Licensed to thrill
When the film Casino Royale came out back in 2006 it was praised as reinventing the Bond franchise. Out went the cheesy one-liners and farcical special effects, in came a gritty new plotline and a smouldering Daniel Craig. It was all good stuff but where was the action? A Bond movie without a boat chase is like a firework without a fuse. I mean come on, if you had a Sunseeker Predator 108 and an XS2000 at your disposal, what would you do?
Thankfully, when it came to making Quantum of Solace, EON Productions saw the light. They had a chat with Sunseeker at the Southampton show in 2007, flicked through the brochure and stopped at the page with a Superhawk 43 on it. $200 million dollars later and the movie has just hit our screens featuring a heroic boat chase between a Superhawk, a fleet of Avon RIBs and a suspiciously quick jet-propelled wooden fishing skiff that happens to be lying around – those Haitian fishermen must be richer than I thought!
It’s great to watch but I can’t help feeling that the villains on board the Sunseeker should have put up a better fight. With 945hp at their disposal and one of the best-handling hulls on sale, they could have shrugged off the impact from a poxy wooden fishing boat and run rings around Bond’s overpowered punt.
In a brave attempt to discover the truth (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it), I went to have a play in the very same Superhawk from the movie and chat to the guys who helped drive it.
I won’t spoil the surprise, suffice it to say that if I were the evil General Medrano, I would have fired the Superhawk’s skipper on the spot. With a Kalashnikov. You can read the full story on p60 and view the footage of us yomping over the waves. In the meantime if anyone from EON is reading this, will you please make sure that Bond gets to drive the Sunseeker next time. MI5 seem to have no trouble stumping up for an endless supply of Aston Martins for him to trash so surely they can plunder the expenses budget for a Sunseeker or two.
