Sai Bennett recreates iconic scene in Casino Royale with Port and Persol
“In poker you never play your hand. You play the man across from you.”
– James Bond
The latest instalment in the James Bond series, No Time to Die, has an increasingly ironic title, doomed to be forever postponed. Now set for October later this year, the release has been used as an unlikely yardstick, its presence in the cinema a sign that things, finally, are back to normal. It also marks Daniel Craig’s final reprise as the MI6 agent, a journey that first began with 2006’s Casino Royale, the sober reboot that heralded a definitive departure from Pierce Brosnan’s increasingly camp, endlessly quipping Bond. At the time, Time Out New York’s film critic praised Craig’s “crisp, hateful, Mamet-worthy snarl…This is a screwed-up Bond, a rogue Bond, a bounder, a scrapper and, in the movie’s astoundingly bleak coda, an openhearted lover.”
Channelling this multi-faceted take, luxury eyewear Persol – per il sole or ‘for the sun’ – together with Port, have created a short featuring young British star Sai Bennett. Bennett, seen in Close to the Enemy, Mr Selfridge and most recently The Spanish Princess, delivers the iconic first encounter between Vesper Lynd, played by Eva Green, and the calculating secret agent, astutely performing both in jet black low and wide men’s shape and diva-inspired cat-eye shades – PO3268S and PO0582S respectively.
