BONDATHON: SKYFALL

In a strange way Goldfinger ruined James Bond. That 3rd entry in the series is a great film unto itself, but it also codified a rigid formula that the series has been slavish to ever since, rendering many of the subsequent films dull and repetitive. It seems that the best Bond's since then, paricularly Danial Craig's debut Casino Royale, have worked by getting away from the formula. But now comes Skyfall, a film that feels like the best of both worlds. Conscious of the present, respectful of the past, the film treats the format not as a crutch or something to be avoided, but as a springboard to tell a more resonant, ambitious story than the franchise has ever attempted, let alone pulled off.

At the center of the film is a question of loyalty. Why be loyal to a country that isn't loyal to you? This is brought up in the film's opening action sequence, where Bond and his partner Eve (Naomie Harris) pursue a high value target through Istanbul. At the end of the chase, Bond finds himself being used as a human shield. M (Judi Dench) makes a tough choice and orders Eve to take them both down. But it goes wrong. The target gets away and it appears that Bond is dead.

The consequences of that failed op become painfully public. The target is working for a man named Silva (Javier Bardem), a cyber-terrorist with a personal vendetta against M that leads him to blow up MI6 and reveal the identity of foreign agents. M survives the attack, but now faces public hearings as to her ability to protect the country.

So what of Bond? Obviously he isn't dead, but he's reluctant to return. He's not sure if he can trust M or if the service has anything left to offer him. When he does come back, it's clear that not all of him has survived. He still looks great in his Tom Ford suits, but he's more haggard. Bullet fragments in his shoulder make it hard for him to shoot straight and years of alcoholism have taken their toll on 007 (yes, this film acknowledges that Bond is a functioning alcoholic). It's clear that Bond isn't ready for the field when he goes after Silva. It's a safe bet that he'll survive, but it's possible that there will be even less of him left by the end.

That's not to say that the film is all gloom, doom and meditations. As unorthodox as the film feels, it's still a Bond movie. There are chases through exotic lands, ridiculous stunts, casinos with deadly Komodo dragons and a series of pretty women for Bond to seduce. Then there is the villain. It's hard to discuss Silva without spoiling things (this is the rare Bond film that can be spoiled), but he's one of the most entertaining Bond villains we've ever had. Bardem's smart performance reminds us of the "evil laugh" baddies from 60's Bond without ever falling too far into camp or seeming derivative.

All of this is directed with great skill by Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition). Mendes isn't the first prestigious director to be given the keys to the franchise, but its never paid off quite like this. The Oscar winner pulls nuanced performances out of everyone. Bond and M have never felt more like real people, and Ben Whinshaw is great as a much younger, slightly Doctor Who-ish version of Q.

Mendes also shows off his skill as an image-maker. He and legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins (Fargo, No Country For Old Men) have created not only one of the prettiest films of the year, but one of the best looking films ever to be shot digitally. There are probably huge plot holes that I didn't see because I was just staring at the amazing visuals and production design. Of particular beauty, are the film's neon bathed Shanghai sequence and the final showdown with Silva on the foggy moors of Scotland.

That ending is very interesting. Throughout the film, there is this constant balancing act between old and new, both with the plot and with the characters. So not only is there this playfulness with the formula, but we get Bond and Co. dealing with how the world has changed. With the ending, the old vs. new balance turns decidedly retro as Mendes has Bond seemingly retreating into the past for a Straw Dogs like sequence that might as well take place in 1962.

In many ways Skyfall feels like the film the franchise has been working towards for the last 50 years, a natural evolution that learns from past pitfalls. Proof that in the right hands, this formula can be used artistically. Like Goldfinger before it, Skyfall feels like a definitive dissertation on what it means to be Bond, James Bond. Obviously this won't be the last Bond, but I'd be perfectly fine if it were. It strikes a high and somber note that seems perfectly appropriate for a farewell. At any rate, I don't see them topping this anytime soon.

Grade: A

If I get enough requests I might put together a best/worst list for people looking to dive into the franchise, but barring that, this marks the end of the Bondathon. Thanks to all the viewers out there who made the series such a rousing success. I'll be doing more series like this in the relatively near future. Until then, I'll be working to bring you theatrical reviews of the years remaining Oscar bait, and major redesign of the site (no more bland beige!). If you like, you can find us on Facebook and feel free to check out other Bondathon entries:

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball / Never Say Never Again

You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service 
Diamonds Are Forever
Live and Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun 
The Spy Who Loved Me 
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy  
A View To A Kill
The Living Daylights
Licence To Kill
Goldeneye
Tomorrow Never Dies
The World is Not Enough
Die Another Day
Casino Royale 
Quantum of Solace  
Skyfall

BONDATHON: QUANTUM OF SOLACE

Casino Royale was the best thing to happen to the franchise in years. It had a more nuanced story that took itself seriously and immediately established Daniel Craig as one of the best Bonds in the franchise's now 50 year history. But the problem with making a more sophisticated Bond is that we now expect the sequel to continue in the same vein, but the franchise hasn't managed two good ones in a row since Johnson was in the White House.

That sad trend continues with Quantum of Solace. The film is a direct sequel (a franchise first), and starts up five minutes after Royale with Bond (Craig) searching for revenge on the people who killed Vesper, who turn out to be part of a mysterious criminal organization called Quantum (which explains half the title I guess) who are engineering a coup in Bolivia. I want to pretend that there's more to this film, but there isn't.

There's a girl (Olga Kurylenko) and some half-hearted attempts to show Bond working through his grief, but it's pretty thin gruel. The arc with Bond and Vesper was pretty well covered in the last film, and as a result there isn't much room for Bond to grow here, which wouldn't be a problem if Casino didn't just get done saying that this is now a franchise where people have arcs. So all that's left is to watch Bond rampage through exotic location after exotic location, killing potential leads left and right and annoying M (Judi Dench). The only interesting character is Bond's CIA counterpart Felix Lieter (Jeffery Wright), who has to find a way to covertly help Bond when he realizes that the CIA is in bed with Quantum. The filmmakers aren't entirely to blame, the screenwriting process was interrupted by the 07-08 Writers Strike and it seems that they were forced to shoot a first draft.

But the weak script does not excuse the action sequences, all of which have have been filmed in Confuse-O-Vision, that trendy process where the editor cuts quickly between shots of the camera shaking, turning everything into an abstract, indistinct blur. When used well, this technique can create tension, giving the audience a visceral you-are-there feeling. Here it just gets tiring. It's strange that the set pieces feel like bad copies of Jason Bourne films as the Bond producers poached some of their talent to shoot the action sequences.

It's a shame, because whenever the camera stops shaking it's quite a pretty film. It's wonderfully photographed by Roberto Schaefer to look like an enormously expensive perfume ad. A lot of this is due to stylized title cards and amazing sets by production designer Dennis Grassner who gorgeously  updates the Ken Adams look. The best set is the Andean Grand Hotel, a completely black & white hotel that looks like it was designed by CoCo Chanel. I also liked some of director Marc Foster's visual flourishes, such as the shot in the prologue where we first see the car shooting at Bond reflected in the door of his Aston Martin.

With the film being so striking, I really want to call this film a triumph of style over substance, but unfortunately editing counts as part of the style. Despite some good sets and a kick ass title song by Jack White and Alicia Keys, this is a dull, muddled film, that barely gets the audience from point A to B. It's reassuring to know that for Skyfall, the producers have kept the production designer and fired the editor.

Grade: C

If you liked this review you can check us out on Facebook and enjoy these other Bondathon entries:

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball / Never Say Never Again

You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service 
Diamonds Are Forever
Live and Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun 
The Spy Who Loved Me 
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy  
A View To A Kill
The Living Daylights
Licence To Kill
Goldeneye
Tomorrow Never Dies
The World is Not Enough
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum of Solace
Skyfall

BONDATHON: CASINO ROYALE

It's easy to forget that Die Another Day did very well financially. So well that corporate logic would dictate that the next installment should be exactly the same and come out as fast as possible. But public perception of the film cooled very quickly. Add to this the general darkening of action cinema post 9/11, and The Bourne Identity completely reinvigorating the espionage genre it was clear that a change was necessary. Producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson would need a new, darker, more relevant Bond if the franchise was going to survive.

That new direction ultimately came from a very old source, the very first James Bond novel Casino Royale. The book had been adapted twice before (once as a TV movie, and once as a spoof), but never faithfully, and never as part of the official franchise. The timing was perfect, as this most recent adaptation landed near the start of the reboot craze that swept mainstream cinema and TV in the mid-2000's.

As a reboot, Casino likes to play a bit with series conventions. The film doesn't start with Maurice Binders's famous gun barrel or an outrageous stunt sequence. Instead we are introduced to Daniel Craig's James Bond in a stark, brutal black & white sequence where he earns his Double O status by killing a traitorous section chief and his contact. The construction of the scene with Bond waiting in the dark for his target mirrors a similar scene in Dr. No where Bond ambushes and guns down an unarmed assassin.

This reference to 60's era Bond isn't accidental, the film works to evoke the 50's and 60's while still remaining modern. This ethos is exemplified by Danial Kleinman's credit sequence. The sequence was inspired by the card suit images that adorned the novels 1st edition cover and features fighting Saul Bass-esque silhouettes that would all look very 60's if the animation wasn't so clearly computer aided. The theme song itself by Chris Cornell and composer David Arnold is an updated version of the instrumental theme from On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

After the credits we meet Bond (now officially 007), slowly uncovering a banking plot. There is a man named Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelson) who serves as a banker for dictators and international terrorists. Bond foils one of his side plots leaving Chiffre's cash supply dangerously low. In order to keep his clients from murdering him he sets up a massive, high stakes poker game at the titular casino in Montenegro. M (Judi Dench) orders Bond to infiltrate the game and make sure Le Chiffre loses. To help out, Bond is joined by a skeptical accountant Vesper Lynd (Eva Green).

I'm not much of a card shark so the films poker scenes are all Greek to me, but there is a local agent named Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini) who exists to explain such things to us. But even then, the poker would probably get really tiresome if it weren't peppered with violent attempts on Bond's life and intrigue as to whether Bond is a sufficiently skilled gambler to defeat Le Chiffre. Also the Casino sequence is a fairly brief. Just as we think the film is over, there is a pretty massive shift and the film re-centers on Bond and Vesper's relationship as they float about Venice leading to the most effective tragic moment in the entire series.

By 2006, the public was still getting used to the idea of the reboot, and while the buzzword has gotten a bit tiresome in the intervening years, it still holds power for skilful filmmakers. Its fun to see Bond get his Double O number, acquire his first Aston Martin DB5, drink his first martini, etc. It was fun for me in '06 when it was my first Bond film, and it's fun in '12 after marathoning the entire series. In lesser hands all of these moments would play as distracting fan service, but director Martin Campbell earns the vast majority of them.

It helps that we've never seen a James Bond quite like Daniel Craig. The other actors were playing fantasies, Craig play's a person, more specifically he play's the Bond of the novels. The Bond of the novels is ultimately a very fragile man and Craig latches on to that aspect. From the fragility comes the paranoia and the coldness and the suave front. "The armor" as Vesper calls it. Timothy Dalton got close in the 80's, but Craig is the man who finally brings Fleming's Bond to the screen. 

The film really puts this more fragile Bond through the ringer. The action in this film would be good on it's own (every scene is excellently constructed and executed), but is heightened by the knowledge that Bond might not be able to hold it together. If the last few films felt overly cartoonish, this one goes the other way. Bond is a violent man in a violent world and the film doesn't apologize for it. In the 2000's action films seemed to become more and more sanitized. The ability to digitally darken blood to a less visceral brown seems to have made the PG-13 rating more restrictive, it's refreshing to see Royale going the other way with it. It's a bit shocking that the film's famous torture sequence snuck past the MPAA in any form considering it's conception.

If we've never met a Bond like Craig, we've certainly never seen a Bond girl quite like Vesper Lynd. We've seen similar ones, there's a tragic angle that mirrors On Her Majesty's Secret Service, but the difference here is that the film treats Vesper like a real person. Bond and Vesper don't fall in love via convenient musical montages, but by actually talking to each other and developing a relationship that we can believe and invest in. It also helps that Eva Green is a hell of an actress who pull off even the cheesiest lines of dialogue.

The film is pretty true to the novel. There are plenty of superficial changes to update it (terrorists instead of Soviets, poker instead of baccarat). The first hour of the film is new material to compensate for the relative shortness of the novel (my audio version clocked in at 2 hours shorter than most of the books). Still, the film gets so much right from the book, I wonder if there's any reason to read the novel at all. Sure it contains copious amounts of information about gambling, but it also features more 50's sexism than you can shake a stick at. In the book, Bond doesn't much care for Vesper. Even after he falls in love with her, she's just a silly child to him. It doesn't help that book-Vesper is given to wild unexplained mood swings that give the impression that Fleming just doesn't know shit about women. The film is much better than the book, while we're at it, it's much better than the majority of the other Bond films. If you've never seen a Bond movie, this is definitely the place to start. I don't want to say that it's the best of the series as Skyfall has been getting such excellent advance notices, but its certainly close.

Grade: A

Enjoy these other Bondathon entries:

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball / Never Say Never Again

You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service 
Diamonds Are Forever
Live and Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun 
The Spy Who Loved Me 
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy  
A View To A Kill
The Living Daylights
Licence To Kill
Goldeneye
Tomorrow Never Dies
The World is Not Enough
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum of Solace
Skyfall

 

BONDATHON: DIE ANOTHER DAY

In 2002, the Bond franchise celebrated it's 40th anniversary with its 20th film, Die Another Day. The film isn't terribly well remembered, in fact it's considered a low point of the franchise that almost destroyed 007 forever. This hate fly's in the face of the fact that it got not terrible reviews and made a boat load of money, begging the question, is Die Another Day really that bad?

The short answer is no. The film is not good. Not good by any means, but it's hardly as unwatchable as say The Man With The Golden Gun and as much as it tries, and good Lord it does try, it's not nearly as outrageous as Moonraker.

Before descending completely into camp, we have an admirably hardcore opening where Bond (Pierce Brosnan) is captured and spends the next fourteen months being tortured in a North Korean prison camp. The torture continues through the opening credits meaning Bond's ultimate punishment is having to listen to Madonna's awful title track. Eventually Bond is traded back only to face suspicion from M (Judi Dench) over what Bond did or did not divulge during his internment. M strips Bond of his Double O status and detains him for further questioning. Backed against the wall, Bond has no choice but to break out and go rogue to clear his name.

Up till here everything is fine. The action is heightened, but not out of line with series norms. Brosnan is a bit hammy when playing dark, but generally okay. The film has adequately set the stage for a darker, more personal adventure. Unfortunately that's not what it delivers and things take a turn around the 50 minute mark as the film decides that it wants to be a goofy, sci-fi cartoon and never looks back.

On the one hand I admire separating the dark and whimsical elements of the franchise into separate segments as they have never played well together. On the other hand the series has never been good at whimsy so having the entire second half of the film be all whimsy turns out to be a pretty fatal move.

Some of it works. The ice palace fortress of super-villain/Richard Branson analogue Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens) is a tremendously silly idea, but a visually striking one none the less. Also, I liked that when the bad guys capture Bond late in the film, they figure out that they have to take his laser watch too. Also Halley Barry is fun as Bond's NSA agent sidekick Jinx. Jinx is another one of those female James Bonds from foreign agencies. She has her own gadgets, her own car, and like Bond she can only speak in groan inducing double entendres.

But then there is nearly every other element of the film. For every moment that works, there are entire sequences that fall flat. Let's start with the villain. I wanted to like Graves. He's partially based on everyone's favorite billionaire Richard Branson and partially on Ian Fleming's version of Moonraker baddie Hugo Drax, a character who certainly didn't get his due in the official adaptation and doesn't do much better here.

Take his villainy. In addition to having a derivative super weapon (another laser satellite) Graves also has a terribly unimaginative plan to (spoiler alert) destroy the mine field separating North and South Korea so that the North can invade. This brings up some important questions, 1) Why is he using a super-laser with more destructive power than an atomic bomb to clear a mine field when he can just destroy Seoul, forcing the South to surrender? 2) Are there any satellites in this universe that don't double as giant lasers, and if not, why doesn't the world just outlaw satellites? (end spoiler alert)

That laser leads to the films most infamous scene where Graves, who is controlling the weapon via a robot suit, has the laser chase Bond so that he must kite surf down a melting glacier. Until now the only reason the franchise has sort of gotten away with nutty ideas like this is that we've gotten to see talented stunt men pulling them off. This film robs us of even that pleasure by executing the scene with terrible CGI, with close-ups of Brosnan serving as the only photographic element. It's not that CGI can't produce nail-bitters (just look at the fantastic set-pieces that Pixar has done over the years), but you have to convince the audience that there is a real person in real danger. Even a wacky, cartoon universe should be able to ground it's audience somewhat.

Ultimately though, Die isn't interested in grounding us. It just piles on gimmick after shallow gimmick. DNA treatment centers, dancing lasers and the aforementioned robot suit. Heck, the most plausible element in the film is Bond's invisible car! Yeah, that invisible car that uses tiny camera's to project images onto the other side is actually, theoretically sound. Still, it doesn't matter because watching 007 slowly sneak around Graves's lair in a 4,000lb invisible Aston Martin is one of the most laughable images in the entire film.

The film's laughability isn't helped by the stylistic flourishes imposed by director Lee Tamahori (XXX: State of the Union). The man seems obsessed with step-printing and mock fast motion that hit at seemingly random moments and fly in the face of the formalism that the rest of the film is shot with and just help underline that these films had gone right back to being cartoon parodies of themselves. In a way, this is the cinematic equivalent of a mid-life crisis, artificially big, gaudy and over the top, the film keeps trying to convince us how young this franchise is and fools no one.

Grade: C-

Enjoy these other Bondathon entries:

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball / Never Say Never Again

You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service 
Diamonds Are Forever
Live and Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun 
The Spy Who Loved Me 
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy  
A View To A Kill
The Living Daylights
Licence To Kill
Goldeneye
Tomorrow Never Dies
The World is Not Enough
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum of Solace
Skyfall

 

BONDATHON: THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH

There is a moment in The World is Not Enough, Pierce Brosnan's third outing as venerable superspy 007, where he stumbles onto a nuclear facility. As he takes the elevator down into one of Peter Lamont's huge sets, I figured that this must be the villains lair meaning we were entering the films last act. I then glanced down at the counter on my DVD player and realized with mounting dread that I wasn't even halfway through the film yet.

Let's go back to the beginning. It's customary for these films to have a pre-credit action sequence to help introduce the plot and maybe remind us of how cool Bond is with a spectacular stunt. This one has nice stunts, but damned if I know what was happening in it. Bond is trying to get some money back for reasons never really made clear, it all goes wrong, MI6 headquarters gets blown up and Bond ends up chasing a sniper down the Thames in a rocket boat he borrowed from Batman.

These prologues are often the best part of the film (even Moonraker had a decent one), but this one makes the pivotal mistake of not playing like a prologue, but like a sequence from the middle of a film. It's not just in that it starts out at such a high level of action that the film has to go to Toon Town to top it (we'll get to that), but that it's paced in a way that sub-consciously tricked my brain into thinking it was much later in the film. That said I do like the touch of having it end with Bond falling from a hot air balloon only to have his fall broken by the Danial Kleinman's outrageously 90's opening credit sequence.

Don't get any ideas Mad Men!

Before we move on, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the credits are set to one of the two or three best songs in the Bond cannon. The titular track by Garbage is a fantastic at subtly pointing out all of the shallow, soul eating ambition that it takes to be a Bond villain: "The world is not enough, but it's a very good place to start... If you're strong enough, together we can take tear this world apart." The irony is that the title inspiring that song isn't what the villain says before launching an atomic bomb but rather, the Bond family motto.

Anyway, Bond emerges from the credits mostly unharmed (he has a broken arm, sorta), and we start to learn about the convoluted plot involving former kidnapping victim/recent orphan/oil heiress Electra King (Sophie Marceau), the pipeline she's building and Renard (Robert Carlyle), the pain immune terrorist Bond must protect her from. After a brief visit with Q (Desmond Llewellyn in his final performance) to pick up some gadgets (X-Ray glasses, BMW, and a jacket that transforms into a dome for some reason) Bond jets off to Azerbaijan.

Normally Bond would try and seduce King immediately but this time he waits a whole ten minutes out of respect for her dead father or something nonsense. So while we wait we get predictable character development punctuated by a scene where the pair are attacked by flying snowmobiles (not as cool as it sounds). Bond later abandons his role as bodyguard so he can stumble around and find that aforementioned nuclear facility.

It's here that he meets the film's other Bond girl, Christmas Jones (Denise Richards), who lives up to her reputation as one of the worst recent Bond girls. It's not that Richards is miscast as a nuclear physicist (she is), it's that the film is incapable of making us believe that she's a professional of any sort. I'm sorry, but nuclear physicists, even the sexy ones, don't wear crop tops and booty shorts to work. It doesn't help that "nuclear physicist" is her only discernible attribute so there's no reason to care about her even a little bit even though she's the one Bond ends up with at the end. She's also completely useless for most of the film, making her the only damsel in distress in Brosnon's entire run. Furthermore, Jones's underwritten and lacking role is only underlined by all of the character development that Electra gets.

Electra, in the meantime is one of the more interesting Bond girls in a while. Late into the film we discover that the aloof, independent King is (Spoiler Alert) the secret evil mastermind, and a good one at that. She kidnaps Bonds boss, M (Judi Dench), and plans on nuking Istanbul so she can have oil pipeline supremacy. The film ends with Bond facing the choice of killing a woman he cares about to protect the world. In a better film, this might be an important turning point in the franchises mythology, making her the most important woman in the Bond cannon since his wife Tracy, but it's not a better film. Just once I'd like Bond to have some baggage that meant anything. (/End Spoilers)

The main issue though is the action. On the one hand we have some fairly authentic feeling Geo-political scrambling, but then we have action scenes that are ridiculous and cartoony even for a Bond film. In addition to the boat sequence and the flying snowmobile scene we also have a sequence where Bond and co. are attacked by helicopters carrying two-story buzzsaws to cut the building he's in in half. The latter is so big and grandiose, you assume it's the climactic ending, but it's not, not by a long shot. These increasingly silly action scenes are a dangerous president. This film goes too far with them and our next film in the marathon will go so outrageously far with them that it'll cause a massive shift in the series.

This film was directed by Micheal Apted, who may be the most interesting director to ever be allowed a crack at the series. He's done such diverse films as Coal Miner's Daughter and Gorillas in the Mist, but he's arguably most known for the Up documentaries, which has been slowly documenting the lives of the same group of Londoners from childhood through retirement and beyond. They are among the most remarkable experiences cinema has to offer. It's unfair to criticize a Bond film on that level, but you should see those instead.

Grade: C-

Did you know you can now follow this blog on Facebook? Well, now you do.

Enjoy these other Bondathon entries:

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball / Never Say Never Again

You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service 
Diamonds Are Forever
Live and Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun 
The Spy Who Loved Me 
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy  
A View To A Kill
The Living Daylights
Licence To Kill
Goldeneye
Tomorrow Never Dies
The World is Not Enough
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum of Solace
Skyfall

 

BONDATHON: TOMORROW NEVER DIES

I often wonder about the minions in the Bond universe. I don't mean the 2nd tier muscle men that Bond often deals with, but the low level employees. Do the thousands of technicians working on those plots know why their boss wants to build a super-laser in a hollowed out volcano? Do they know he's evil? Do super-villains ever worry about their plans leaking?

The answer, according to Tomorrow Never Dies, is that everyone is indeed in on it, to some degree at least. It's villain, Eliot Carver (Johnathan Pryce) is a media mogul who want's to start a war between Britain and China by basically reenacting the Gulf of Tonkin incident but with different countries. Carver makes no bones about his evilness to his employees (as if the platinum crew cut wasn't a hint). Early in the film he holds a meeting with all his news editors where they manipulate and plant news stories to boost profits, with much evil cackling and hand ringing. Later, before he kills a very prominent socialite he has a lowly news anchor record the obituary in advance just so he can show it to his victim first. There's evil, and there's plain carelessness. I half expected Carver's janitor to be in on the evilness. It doesn't help that Pryce and director Robert Spottiswoode (Stop or My Mon Will Shoot!) insist that Carver be played as over the top as possible. Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers films is more down to earth than this guy.

With the evil scheme pretty well spelled out to us in the beginning, watching Bond (Pierce Brosnan) try and uncover it is pretty dull. The film tries to spice it up by revealing that Carvers wife Paris (Teri Hatcher), is Bonds former lover.  Upon learning this M (Judi Dench) orders 007 to "pump her for information."

Dropping in on a former Bond girl is kinda a neat idea. It offers an opportunity to show us a new side of the character and follow up on the post-modern aspirations of Goldeneye. Unfortunately the script (which was rushed into production to satisfy a studio stock-holder) isn't really interested in this idea and all we get is some sub-par banter before Paris is killed just to give Bond some cheep revenge motivation that is never mentioned again.

The second half of the film is better. Bond goes to China and teams up with local agent Wai Lin, played by Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) to stop Carver. The idea of Bond teaming up with a foreign, female version of himself isn't new. We got a similar version of the character in The Spy Who Loved Me. But this version can act and do all of her own stunts.

Those stunts are pretty spectacular at times. The best scene in the movie, the scene that makes up for all the dullness that came before, is a bravado stunt sequence where Bond and Lin are handcuffed together and slide down a building, get onto a motorcycle (they share the handle bars) and evade a helicopter that's using it's blades to mow down civilians. Credit for this bravado sequence goes to second unit director/legendary stunt man Vic Armstrong.

I liked the gadgets in this film. The best is Bond's BMW which can be controlled from his cell phone. This may have come off as too over the top in 1997, but in 2012 I'm surprised there isn't an app for that. But then again, in 2012, wikileaks would stop Carver long before Bond could.

In addition to the stunts and the gadgets there are a few nice performances. Vincent Schiaveli scores laughs as Dr. Kaufman, an assassin who dabbles in torture and specializes in celebrity overdoses. Bronson continues to be a great Bond, playing the character as a fun loving child rather than a sadist (Connery/Dalton) or a square (Moore). If the earlier Bonds felt like imperial relics keeping the world in check, Brosnan's Bond just wants to party. In Goldeneye, that glee served a clear thematic purpose, in Tomorrow Never Dies it just serves to cover up plot holes and an underwritten script. It's still fun, but the film is a huge step backwards.

Grade: C+

Enjoy these other Bondathon entries:

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball / Never Say Never Again

You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service 
Diamonds Are Forever
Live and Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun 
The Spy Who Loved Me 
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy  
A View To A Kill
The Living Daylights
Licence To Kill
Goldeneye
Tomorrow Never Dies
The World is Not Enough
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum of Solace
Skyfall

BONDATHON: LICENCE TO KILL

Timothy Dalton's second and final outing as James Bond, Licence To Kill deserves some credit, in that it strips away the vast majority of the Bond formula tropes. Unfortunately it simply trades one set of conventions for another. Instead of a Bond film, this is an 80’s cop movie with spies, Lethal Weapon 007 if you will.  

The film brings back CIA agent Felix Leiter (David Hedison). Bond’s friend and frequent partner. Felix is doing really well. He’s captured infamous drug lord Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi), and he’s getting married. There's a big party, dancing, presents. Felix is on top of the world.  It’d be a real shame if Sanchez where to escape, kill Leiter’s wife and feed him to a shark. Bond wouldn't like that. Why, he would swear revenge and go on an all out killing spree.

The cop cliché’s pile up as Bond meets an informant (Carey Lowell) in a strip club (the kind where the girls keep dancing through bar fights). Bond is shocked to discover that his contact is a woman. She scoffs at Bonds assertions that a woman can’t be a cop and makes fun of his Walter PPK. Of course, the cop movie transformation wouldn't be complete without a scene where Bond goes rogue after M (Robert Brown) essentially orders Bond to hand over his gun and his badge. "You're a loose cannon Bond!"

Licence want's you to think that it's darkest, grittiest film in the franchise. But quite frankly it's just as ridiculous as always. The only thing keeping it from the camp of the Roger Moore days is the relentless violence. Apart from the hot cheese of the 80's cop cliche's we have scenes where someone tries to stab Bond with a swordfish, a mack truck that does wheelies while Schwarzeneggerean explosions go off in the distance, and we haven't even gotten to the gadgets.

I half expected that truck to roar

After Bond quits/is fired from the service,  Q (Desmond Llewelyn) takes it upon himself to provide Bond with some gadgets that might help him out. They are not his best, the worst is a Polaroid camera that takes X-rays AND shoots lasers at the same time for some reason. I kept waiting to see how Bond would use this insane, ill-conceived gadget during the climax, but sadly he never does.

The idea of Bond going rogue could be an interesting idea. Taking away all of 007's tactical support, and forcing him to fend for himself could be dramatically fascinating. But the thing is that Bond is never on his own in this film. He has Q giving the same tactical support he always has.  Consequently I still don't believe that Bond can survive on wits. Sure he applies some Yojimbo like manipulations to Sanchez and his men, but none them are believable. The film asks us to buy that Sanchez doesn't know Bond is his enemy when Bond was there doing most of the work when he was apprehended in the first place.  Even if Sanchez never saw Bond (which is a stretch), it's firmly established that Sanchez has moles in Leiter unit who probably saw the whole thing.

The use of Felix Leiter in this film is a bit odd. Ostensibly his inclusion is a way to trade on the mythology of the series, but it can't get that right either. Hedison's casting makes little sense, he played Leiter once before way back in 1973's Live And Let Die where he was as forgettable as most of the actors playing Leiter. If you're trying to build a consistent universe and build the world, why not bring back John Terry who played the role briefly in the last film?

This is a film of lasts in the Bond franchise. Firstly it was the last film for screenwriter Richard Maibaum who wrote or co-wrote the lions share franchise. Secondly it was the last film for title designer Maurice Binder who had grown too ill to continue.  Most importantly, this is the last film for Timothy Dalton as Bond. Dalton was scheduled to do a third film but between the low performance of Licence, rights issues with the franchise and the end of the Cold War, it was decided to replace Bond yet again with the next film.

But Dalton would be fine. He’s that rare anomaly, the only actor who’s arguably more known for his post-Bond roles. People of my generation are likely to recognize Dalton for Hot Fuzz, Rocketeer, Toy Story 3, Flash Gordon, Doctor Who, Chuck, and having an awesome British voice long before James Bond. Still, he was a excellent Bond, who's darker energy would eventually provide an important template for the current incarnation. But that said, as dark as these films are, with all the murder and bloodshed, the last image we get in a Dalton Bond is of a giant stone fish winking at the audience.

Grade: C


Enjoy these other Bondathon entries:

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball / Never Say Never Again

You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service 
Diamonds Are Forever
Live and Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun 
The Spy Who Loved Me 
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy  
A View To A Kill
The Living Daylights
Licence To Kill
Goldeneye
Tomorrow Never Dies
The World is Not Enough
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum of Solace
Skyfall

 

BONDATHON: THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS

The idea of the reboot is fairly new. The concept of starting a franchise over to correct irrevocable harm done by a previous incarnation, gained a lot of prominence in the 2000's. Usually there is an all new cast, and an origin story to returns to the "edgy roots" of the franchise. In 1987, The Living Daylights became a rough template for this modern idea. This film is not the origin story it was initially conceived as, but it does shake up the cast somewhat with a new Bond (Timothy Dalton) and a new Moneypenney (Caroline Bliss) and most importantly, it captures the tone of the Ian Fleming stories better than any of the other Bonds until 2006's Casino Royale.

What's impressive about the film is it's momentum. Other Bonds have struggled integrating story and action, usually having to chose between one or the other. Living Daylights manages to have lots of action and 3 times as much story as the average Bond adventure. We meet our new Bond, as he foils Soviet assassins that have invaded a mock combat exercise. Then, before we've had a chance to recover, he's off to Czechoslovakia to help extract a KGB defector who has knowledge about a new program to kill foreign spies. But something about the whole thing seems fishy to Bond, he's dealt with the Russian general who's supposedly behind it all and he doesn't seem the type for unprovoked attacks. There's also the matter of the female cellist/sniper Bond foiled back in Czechoslovakia and the arms dealer (Joe Don Baker) and the Afghan opium ring.

The film is a bit of a coming out party for director John Glen, who directed all of the late period Moore films. But his down to earth style never fully jived with the whimsy of the Moore-era, but it does fit with Dalton. Dalton plays the role with an intensity and tenacity that are more reminiscent of Fleming's Bond than Connery's or Moore's. He's a killer and he enjoys being a killer. Very few things are as satisfying in cinema as people who enjoy being good at their jobs. Credit should also go to veteran Bond scribes Richard Maibaum and Michael Wilson for actually creating a script where Bond is genuinely interested in the mystery and does proper espionage instead of bumbling about until he gets captured by the bad guy. 

The strong script keeps the films many action scenes from feeling gratuitous. The scenes are well done even if they still depend more on gimcrackery than craftsmanship. Oh, it's been a while but we also get our first real Bond gadget car since Spy Who Loved Me. I'm really surprised how rarely the series gives 007 a gadget car seeing how I grew up in the Brosnon-era where they were as obligatory as the shaken martini's. This one is an Aston Martin Vantage and it resembles the 90's Bond cars quite well, it's bullet proof, naturally, and has heat-seeking missiles, snow skids and a rocket engine. Or as Bond calls them: "extras."

While we're on the subject of formula elements, lets talk about music. After the success of the Duran Duran single for the previous film, it was decided that this film would have not one but three original songs. The title track is by a-ha (I've never heard of them either) and the other two are by The Pretenders. All of them are pretty terrible as is the score by John Barry (his last for the series). The 80's school of pop just feels so out of place in this darker, more serious Bond. At the very least it dates the film badly.

Despite some bad music, this is one of the better entries of the Bond franchise. The strong script and the darker tone is a welcome break after 7 Moore films. Dalton is a fantastic Bond and it's a pity he'll only get to do one more film.

Grade: B+

The Living Daylights is currently streaming on Netflix Instant.


Enjoy these other Bondathon entries:

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball / Never Say Never Again

You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service 
Diamonds Are Forever
Live and Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun 
The Spy Who Loved Me 
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy  
A View To A Kill
The Living Daylights
Licence To Kill
Goldeneye
Tomorrow Never Dies
The World is Not Enough
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum of Solace
Skyfall

 

BONDATHON: A VIEW TO A KILL

James Bond 14 represented the end of an era. It was the final film of Roger Moore’s tenure. This departure came way too late. His overly mugging performances enabled the creative team to indulge the franchises weakest aspects and lose sight of nearly everything that made the character interesting.  Another problem with Moore’s inclusion at the end of his run is director John Glen. This is his third Bond and his darker, more direct style coupled with more mundane plot lines are at complete odds with the spirit of the Moore-era. The stupid, soul crushing spirit.

The prologue is a good example of this. It’s a rather grim one that finds Bond in Siberia recovering a microchip from a deceased 003 (it’s behind a locket with a family photo) only to be spotted by Soviet agents. During the ensuing ski-chase the soundtrack is invaded by The Beach Boy’s singing “California Girls.” Why does this happen? Because it’s a Roger Moore Bond film, that’s why!

From there we transition into the opening credits. Which are yet again by Maurice Binder. By this point Binder’s title sequences had become even more repetitive and predictable than the films themselves. But here he mixes it up by painting black light patterns and words on the girls. It’s often a garish effect but it is striking. The accompanying theme song by Duran Duran is a bit muddled. I was not surprised to learn that it was the last song the band wrote before they broke up. It feels like two songs stuck together. Lyrically it can’t decide if it wants to meet you “with a view to a kill,” or to simply “dance into the fire.” Fortunately John Barry’s epic symphonic orchestration of the melody fairs much better (attached below)

Back in the plot, that microchip turns out to be very important to national defense and it's manufacturer Max Zorin may be double dealing with the Russians. Time for Bond to investigate! It should be mentioned that Zorin is played by Christopher Walken. That’s right, Oscar winner Christopher “More Cowbell” Walken was a bond villain! After a long stretch of completely forgettable baddies, Walken is the perfect antidote. He’s not quite as gonzo as we know him now, but is clearly having a blast, particularly as he does Judo with his hench-woman May Day (Grace Jones) or when unveils his evil plan aboard his personal blimp. It’s not the writing that makes Zorin memorable, it’s 100% Walken.

In the last review I complained that stylistically, Bond films felt trapped in the past particularly after the action movie really started to come into it's own in the early 80's. This film starts to rectify the issue. Cinematography by the returning Alan Hume feels a bit more dimensional then in his last few efforts and there are some subtle dolly moves that help make the film feel more modern as well.

More important in this regard, are the action scenes. The quality of these scenes very wildly, but they are more dynamically filmed than previous efforts. There’s a great mini-chase where May Day parachutes off the Eiffel Tower and Bond frantically follows her in a car that is first turned into a convertible by a parking gate and then into a mini by a passing truck. It’s as good as these gimmick scenes get. Unfortunately there are some very lame chases near the end in San Francisco, including one where Bond climbs onto the ladder of a speeding firetruck for no real reason. It also doesn’t help that by this point Moore was closer to 60 than 30, meaning it was getting harder and harder to believe that it was Bond saving the world and not a highly trained stunt-team.

Apart from a few of those action scenes and Walken as Zorin, there isn't a whole lot to recommend here. The film's have become little more than products, and very silly ones at that. The franchise wasn't in great shape when Moore came on, but at least there where possibilities. Instead the films became lowest common denominator, tone deaf affairs alternating between great stunts, gruesome kills, and terrible jokes.  Hopefully the two Timothy Dalton films will be better. A View To A Kill is a forgettable swansong. Best described as "The one with Christopher Walken."

Grade: C+ 

Here's an excerpt of John Barry's score for the film. This orchestration of the Duran Duran song is truly gorgeous...until the 80's guitars kick in at the 3 minute mark.


Enjoy these other Bondathon entries:

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball / Never Say Never Again

You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service 
Diamonds Are Forever
Live and Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun 
The Spy Who Loved Me 
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy  
A View To A Kill
The Living Daylights
Licence To Kill
Goldeneye
Tomorrow Never Dies
The World is Not Enough
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum of Solace
Skyfall

BONDATHON: OCTOPUSSY

For a moment it didn’t look like Roger Moore would return. He reportedly didn’t like the violence of For Your Eyes Only and was negotiating his contracts film by film at this point. So Bond mastermind “Cubby” Broccoli was all set to recast the part with American actor James Brolin. This plan would have marked a huge change in the Bond series, but when it was announced that Sean Connery would be starring in a rival James Bond film Never Say Never Again, it was decided that it would be a bad time to introduce a new Bond to the official franchise and Moore was convinced to sign up again for Octopussy.

In East Berlin, there is a fancy dinner party at the residence of the British ambassador. The party will be interrupted by a clown crashing through the Ambassador’s glass doors. He falls dead, a fabergé egg clutched in his hand. This is a mystery too ridiculous for other detectives/super-spies. This looks like a job for Bond, James Bond. It turns out that the clown was Bond’s coworker 009, and while the egg is a fake, it’s drastically important to someone and it’s Bond’s job to find out who’s responsible, and why they’d make such a big deal over a fake egg.

There's lots of inns and outs in this one. Eventually Bond meets a smuggler named Octopussy (Maud Adams) and her all female army. There are all sorts of red herrings and a rogue Soviet general who wants to invade Europe, it's actually a lot more plot than we usually get in a Bond film, certainly more than For Your Eyes Only. The script by novelist George MacDonald Fraser feels like a proper International thriller with twists and title cards telling you where you are and everything. It's not John Le Carre, but it's nice to see them try.

Action scenes aren't bad. There are some nice gimmicks such as a mini-airplane, and the terrifyingly hilarious buzz-saw yo-yo. The standout set pieces include a car chase through the streets of Udaipur, India and a train sequence, both feel almost like direct responses to scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark but without the smooth freneticism of Spielberg. According to lore, Spielberg lobbied for years to direct a Bond film only to be turned down every time for in-house people. Spielberg moved on to beat the franchise at its own pulpy game with Raiders, it moved the genre forward, while the Bond films still look and feel like they could have been made in 1969. The competing Bond film from that year, Never Say Never Again (reviewed more thoroughly here),  isn't the best Bond film, but at least it feels modern. Never also had Sean Connery who brought with him the energy and iconography of the best of Bond.

While we're on the subject of iconography, someone really needs to sit the Bond producers down and have a long talk with them about dress-up. Since Spy Who Loved Me, the Bonds have included a moment where 007 dresses up as other cinematic icons. Scenes like this these can be terrible, can make for some decent chuckles, but they also devalue the character. If an icon has to dress up as another icon, then he’s not really an icon. Every time we see Bond in a Clint Eastwood poncho or, as in this film, swinging from vines doing a Tarzan yell, it’s just saying that Bond isn’t a powerful enough icon to carry a film like this.

James Bond is supposed to be the ultimate fantasy symbol. He has the clothes we will never afford, takes the cars we will never drive to the places we will never go to meet the girls we will never have a shot with. Yet in the Roger Moore era, all those elements have been diluted to the point that late in Octopussy, we have James Bond literally dressing up as a clown.

Ladies!!!

Not only is he dressed as a clown, he's dressed as a clown while disarming an atomic warhead. This is, sadly, not the low point of the series (That is still Man With The Golden Gun), but it does signify that the producers care more about their little throw away jokes than character or tone. Bond doesn't need to be super serious, whimsy is fine. But I need to believe, on some level, that this character exists in a plausible world, otherwise the fantasy breaks down and the iconography breaks down.

Grade: C+

Enjoy these other Bondathon entries:

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball / Never Say Never Again

You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service 
Diamonds Are Forever
Live and Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun 
The Spy Who Loved Me 
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy  
A View To A Kill
The Living Daylights
Licence To Kill
Goldeneye
Tomorrow Never Dies
The World is Not Enough
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum of Solace
Skyfall