BMW’s The Hire: 8 Short Films

Back in 2001 or so..

bmwlogoBMW did these short films with Big-ass names directing, with a young Clive Owen, they were practically adverts, but done using fiction, which I’ve always felt ‘is’ the best way to sell an idea (or a car, evidently). I may’ve seen a couple of them at the cinema, bundled with the adverts, but I’m not 100% sure, does seem familiar.

This hit my radar again as BMW have recently announced that they are coming back for a new batch of BMW Films, which sounds jolly good to me. Made me think to go check out the old batch, which incidentally I found on YouTube but NOT on the bmwfilms site. I also read up a little about them, only to discover, Luc Besson has said on record that The Transporter series was inspired by this set of films. HA!

Not that much of a stretch really, they probably got a good sponsorship deal too. What’s interesting is that they tried refueling that franchise only recently (without Statham) & it failed rather miserably from what I hear. [I’ve yet to watch it.]

    Food for thought:

  • Did BMW in a way have a hand in making Clive Owen and also Jason Statham a bankable Hollywood star? Note, prior to this both boys were pretty much grounded in the U.K. bar a couple of exceptions.
  • For these rather simple genre-pieces, are short films as well as bite-size web content more palatable to the newer generation?

Meanwhile as we await the new series, here are the old ones, in order.
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bmw-the-hire

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