Martin Campbell: The GREAT journeyman

There are two types of directors who get a lot of attention - the geniuses and the doofuses.

There's a lot of talk about guys like Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg on the one hand, and guys like Brett Ratner, Uwe Boll and Michael Bay on the other.

We will leave it to you to decide which of these are the geniuses.

Directors who show up, do a respectable job, and then move on - directors such as Edge Of Darkness helmer Martin Campbell - tend to go more or less unnoticed.

Campbell and his ilk are the journeymen, the craftsmen, the guns-for-hire of the movie industry.

While they may lack vision, they don't cause problems and, most importantly, they deliver the goods.

Campbell's track record over the years has been respectable but not remarkable.

He started off, strangely enough, doing bawdy British sex films in the '70s. The Sex Thief (1973) told the story of a jewel thief who had a habit of bedding the victims of his crimes. In Eskimo Nell (1975), the story revolves around a porn production that goes off the rails.

Clearly not the most auspicious of beginnings.

MOVING ON

Following his short-lived career as an erotic film auteur, Campbell managed to land regular TV work, and for five years he churned out high-quality cop shows.

He reached his peak with Edge Of Darkness, for which he won a Bafta Award for Best Series in 1985.

Based on the strength of his TV work, Campbell was well-positioned to once again enter the insanely competitive world of feature films and, by 1995, he found himself in the enviable position of rebooting the James Bond franchise along with Pierce Brosnan in GoldenEye.

What seemed an overnight success to those unacquainted with his work was in fact the fruit of a two-decade-long struggle.

Since GoldenEye, Campbell has given us two reasonably successful Zorro flicks, and yet another Bond reboot in Casino Royale, this time with Daniel Craig as the martini-swilling super spy. He did Vertical Limit with Chris O'Donnell and Beyond Borders with Angelina Jolie.

By any standard, he's had a great career.

What he hasn't had is an extraordinary career.

That's okay.

The fact that after more than 25 years he's releasing a film adaptation of his Edge Of Darkness - which opens here today - perhaps speaks of a certain lack of imagination, but you just know that the film will be gripping and well-crafted.

He hasn't simply rehashed well-worn characters such as Zorro and Bond - he's breathed new life into them. He will no doubt do the same with Edge Of Darkness.

Anyway, better Edge Of Darkness than Eskimo Nell.

Comic book fans seem reasonably happy with the choice of Campbell to direct the upcoming Green Lantern film. Chances are 99.9999 per cent that he'll do a pro job.

And why not? He's a pro.

- Jason Johnson

This article was first published in The New Paper.