Flashbacks Of A Fool

In an scene sure to delight blue-swimsuit lovers everywhere, Flashbacks Of A Fool opens with a flash of Daniel Craig’s naked form as he romps with not one but two nubile ladies, incongruously set to a soundtrack of Scott Walker’s “Jacques Brel”. But pleasures of the flesh aside, all is not well with Joe Scott (Craig) , a coke-snorting, wayward Hollywood actor whose age and behaviour makes him increasingly less hireable. After a heated meeting with his agent, Joe cools off in the Pacific Ocean. Cue the titular reminiscences, as the teenage Joe (Harry Eden) indulges in his own Seventies summer of love and eventual tragedy on the English coast, set to a toe-tapping soundtrack of Bowie and Roxy Music.

Penned by writer/director Baillie Walsh for his friend Craig several years BB (Before Bond), there’s a delicious irony in watching the latter send up the leading man reputation he now enjoys. Flashbacks has its flashes of brilliance, not least the scene in which the young Joe and his first love Ruth mime mesmerically in slow motion to Roxy Music’s “If There Is Something”. But it’s telling that this is one of the highlights, given Walsh’s background directing music videos for the likes of INXS. Walsh was apparently inspired to write Flashbacks by a painting, and parts wouldn’t look out of place on a gallery wall: the Seventies scenes in particular have an almost dream-like quality to them.

Unfortunately though, Flashbacks also has the depth of a painting: the rose-tinted retrospective is entertaining but unfocused, and although Craig and Eden are compelling, there’s not enough emotional investment in either of them, with Craig’s screen time regrettably curtailed. With hindsight, perhaps Walsh could have made less of the Flashbacks and more of Daniel Craig.