At 7052 Hollywood Blvd tears will drop for James Coburn. In fact, I dare say at locations throughout the world, heck even at that keyboard you are at right now, tears will well up, because today - James Coburn exited this stage we call Earth.
Harry here, and in terms of MEN - all caps - in cinema, few struck the image and the impression of James Coburn. He's one of the MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, he understood that HELL IS FOR HEROES, and of course he's one of the few that actually made THE GREAT ESCAPE. Of course those are the early Coburn films, when he was finding his feet, his pace. He was simply, one of the other tough guys that ya didn't really get to know. In those early films, he made the best out of moments. Striking into our memory more with body postures and physicality than actual screen time. In that period, he was simply emerging. But when watching CHARADE, is there any of us that can forget his, "She batted them pretty little eyes at you, and you fell for it like an egg from a tall chicken!" Not me.
However, for me... For my money, James Coburn was the first man to clean Hans Gruber's clock. 22 years before John McClane tossed Hans Gruber out a window, Coburn's Derek Flint took care of him in a bathroom. "Hans Gruber, Hitler youth movement, escaped during the Nuremberg Trials." Yes... Ol Flint was the man. In 1966, OUR MAN FLINT heralded the front and center arrival of James Coburn.
No longer was he sitting slightly off center in shots, holding his tongue while Cary Grant or Steve McQueen got all the lines. Suddenly those razor sharp eyes of his, that strikingly imposing figure was the centerpiece in a satire of the James Bond series that was just lovely. Derek Flint was simply cooler than any other spy around. He didn't want to work for the government. When told that his country needed him, he'd say, "It's always nice to be wanted." However, the biting satire of Flint is a wonder. Excuse me if I go on about the Flint character, but as chance would have it, the films I happened to be watching today while working at the computer were OUR MAN FLINT and IN LIKE FLINT... Coming off those films to find Coburn no longer among us is just stunningly wrong. You see, Flint isn't serving any man, any country. Flint is his own person. The villians of the first Flint flick were a group of benevolent scientist trying to blackmail the world into destroying all their weapons, so we could live in peaceful harmony. At the end of the film, when Flint must choose everlasting peace for mankind or the chaos he lives in...
Dr. Wu
"Ours would be a perfect world! Why?"
Derek Flint
"Because it's your idea of perfection, gentlemen -- not mine!"
Dr. Wu
"Ours would be a perfect world! Why?"
Derek Flint
"Because it's your idea of perfection, gentlemen -- not mine!"