Renard (James Bond)

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James Bond character

Renard
Gender	Male
Role	Villain
Affiliation	Elektra King
Current status	Deceased
Portrayed by	Robert Carlyle

Viktor Lavrentievich Zokas, better known by his alias of Renard, the Anarchist, is a fictional character and villain in the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough. He was portrayed by Scottish actor Robert Carlyle.

[edit] Biography

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Renard was trained by the KGB as an assassin, but was let go because of his mental instability. With the cessation of the Cold War, the political climate changes, and he becomes a terrorist. During a mission to thwart one of Renard's plots, MI6 agent 009 tracked him down and shot him in the head. Renard survived the attack, but the bullet could not be removed from his head, and was steadily working its way through his brain toward the cerebral cortex. As it moved, it steadily deprived Renard of his ability to taste, smell, and, most notably, feel. At some indeterminate time, the bullet would reach his cerebral cortex and kill him, but he would continue to function, and indeed grow stronger, until his death, as his inability to feel pain allowed him to drive himself far beyond ordinary physical limits. His unique physical prowess is demonstrated in a grisly scene where he handles scalding pieces of volcanic rock in his hand without so much as flinching.

He kidnapped Elektra King, a billionaire heiress, and held her for ransom, which her father refused to pay. Elektra, who was suffering from Stockholm syndrome and so believed herself to be in love with Renard, was infuriated and joined forces with him, mutilating her own ear so he could send a piece of it to her family as a warning. She then "escaped" and remained her former captor's lover in secret.

Ten years later, he joined forces with Elektra in a scheme to take control of the world's oil market. In a bold move, they launched an attack on MI6 (a first for the series), which kills Elektra's father, who was visiting the facility. Originally, it is thought their target was her family oil pipeline, but it is later revealed that they damaged the pipeline to cover their real target: all oil supplies except for those belonging to the King family. Renard hijacked a Russian nuclear submarine and intended to introduce weapons-grade plutonium into the sub's nuclear reactor, causing a nuclear meltdown. This would happen in the Bosporus at Istanbul; the ensuing "accident" would contaminate the city and the Bosporus for decades, preventing any shipping from the Black Sea — including shipments of Caspian Sea oil via all existing pipelines except for the King pipeline, which terminated on Turkey's Mediterranean coast.

They took M hostage and captured Bond, whose own feelings for Elektra clouded his judgment. After forcing himself to kill Elektra, Bond confronted Renard in the hijacked sub. Just as the reactor was about to go critical due to Renard's plutonium-laced fuel rod, Bond rigged the reactor so that the rod was instead shot out of the core and into Renard's body, killing him and also stopping the reaction.