Brutal Bond

Brutal Bond - Knifing Slate

By MI6 Staff

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Over the next few months, MI6 will explore the scenes where James Bond is at his most cold-blooded and hardcore across all 23 adventures to date. Voting will then open to find 007's most brutal moment in the series.

Having traced a payoff made by Quantum, via marked bills, to an assassin situated in Haiti, James Bond poses as the villain, Mr Edmund Slate (Neil Jackson), to gain access to his hotel room and his mail. Inexplicably, Slate is expecting Bond. After padding around the accommodation for only a few seconds a knife's flick alerts 007 and he reacts in time to see Slate burst through some glass doors.

"Tell her Slate was a dead end."

Bond and the assassin plunge through the flimsy dividing wall and Bond defends the wielded knife with his shoe; then he counters with some shattered glass from the floor. Frenzied fast blows unfold in a close quarters fight to the death. Eventually making it to the balcony, flinging Slate through another set of glass doors, Bond gets the upper hand and watches cooly as Slate bleeds to death.

Once dispatched with, he uses the goon's shirt to strap his wounds and borrows a jacket. He picks up the assassin's briefcase and departs the hotel remorselessly. In the case is the vital clue that suggests Quantum's next target: the lovely Camille who happens to be passing the hotel and collect Bond.

The fight was staged on location in Colón, Panama, doubling for Haiti. After months of rehearsal Daniel Craig and Neil Jackson, an English actor known for "Push" (2009) and "Alexander" (2004), staged the brutal combat sequence.

The sequence was filmed on 21st March 2008 under the close supervision of Bond stunt double Ben Cooke, who arranged the fight, and Bobby Holland Hanton, who was doubling Craig in the sequence. In order to film in some of the more run down residential areas, such as the Fenix Building where Felix Leiter gives Bond some information on Greene's deal with Medrano, the production carried out extensive repairs to wiring and plumbing making it a safe environment for the filming crew.

Much of Colón's once-beautiful architecture is in rapid decay, and the Arboix Building is no exception. This huge pastel orange building in down town Colón was chosen by the locations department as the Hotel Dessalines, Haiti.