Pierce Brosnan’s favourite gangster movie: “To this day it doesn’t disappoint”
It’s very difficult to be as cool as Pierce Brosnan. Not many people have ever managed it, and it’s hard to know how you’d even try. You could wear aviators all day and all night and not get close. He was the coolest James Bond, he was cool as a young man in The Long Good Friday, and he was just as cool as a pretty old man in The Black Bag some 45 years later. He epitomises cool in a way that only a few actors have done. Possibly Steve McQueen. Definitely Paul Newman.
So it’s probably not all that surprising that Pierce namechecks the aforementioned Newman as one of the role models he studied closely when honing his craft five decades ago. Brosnan himself has had something of a career renaissance after a fairly quiet 20 years or so after playing Bond for the last time in 2002’s Die Another Day.
While he did turn out in 2008’s “Mums sway along singing while clutching big glasses of wine” ABBA-focused comedy Mamma Mia, the Irish actor only really appeared in one film a year for some time, often in more minor roles.
Lately, however, Brosnan has been back with a bang, most recently alongside Tom Hardy as the frankly intimidating Conrad Harrigan in the Guy Ritchie-helmed Mobland and in eight films in the last two years, including 2023’s hugely underrated The Last Rifleman.
Brosnan is very clear on the movies and actors that he feels were most inspirational for him on his way to becoming a star. When pushed to pick his five favourite films, Brosnan went for a mix of gritty gangster classics and family favourites, something of a simile for his own career in fact.
He selected The Wizard of Oz, The Godfather, The English Patient, No Country For Old Men, and There Will Be Blood, saying in reference to the latter two films: ”Just outstanding work by director, writer, producers, actors. Captivating, both men: Javier Bardem and Daniel Day-Lewis — just iconic.”
You can’t really argue with many of Pierce’s choices there, let’s be honest. No Country For Old Men is an incredible film with one of the best baddies of all time, thanks to Bardem, especially in that heads or tails scene, which still makes us sweat even thinking about it. The Wizard of Oz is a staggering piece of work given the scale of bringing such a story to the big screen with the effects standing up even almost 90 years on and There Will Be Blood features Daniel Day Lewis at his peak-unhinged megalomaniac best, even outdoing his turn in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York.
It was 1972’s epic The Godfather that struck a chord with Brosnan more than any other, however, mostly thanks to his admiration for the legendary Marlon Brando, an actor many feel holds the title of the greatest to ever appear on screen. Brosnan said: “(I’m a) Huge fan of Marlon Brando. For this man to come out of the shadows playing Don Corleone was just captivating. And it never disappoints; to this day, it doesn’t disappoint. That movie is still a spectacle of Americana storytelling with a performance by him which is just inspiring.”
The Godfather was an immediate hit with critics and audiences alike on its release more than 50 years ago. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola and featuring a jaw-dropping cast including Robert De Niro, Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Rober Duvall, and Diane Keaton, the story of the Corleone family still tops many lists of the finest films of all time.
It is also one of the few movie franchises to feature a sequel that some feel might even outdo the first film, although it is much darker in tone and more philosophical than the first. It does feature fewer decapitated horses, however, which is always a bonus.
It was Brando’s performance in the movie that struck a chord with the younger Pierce Brosnan, who added, “He was an inspiring actor, he was certainly somebody who I still go back and watch and… the music, the story, the whole trilogy — It was very much connected to my youth as a young man about to go off to drama school”.
He added: “Brando was one of many — Montgomery Clift, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant, Paul Newman, Warren Beatty, Robert De Niro. When you’re moved emotionally by an actor, you want to be like them, you want to be up there, just that innocent dream that I had as a young man to make movies, to be a part of movies, never in my wildest dreams thinking I was going to come close to it. And it still has that allure.”
Brosnan, meanwhile, is about to continue to showcase his versatility with some interesting upcoming roles. Soon he’ll be playing one of the investigative octogenarians in the movie adaptation of Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club alongside Helen Mirren, a book that has topped the best-sellers list in the UK since (it feels like) approximately 1992. Then he’ll be helping his director son out in a werewolf caper named Wolf Land, where presumably he’ll be putting his good looks to use in order to distract the fanged-toothed beasts from attacking people. At a guess!
