: “In every sense of the word”
It’s easy to look at what Daniel Craig is doing right now and crown him the ‘king of the post-James Bond career’; however, that honour still belongs to Sean Connery.
While his modern counterpart is doing some really interesting stuff right now, the original 007 put in a remarkable stint after his time with MI6 came to an end. As well as his commercial successes in the forms of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Rock, and more, you’ve also got some truly mad stuff. You’ve all heard of Zardoz, right? I rest my case.
Not all of his roles from this period were nappy-wearing spacemen, though, as in 1976, which is technically in between his stints as Bond, if you count Never Say Never Again, he appeared in The Next Man, a political thriller also called The Arab Conspiracy or Double Hit in certain quarters, centring on Khalil Abdul-Muhsen, a Saudi Arabian statesman who wants to stabilise the region by making peace with Israel. The more world politics changes, the more it stays the same.
In one of the strangest bits of casting since John Wayne played Genghis Khan, Connery played the lead character. Despite being completely ill-equipped to portray an Arabic man in a film about geopolitics in the Middle East, the former superspy had an absolute blast.
“I took the part of Khalil in The Next Man based on reasoning that I always use,” he revealed, “I thought him to be an interesting character. He is a contemporary man in every sense of the word: sportsman, diplomat, lover, intellectual, a complete man of our times.”
If you watch The Next Man (which I wouldn’t recommend, by the way), you can understand why Connery was drawn to the part. It’s essentially another James Bond story, which finds him playing a very important man with a mission to bring about international peace, and he is joined by Albert Paulsen as his sidekick and a glamorous lover played by Cornelia Sharpe, on a saga that involves ducking bad guys in exotic locations. The pace of the film is a lot slower than your typical Bond romp, but they share a similar template.
As fans of Connery’s will know, this is far from the only time he played a nationality he definitely shouldn’t have, for in Highlander, he portrayed a man with the excellent name of Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez.
The character was originally from Egypt, referred to as ‘The Spaniard’, and, of course, Connery had zero connection to either country, with the actor following it up with playing a Soviet submarine commander in The Hunt for Red October, an Irish police officer in The Untouchables, and a Greek king in Time Bandits, all without once dropping his famous Scottish drawl.
Connery has admitted that he was working too much immediately following his departure from Bond, and The Next Man falls squarely in that time period, so maybe we should cut him some slack. Then again, as we’ve just proven, his penchant for playing slightly dodgy characters didn’t stop with Khalil Abdul-Muhsen; at least he had a good time, I suppose.
