Between missions as 007, Daniel Craig elected to produce and act in the debut feature of his friend, commercials director Baillie Walsh. The result, Flashbacks of a Fool, spins the tale of a washed-up movie star who is summoned home to attend the funeral of a childhood buddy. And what a curate's egg it turns out to be: a woozy rites-of-passage drama that seems one-part languorous to two-parts drunk, drifting sluggishly between sun-blasted present-day California and sun-blasted 1970s England. It's like an awkward (and how could it not be awkward?) marriage of The Cement Garden and Beaches; an intriguing bit of driftwood, an exotic wreck. Matters wrap up with a bizarre scene in which our hero listens with frowning sadness to the story of a woman who was decapitated by a lorry and then had her head stolen by a passing fox. After which he shakes his head (so much strangeness in the world!), picks up his bag and prepares to return to Bond.
Director: Baillie Walsh
Writer: Baillie Walsh (writer)
Release Date: 18 April 2008 (UK)
Genre: Drama
Plot: A fading Hollywood star looks back at the days of his youth as
he returns home from his best friend's funeral...