Film Review: My Name Is Modesty (2004)
It is a regrettable fact that few contemporary observers are aware that Britain in the twentieth century possessed a rather thriving comic book industry. At one point, several of these characters achieved a level of global popularity. Among these iconic figures, none was more formidable than Modesty Blaise. Created in 1963 by Peter O’Donnell, she emerged as the adventurer heroine of a sprawling series that would continue for nearly forty years, until 2002. The literary output alone consisted of at least eleven novels, a testament to the narrative richness that O’Donnell poured into the character. The series proved to be immensely popular throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
However, its penetration into the American market was hampered by significant hurdles. It never caught on significantly in the USA, largely due to the censorship and prudishness of local comic book distributors who never accepted the open flaunting of Modesty’s sexuality and nudity. Despite this, there were some American fans who understood her appeal. Most notably, Quentin Tarantino, the acclaimed director of Pulp Fiction, expressly paid it a homage in his 1994 masterpiece, embedding the character’s influence into the fabric of modern cinema.
This cultural footprint inevitably led to attempts to translate Modesty Blaise to the screen. It happened three times, and all three adaptations were failures. The first one, directed by Joseph Losey in 1966 and starring Monica Vitti, remains the best known. It is frequently cited today as an example of Swinging Sixties pop art and quasi-psychedelic excess, a bold attempt that failed to translate the grit of the novels to the screen. The second attempt, a 1982 American TV series starring Ann Turkell, was less ambitious and never passed the pilot episode, dying before it could truly begin. The third and final one, the 2004 direct-to-video film directed by Scott Spiegel, was not even supposed to be a success at all. It was produced under circumstances that suggested it was destined for obscurity from the outset.
The political machinery behind this 2004 iteration reveals much about the nature of the project. Although Tarantino is credited as an executive producer, the force behind the project was Miramax under the leadership of Harvey Weinstein. The studio held film adaptation rights, but it found itself under threat of losing them if the film hadn’t been made within a specific window. Consequently, Weinstein decided to make the low budget barebones adaptation solely for the purpose of keeping those rights. This strategy was very much like in the case of the infamous 1994 low-budget and obscure adaptation of Fantastic Four, where intellectual property was preserved through token efforts rather than genuine creative investment.
The plot of My Name Is Modesty begins in Tangier, Morocco. Here, the protagonist Modesty Blaise (Alexandra Staden), works as a croupier in a casino owned by Monsieur Louche (Valentin Teodosiu). The inciting incident occurs after Garcia (Raymond Cruz), one of Louche’s subordinates and Modesty’s best friend, leaves the casino to go on a date. Immediately thereafter, the casino is invaded by a group of armed robbers led by Miklos (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). During the raid, they kill Louche and one of his employees, and it turns out that those were the only two persons who knew the safe combination. The other person with the combination is Garcia, and until he arrives in the morning, Miklos takes all employees hostage. To pass the time, they begin playing roulette with Modesty negotiating a deal: any time she wins, Miklos releases a hostage; any time he wins, Modesty has to tell something about herself. Through these flashbacks, we learn about her past as a little girl left orphaned and homeless in war-torn ex-Yugoslavia, until being adopted by kind-hearted Professor Lob, (Fred Pearson), who learned her to read and write, as well as training her in various martial arts. After Lob got killed in the Algerian Civil War, Modesty eventually ended up working in the Moroccan casino.
Despite the narrative flaws, there is one thing that this adaptation of Modesty Blaise does right, and this is the casting of Alexandra Staden. The British actress looks much more authentic and resembling Modesty Blaise from the comic books than previous iterations. In many ways, she surpassed the looks of her predecessors, particularly Vitti, bringing a modern physicality that matched the character’s descriptions in the source material. She possessed the necessary presence to carry a film of this nature.
In anything else, however, Modesty Blaise is near-complete failure. Like many Hollywood comic book adaptations, My Name Is Modesty begins with an origin story, a structural choice that arguably undermined the character. The problem is that the character was inspired by O’Donnell’s encounter with a little girl displaced by war during his service in World War II Iran. The film puts Modesty Blaise in a contemporary setting, and the closest equivalent to World War II authors could imagine at that point was the 1990s carnage in ex-Yugoslavia. Yet, the scenes in the prologue and flashback point to the conflict much more abstractly and inauthentically, at least to those who had misfortune to witness it first hand. The production design could not capture the true horror of the Balkan conflicts, resulting in a setting that felt like a generic war zone rather than a specific historical event.
Furthermore, the low budget mandated that this origin story be presented very economically. The practical result was that the almost entire plot takes place at a single location, rather than the globetrotting adventure one could have expected from a Bond-like heroine. Modesty Blaise was known for traversing the world, yet here she was stuck in a casino. Instead of non-stop action, the audience had to watch rather boring roulette game, with the final showdown, in which Modesty finally shows her formidable martial arts skill, happening only in a rather anti-climactic finale. The tension of the game was drained by the static nature of the production.
Unsurprisingly, My Name Is Modesty was savaged by critics and sank into oblivion, becoming a source of embarrassment for anyone involved. For fans of Modesty Blaise, this is another tragic missed opportunity. However, it is also an example of how certain careers can play out very differently even when associated with fiascos. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, arguably the biggest name during the production, transcended his one-note character and became an iconic star of Game of Thrones. Alexandra Staden, conversely, who could have become another action heroine of early twenty-first Century, did not. She faded into the background as the film she was supposed to star in did, leaving My Name Is Modesty as a footnote in the history of failed adaptations.
RATING: 3/10 (+)
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