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North Sea Hijack aka ffolkes (1979)
Extortionists plant bombs on an oil production platform, a drilling rig, and a ship they have hijacked in the North Sea. The British government sends gruff, eccentric troubleshooter ffolkes (Roger Moore) to counterattack. Film looks like a TV-movie at the beginning (the flabby musical score doesn't help) but gets into gear once the head extortionist (Anthony Perkins) picks up a phone and makes his demands. Otherwise routine story has a few things going for it: shipboard location work on heaving seas inject some atmosphere, and Perkins has snappy dialogue, but the main point of interest is seeing Roger Moore playing against his James Bond role. In fact "North Sea Hijack" appears in the middle of Moore's run of Bond films, and you have to wonder how strongly he was attracted to the part just to escape that image. It's a little jarring because while at first we see differences (ffolkes is bearded, reclusive, lives in an Aberdeen castle) we very quickly begin to draw parallels (like Bond, ffolkes is ex-navy, overconfident, and patriotic). And there is also Moore's plummy voice, which sounds very much like Bond underneath ffolkes' whiskers.
The most dramatic difference would appear to be ffolkes' attitude towards women - he is postively misogynistic. But for those filmgoers who have known that Bond's own treatment of women reveals suppressed disdain for them, this is not so much of a departure after all, and makes "North Sea Hijack" even more interesting, in that it is Moore's own criticism of his more famous 007 role. Veteran comedy screenwriter Jack Davies even throws in a pat 'explanation' of ffolkes' behavior (it was all to do with his childhood, of course). That this is offered in a throwaway, comedic moment shows just how silly these supposedly enlightening scenes are. It's obviously ironic that ffolkes is helped out by a girl in the end, but I think that it's just as perverse that the whole film finds a misogynist devoted to protecting installations that are referred to exclusively by their female names: Ruth, Esther, and Jennifer. Film's businesslike approach to action sequences makes it more believable than the blockbuster excesses that would become the standard a few years later. Similarly, Moore isn't required to be some kind of superhero - for most of the film he is surprisingly inactive. |
Roger Moore is "ffolkes" the man who loved cats, ignored women and is about to save the world.
