Blog, James Blog

Casino Royale

Title: Casino Royale

Year: 2006. The 21^st James Bond film jumped on two of the biggest trends of mid-aught’s with both feet, poker and the Hollywood reboot and after the disastrous Die Another Day (2002) the worlds biggest film franchise was ripe for latter. The first time I came across the concept of “the reboot” was in comic books in the 80’s. A reboot was a way to wipe the slate clean and begin anew with characters we already loved. They could be given new origin stories, both friends and foes alike could be brought back from the dead, and if we were lucky, maybe some of them would end up in snazzy new costumes. This is why, say Wolverine for instance, has four different origin stories and over half a dozen looks. Add the X-Men movies, cartoons, toys, and video games and it would take all the Mormons in Utah to untangle his family tree. But that is part of the point, by constantly reinventing the wheel, or Adamantium claw, Marvel can keep bringing in new fans who don’t need to be bogged down in decoding years worth of mythology. The first time I remember hearing the concept applied to film was with Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins (2005), a reboot of the Batman films that started with Tim Burton, ended with Joel Shitmaker, and where themselves a reboot of the campy TV series. Different from a prequel, which suggests some kind of continuity, or a remake, which implies a classic we loved as kids but with more CGI, Tim Burton, and Johnny Deep, reboots have become the hottest Hollywood buzz word since adaptation and full frontal nudity. Recent years have seen everything from 21 Jump Street (2012) to Star Trek (2009) to The Pink Panther (2006) get the “modern spin.” Countless 80’s slasher flicks from Halloween (2007) to Friday the 13^th (2009) to Nightmare on Elm St. (2010) have been ghoulishly brought back from the dead. Some reboots have launched franchise were there were none before (I hear rumors of a third The Hills Have Eyes picture) while some, like The Warriors (1979) in Los Angeles, have mercifully, never made it past pre-production. Some are strange hybrids like Rise of Planet of the Apes (2011) which was a prequel to Planet of the Apes (1968) but also a loose remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) while simultaneously acting as a reboot of the failed attempt at rebooting the franchise with the Tim Burton remake of Planet of the Apes (2001). This is quite a bit of monkey around but when it comes to rebooting at the drop of a hat, superheroes have proven to be the worst offenders. This summer we will have The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), a reboot of the less then five year old trilogy of two great, one terrible Sam Raimi Spider-Man films. That whole Superman Returns (2006) reboot thing didn’t work out so here comes Man of Steal (2013). (Zack Snyder??? Really guys?) The most egregious of these has to be the big green guy. When Eric Bana didn’t work in Ang Lee’s Hulk (2003) Marvel simply turned around and made The Incredible Hulk (2008). But when star Edward Norton and the studio had a falling out they brought in Mark Ruffalo to play Bruce Banner in this summers The Avengers (2012). Who cares who plays the mild manner doctor the thinking goes, the star is CGI anyway. All of this is a way of saying that the reboot has become a way to put a new quarter into the machine and start the game over. Studios love em because all past mistakes can be erased and the fashion of the day, be it snarky or dark or 3-D, can be grafted onto a character we as an audience what to watch. Take the three Hulks of the last decade. Lee’s “Thinking Man’s Hulk” was the dark, boarding, probing, questioning hero of post 9/11 America. Norton’s was much more action driven, a globe trotting man out to right wrongs and run over roof tops in Brazil during a chase that looked nothing at all like the roof top chase in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). (Just sayin’) If we are to believe the trailers (and that’s all we’ve got at this point) Ruffalo’s Banner looks to be the straight man to Downey’s sarcastic, quip happy Tony Stark. With that in mind, the James Bond character in Casino Royale is to Die Another Day as the Batman of Batman Begins is to Batman & Robin (1997). Another fantastic trick the Bond reboot pulls off is dropping Bond’s favorite card game, the now nearly forgotten Baccarat, and replacing it with the game of the moment, Texas Hold’ Em. In his 1978 book “Super System,” AKA The bible of poker, Doyle Brunson wrote that no limit Texas Hold’ Em was the purest form of poker even thought at the time it was little know outside of the American Southwest and Five Card draw was the preferred game of the day. Fast forward to 2003 when an accountant from Connecticut took a $40 buy-in and went onto win the bracelet and $2.5 million at the World Series of Poker playing Texas Hold Em. Poker exploded. Once a shady game played by hustlers and cutthroats in smoky back rooms now poker was played by celebrities on primetime television. From a TV standpoint it helped tremendously that the game of Hold Em was not only very easy to follow, it’s structured so that five of the seven cards a player is holding are exposed, making it the most visually appealing of poker games. So much so that an action film such as Bond could build an entire movie around the game, all be it with some machete attacks and a lethal poisoning throw in to keep everything interesting. Hey, it maybe a reboot, but it’s still Bond, James Bond.

Film Length: 2 hours 24 minutes.

Bond Actor: Daniel Craig. In October of 2004, Pierce Brosnan told the world he would not be returning to make a fifth James Bond picture and once again the search was on for the new Bond. Rampant press speculation and vocal public opinion about who should get to fill Bond’s shoes have always been a part of the casting process, but EON was not prepared for the tsunami of coverage that followed their quest for 007 number 6. Thanks to shows like “American Idol,” viewers and fans now felt as if they were part of the process and thought they could actually vote actors off the island by simply making enough noise. They also, for the first time, had the tool to make their shouts heard and the internet exploded as everyone with access to a keyboard saw fit to add their two cents. In something of a wag the dog scenario the “mainstream press” played along and by the summer of 2005 it seamed like any actor with an English accent was up for the role including Ioan Gruffudd, Hugh Grant, Gerard Butler, Heath Ledger and Eric Bana. By October, just days before EON was to announce the new Bond, the BBC website had taken to posting odds in real time. The dark horses were Ewan McGregor, Hugh Jackman and Colin Farrell at 12/1, Clive Own had an outside shot at 10/1, Julian McMahorn was right in the mix at 4/1 but the odds on favorite at 1/3 was Englishman Daniel Craig. While not as well known internationally as Jackman, Farrell or McGregor, Craig had been a staple of English TV in the 90’s and stared in the acclaimed show “Our Friends up North.” Craig gained wider fame as Alex West in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and as Conner Rooney in Road to Perdition (2002), “a big baby who doesn’t know his thumb from his d**k!” (Not my words.) He went on to prove he looked great carrying a gun in the strangely overrated Layer Cake (2004) and the criminal underrated Munich (2005). In what should have been a career highlight, Craig was introduced to the world as the new James Bond after arriving at a riverfront press conference on a Royal Marine gunboat. All the actor did that day was get off the boat, walk onto the dock, wave, and say a few words. However, if you were to hear the shriek of harsh, ugly and in some case threateningly negative bile that immediately followed you would have though he pushed the Queen into the Thames. It is no exaggeration to say the backlash was by far the worst EON had ever experienced. SOME FANS THINK NEW BOND SHOULD BE SELLING BONDS the Columbus Dispatch declared and went on to criticize the actor for wearing a life jacket whiles onboard the bouncing, speeding boat. (The article failed to mention that the dozen or so Marines that escorted the actor were also wearing the safety devices.) “He looks more like a banker than James Bond.” the article concluded. BOND GONE BLOND?” asked several U.S. papers including the St. Louis Dispatch. Over on the nets, some enterprising twit founded www.danielcraigisnotbond.com and called for a boycott of the new film. Thousands singed up in protest. Daniel Craig actually received hate mail and threats from “fans” that had yet to see a frame of film. Things were so bad Brosnan felt the need to make a statement on the actors behalf. Sir Sean chimed in saying “Craig’s a great choice, really interesting – different. He’s a good actor,” but none of it helped. By the summer of 2006, just months before the film’s release, the story shifted gears and became about the blowback. On July 31, 2006 the WENN website reported that “New James Bond star Daniel Craig has been stunned by the bitter backlash he has received since replacing Piece Brosnan as the secret agent last year. Craig …was disheartened when thousands of fans called on film-makers EON to ditch him and bring back Brosnan – claiming the Munich star was “too ugly” for the role. The 38-year-old star says, ‘I didn’t expect this backlash. You take it in, you can’t help it. I’ve been trying to give 110 per cent since the beginning but after all the fuss, maybe I started giving 115 per cent.’” Good on Craig for taking the right attitude and good on EON for not folding in the face a torch bearing mob, it couldn’t have been easy. Then, in November of 2006, something funny happened on the way to a theater near you. Mainly, people actually saw the film and Craig went from zero to hero quicker then the public changed their mind on Mel Gibson in the summer of 2010. Overnight he became the best Bond yet, better then Connery! Casino Royale was the best Bond picture ever! Q and Moneypenny and Moore and Brosnan were suddenly relics from a forgotten time. This is all fun to look at in retrospect but we have seen it again and again and again on the internet. The truth is, the public was 100% wrong when attacking an actor before seeing his performance and they were equally wrong to dismiss everything that came before him after enjoying his movie. A moment to editorialize, it’s very much this “with us or against” (thanks a lot W) mentality that has come to dominate discourse in the first decade of the 21^st century from politics to pop culture. Adding to the ugliness is the speed at which this all happens. We as a public now feel the need to own a thing, chew it up and spit it out, and then once we’re done with it, it’s on to the next hot thing people want to take ownership of. Whatever happened to reflecting on a thing, seeing in the context of history and as a larger piece of work? The sad truth is the public as a whole has become utterly stupid and completely entitled at the same time, a deadly combination that makes consumers of pop-culture reactionary buffoons with no rudder to stay on course. This puts the creators of pop-culture products in a position where they simply can not gage the quality of their work based on public reaction or box office numbers and the work suffers. The only thing a creative person can do is give everything to their performance or screenplay or whatever job they may have on a project and once it’s out there, 100% forget about it. Sadly, fewer and fewer people take this attitude and that is why we get nothing but “sure things” like action sequels, remakes, and yes, reboots. This is the state of Hollywood people complain about while shelling out money for the next Transformers film.

Director: Martin Campbell. Die Another Day (2002) felt more like a 40^th anniversary sizzle-reel then a film, playing like a bloated parody of a Bond picture as opposed to the real deal. Now, with the past completely strip mined, EON could finally let it rest in peace and start fresh. In order to reinvent James Bond, EON decided to; if I may paraphrase Doc. Emmett Brown, go forward to the past. Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were the first to bring Ian Fleming’s spy to the big screen, but not the screen. In 1954 a television show called “Climax!” aired a 53 minute teleplay staring Barry Nelson as CIA agent Jimmy Bond in “Casino Royale.”

A few years later Fleming was able to sell all his books to EON save his first since the rights were still held by “Climax!” producers. So Broccoli and Saltzman just ignored the first book and kicked everything off with Dr. No (1962). After Bond became a global sensation in the 60’s the producers who held the rights to the first novel “rebooted” their television show with the Casino Royale (1967) film, a movie with seven James Bonds and zero credibility. Fast forward to 1999 when as part of a settlement with Sony the keepers of the Bond flame, Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, finally secured the rights to Fleming’s first book. After Die Another Day turned the smallest profit for a Bond film to date, EON decided to start fresh and not only reinvent Bond as a harder edged character, but for the first time tell his origin story. As he was called upon to do with GoldenEye (1995) director Martin Campbell was once again brought in to update and reboot James Bond. In watching the DVD extras it is strongly implied that Campbell, the man who directed Brosnan’s first Bond film, played a big part in getting Brosnan booted off this one. Once the decision was made to go back the beginning it made sense, the thinking went, to get a younger Bond as well as an actor not already associated with the role. Fair enough. Campbell, it must be said, has wonderful instincts. GoldenEye is the last gem in the Bond canon up to this point and let’s says right off the bat that Casino Royale is the best looking Bond film since the heydays of the 60’s. The colors just pop off the screen, the locations and sets are rich without going over the top, and everything has the hyper-reality look, from the cars to the women to the chips and cards on the table, that we want from a James Bond film. After the CGI melting planes and invisible cars of the last film this one feels rooted in the real. The fights are much more violent and we feel every punch. A torture scene features both actors dripped in sweet to the point where we smell the dankness of the room. A chase though a construction site and into an embassy leaves us out of breath. As he did with GoldenEye, Campbell once again gets to the core of what makes Bond Bond and the old agent is reborn in his camera lens. The first two thirds of the film move with the economy of a modern thriller but it’s never rushed. And the details, rich and correct, contribute a charm to this film is a huge way that I think was overlooked when the film was first released. Much was made of this being a “darker, no nonsense” Bond which is true in a way but this isn’t brooding hero like say Nolan’s Batman or the new Bond on the block, Jason Bourne. Dark is often meant to mean joyless but not here. In fact, the Bond of this film has just as much humor and I would argue more mischievous joy then any previous incarnation. Like a 16-year-old who just got a license to dive, Bond has earned his 00 and he can’t wait to flash it all over town.

Reported Budget: $150 million estimated, a nice round number and a mere $8 million more then the most expensive previous film four years previous. Bond films have always featured prominent product placement but since the three film deal with BMW for the first Brosnan pictures the corporate financing deals have become s favorite target for critics. In his film The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (2011), provocateur Morgan Spulock focuses in on close-up shots of Ericsson phones in both of Craig’s outings and holds a “special place in hell” for an exchange between 007 and the Bond girl where she asks about his watch. “Rolex?” “Omega” Bond replies. “The fact you are having a conversation about a watch is ridiculous,” hissed Spurlock. If products are arbitrarily thrown into a film or if a plot point is inserted simply to include a product and not as part of the story then yes, call everyone involved out. However, I think Spurlock has his panties in a bunch over a whole lot of nothing in this case. The cell phone is an integral part of the plot in this film and never once did I notice the name on the receiver, big HD flat screen and all. As for the Omega conversation, it’s organic and goes by without creating a bump. There are much worse offenders, like the Q Dollar Car Rental guy selling the BMW in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). Spurlock needs to relax and go have another Big Mac.

Reported Box-office: $167,445,000 US and $594,239,000 worldwide. That is a big time number in the U.S. alone but still only good for #9 on the year. Once “The Franchise” in town, now Bond has nothing but franchise to compete with including the X-Men: Last Stand (#4), Superman Returns (#6), Ice Age: Melt Down (#8) and Disney’s little theme park ride that could, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man Chest (#1). A side note, I enjoyed the first Pirate film and I would watch Jonny Deep read the phone book but that second one? What the hell was that? I have not seen any of the subsequent films so perhaps it gets better but man, that movie makes the 1967 Casino Royale look like a Merchant and Ivory picture.

Theme Song: “You Know My Name” by Chris Cornell, not to be confused with the Beatles novelty song “You Know My Name, Look Up the Number.” Cornell not only performs but also co-wrote the tune with a Bond theme vet. This song has the distinction of being the only Bond theme to not be included on the official sound track album. Cornell instead released it on his second solo effort, “Carry On.” A few things… first off, I’m old school when it comes to the Rock and/or Roll. I still feel that album covers should mean something. I remember being a kid and sitting on the living room floor to look at my dad’s record collection and just freaking out over Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Meat Loaf’s “Bat out of Hell” covers. They were windows to a different world and completely influenced the way I heard the music on the record. The scene where the kid finds the albums under his bed in Almost Famous (2000) gives me chills and makes my throat swell up. So, all that said, check out this album cover.

Truth is, I’m not always right when it comes to music but I was onto this douche from day one. I’m a white kid from suburban New Jersey who graduated high school in 1992 with hair down to my mid back. When I wasn’t moping around the school’s halls I would watch crappy VHS copies of Clockwork Orange (1971) and Taxi Driver (1976) with my only two friends. In other words, I’m the poster child for Gen X alienation and grunge was targeted right at my soul. Thing was, I didn’t buy it. Of the “Big Four” the band I was most into at the time would have been the glam leaning Alice in Chains. I loved Layne Staley voice and you want to talk album covers; the “Facelift” jacket says it all. The band I did miss the mark on was Nirvana who I just lumped in with the rest as a joke until I saw them live in ’93 or ‘94. It was one of those deals where I literally ran out the next day to buy all their records. Again, I’m not always right. I haven’t thought about Alice In Chains for years and Nirvana is the only band out of that scene, other then Mudhoney, that I still listen to today. I could never stand the arena rock gods that were Pearl Jam, they always sounded like Jock Rock to me. And that leaves Soundgarden who I viewed as the bottom of the grunge barrel, floating around down there with the likes of Bush and STP. In the early 1990’s, Soundgarden was everywhere. You couldn’t walk through a parking lot without hearing Cornell’s ridiculously forced pipes belting out all his angst about a “Spoonman” or his Jesus Rock Star Pose. As a result, I actively rejected not only Pearl Jam and Soundgarden but there fans. My friend Mike and I took to calling any band labeled “alternative” by the name Stone Garden Pumpkin Jam. You know that Onion T-Shirt “Your favorite band sucks?” That was me pissing on Soundgarden fans ice cream whenever I had the chance. I was young and I was an asshole and it wasn’t a cool thing to do but I wasn’t wrong about the music. And did history not prove that Cornell is every bit the tool I always knew he was? Dose anyone on Gods green earth own an Audio Slave record? Did we really need a Cornell/Timberland project? Wouldn’t you happily give up six month at the end of your life if you were guarantied to never, ever hear “Hunger Strike” again? Well, just take a listen to this Bond theme.

Ummhummm. Can we please get the great Shirley Bassey back in the studio immediately?

Opening Titles: The best we’ve seen in ages. A perfect mix of traditional Bond titles injected with some much needed update serum. Just like the film, the vibe of the titles is looking back while going forward. The theme is playing cards, which fly around the screen like we are stuck inside a game of 52 pick up. Trim on the King of Heart’s robe extends off the card and curls around silhouettes of dudes in Man Men era suits. When the men get shot with heart shaped bullets they fall into a pile of diamonds. Cross-hair targets get spun into roulette wheels and a 7 of hearts gets two bullet holes blasted into it coming up luck 007. The art is in the distinct early 60’s style of say Dr. No’s titles or the Catch Me If You Can (2002) credits. At the end, one of the silhouettes comes into focus and staring out at us is the new blond haired, blue eyed Bond, unblinking and ready for action. Get your blinds in the middle and deal em up. Game on!

Opening Action Sequence: We open not with the familiar UA logo and gun barrel but a black and white MGM into Columbia logo. The B&W stock carries over into the film giving it an immediate back to basics, classical feel. The title card tells us we are in Prague, Czech Republic while the glass elevator and modern architecture of the building tell us we are in the present, despite the black and white. A man enters his office to be greeted by another sitting in the dark. “M really doesn’t mind you earning a little money on the side, Dryden. She’d just prefer it if it wasn’t selling secrets.” Dryden sits down, gets his gun ready, and explains the new world of Bond to us in a few short sentences. “Spare me the dramatics Bond. If M was so sure I was bent, she would have sent a double O. Your file shows no kills, it takes two.” Cut to a bathroom, a more saturated black and white, as we witness Bond drowning a man in a sink. This is a violent, hand to hand, close-up death. The look on Bonds face lets us know the kill means something. He is also a quick study. When Dryden pulls his piece and fires on Bond, the gun makes an anticlimactic click. Seeing in Bond’s eye that the first kill has been made, Dryden tries to impart some wisdom “Don’t worry, the second is…” bang! “Yes, considerably” the newly baptized 00 responds, establishing himself as the cold blooded bastard he will need to be. As the camera gives us our first good look at the new Bond, Craig’s face is closer to Connery’s then any other Bond. Pierce was pretty, Moore was stylishly handsome, Lazenby had a models face, and Dalton was a stuffed suit but Craig looks like a soccer hooligan, all be it a very good looking hooligan. He has the creases and rough and tumble face of a man whose been out in the world and raised a bit of hell. His fixed eyes tell you he’s not to be crossed. For his conformation, Bond turns to the camera and shoots down the black and white gun barrel as red blood drips down to fill the frame. Welcome aboard 007.

Bond’s Mission: Bond’s mission started with the fall of Paris in June of 1940. Just hours after the Germans marched down the Champs-Élysées, a young writer named Ian Fleming entered one of Paris finest restaurants and found it empty. The owner, facing the reality of living under Nazi occupation, broke out his finest wine and the two men sat, talked, and drank. A lot. Fleming later made his way to Lisbon and asked the locals where he could find the German officers. They sent him to the Casino Estoril where he watched as the men drank and threw their money around at the tables. “If only I could take them on” a young Fleming thought, “I could bankrupt the German army.” This proud patriot didn’t have the means or skill to do so that evening but he went on to create a character that could. “Casino Royale” is about a high stakes Baccarat game organized by a banker to the bad guys who needs to raise funds quickly and the spy who sits at the table with enough charm, smarts, and luck to take the banker’s lunch. For a franchise that has made it name on action oriented gadgets defeating world dominating villains, a card game may seem to be a rather dull affair. Enter another hip 2006 trend known as free running AKA Parkour. The newest 00 is in Madagascar tracking a bomb maker. You know the guy is badass, not because he crafts weapons of mass destruction, but because he spends his leisure time betting on mongoose vs. cobra fights. Take that Michael Vick. And speaking of mongooses, as a public service Blog James Blog offers this Chris Cornell palette cleanser, the Donovan ode to the most famous mongoose of all, Riki Tiki Tavi!

You’re welcome. Bond, being the rookie, has been saddled with a complete incompetent he calls Carter who not only blows their cover but falls into the cobra pit. Bomb guy runs and Bond gives chase first through the forest and then up, down and all around a high rise construction site. As the baddy moves, Parkour style, like a ballerina around objects Bond smash, crashes, stumbles and stammers ever forward like a drunk behind the wheel of a tank. He’s fast, he’s effective, but he is far from pretty. When the baddy jumps from a 25 story high crane arm to a 22 story high one below and then to a nearby roof (in one, glorious, continues shot) he does so with the grace of a gold medal gymnast. Bond jumps and makes it, but with the clammier and clanking of a bull in china shop. The chase, expertly shot and adrenaline pumping exciting also serves as a window into who this James Bond is. He is every bit the blunt instrument M calls him but is also full of those wonderfully youthful qualities, drive and ignorance. Our hero will never quit, even when he is clearly bested. How gratifying, after the gratuitous car chases and sunbeam races of the last film that here, a chase not only moves the plot forward but also develops character. In addition, there are great moments of humor, like when the baddy throws an empty gun at Bond’s head and gets it thrown back at him with double the force. Martin Campbell ladies and gentlemen. It’s also worth noting that Craig does in fact move incredibly well, and fast, and he is physical in a way Bond had never been. By the time the chases ends up in an embassy, Bond marches in like he has an appointment and gives anyone who gets in his way a good crack on the head. Craig reminded me of the Terminator in these scenes, his face showing no emotion, his eye focused and unblinking, as he marched forward leaving a wake of destruction in his path. For the coup de grace, Bond kills the bomb maker in the courtyard of his embassy, blows up the facade on the front of the embassy, and takes off with the bomb maker’s bag which contains a bomb and his cell phone. Killing a man while he is inside his embassy is like punching the mother of the bride in the face during a toast at the wedding reception, it’s simply not done and Bond just did it. All of a sudden the man we have spent all these years with and got to know so well is something he hasn’t been since Nixon was in office; dangerous. 007 quickly cements his unpredictably reckless streak when he breaks into M’s house. Before M shows up Bond hops on her computer to trace a text, the single word “Ellipsis,” he found on the bomb maker’s phone to a precise time and place, the Ocean Club in the Bahamas. When M returns home, none to happy to find Bond in her house after he appeared on the front pages for blowing up an embassy, the boss lady tells him to go bury his head in the sand. Guess what beach he chooses?

Villain’s Name: Le Chiffre. Republicans typically regard the French with a sneering scorn but I think they would find a kindred spirit in Le Chiffre. A fantastic villain, Le Chiffre is not your dad’s Bond baddy. He is not building a weapon to take over the world nor is he hell bent on distorting it. In fact, he can best be described as an opportunistic middle man with no morals or scruples. In real life we call them hedge fund mangers and like a true Wall St. scum bag when the going gets tough he squirms and twists and runs for the gutter like the rat he is. I loved him. He is also the appropriate villain for Bond to take on at this point in his career, Blofeld would wipe the floor with this green agent, he needs to work his way up and where better to start then with the banker to the world terrorists. We first see Le Chiffre being introduced to a Ugandan war lord by the shadowy Mr. White. These terrorist, by the by, look just like what I would think terrorist look like, not a jumpsuit clad guy carrying a clipboard among them. Le Cheffre, an Albanian chess prodigy and mathematical genius, provides a rate of return and promises access to the money at anytime, anywhere in the world. He also enjoys poker and high risk investments, both of which will prove to be his downfall.

Villain Actor: Mads Mikkelsen. He’s fantastically smarmy as the slimy, sweaty, atypical Bond villain. Bond baddies are always in 100% complete control, until Bond does that one thing to yank the carpet out from underneath them at the eleventh hour. Mikkelsen’s villain is in a pickle that Bond helps to put him in but also of his own making and in trying to escape he digs his hole deeper. Mikkelsen is also Danish.

Villain’s Plot: Our man has a plan and he wastes no time. The second he has the Ugandan war lords money in hand he is putting it to work, shorting a major airline known as Sky Fleet. His broker recommends against such action since in days time the company will be unveiling the jet of the future at Miami International. “No one expects the stock to go anywhere but up.” Indeed, but Le Chiffre has some insider knowledge, mainly that the plane is going to explode on the runway. His first choice to carry out the attack was shot dead in front of his embassy but not to worry, there is a backup ready to come off the bench. Meanwhile, Bond is in full on detective mode and in the most logical A to B to C manner, ends up at Miami Airport with the password, “Ellipsis,” to get him on to the runway. After a spectacular chase on the tarmac pretty much everything at the airport but the new super jet gets destroyed. Bond saves the day and Le Chiffre looses one hundred and one million, two hundred and six thousand dollars of terrorist money; news the villain greats with a pull off his inhaler. Since these are not the kind of guys who take IOUs, Le Chiffre does what rich guys do when the screw the pooch, quickly try to leverage another bet using highly moneyed connections. How else could he so quickly arrange a high-stakes poker game at the Casino Royale with 10 players, $10 million buy-in, $5 million re-buys, and winner take all for a possible $150 million? Needless to say, Le Chiffre doesn’t plan on loosing. Meanwhile, turns out Bond is the best card player at MI6 and gets the gig. His mission; take the table. For those who don’t play poker and are used to world melting lasers the steaks may seem quite low. On the contrary, this is a chance to de-finance God only knows how many terror attacks and if Le Chiffre doesn’t win, who knows what baddies will crawl out of the wood work to collect. I also can’t stress how well structured and paced the build up is to the big game is. There are zero leaps in logic and Bond learns what’s happening as we do. Leading up to the main event the film is constructed as tightly and precisely as an Omega wrist-watch.

Villain’s Lair: There are all kinds of poker players and when you sit down at a public table you never know what kind is sitting across from you. The first time we get a feel for what kind of a player Le Chiffre is he’s hosting two others on board his yacht. While another player is deciding how to bet, Le Chiffre does one of the more obnoxious things you can do at a table, tell the other guy what he’s looking at. “I have two pair and you have a 17.4% chance of making the straight.” This is the height of arrogance and while it may serve to put an inexperienced or hotheaded opponent on tilt, it is also a poor strategy against more experienced players who will see thought the trick and pick-up tells while doing so. It worked here however as Le Chiffre’s opponent folds. Le Chiffre also has access to an old smelting mill right out of the Saw franchise where he engages in some homoerotic torture. Not that there is anything wrong with that. The homoerotic part that is … no torture is wrong under any circumstance. To clarify, homoerotic fine, torture not, despite what the Republican Party has to say on both subjects. Right, so Le Chiffre cuts a hole out of the bottom of a chair, strips Bond naked, and tries him to said chair. The room is a rusty, filthy dungeon and both men are so sweaty you can smell their body odor through the screen. One of the many genius things Quentin Tarantino does as a writer is have characters explain the horrific things they are doing or going to do. So, when we see it happen, we know exactly what kind of pain/agony the character is going through. Daryl Hannah reading the effects of Black Mamba poison to Michael Madsen as he is experiencing it in Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004) or Eric Stoltz describing how the needle needs to be rammed through the breast bone in Pulp Fiction (1994) would be two easy examples. Here, Le Chiffre walks around swinging the rope and then gives a light tap to Bond’s under carriage. He screams and we all know what’s coming next and when it does, we feel it with Bond. This is the exact opposite of the North Korean torture scene from the last film. This is real. This is gross. This hurts. But boy oh boy dose Bond put up a heroic front. “I’ve got an itch, down there, do you mind?” Whack! “Ohhhhhhh, no no no, to the right, to the right!” Talk about quips! Eat your heart out Roger Moore.

Villain’s Coolest Accessory/ Trait: The man cries blood. It’s a wonderful touch. Watching Le Chiffre calmly blot his eye as others look on in horror is simply fantastic. Don’t think so? Picture sitting next to this guy on the subway. He also has a platinum plated asthma inhaler which serves to emphasize this is not a physical guy. He is an intellectual villain in the proud tradition of Bond baddies but unlike others of his stripe, he has no muscle, no Jaws or Oddjob, to step up when the going gets tough. This is an oversight he will regret.

Badassness of Villain: Forgetting the whole poisoning opponent’s drinks, which Le Chiffre does do, I still would never want to play with this bastard. Not because he is all that good (and in what we saw of his play, he is not) but because of how he plays. Indeed, the telling other people their odds is a prick move but he out does himself at the Royale in what maybe the most obnoxious move you can make at a table. In one of the earlier hands we see Le Chiffre bet out $50 thousand on a 9,8,5, all hearts flop. Bond calls and forth street comes the 9 of clubs. Le Chiffre bets out $100 thousand and Bond smooth calls, all the while pretending to be distracted by a lady. The 2 of hearts comes on the river and the aggressor bets $200 thousand and Bond calls. Le Chiffre then “slow rolls” to show he has the best possible hand; a boat, nines full of twos. Bond throws his flush into the muck. The thing is, Le Chiffre was behind the whole time, bluffing, and caught a huge break on both the turn and the river. As my buddy Johnny would say, runner, runner, nothing funner. He was out played but got lucky. When that happens one should be graceful in taking the chips, humbling accepting the gift, and move on. However, Le Chiffre not only acts like he out played Bond, he “slow rolls” his hand. That is to say, he exhales as if he has lost, holds his cards so others can’t see them, then slowly reviles just one card, again to make it look like he has lost, and then reveals the second card to show the winning hand while saying “oops.” Violence at the table is not normally condoned however in response to a move like that, for that much money; I don’t think anyone would be too pissed if Bond punched Le Chiffre in the nose. However, Bond takes it in stride, having picked up Le Chiffre’s tell and makes his way to the bar for a drink. Better man than I. Le Chiffre also over plays/ slow rolls later when after kidnapping Bond’s girl and capturing a nearly dead 007’s on the side of the road, the baddy brags about how he got to him. “I’m afraid your friend Mathis is really my friend Mathis.” Again, no need to rub it in dude and besides, you still don’t havz da money Lebowski! Truly a sadist, I think Le Chiffre enjoyed whacking Bond in the giblets, getting the password for the money was a fringe benefit. All this adds up to make him badass, just not in the traditional way.

Villain’s Asides/ Henchmen: When Bond broke into M’s place, he found out the text the bomb maker received, “Ellipsis,” came from the Ocean Club in Bahamas. When Bond gets to the club he takes note of the security cameras, something he failed to do when he blew up the embassy. Our young spy is learning. He breaks into the security offices, pulls the surveillance tape with the date and time the text was received, and sees a man stepping out of an Aston Martin, sending a text. Next to reception where Bond tells the lady he is oh so sorry to report his door nicked an Aston Martin in the parking lot. Who owns it so he can make a personal apology? Why that would be Alex Dimitrios who lives right up the beach. This seamless flow from one piece of the puzzle to the next not only leads Bond to the baddy it also builds who Bond is to become. When Bond finally meets up with Dimitrios it is at a poker table where Dimitrios is loosing badly and behaving worse. When his beautiful lady comes over to give him a kiss he hisses “If that was for luck you are two hours late.” Nice, nothing better then taking your loosing out on your lady. So steaming is Dimitrios that he becomes blinded by his cowboys and ignores the ace that came on the flop. For reasons only EON can explain the betting goes backwards on the turn (a 7 of hearts) and Dimitrios puts out a $5 thousand dollar feeler. Bond bites as others clear out of the way and the river comes a K. With the whack-a-doodle hand once again proceeding clockwise Bond checks. Dimitrios, having made his set but short stacked can’t take full advantage and reaches into his wallet, another big no-no. “Table stakes only sir” the dealer scolds as Dimitrios breaks into a sweet. “Here, these were on the table” he says tossing forward the keys to his Aston Martin. “Sir” the dealer starts but Bond says he will allow it, “Give him a chance to win his money back.” Wouldn’t you know it, Bond’s got pocket rockets plus the A on the table and three aces is better then three kings every time and twice on Sunday. “The valet ticket please.” And just like that we watched Bond get his first Aston Martin, won in a card game. This character is beginning to take shape me thinks…

Bond Girl Actress: Eva Green. A show biz kid born in Paris, Green acted in several films before she became more involved in various other artistic pursuits. That’s all I got and for that reason alone I applaud EON for looking past southern California when it came to casting the Bond girl.

Bond Girl’s Name: Vesper Lynd. Ursula Andress’ Honey Rider will always be films first Bond girl but Vesper was the first to steal Bond’s heart, in the books at least. Long time readers will be familiar with Blog James Blog’s weakness for trains in film so the very fact that Bond meets Vesper on board a train is a promising start. Vesper is, as she introduces herself, “the money,” which is to say an accountant in charge of keeping an eye on the crowns $10 million buy-in and Bonds handling of it. She has also been authorized to give Bond the additional $5 million buy-in should he bust but it’s at her discretion. This, needless to say, becomes key. But for now back to that pleasant train ride. Bond and Vesper size each other up as only people in movies do, reading each other their resumes as a “get to know you” game of one-upmanship. It’s cute, I guess, but if it happened in real life it would be the most obnoxious business partner meeting in the history of business. This exchange also allows Vesper to play the role of audience members who may not be familiar with poker or are of the school that it’s “just a game of luck.” Because of this fundamental lack of home work on her part (would you not learn everything you could about where you’re investing your $10 million?) I found her to be a little cold. Bond however sees the nut as a hard one to crack and decides to push her buttons at every turn. In the car on the way to the game he informs her they will be in the same suite to keep up appearance as per their cover only to turn around and check into the hotel as James Bond promptly blowing that cover. To her credit she takes it and gives back just as good, particularly when the two pick out each others outfits for the big game. By the time they made their way down stairs I warmed to dear Vesper but Bond was already smitten; hook, line and sinker. By games end Bond realizes she is spoken for and being the true gent, pulls back a bit. A kidnapping, a ball beating, and an escape later and she’s all over him and he’s taking like a bad Hallmark card. “I have no more armor left” Bond confesses before making like the son of Jor-el in Superman II (1980). And it’s not just talk, Bond emails his one sentence MI6 resignation letter to M and from all I can tell seems 110% committed to becoming this woman’s house husband. And here is the rub, this is all just as clumsy as I just made it sound. I loved this movie but after my first viewing for this project I had a nagging issue, an uneasy feeling that something was seriously broken and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. With the second viewing all became clear; Vesper is this movies kryptonite. When Superman was willing to give up all his power for Lois Lane, I bought it. It was easy as pie to understand exactly why Superman would sacrifice everything he is for this woman. Why would Bond, who worked so hard to get his 00 and is just now having the larger world that his new status gains him opening up before him, give it all up? The problem is not that he would do so for a woman but for this woman. Lazenby’s Bond in love with Tracy? Hell and yes, who wouldn’t fall in love with her? Vesper, as presented here (I have not read the book), has been hot and cold and left and right and all over the place. But above all else she committed an unforgivable sin on both the professional and personal level that Bond, no matter how pulverized his manhood became in Le Chiffre’s dungeon, would never be able to overlook.

Bond Girl Sluttiness: From a recent entry on Roger Ebert’s blog:

Most movie orgasms are perfunctory. Often we start with an action movie, introduce a woman, and then it becomes semi-obligatory for the hero to have sex with the woman. Routine examples of this can be found in the Bond films. His sex must be devoid of emotional significance, or 007′s eyes would be deep, sunken pits after sleepless nights spent recalling the 30 or so women who have lost their lives after sleeping with him. Often a Bond movie will close with Bond and one of the women relaxing on an idyllic isle, but at the start of the next film these promising relationships have not survived. Possibly there’s something sexually flawed about James.

This film, being a new beginning, seems to want to change all of the above. They do so firstly by making Vesper the love of Bonds life, then making him truly feel her death, and finally by carrying her loss through to the end of this movie which implies that Bond 22 is going to be about 007 going on a kill crazy rampage to avenge his ladies death. All wonderful ideas, the only problem is it aint that easy to un-teach this new dog his old tricks. Everyone’s heart is in the right place but EON and Co. fumble play. To recover from the ball beating, Bond is resting in a wheelchair at some kind of hospice. This is a major departure in and of itself, I don’t think Roger Moore ever suffered as much as a hang nail. Vesper jumps at the chance to take advantage of this wounded man, first telling him you can have me whenever you want and then wiring the money to a false account. She showed no interest in bedding Bond until now when she needs to play him. Not understanding the bluff earlier in the film she now becomes the coldest heart at the table. Yes, she winces a little upon learning Bond used her name as the password, but not enough to say, “Hey, you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread and my own personal superhero, can we go rescue my boyfriend and that $150 million I just sent off to known terrorist? Thanks mate!” Yes, some boyfriend is why she sells our hero down the river. She only sleeps with Bond to deceive him into (a) loosing the money and (b) turning himself into an unemployed world traveling lay about. Vesper once again has an opportunity to correct her mistake when she herself withdraws the money. Again, she doesn’t make the play and coldly moves forward hesitating not a lick. We don’t learn she traded Bond’s life and the money in exchange for her kidnapped boyfriend until way later and the plot device is as thin as an inside straight draw. In explaining the boyfriend bit M says Vesper really did care for Bond which is bullshit because of her many chances to put things right. Maybe if we met this boyfriend at some point and he was just as fantastic as Bond but somehow I don’t think he is. This is a relationship where Vesper is willing to betray her county and Bond, the coolest guy in any room David Bowie is not, for some guy? And the true sticking point here is Bond. This is James Bond who despite all his boozing and skit chasing keeps the mission and his country as priory one. He blew up an embassy for Christ. Now, he is in love and willing to give up everything for a woman who hung him out to dry on his mission way before she stole the money? Back at the game, Bond busted out and lost his first $10 million thanks to a betrayal. He goes out onto a terrace to regroup and get his head together before going back in with his $5 million re-buy. Enter Vesper. Now ladies, the last thing you ought to do is lecture a man who just botched the biggest mission of his career when his full house got crushed by four Jacks. That goes double if you happen to be a co-worker who holds the purse strings for the re-buy. Shut up, give him the money, and let him save the world. But no, Vesper not only refuses to give him the cash, she patronizing to boot. Bond, correctly, snaps calling her a “bloody idiot.” And she is exactly that. She is willing to blow the whole thing and this is BEFORE the boyfriend is kidnapped! She shows no trust in Bond or the mission as laid out by her boss, M, before, during, and after the boyfriend kidnapping incident. Why on God’s green earth would Bond want to spend the rest of his unemployed life with this woman?

Bond Girls Best Pick-up Line: “How’s your lamb?”

Bond’s Best Pick-up Line: “Skewered. One sympathizes.”

Number of Woman 007 Beds: Two. Origin stories for characters, especially ones we already know, can be quite enjoyable. It’s a blast watching Tobey Maguire soar over the city streets learning the full extent of what is means to be Spider-Man. This is why the first Matrix (1999) succeeded and the next two failed. It’s a lot more fun and interesting to watch Keanu Reeves learn he is Jesus (whaaaooooh) then to watch him be Jesus (ooooooh). After winning Dimitrio’s Aston Martin, Bond pulls the car around to find Solange, Dimitrios wife, surprised but not shocked to find someone other then her husband behind the wheel. “That’s why he was in such a bad mood.” Bond invites her to his place for a drink. “It’s not far.” She hops in, they spin around the parking lot, and end up back at the valet for the Ocean Club. This whole thing is simply delightful, Bond learning on the spot how to take full advantage of his new 00 while developing what would become his modus operandi. This is his first baddy’s lady conquest and he opened the door with superior play at the poker table and an Aston Martin. This is the birth of Bond and Craig plays it, correctly, like he’s a kid in a candy store. Later, while rolling around on the floor of Dimitrios house with his wife Bond actually chuckles to himself. It’s as if he saying “this is my job!” He also pulls what would become a classic out of the Bond playbook. While engaging in liaisons with the lady he casually brings up the hubby, so where is Dimitrios now do you think? Solange, to her credit, knows Bond is using her to get to her husband but she is simply having to much fun to care and plays along. Learning Dimitrios is on the next flight to Miami, Bond hops up, tells the lady he is getting drinks, and out the door he goes, bound for Miami and one step closer to finding the mysterious money man. However, shit, as the kids say, gets real quick when your operating in the world of high intrigue. After thwarting the Miami bombing Bond returns to the Bahamas to find Solange has been killed; no doubt retribution for her betrayal. Bond takes the news that he’s become a black widow in stride and assures M the deceased knew nothing that could compromise his mission. When the next woman he beds, Vesper, also ends up dead he finds it not so easy to dismiss. In keeping up with the new improved modernized Bond, the ladies had much to cheer about in this movie as well. It was refreshing to see Bond, not the girl, have the emerging from the sea Ursula Andress moment. While the same reference severed to objectify Halle Berry in the last film, here it somehow has the opposite effects and humanizes Bond. It also made the wife quite happy as she sighed to herself and thanked the gods of cinema it was Craig, and not Moore, in the little baby blue briefs.

Number of People 007 Kills: Here’s the thing, before the sinking house, every one of these kills is felt and means something. As much as getting burned by his first love contributes to hardening Bond’s soul, these kills are violent, personal acts that do the same. Bond’s first kill, the drowning of a man in sink, was extremely violent and in Bond’s own words, did not go well. The second, the shooting of a corrupt MI6 agent, was easier, yes considerably, but killing one of your own isn’t a picnic. Now a full 00, Bond enjoys the rights of any Florida citizen under the “Stand Your Ground” statue; he can kill anyone at anytime for any reason. Except if the person you’re trying kill is seeking asylum with in the walls of their embassy in which case killing is strictly verboten. “Sod that” says Bond as he shoots the unarmed bomb maker/ Parkour expert in cold blood and blows the front wall of the embassy for good measure. If you’re going to break the rules, do so with some flair I always say. The next body Bond adds to the count is taken down at a Bodies exhibit for one of the more cinematically interesting kills in the Bond canon. Surrounded by a crowd of living people who are standing around looking at dead people engaged in various activity Bond ends up face to face with Dimitrios. The two silently push and a pull at a knife as passer-bys go about their business, failing to noticing the life and death struggle happening right before their eyes. Again there is a visceral, gut punch feeling to this kill, Bond is looking the man in his eyes, his face not two inches away, as he slowly jabs the knife in. The airplane bomber on the other hand falls to a perfect bluff. After the chase around the airport, Bond is cuffed and the baddy, from a safe distance, is about to blow up the plane, unaware that Bond clipped the bomb to his belt. As everything becomes clear a look of panic crosses the bombers face and we cut to Bond, face on the hood of a cop car, smiling to himself as we hear a satisfactory off camera cue, not kaboom as much as a pusffitt-poof; much more personal. It’s also funny. There is quite a bit of humor in this film, it’s just a darker humor, the kind of jokes homicide cops or emergency room doctors tell to keep the grim realities of their work at a distance. During a break in play at the Casino Royale, a few of Le Chiffre’s clients come calling, machete in hand, none to happy that he has lost there money. He assures them he has matters well in hand and will get them money to them at the games conclusion. Bond and Vesper happened upon two of these men in a stairwell and a hand to hand battle ensues. The combatants jump from flight to flight as the battle unfolds in such a basic yet revolutionary way its shocking no one has come up with this idea for a movie before. It all ends with two dead baddies at the bottom of the stairs, one of whom Bond strangles from behind while laying on the floor a la Anton Chigurh. Sadly, the rest of the kills are more standard action film fare. In Venice, Bond objects to being followed by a dude, a bullet to the head solves the problem. Then while battling in a sinking house, Bond shoots four dudes, push another under a falling elevator and takes out the head baddy with a nail gun bringing Bond’s kill total to 15. A quick note about that sinking building by the by, on the DVD extras the head special effects talks about a meeting he had with the EON brass before shooting began on Bond 21. He said they told him that there would be no Q, no gadgets, and no transforming cars. Well, this movies going to be easy he thought. Then, he was told he needed to come up with a set for a six story building that would sink into sea. He proceed to build the huge set on a gimble so it could pitch left or right and made it capable of moving up or down in the water up to 18 feet. He went on to say it was the most complex “gadget” he ever had to build for a Bond picture. The moral, even in a back-to-basic Bond, they can resist building a volcano lair.

Most Outrageous Death/s: The sinking building, in truth, does feel like another movie. It’s dramatic for sure and it’s not to say this film didn’t have outrageous stunts, but they were more nuts and bolts, the sinking house feels quite CGI and frankly, a little contrived. This all brings us to Vesper caught in the elevator. You know those ads for $19.95 gadgets you can by on TV that are products to solve a problem that doesn’t exist? “Don’t you just hate cutting vegetables” the VO asks as you see an actress handle a knife like she has five thumbs while struggling to slice carrots and you’re sitting there thinking “Just cut the carrots lady.” That’s how I felt watch Vesper in the elevator. She becomes a damsel in distress, someone who needs rescuing when all she needs to do is simply open the door. We know this because after the elevator cage plunges underwater, we see her lock the door and take the key so Bond can’t save her. I know this is meant to be a Jesus giving up her life for her sins moment and I know she saved Bond with the defibrillator and he giving her CPR, unable to save her, is meant to be a full circle moment but in a film that goes out of it’s way to make us feel every punch and make these people real why in hell come up with something so contrived. Again, I can’t stress this enough, all she had to do was open the damn door of the elevator! She proves to be, as Bond so accurately observed, a blood idiot. Anyway she drowns and Mr. White runs away with the money.

Miss. Moneypenny: No Moneypenny in this movie so let’s use this space to discuss Mathis. As Bond’s fixer for the poker game, Mathis earns his strips and then turns out to be playing for the other side, clueing Le Chiffre in on Bond’s read of his tell and therefore costing Bond his $10 million buy-in. Vesper for her part then refuses to give Bond the additional $5 million and its pretty much game over. Which got me to thinking, between Dryden’s selling secretes at the top and both Mathis and Vesper selling Bond out, how the hell does M vet these people? Maybe she could use an assistant…

M: Hey M, we were just talking about you. We first meet M as she is ready to kill her newest 00 in the wake of the embassy SNAFU. “In the old days if an agent did something that embarrassing he would have the good sense to defect, Christ I miss the cold war.” Again, this is really funny for a film that has the rep of “getting rid of all the humor.” Clearly Bond is different in this reboot and to Judi Dench’s credit, so is M, all be it in a more subtitle way. Here she takes on more of a mentor role then straight up supervisor. She feels a connection to her newest 00, partly because she took a chance on him and partly because Bond is willing to bend if not break the rules. She runs this ship but appreciates a little out of bounds play stating that even the PM has the good sense to let he do her thing as long as it stays out of the papers. This is the opposite of the 1970’s M, a boss who mostly just got in Bond’s way. I like this better, feels more like the way MI6 would be run. Even when she does fence with Bond, it’s for his good and the good of the mission. While he makes cracks about not expecting to live all that long, she makes sure he checks his emotions and keeps his eye on the ball. This leads to a very well done heart to heart about trust and how Bond needs to learn who he can and who he can’t rely on. By the end of the movie, so burned is Bond that he simply trusts no one and goes off solo, forever to follow the money. One gets the feeling perhaps he’s gone to far the other way… something for M to contend with the next go around. PS M does in fact have a home in which there is a bed in which there is a man. This is a nice touch, M can enjoy such comforts while Bond is getting burned seeking them.

Q: I’m surprised at what I’m about to say but I didn’t miss Q in this film. I think that’s perhaps because I know Desmond Llewelyn is gone, never to return, and I never had the chance to fall in love with John Cleese in the role. In the absents of Q and his gadgets we get a cell phone and a war room full of agents that act as support. Again, I really like this, feels real and it’s something we as an audience can relate to. We’ve all been on a business trip when we need to phone back to the office to get a contacts number or instructions on how to work the portable defibrillator.

List of Gadgets: Yes, the car has a portable defibrillator. Bond is poisoned during the poker game and as a result goes into cardiac arrest. He stumbles out to the car which is equipped with a secrete compartment for his gun and a portable defibrillator. As silly as this scene is on the surface I had no problems with it in the context of the film and it in fact works as an exciting Bond moment. It’s substantially much more realistic then what transpires at the poker table shortly after. Bond also has some kind of chip injected into his arm, a tracking device of sorts, so MI6 can always know his whereabouts. This is a useful thing until it’s pried loose from his arm by Le Chiffre’s knife. But the most important gadget Bond has in the film is the very same device that makes every single one of us a real life James Bond and Captain Kirk rolled into one; the iPhone.

Gadgets/British Government Property Bond Destroys: After a lifetime of watching car chases and crashes on the screen, from “CHiPs” and “Dukes of Hazzard” style pill-ups to artful pursuits in Bullitt (1968) and The French Connection (1971) to silly but fun in Death Race 2000 (1975) and The Blues Brothers (1980) not to mention every other Bond film I thought nothing new could be brought to motorized vehicles following other motorized vehicles on film at any speed. Casino Royale delightful stomped on my seen-it-all cynic self with a stunt so basic it’s simply unbelievable no one thought of it before. It also happens to be the best single shot in a movie silly with great moments. It’s night; the baddies grab Vesper, pull her into a car, and take off down a country road. Bond jumps into his Aston Martin and gives chase. He is moving very fast over a poorly lit road with blind turns and rolling hills. As he comes flying around one corner we get a flash of Vesper, tied up, lying in the middle of the road. In desperation Bond yanks the wheel avoiding Vesper and sending the car careening off road where it proceeds to roll for what seems an eternity. As I always love pointing out the boys in shop did this one for real and sent an Aston Martin and driver flipping into the air at 70 MPH by shooting off an air cannon. The car flipped a world record breaking six times before coming to rest. It looks just absolutely spectacular on screen and I defy anyone, no matter how many times they’ve seen the film, to not give a winching “ohhhh” as the car cartwheels to a stop. This is just halftime of a brutal evening that has seen/will see Bond be poisoned, die, brought back to life, betrayed by Mathis, lose his girl, crash his car and end up naked and tied to chair getting his balls beat. But hey, at least he won the $150 million, hey? This is all a very long way of saying the car, he destroys the car. He also goes through a lovely tuxedo while playing the big game; ruined by machete and shower. The shower scene, happening shortly after his battle with machete, shows Bond holding Vesper with hands that have scratched up knuckles from the recent fight. Details, they make all the difference.

Other Property Destroyed: 007 may have started it all off with seven years of bad luck, smashing a bathroom mirror in carrying out his first kill. He takes a bulldozer to a construction site and runs through a few walls and knocks down a few girders for good measure. Then there was that incident at the embassy. In order to stop the bombing at Miami International he manages to take out a luggage truck, a flex-bus, a fuel truck, and the Bluth Family car.

All of these destructive chases are outrageous and over the top but proceed in a logical way and stick to their own physics. The sinking Vatican build is a little goofy as we discussed earlier but I think most fans are willing to forgive in this case. It is exciting, that’s for sure, and at the end of it Venice has one less landmark, thanks to 007. M doesn’t seem to pissed-off tough, just don’t blow up those building with diplomatic immunity and all will be fine.

Felix Leiter: Jeffrey Wright. Bond has just been told by his so called partner, Vesper, that she will not release the $5 million for him to continue playing in the tournament and therefore he has failed his mission. Half drunk and fully pissed-off Bond decides to take matters into his own hands when he sees Le Chiffre in the bar. Grabbing a dinner knife out of desperation Bond makes a B-line for the baddy only to be intercepted by one of the players at the table who identifies himself as “a brother from Langley.” Hey, the brother from Langley is a brother to which I say hell yah! Bond caught some racial flack for Live and Let Die (1973) which I didn’t entire agree with but the truth is, other then the Bond ladies who come from around the world, Bond has lived in a very white universe. Quite nice to bring in some color. (All that said, Vijay in Octopussy (1983) was one of my favorite Bond sidekicks.) Wright is probably most famous for playing the lead in the well received but I felt uneven Basquiat (1996). Since then he’s gone the character actor route and seen incredible success. Wright’s Felix, unlike Felix of the past, actually saves the day. Bond explains the witch with a B will not give him the money; money the American is willing to front Bond without a moment’s hesitation. Felix, being a good poker player, is smart enough to know tonight is not to be his and he saw Bond had Le Chiffre dead to rights. This is also an elder giving the young hot head a bit of good advice, don’t go off stabbing the cat, kill him with cards at the table instead. It all adds up to an amazing act of generosity and good faith and it 100% explains why these men would share a life long bond, even if Felix becomes, which is to say was, a complete imbecile in future/past missions. But hey, it’s a reboot so everyone gets a clean slate and after one film, Felix is aces in my book.

Best One Liners/Quips:  Now the whole world’s going to know that you died scratching my balls!

Bond Cars: When Bond arrives in the Bahamas he is seen driving a Ford. A rental I assume. We’ve all got to start somewhere and the truth is its much nicer then my first car. He then wins the 1964 Aston Martin and decides his days of Fords are behind him. He contacts M who makes sure he has a brand spanking new Aston Martin DBS V12 for the big game. And boy how she purrs. It comes equipped not with life taking weapons but a live saving defibrillator in the glove box. Ohh Ok … and a hand gun.

Bond Timepiece: It’s an Omega, not a Rolex. Get over it Spulock.

Other Notable Bond Accessories: Knowing nothing about guns I did notice that for the first time Bond seemed to be using silencers. After some research I found this to be true but the device is called a “suppressor” among those in the know. I also learned that the hand gun he uses throughout the film is not his trust Walther PPK (thought that is the model featured in the posters) but a “suppressed” Walther P99. As for the big guy that he shoots Mr. White in the leg at the end, that’s something called a Heckler & Koch UMP9 9mm, with suppresser natch. Hey man, they look cool and there is something more satisfying about the “Puuthump” of a suppressed fire arm as opposed the more traditional “Bang!” Bond started out the film a little more casually attired then we’re accustom to but he looks great in his suit sans tie when he touches down in the Bahamas. As for the tux during the game I will quote Vesper, “There are dinner jackets and there are dinner jackets. That is the latter.” On this point she is correct.

Number of Drinks 007 Consumes: We here at Blog, James Blog would like to tip our caps and raise our glasses to one Mr. Craig who brings Bond and boozing to new glorious heights. Before sitting down at the table at the Ocean Club Bond gets a large Mount Gay with soda from the bar, I think … his order was mumbled so I’m not 100% sure. By the time he checks into his room at the Ocean Club Bond is quickly realizing everything is on the company’s dime so he orders a bottle of Bollinger…for himself! On the train he shares a bottle of red with Vesper and he has some champagne with Mathis as the two sit at a sidewalk café watching the chief of police get arrested. But Bond is only warming up. One of the rules most poker pros not named Scotty Nguyen stick to is “don’t drink at the table” to which Bond says stick it in your ear.

Feeling a little full of himself after winning a good size pot Bond decides to give the waiter a bit of the what for ordering a dry martini. “Wait” Bond says as the man turns to fill the order, “Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Litllet, shake it over ice then add a thin slice of lemon peel.” An uptight gent at the table decides he’ll take one as well, as does another player and then finally Felix who asks that they “hold the fruit,” at which point Le Chiffre, being the kind of player he is, pulls yet another total dick move. After loosing a hand and seeing everyone is having fun he chides them for doing so, “Anyone want to play poker now?” When I’m at a table and some pulls that nonsense I typically shoot them a look and tell em they can switch tables anytime? “And who knows, maybe you’re luck will change” I like to add. That ether shuts em up, piss em off, or gets them to leave. Whatever the outcome, I’m happy. Anyway, this drink order opens the flood gates as Bond orders a second before the break. During the break the whole machete incident happens which prompts Bond to clean out his wounds and dull his pain with whisky. One for the cut – one for belly, two for the cut – one, two for the belly, and so on. Bond returns but quickly busts and makes his way to the bar. “Martini” “Shaken or stirred?” “Do I look like I give a damn!” Not getting the buy-in from your lady will do that to a man. His next drink is back at the table, thank you Felix, but this one has a little extra kick; the martini is in fact poisoned. Thinking quickly, 007 grabs a full water glass and pours in table salt inducing vomiting. None the less, he ends up dead only to be shocked back to life and despite now having two breaks in a row that are the equivalent of the trip to town in Wet Hot American Summer (2001) Bond once again returns to play poker and wins! How to celebrate? Why another shaken not stirred martini with dinner that now gets a name, The Vesper, because once you’ve tasted it, it’s all you want to drink. Despite my dumping on Vesper that’s a good line. L’Chaim dear Daniel, you’ve done your country proud with your poker prowess and incredible tolerance.

Bond’s Gambling Winnings: Muhammad Ali, in his day, would use every opportunity he had before a match to talk his opponents to death, saying anything and everything to get in their head so “I would win the fight before I even stepped in the ring.” Bond subscribes to the Ali school when it comes to poker and from the moment he enters the casino he’s playing the game. By checking in under his real name, Bond is not only putting his card on the table he’s also saying I’m not afraid to play aggressively. When we finally do get to the table, it goes without saying that in grand Bond tradition the room is beautiful, the people are gorgeous, and everyone has something to hide except for me and my monkey. So, the game is afoot and the hands are a dealt and things happen and things happen and then we get down to the final hand. If you don’t care about poker please skip down to the List of Locations because even though Bond has barrel rolled over rivers, been shot out of a torpedo tube, walking on alligator heads, brought himself back from the dead, and crash landed a space shuttle, nothing he has done up to this point is more far fetched, unrealistic, or out and out bat-shit crazy then this final hand of poker. By way of setting this thing up, whenever I sit at a table, I quickly name all the players in my head either based on their appearance or play. In other words, the guy with the Yankees cap is Jeter, a tight player is The Rock, and so on; I imagine everyone does something similar when they play. With this in mind, the last hand of the Le Chiffre invitational is down to four players; proceeding from the dealer we have Ponytail, a grey hair gent with a silver ponytail going down his back, Big Luv, a rotund man in a loud purple suit, Le Chiffre and then Bond. The blinds, I.E. the forced bet or the anti, are at ½ a million and a million. We as an audience join the action already in progress, $24 million in the pot and 8,6,4 all spades along with the ace of hearts are already dealt out on the table. Le Chiffre, first to act, checks as all other players follow suit. Cagey play and so far so good. On the river Lemmy’s favorite card falls, the Ace of Spade. Once again Le Chiffre and Bond check into Ponytail who goes all in for $6 million. Big Luv nearly jumps out of his seat to get his all in, $5 million, pushed forward into the pot. Now Le Chiffre, who Hollywood’s a bit, which is to say he pretends he’s thinking about it, playing with his cards and chips, before doubling the bet to $12 million. Now it’s Bond’s turn to act some and after staring Le Chiffre down a bit he pushes in all his chips, $14.5 million, forward. Le Chiffre looks like Sylvester the moment after he’s swallowed Tweety as he looks down at his house, Aces full of sixes. Le Chiffre lets go of a gasp of a laugh knowing he is about to bust the entire table in one hand, “Well I think I will call you on that one” he says while pushing in all his chips. $150 million in the pot Mathis points out. Showdown. Ponytail is quite pleased with his A high flush to the Q, a monster hand that would win most days in Vegas. However, he couldn’t have been pleased that his last spade came an Ace and indeed here comes Big Luv with a boat, eights full of aces. Le Chiffre, as we saw, has the bigger boat, aces full of six which of course he slow roles as is his custom. So, Ponytail had only four hands that could beat him, Big Luv only two and Le Chiffre is next to the nuts. $1 dollar American to anyone who can predict what Jimmy B is holding. Much has been made of Bond hitting the straight flush (5,7 of Spades) in this situation, rightfully so, and we will get to that, but many things need to be unpacked here. Firstly, we learned there was $24M in the pot on forth street which was checked around. Then on the final round of betting everyone is all in with $6M, $5M, $14.5M and $14.5 respectively. If my calculations are correct, and I’m certain they are, that would be $64 million in the middle. I don’t know what kind of operation they are running at the Casino Royale but most of the places I play, if $86 million walked away from the table, someone would notice. But that’s not even the strangest thing. Fifth street is Ponytail all in for $6, Big Luv all in for $5, and then Le Chiffres raises to $12. Why in heavens name would he do that here? It leaves him with only $2.50. Looking across at Bond, he had to see that Bond had $14.50. Why not put him all in here? Or, just call the $6. You would never, ever in this situation leave yourself with only $2.50. It’s like emptying your gun except for one bullet and then saying, OK you shoot all of your bullets at me. If you think you have the best hand, and Le Chiffre dose, pull the trigger or slow play but don’t do a half measure, especially when you see that you and your opponent are evenly stacked. Which brings us to another huge point, are you telling me, after that much time, money, and play in this tournament that Bond and Le Chiffre, the two big stacks at the table, have the exact same amount in chips? The chances of this happening are about the same as getting hit by lightning while driving a motorcycle on the frozen Hudson River. Bond then beating two house and a flush with a straight flush is about the same chance of getting hit by lightning while driving a motorcycle across the frozen Hudson River with Diana Rigg on the back and Bill Clinton in the sidecar while all three of you are harmonizing on the second verse of “Up on Cripple Creek.” No matter how fun it sounds, it will never, ever happen.

List of Locations: Much of the movie was shot in the Prague, the beautiful old world capital of the Czech Republic. The Madagascar slums and construction site chase scene were filmed is the Bahamas as was the Ocean Club and beach scene. Montenegro, the location of the Casino Royale, looks like a story book fantasy and is a place I would live the rest of my life if I had the means. The Bodies exhibit exteriors were Miami and the airport chase was also Miami as well as three other airports. Pinewood did some set work and the finale was shot in Venice. The coda where Bond confronts Mr. White was shot in George Clooney’s beloved Lake Como. I remember exactly noting from Quantum of Solis (2008), a bad sign right off the bat, but I hope to continue where we left off. Lake Como is simply breathtaking and I want to know who/ what Mr. White is up to. Maybe he works for Blofeld and SPECTURE? Maybe Bond’s quest for vengeance will once again pull him away from MI6? Maybe I’m wishing in vein because while I don’t remember the movie, I remember many did not enjoy it. Oh well, we will cross that bridge when we get to it.

Bonds Special Abilities Displayed: Not at first but 007 eventually gets a hold of this Parkour thing. At one point during the Miami fracases, he slides over the top cabin of a truck and flips over and into the cab via the hole where a windshield should have been. He also does some fancy bouncing in the stairwell during the machete fight. 007 has incredible quick draw abilities as displayed at the embassy. In all this time with Bond, I don’t think we’ve seen him do the quick draw thing; impressive. Bond also has a golden horseshoe firmly lodged into his ass as is evident anytime he sits down at a poker table. Then there is the typical list of vehicles, a jet fuel truck, a construction tractor, a sailboat while under power and a first, a wheelchair. See, still new stuff to explore.

Final Thoughts: The blurb on the back of my copy of Casino Royale comes from Josh Rothkopf of Time Out New York. “Daniel Craig is the best Bond in the franchise’s history.” I disagree but the line is also understandable. I find Rothkopf to be a very thoughtful critic who truly understand film history and I do not take his comment to be a tossed off platitude. I’m sure he meant it at the time. My question is, if I bumped in Rothkopf at Kettle of Fish tonight, would he still feel that way? I doubt it. Hailed as the future of Bond at the time, today Casino Royale fits quite nicely into the Bond cannon. Indeed, it is a step forward but no more so then other great Bond films of the past. Further, things like Parkour, the Bodies exhibit, the bombing of an airport, the shorting of stocks, the blink and you miss it Richard Branson cameo and even the central poker game are not necessarily dated but they do place this film in a time and place, just like every other Bond. And that’s as it should be. But I think at the time of the film release there was an over enthusiasm for everything about this movie, particularly the praise of Craig. I’m sure this was due in no small part to the pre-release backlash against the actor. Add the fact that it followed Die Another Day (2002), a bad movie that has aged worse then any Bond film not called Moonraker (1979), and I think people went a little nuts for Royale. All this is not to say it’s not a great film, the opposite in fact. 45-years-old when the film came out, the Bond movies didn’t get where they are without adapting and changing, sometimes going the right direction and other times not. This movie takes a leap into positive territory and ends up being one of the stronger entries. The number one reason for this, more important then Craig, is director Martin Campbell who with his two films has proven to be the best Bond director since Terence Young. Guided by his steady hand the film “gets real” and deconstructs one of film’s great heroes. Instead of going big and outrageous, things were boiled down and became a hyper realized reality. The story is a fantastic piece of writing that shows us new angles while reveling where some of James favorite moves come from. It’s back to basics for most of the stunts which are once again exciting and a blast to watch. The baddie is also brought back to earth but still a villain we love to hate as demonstrated in the torture scene. And Craig’s Bond is wonderful; he’s fun, smart, physical and handsome. Both he and Campbell give the character an arc going from wet behind the ears to arrogant and cocky to humbled and hardened. Yes, the poker is ridiculous but it’s also fun to watch. And isn’t that point? I’d bet my entire stack that 90% of the audience for this film wouldn’t know if a straight is better then two pair and that is fine. It really doesn’t matter. The game tonally fits in with the rest of the film in that its beautifully shot, it has significant tension, provides a tight storyline, and is above all fun and exciting. And that’s what it should do.

However, however…despite all the new inventions the rebooted Bond manages to fall into the same trap that has plagued 007 since he hit the big screen; the weak third act. Sadly, the lack of a satisfactory ending is enough to knock this film off the top shelf. Think back to Dr. No (1962), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), The Man With the Golden Gun (1974), Octopussy (1983), The Living Daylights (1987), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and most egregiously Moonraker, and you will see good or great films that fail to stick the landing. Casino Royale is a cracker-jack thriller that frankly should have climaxed with Mr. White killing Le Chiffre. The next scene could be as it was, Bond left recovering from his injuries, wondering why Mr. White let him and Vesper live. The banker comes and we see Vesper deposit the money, but right after she gets a phone call. “Excuses me James?” She walks away. “Yes?” On the other end a voice asks “Is it done?” “Yes Mr. White, the money is in your account.” “Good, we will be in touch.” Phone hangs up; she looks back at Bond, the camera pulls out to a wide shot, the score hits and credits. I understand the story demands we deal with Vesper and her betrayal but that doesn’t mean it fits in with the rest of the film, at least not as written and told here. I donno, maybe the Bond/Vesper relationship is an impossible sell but I simply can’t swallow it and the last bit of the film suffers as a result. When I mention this movie to people inevitably they give some variant on the comment “I liked it, but it was a little too long.” Indeed, the running time is well over two hours but what they mean to say is the movie “felt too long.” That is because the pacing in the last act makes it fell like the movie is being dragging across the finish line. Add the sinking house and the entire tone is inconsistent with the tight, fun adventure in the first two acts. It’s a shame because I can not over emphasize how significant an achievement it is to reinvent the most recognizable character in film history and do so in a way that succeeds so incredibly. We will hold out on ranking Craig against other 007’s until we have a larger sample size but I can say he was presented with a nearly impossible task, a task that most wanted him to fail. Craig met the character and his critics head on and to quote my favorite guru Paul Crik, he killed it.

Martini ratings:

Die Another Day

Title: Die Another Day

Year: 2002. At one point in Die Another Day Bond and M are standing in an abandon subway station under London. “While you were away the world has changed,” M informs Bond to which he responds “not for me.” With these three words 007 is not speaking as Bond the character created by Ian Fleming but as “Bond” the one billion dollar film franchises created by Harry Saltzman and Albert “Cubby” Broccoli. Four decades previous, Dr. No (1962) redefined what a popcorn action film could be in many ways, one of which was the “ripped from the headlines” plot based on The Cuban Missile Crises. While never references the incident itself, the film tapped into the ever-present fear of nuclear annihilation. In subsequent films, Bond would tackle everything from the cold war to radical environmentalism, the space race to petrol-politics, the war on drugs to the tensile strength of speeding fire trucks; always in it’s very own Bond world way. But in the first film following perhaps the largest worldwide political event of Bond’s forty years save the fall of the Berlin Wall, Bond had no idea how to respond. To be fair, in the immediate aftermath of September 11^th 2001 no one in the entertainment industry knew how to wrap his or her head around the events of that day and some pretty crazy stuff was said. Some felt we would see a “new responsible way of making films,” were “violence would no longer be glamorized.” Others wondered aloud and in print if “anything would ever be funny again?” and predicted the death of irony. Ironically, it would be comedy that delivered the first, and incredibly appropriate, response. TV was showing nothing but up to the second news reports, that was if you could still get TV. I had rabbit ears on a small Sony at the time and since broadcasts in the city all came from the top of One World Trade, all I had was fuzz. This meant many trips to local bar to absorb the news while numb myself to it. With all conventional programing preempted, it fell to print, in the form of The Onion, to make one of the first jokes, and not a moment to soon. That now famous front page made it just that much easier for those of us who worked in tall Manhattan office buildings to step onto the elevator. On TV, the holder of the second highest elected office in America, New York Mayor Giuliani, famously appeared on SNL and gave people permission to laugh again, but he was in fact a little late to the party. New York’s twin towers of late night comedy, Letterman and Stewart, had already returned to the air and nakedly, awkwardly and beautifully fumbled with what was funny and appropriate after America’s greatest city, to paraphrase John Updike, got both its front teeth punched out. While New York was carrying on in the proud tradition of Broadway and declaring the show must go on, Jay Leno was still hiding in his bunker of a garage in Burbank, along with the rest of La-La Land. Another irony, the town that makes billions off distorting buildings and mindless killing thousands in action packed fantasies had no idea how to react to the real thing that so many described as “looking just like a movie.” Producers of Zoolander (2001), a comedy about New York’s fashion industry that was released on September 28^th, rushed to digitally erase the twin towers from shots of the skyline, an act of vandalism Paramount still needs to square. A trailer featuring a baddies helicopter caught in Spiderman’s web strung between the towers was yanked from TV and theaters. Most hysterically, there was a loud cry urging Peter Jackson and Co. to rename his second Lord of the Rings film, even thought the book on which it was based, “The Two Towers,” was published in 1954. While New Yorkers ran toward the burning buildings to do what we could, Hollywood ran away as fast as they could. It took a New York filmmaker who was never warmly embraced by Hollywood to make the first, and to date best, film dealing directly with September 11^th. Spike Lee’s near masterpiece The 25^th Hour (2002) is the one of the only non-documentary movies to sift though the aftermath of that day with emotional honesty and in doing so becomes the exception proving the rule; big budget Hollywood style films almost always fail when attempting to tackle large scale horror head on. While Hollywood’s initial response of whitewashing the towers out of existence is inexcusable, that fact that the entertainment industry had the wisdom to tread lightly when taking on such large and at the same time nuanced subject was wise if not commendable. The truth is, most films shouldn’t even try, lest we have another Pearl Harbor (2001) on our hands. For projects like Remember Me (2010) or the Oscar bait Extremely Tasteless and Incredibly Exploitative (2011) it will always be “too soon.” (Ed Note: Full disclosure, I never saw Remember Me or Extremely Tasteless and Incredibly Exploitative and I never will.) Think about how many truly great films deal directly with the holocaust or Hiroshima. For every Schindler’s List (1993) there are 100 cynical train wrecks. You know someday some black hearted executive will release a tear jerker centered around the Japanese tsunami of 3/11/11, no doubt staring Ryan Gosling and Reese Witherspoon, but we can all rest assured it will be a bigger bust at the box-office then John Carter (2012). Indeed films work better in dealing with the incomprehensible through the prism of metaphor, parable, satire or allegory. Think about the Japanese film industry responding to the nuclear bomb attacks on their nation with Godzilla (1954) or Hollywood responding to the AIDS crises with Fatal Attraction (1987). A few years after the fact, with the benefit of perspective, Hollywood did in fact make powerful “post 9/11 films.” Movies like The Departed (2006), Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), There Will Be Blood (2007) and No Country for Old Men (2007), not to mention the countless post-apostolic moves that have come out in the past few years, are movies filled with dread. They all convey a feeling that something evil is out there, it’s coming to get us, and we don’t know who/what it is or when it will strike. In these movies the good guys are compromised, violence can breakout at anytime, and in some cases (No Country, There Will Be Blood) the baddies gets away. Kind of sounds like the 21^st Bond film that came out in 2006, don’t yah think? (By the by, with all these 2006/07 releases it would appear five years was the prescribed time to properly digest 9/11.) But for now, we are dealing with Bond 20, released 14 months after the attacks, thirteen months after a “coalition of the willing” hit the ground in Afghanistan and four months before Tony Blair would sully his legacy by jumping in bed with George Bush’s war on Iraq. In the three years James Bond was away, the world did indeed change, but not for Bond. Current events were going way to fast for 007 to catch up, so producers ignored the present and used this, the 40^th anniversary and 20^th film of the James Bond franchise, to celebrate 007’s rich past.

Film Length: 2 hours 7 minutes

Bond Actor: Pierce Brosnan. By Pierce’s forth film, it became clear that James Bond was trying to kill the actor. Bond had been working since 1995 to weaken Brosnan mentally, and the strain was manifesting itself in the physical. According to IMDb the official James Bond tailor in London reported that while Pierce started as the lightest Bond to date (164 pounds for GoldenEye (1995)) by the time he was getting fittings for Die Another Day he was the heaviest at 211 pounds. Once shooting began, 007 really got nasty. One of the first sequences to be shot featured a hovercraft chase over a minefield. During one of the stunts Pierce injured his knee so badly he was rushed to a California hospital for an operation. While he was recovering production was totally shut down for a few weeks, the first time a Bond film had ever done so.  “I feel guilt, I’ve blown it,” the actor said at time and I don’t doubt his sincerity. Perhaps as a result of the knee injury, Brosnan is much less physical in this film. In fact, the best scene in the movie, a sword fight, was the last thing shot in order to give Brosnan the maximum time to recover. Add the fact the shooting schedule was thrown into further disarray thanks to rainstorms in Spain and thin ice in Iceland and EON was looking at a chaotic production. Perhaps it was the difficulty surrounding the shoot that left a bad taste in Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson’s mouth or maybe other factors played a role but for whatever reason, Pierce was not invited back for the next Bond picture. Reasons as to why and how this happened are sketchy at best and I found only scant credible reporting. In an October 15, 2004 piece in the Toronto Sun, Brosnan implies he was fired. He told the paper that he was willing and eager to do a fifth and final Bond, adding that Broccoli and Wilson had asked him to return. “And then one day the phone rang–I was here (in Nassau shooting After The Sunset)–and my agents told me that the goalposts had moved and that they had changed their minds.” He added, “It was disappointing. It was surprising. And I accepted the knowledge (that his run as 007 was over for good) after 24 hours of being in shock.” He went on to say he harbored no resentment and handled the entire thing like the true gentlemen he is but the question of why he was the only Bond actor to date to be made redundant lingers. His performance is top notch, while the film itself not so much. In watching the past three movies I’ve come to think of Brosnan’s take on 007 as a prefect mix of Moore’s world wear humor and Connery’s steely toughness and here he has scene where the marriage of the two works wonderfully. Indeed, the film is incredible flawed and one of the weaker Bond entries but none of that rests with Brosana who at most points is better then the material. It’s a mystery indeed but I get the feeling, with no facts what so ever to back me up, that Brosnan fell on his sword and took a brunt of the blame for Die Another Day’s shortcoming for the good of the franchise; a franchise that let him go in a rather, if we are to believe Brosnan’s account, underhanded way. Whatever went down, the end result remains. Bond succeeded in his mission to eliminate Pierce Brosnan. Maybe he wanted to be a blonde?

Director: Lee Tamahori, hack for heir….mostly. Tamahori’s claim to fame is his widely love feature directorial debut Once We Were Warriors (1994). Unseen by me, the film takes place in Tamahori’s native New Zealand and deals with alcoholism and domestic abuse. When looking upon the rest of Tamahori’s filmography, it can safely be said that films like The Edge (1997), xXx: State of the Union (2005) and Next (2007) don’t quite reach the heights or depths of his first outing. This is fine, most directors don’t even have a good scene in them. Anyone with a great movie under his belt is to be applauded. Tamahori made his bones in the biz as an award winning commercial artist and while I cannot speak to Once We Were Warriors, I can say his films that I have seen sprang from that sensibility. Making TV ads is no easy thing. It takes a tremendous amount of skill and talent to hook someone and get a message across, even if the message is as simple as buy this, in a very short amount of time. One of the more common ways to do that is to produce a flashy self contained single concept piece that can be instantly understood. However, while 30 seconds of good looking people doing sexy activities is great for selling Budweiser, it tends to loose some punch when strung out for a 2 hour narrative. As a result, the Tamahori films that I have seen feel like a bunch of different “ad moments” added together. You get slammed into a set piece quickly, and while this works as a “hook” for ads it means sacrificing set-up in a film. Then it’s all wiz-bang with no context until we hit a big climatic finish, but we still have more then 9/10^th of the film to go. Strangely, Broccoli and Wilson found this quality in Tamahori to be an asset. For the 40^th Anniversary the keepers of the Bond flame felt the need to, as the DVD literature puts it, “Pull out all the stops.” The DVD extras have interviews where the two producers speak proudly about how any given action set piece in this movie would “be the center piece to any other film and we’ve got five.” This bigger is better thinking lead to some of Bond’s biggest disasters and this production has a Moonraker era “Look what we can do!” feel written all over it. It’s the worst impulses of the franchise and yet EON continues to fall into the trap. If you need further evidence that this film was a bloated boondoggle look no further then the “stripped down reboot” follow up Casino Royale (2006). Things are not helped by Wilson and Broccoli’s decision to embraces the worst film making trends of the day, mainly the frantic hack and slash editing style as seen in so many open big/gone next week action films of the time. Christian Wagner, the man who cut Bad Boys (1995) for Michael Bay, one of the worst offenders of the chop it to shit style, was brought on as the editor. Add Wagner’s pacing, or more appropriately lack thereof, to Tamahori’s “Cram it into 30 seconds” storytelling and shooting style and what you have is a big, loud, ugly film with three acts that exist nearly independent of each other. The icing on the cake is Tamahori’s fetishism for Matrix (1999) style camera moves and film speed manipulation. We gets shots of one of the baddies, wearing a wind blown trench coat natch, whirling around with guns blazing in a low angle slow mo that then speed-ramps into double time as the soundtrack assaults the viewer with Whoooossshhh and zipppppsss and lands with a clang! Add the Fast and the Furious (2001) neon car chase, the Richard Branson modeled villain and a Madonna cameo and the film feels more dated then any of the Moore of Connery movies. Die Another Day is just like 95% of action films we see today, the two-minute trailer plays as a better movie then the feature.

Reported Budget: $142,000,000 estimated.

Reported Box-office: $160,854,135 USA and $431,971,116 worldwide. These numbers tell two very different stories. On one hand, the $432 million worldwide is by far the largest take for any Bond to date. On the other, with the $142 budget taken into account this is the least profitable Bond to date, which probably played no small part in Brosnan being shown to the door. I also remember the publicity blitz at time and I’m sure marketing ate up millions if not tens of millions. Up to this point, James Bond was the highest grossing movie franchise ever, pulling in just north of one billion dollars. But the number 4 film at the box office in 2002, the $262 million grossing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, would be the beginning of the end of Bond’s reign. Today, eight movies and ten years later, JK Rowling’s boy wizard is top dog. But no worries, considering Potter has now graduated and Bond is about to release his 23^rd film, it’s only a matter of time before Jimmy B is once again sitting on top the largest pile of money.

Theme Song: “Die Another Day” by Madonna. The wife and I had a few folks over to watch the MMXII Superbowl. They weren’t really huge football people but they got into the spirit of the game because who doesn’t just absolutely relish every moment of Tom Brady get his ass kick while Boston fans scream they were once again robbed. Note to New England boosters, once (the Tyree helmet catch) maybe luck but twice (the Manningham sideline catch) and you’ve just plain got beat… twice. Anyway, throughout the first and second quarters our company was complaining about the up coming halftime show featuring Madonna. Now, I’ve never owned one of her records but I have always respected what Madonna has done for women in music. I also know that if nothing else, she is a consummate professional, who like a great athlete (and unlike Brady in his past two Superbowl appearances) ups her game for the biggest stage. So I found myself in a strange position of defending, at times strongly, Madonna to the point where I was very nervous that I might have oversold someone I’m not the biggest fan of. From the moment Madge entered the field seated on a golden throne being carried by 100 gladiators I knew I backed the right horse. Regardless of how one feels about the woman, nobody can deny her halftime show killed it on every level. She not only performed an A-plus set but in the year when Tim Tebow became a NFL folk hero and Rick Santorum is still somehow though of as a serious contender for the White House, Madonna brought gay culture into every living room in America. The best part, I’d bet you 99% of football fans didn’t even notice. They just keep on downing Coors Lite as they swayed along with Cee Lo. God bless you sister, after that balls-out move I respect you even more. All that said; this is easily the worst Bond tune to date. Madonna sounds like a malfunctioning robot performing at some kind of Blade Runner (1982) S&M club. It’s like a track from a 2002 club scene that never existed. Take a listen yourself as samples of Madonna asking “Sigmund Freud” to “analyze this” can barely be made out over the faux industrial clamor.

 

And the punch line; the theme song is far from the worst music decision in the film. Popular music cues in movies are no easy thing. The song choices must fit into the sealed universe created by the film and at the same time say something larger about the character, the story, the mood or the events that are relevant in the movie at that moment. And if I may paraphrase Carly Simon’s wonderful Bond tune, nobody does it better then Martin Scorsese. In movie after movie Scorsese picks the perfect piece of pop music to evoke the mood of a specific time and place. Take Mean Streets (1973). Think of the slow motion tracking shot of De Niro’s Johnny Boy walking into the bar, a chick on each arm, as “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” plays on the juke. Johnny Boy is a neighborhood punk and the bar is a Little Italy dive but at that moment, Johnny Boy feels like Henry Hill walking into the Copa. Using the language of cinema, Scorsese shows us Johnny Boy feels like the king of the world, no need to have him raise his arms and shout it. Later, there is a completely different feeling when Harvey Keitel’s Charlie is off his face drunk, staggering around the bar to The Chips “Rubber Biscuit.” The hits keep coming; Harry Nilsson’s “Jump into the Fire” during Henry’s coke freak-out in Goodfellas (1990), “Give Me Shelter” in several films (ironically not Shine a Light (2008)) and The Clash’s “Jenny Jones” as Tom Sizemore and Nic Cage speed around Hells Kitchen in Bring Out the Dead (1999).  (Side note to Tamahori; also watch some Scorsese for an advanced class in how to use film speed manipulation to create mood and not as a gimmick. See also Pootie Tang (2001)) And hey, speaking of The Clash, exactly why the hell is “London Calling” in Die Another Day? First, some context; Bond has been exiled and is operating as a rouge agent. He is returning to London for the first time since being imprisoned in North Korea for 14 months. One shot Bond is in Cuba and the next we see an airborne 747. The plane whips onto the screen with a speed ramp and the opening cords of “London Calling” are heard. Cut to the plane interior, Bond orders a drink, (Note for geeks, the stewardess is played by Roger Moore’s daughter) takes a sip and the plane lands at Heathrow. Let’s get into why this idea fails on so many levels. First, the lyric “London calling” is too on the nose. The worse offender of this would be Zack Snyder’s miserable Watchman (2009). While we see two of the heroes flying across a windblown Martian landscape the line “two riders were approaching and the wind began to howl” from Hendrix’s cover of “All Along the Watchtower” is heard. In addition, can we all agree right here, right now, that “Hallelujah,” both the Leonard Cohen original and Jeff Buckley cover, while a wonderful song, be forever ban from film due to gross misuse and overuse? OK, moving on. See, when Alex kicks the shit out of a woman in A Clockwork Orange (1971) he doesn’t sing “Smack My Bitch Up.” (I know the Prodigy song wasn’t out when the film was released. Just roll with me, hey?) Why? Because he’s beating up a woman! We see that, we don’t need to be told in song. What Alex does tell us by belting out a few bars of “Sing in the Rain” is much more significant and offers a clear window into his dark, twisted soul. So yah, Bond’s flying back to London, no need for Joe Strummer and crew to spell it out for us, it cheapens the moment and the song. As we said before, the song must also expand our understanding of the character and here the use of The Clash is even further off the mark. James Bond feels that the only way to appreciate the Beatles is while wearing earplugs. 007 wouldn’t know The Clash if he was cracked upside the head with Paul Simonon’s bass. I know he’s English and The Clash are a seminal English band but so what? Annie Hall (1977) is one of the quintessential 1970’s New York City films but when Annie start messing around on Alvy we don’t cut to “Sheena is a Punk Rocker,” one of the quintessential 1970’s New York City songs. The only place where Joey Ramone would ever cross paths with Woody Allen would be at a kosher deli. The point is, I love The Clash and London Calling is on my top 25 records of all time list, but so is Blonde on Blonde and “Visions of Johanna” has no place in Bond film. A song should at the very least do no harm, but “London Calling” punches a hole in the Bond universe and leaves a vacuum much in the same way Gidea Park’s “California Girls” did in A View To A Kill (1985). I guess we should at least thank the gods we got the genuine article and not Rebel Truce.

Opening Titles: Well, I will say this, EON fires a shot across the audience’s bow from the get go. We are greeted by the familiar Bond stroll to center screen where he turns to face the audience and shoots. However, this time a digital bullet comes out of the gun and flies right at us. Progress marches on. Also for the first time, the opening action sequence bleeds over into the credits and pushes the plot forward. Large scorpions dance among several credit chicks that look like fire and ice demons from Mordor. All the while, shots of James Bond being tortured in a North Korean prison are inter-cut. Take a moment to digest that one because it’s a biggie. We’ve seen stuff like Bond strapped to a table while a laser close in on his mojo or James being punched in the gut and threatened with further violence if he didn’t talk. However, he is never truly hurt and it only lasts a few minutes. Before you know it, 007 has returned to his “cell,” typically a perfectly appointed five star room with a balcony overlooking a pool where Bond sips at a martini while planning his escape. Here, Bond is being water boarded and stung with scorpions in a gulag for what we learn is 14 months of pure hell. This is big, yet it registers zero impact. The connection to the violence is completely undercut by the fact that it’s presented as stylized flashes that are surrounded by an otherwise traditional Bond credit sequence. Indeed, it’s hard to feel what Bond is going thorough while watching naked dancing girls and listening to a pumping, headache inducing theme song. Actually, scratch everything I just said. This is brilliant tactic employed by the North Koreans. If I was tied down and forced to listen to Madonna’s “Die Another Day” stuck on repeat, I’d be spilling state secretes before dinner.

Opening Action Sequence: Can’t go wrong photographing the ocean at dawn. As the sea roars a barley visible black figure appear from behind a wall of wave, riding on a Hawaiian table. The shot is haunting, beautiful, and majestic. Then, a second surfer appears and then a third. The three ride the same tower of a wave (three riders were approaching and the wind began to howl) onto a heavily guarded beach. Much later in the film, as if deliberately trying to ruin a good thing, there is a scene where Bond is in an ice jet boat that’s dangling off the side of an iceberg which is being melted by a space laser. (Don’t worry about it, it just is.) Bond grabs a parachute and the engine cover off the ice boat. The engine cover becomes surfboard that he uses to ride down the sliding iceberg and then kite-surf the ensuing wave. The water looks faker then Mitt Romney talking about “cheesy grits” but never mind. It’s just such a clumsy and ugly execution all around that you cannot believe it exists in the same film as these true to life (shot in Hawaii) opening moments. This is just one small example of how this movie is a bunch of parts moving in every direction that never come together as one functioning whole. But back to the here and now as James Bond and his two bros are making like Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore and hanging ten into a hostile beach.

Bond’s Hobie comes with some high-tech beacons which he uses to alert a helicopter to his location. The chopper lands and man dressed in the same beige field jacket as Bond emerges carrying a brief case. 007 knocks him out, steals his sunglasses, grabs his briefcase, and rides the helicopter to a North Korean base situated right on the DMZ. The briefcase, which Bond has rigged with some hidden C4 explosive, is full of conflict diamonds from Sierra Leone. The diamonds are being delivered to the corrupt Colonel Moon who uses a fleet of hovercraft to smuggle the contraband out of the country to God only knows where. His profits in turn are used to buy sports cars, which he proudly displays on the base. While not the sharpest trafficker in history the Colonel still manages to unmask Bond when a photo of the spy, secretly taken by one of Moon’s men, is electronically sent off to some intelligence folks who report back that 007 is MI6. Yes, Bond was busted by an iPhone. “You will not live to see the day when the world is ruled by the north Mr. Bond.” “Neither will you” and were off. The Colonel blows up Bond’s chopper and Bond blows up the diamonds and Moon’s cars and both end-up behind the wheel of two hovercrafts. (Is behind the wheel proper for hovercraft?) As even more hovercrafts give chase Bond and the baddie slide out onto the minefield, which conveniently has dirt roads running parallel to each other. This is good for when you want to hover side-by-side with someone while shooting at them. Mines blow up and so do the other hovercraft in a chase that is keep interesting because of the way the hovercraft slide and … hover. However we only get to see this in quick, short bursts as the editing will not allow us to focus on any one thing. Eventually Bond and the baddie end up on the same craft, which goes flying off a cliff into a river. Bond jumped off just in time to save himself from the fall but not half the North Korean Army who shows up under the command of General Moon, indeed the father of the dead Colonel Moon at the bottom of the river. The poor General is a little conflicted at the moment. Firstly his pissed at his kid for betraying his country and using the Army for his own personal gain, but he’s none to pleased with Bond for killing his boy. Above all, the guy is just perplexed. “Fifty years after the superpowers carved Korea in two and then you arrive. A British spy, an assassin …” In order to find out why Bond was in country, the General spends the 3 minute 30 second credit roll dunking 007’s head in water and stinging him with scorpions.

Bond’s Mission: So it turns out Bond was tortured for a little longer then the opening credits, more like 14 months if we are to believe the on screen text and length of Bond’s unkempt facial hair. Indeed seeing the always dapper gentleman spy looking like Robinson Crusoe (a role Brosnan played in a 1997 movie) should be more shocking then it is, but credit to Brosnan for trying to pull as much gravity from the situation as he can. When Bond is yanked from his cell and stands before a firing squad, Brosnan plays the scene with a perfect mix of defiance and fear in facing his death. However, the firing squad retreats at the last second and a disembodied voice tells 007 to cross a bridge that extends into a foggy void. Turns out, Bond is being exchanged for another prisoner named Zao who also happens to be the cat who opened the diamond briefcase with the explosives in it. As a result, Zao’s face is now bedazzled with a dozen or so diamonds. Why he didn’t adopt Diamond Head, no one’s favorite 80’s metal band, for his moniker is a mystery. Bond is being exchanged, against his wishes, because the United States had one of their deep cover men in Korea exposed, and they think Bond spilled the beans. The U.S. is willing to give up Zao, who killed four Chinese agents, to get Bond out so he will stop talking. We all know Bond would never talk and so should M but she has her doubts. Bond has his 00 revoked and although it’s never stated, I assume he was going to be handed over to the U.S. This is all very dense on exposition yet thinner then the 2012 NY Mets line up. Forget that Bond’s stunt in the DMZ would have caused a war, forget that the prison exchange makes zero sense and forget that Bond escapes the cell M is holding him in by stopping his heart. What, I didn’t mention that last past? Whelp, yah, that’s what he does. What makes this whole Bond being tortured for 14 months and disavowed by MI6 thing so silly is it has absolutely no lasting repercussions. Bond suffers no metal scars from his ordeal. Besides the stopping his heart trick, he learns nothing from his 14 months of hell and loss of the only livelihood he has ever known. Look I get that this is Bond, but after all he’s been through can he really so cavalierly go back to one-liners and banging babes? The answer according to Die Another Day is hell and yes. It is only through the flimsiest of plot devices that the first 20 minutes of the film have any bearing on the rest. So Bond escapes and goes rogue, hoping to learn who set him up to look like an informant. Bond going rouge seems like a no brainer but just like in Licence To Kill (1987) the great premise is fumbled, bungled and all together botched. The plot quickly becomes a quagmire that bends over backwards in attempts to string together a tale of revenge and betrayal, themes that are never able to cut through story points involving diamond smuggling, space weapons, billionaire playboys and plastic surgery. If a cynical person were to take a step back from the film, they may conclude this movie has no ideas of it’s own but functions as a highlight reel referencing memorable moments from previous films via inside jokes. Take the part where Bond is in his Cuban contacts office and he picks up a bird watching book. Savvy fans know Ian Fleming enjoyed bird watching from his Jamaican estate and he nicked the name James Bond from an author of an ornithology book. The joke is continued further when on the beach, Bond, James Bond introduce himself to the Bond girl as an English man on holiday, in town to observe the birds. See, bird is a British term for woman and Bond is poising as an ornithologist so this is funny. The Bond girl, by the by, emerges from the sea in a bikini with a white knife belt on her hips a la Ursula Andress in Dr. No. Another character makes his entrance into the film skydiving over Buckingham Palace with a Union Jack parachute recalling not only The Spy Who Loves Me (1977) open but also the jet pack fly-over of the villa in Thunderball (1965). Gone is the BMW replace by an Aston Martin and Q’s work shop it littered with everything from the fore mention jet pack to the knife shoe and briefcase seen in From Russia With Love (1963) to the hang-glider from Moonraker (1979) to the mini-jet from Octopussy (1983) and many, many more. In case we missed all of that, when Q gives Bond his watch he comments, “It’s your 20^th I believe.” Perhaps with his lack of establishing shots and slash and burning cutting Tamahori was fondly recalling Spootswood’s Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) in which case good on yah … I guess.

Villain’s Name: Col. Moon or Gustav Graves. Yes, the British playboy diamond miner and the dead guy in the cliff diving hovercraft crash are one in the same. Turns out that after the fall the younger Moon not only lived to, shall we say die another day, but went on to live the most incredible 14 months in human history. I say that with full knowledge of Bob Dylan’s 1965-1966, a period of time during which The Bard wrote, recorded, and released three masterpieces (Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde), plugged in and got booed at the Newport Folk Festival, toured Europe twice, was accused of being Judas and changed the face of rock & roll. While Bond was cooling his heels in a Korean prison Col. Moon (deep breath) faked his death, escaped the DMZ, made his way to Cuba, got a DNA transplant that turned the 5’ 9” Korean into a 5’ 11” member of the Shakespearian Acting Company, opened a fake diamond mine in Iceland, convinced his entire diamond smuggling ring to now go thought Iceland, joined the Blades fencing club, corrupted an MI6 agent, fixed the Sydney Olympics, built a greenhouse on a frozen lake, built a diamond infused sun reflector, launched said sun reflector into space and got it working perfectly, and gained the trust of the crown to the point where when we meet Gustav Graves he parachuting into Buckingham Palace to be knighted by The Queen. Ummm, hummm. What you got to say now Zimmerman? Moon’s 14 months “after” his death makes your ‘65-‘66 look like Axle Roses’ 1993 – 2008. Zao, he of the diamond face who was the prisoner exchanged for Bond, also goes AWOL from the Korean army and joins his now Anglo pal Moon in his bid to melt the world, not to stop the world and melt with you. Don’t confuse the two.

Villain Actor: Toby Stephens. This English actor would be right at home in “Downton Abby.” A capital “A” Ac-Tor, he based his Bond villain nakedly on Virgin mega-mogul Richard Branson. The Branson bit works fine but the character in the context of the film is quite silly. Stephens gets this and embraces the camp by going very wide. He also displays very impressive swordsmanship in his best scene in the film. But despite his perfect diction, Stephen’s not a miracle worker and try as he might, the character is just not well written.

Villain’s Plot: Graves uses his “from nothing to everything in no time at all” story to endear himself to the elite of the UK while behind the scenes he’s dealing in conflict diamonds and building a dooms day machine called “Icarus.” Students of mythology will recognize Icarus as a flying man who in his arrogance flew to close to the sun and burnt his wings. Why one would name his project to take over the world after someone who literally crashed and burned is not clear but we have much bigger fish to fry. Look, there’s no way around it, this villain simply doesn’t work. His journey from a corrupt Korean Colonel with daddy issues to a knight of the realm who speaks like Sir Lawrence Olivier is simply a bridge to far. The problem isn’t so much the absurd fiction of the thing; past villains have lived under the sea and in doormat volcanoes, the issue is the characters narrative arc has zero connective tissue. These two men, Moon and Graves, exist in two separate films. The Kananga / Mr. Big baddie from Live and Let Die (1973) was not perfect, but you could see this was the same man living two lives, both of which contributed to the same goal. He was essentially playing the supplier (Kananga) and distributor (Mr. Big) for the same company (Coke is Us.) In this movie, the diamonds are meant to be the connective tissue, but how? Graves set up his ring very quickly, do his partners know he is Moon or did they just trust this out of the blue Brit? Moon was clearly in the diamond biz to sell at a profit (hence the cars) where as Graves needs the diamonds to build Icarus. Was Icarus somehow in the cards all along? If so, how would he launch the satellite as Moon when North Korea has no space program? And what would Moon want with Icarus in the first place? Was his plan to sell it to the North Korean government? Possible, but then as Graves he kills his father, shooting the general in the head while we watch in slow mo. Was he planning on going rogue with the space weapon all along? Then why be so public about its launch, something he never could have done as Moon? This whole thing doesn’t pass the smell test. There is just no way both these men are the same person with the same goals unless, maybe Moon was going to become Graves the entire time and Bond just gave him a good way to disappear. But even that doesn’t work because Graves tells Bond he modeled this playboy character after the British spy, who he never meet till the day he was chased of the waterfall. Indeed, Die Another Day references nearly every past Bonds film in one way or another but Diamonds Are Forever (1971) casts the largest shadow. In fact, a solid argument could be made that Bond 20 is a remake of Sir Sean’s swan song. In the 1971 film Blofeld makes several clones of himself that result in false deaths and mistaken identities. Blofeld also kills off his former self to take on the identity of a seemingly legit businessman, casino mogul Willard Whyte. The legit business in turn is a front to smuggle diamonds which Blofeld uses to build a star wars death ray. In fact, all that’s missing from Die Another Day is a pair of deadly gymnasts (Bambi and Thumper) and a pair of homosexual hit men (Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint) and the two movies are nearly identical in terms of not only story but also, sadly, quality.

Villain’s Lair: I’m not sure Graves holds the deed but he has strong ties to a hospital off the coast of Cuba on the Isla Los Organos or the Island of the Bodies. Bond uses a pretty clever scheme involving a guard and wheelchair to work his way onto the island and discovers the hospital is a front for a gene replacement clinic. To hammer this point home the hospital is decorated with DNA helixes on rotating mirror poles. Graves also has one of these gene facelift doohickeys at his “mine” in Iceland. Built on a frozen lake, the mine is really a glass-doomed greenhouse that is full of planets, which apparently don’t require soil. Also built on this frozen lake is a huge ice hotel that looks like the Sydney Opera House with a gigantic octopus growing out of it. Everything in the hotel is carved from ice, which is very cool. (Thank you, thank you. Don’t forget to tip your bar tender.)

Villain’s Coolest Accessory/ Trait: Zao’s diamond face is rather creepy and is actually quite a good idea. The issue is the Zao character is little more then an earned boy for Graves. Zao is a hell of driver but mostly he just kind of walks around shouting orders as his face sparkles under the klieg lights. Besides being an Asian man trapped in a British body, Graves also never sleeps. Somewhat counter intuitively this leads to him having boundless energy. It’s later implied that his gene therapy robs him of sleep but this is never adequately explained.

Badassness of Villain: As Moon, the baddie is quite badass. We are introduced to him as he is practicing kickboxing on what appears to be a heavy punching bag. We quickly learn he is in fact beating on his anger management therapist in a sack. Speaking of sack, it takes a sold set of stones to be smuggling diamonds in and out of the DMZ right under both North and South Korea, not to mention NATO’s, noises. But once Moon becomes Graves he is no longer as much of a badass as he is a pampered punk. Indeed, wanting to melt the world is badass but we have zero sense of motivation. He might simply be bored as opposed to bad. And in the end when he shoots his father he comes off more like a pouting teen then a maniacal madman.

Villain’s Asides/ Henchmen: Besides Zao, who has been well covered, there is Graves’ personal assistant Miranda Frost. One of the rules in Roger Ebert’s Movie Glossary is The Law of Economy of Characters. It states in part, “Movie budgets make it impossible for any film to contain unnecessary characters. Therefore, any apparently unnecessary or extraneous major character is undoubtedly the villain.” Blog, James Blog has praised past Bond films for their villain switch-a-roo’s; two Brosnan pictures in particular, GoldenEye and The World Is Not Enough (1999), pulled off the misdirection so well that when we learned the truth it was an exhilarating surprise. Here, it matters not one bit that Moon and Graves are the same person so the revile means little. But there is another two-face in Bond’s world and much of the film is given to 007’s quest to learn who set him up. We meet Mrs. Frost at the Blades Fencing club where Madonna introduces her as an Olympic gold wining fencer. When Bond asks “didn’t she win by default?” the not at all currently doing HGH Madonna tells Bond Frost’s opponent “ODed on steroids.” A. No one has ever ODed on steroids and B. I’m not sure what steroids would do to give one an upper hand in the sport of fencing but here we are. Frost next turns up sitting across the desk from M, who brings up the fact that as an MI6 agent, Mrs. Frost has turned up zero illegal active on Graves despite being so deep in cover she has become his right hand woman. “As far as I can tell he’s clean.” Next, Frost hops into bed with James for the least sexy encounter in a Bond film to date (more on that to come) until she finally ends up pulling a gun on Bond while he and Graves stand in a greenhouse office. Please allow good old Gustav explain, “Her weakness is also mine, winning at any cost. So when I arranged for that overdoes of the true victor in Sydney I won myself my very own MI6 agent.” And there you have it. This character is so under written and shoehorned into the plot that an ill gained fencing title is all it took to turn a highly trained MI6 agent against king and country. We are not talking about a 10 in the floor exercise here people. The scene is made all the more silly since Frost is exposed as the third wheel on the baddie bicycle. We get a wide shot of Bond facing Graves, Zao and Frost, the three over dressed villains standing around like hanger on’s waiting for a table during fashion week. And to top it all off, when we get to the climax, Bond doesn’t even get to exact his revenge against she who betrayed him. No, Frost is done in by the Bond girl who kills the Olympic fencing gold medalist during … a sword fight! There is one other henchman of note and even though he gets little screen time he was my favorite. Vlad, a blond with a Dutch Boy bowl cut, is Graves’ answer to Q. He builds and maintains all of Graves little toys, like ice jet cars and the world melting Icarus. He even designed Zao his very own James Bond car with all the usual refinements. This idea is only touched on but it got me to thinking, an evil Q who somehow had counter-measures to Bonds gadgets would be a very cool character. Someone at EON should get on that.

Bond Girl Actress: Halle Berry. For the second film in a row the Bond girl is a Hollywood star (Dennis Richards in The World Is Not Enough) and once again it doesn’t work. First off, I know many people absolutely love Mrs. Berry but I must confess I am not among them. I have not seen Monster’s Ball (2001), the film which won Berry the actress Oscar, an award she left the Iceland set of Bond to collect, but I’ve seen her in many other movies and I find her to be rather dull. The first time I remember taking notice of her was as Vivian in Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever (1991). She was good as Gator’s crack-head partner but Samuel Jackson was transcendent, so much so that Cannes invented an award for his performance. Other then that nothing really jumps out. Her Storm in X-Men gets buried by the other team members which is nuts. During the period I read the X-men, mid to late 80’s, Storm was robbed of her powers and continued to lead the X-men while sporting a kick ass Mohawk to boot. Berry clearly needs a new agent after staring in bomb (Swordfish (2001)) after bomb (Gothika (2003)) after bomb (Catwoman (2004)). What has always been great about the Bond babes is their exotic, unknown qualities and nothing is exotic about A-listers who have every bit of their person life out in the open, especially if they gossip page favorites like Halle Berry or Dennis Richards. All that said, I think even Berry’s biggest fans would have to admit she not good in this movie. Her line reading is flat and lifeless one second, too flirty and over the top the next. But to be fair, Berry also had to deal with scenes like the one where she’s tied to a table, which is attached to a robot arm that goes berserk and is waving her around while several out of control lasers cut back and forth barley avoiding her. “Hurry up James or I’m going to be half the woman I used to be.” Not even Meryl Streep could make that work.

Bond Girl’s Name: Jinx Johnson. When Honey Rider emerged from the sea she was moving in real time, singing to herself, and startled to learn she was not alone. When Jinx pulls of a similar move 40 years later she does so in slow motion, with orchestral stings swelling, while over a dozen patrons in a Cuban beach bar watch. Exhibits A thru Z when defining less is more. Rider’s entrance was an innocent moment full of surprise and intrigue, Jinx’s is a voyeuristic display of a “girls of spring break” DVD. As for Bond, he didn’t find it at all odd that an American would be hanging out in Cuba and offers the lovely lady a Mojito. Turns out Jinx is a NSA Agent after the same prize as Bond, so the two keep bumping into each other until they decide to team up. To her credit, Jinx does kick some ass. In fact, she kills close to as many people as Bond this film including Miranda Frost. For the climax of the film, all the principles end up on a huge cargo plane that’s flying over the DMZ. From the plane, Graves is controlling the Icarus laser which is cutting a path of destruction across the DMZ and heading for an allied base. Bond shoots a hole in the plane through which everyone is sucked except Bond, Graves, Jinx and Frost. We then cut back and forth from Bond and Graves duking it out in the cockpit to Jinx and Frost crossing swords in the cargo hold. While all of this is going on, the pilotless plane flies through the Icarus sunbeam laser and starts to plummet earthward while melting/ falling apart. Still with us? OK, Frost is already sporting a Brandi Chastain sports bra so naturally Jinx removes her shirt as well. While the plane is plummeting, these ladies display impeccable footwork, parrying and thrusting amongst the flying sheets of metal. Finally, the film goes into some kind of blurry slow motion as the gold medal winner bellows “I can read your every move.” Jinx responds by grabbing a knife that’s stuck in a book and screaming “Read this Bitch!” while stabbing Frost in her ice cold heart. Ripley’s “get away from her you bitch” this is not. This entire scene was such an assault on the brain it hurts just recounting it. I can’t even bring myself to describe how Bond and Jinx escape from the crashing plane.

Bond Girl Sluttiness: Sex has always been strangely chased and rarely exotic in Bond films but here it’s outright bizarre. Tamahori has shown that little things like establishing shots and character development don’t interest him and nowhere is that more on display then the sex scenes. One of the jokes of the Bond films is how quickly women jump into bed with him and I fully support this, but to get to the punch line there must be a joke. The doctor said “Then don’t do that” is not funny unless you know the guy first said “Hey doc, it hurts when I lift my arm like this.” After telling Bond she is a Jinx “Born on Friday the 13^th” Bond spends 45 second making bad bird puns and the two are in bed. It’s worth noting the strange jump cuts and the odd fadeout on the wine glasses. The barley sexual encounter looks like a second rate outtake from the Top Gun (1986) sex scene and is as exciting as sitting in traffic at the Lincoln Tunnel. It all feels as if Tamahori has no interest in this mushy stuff and is simply putting it in the film because he’s expect to. He’d rather get it over with as quickly as possible so he can get back to playing with the fast cars and big exploitations. For instance, when Bond is invited to Iceland by Graves, he turns to Mrs. Frost and asks…

Bond’s Best Pick-up Line: “Can I expect the pleasure of you in Iceland?”

Bond Girls Best Pick-up Line: “I’m afraid you will never have that pleasure.”

Number of Woman 007 Beds: But of course he does. The scene happens in the ice palace on a swan bed. The two enter the room talking MI6 business. They both disrobe in such a business like manner I truly thought they were quickly changing out of their evening wear to put on some black night raid gear and out the door they would go. But Frost, unprovoked, just kind of jumps into bed for the least sexy sex scene I can think of that’s not in a comedy or horror film. It’s literally just checking off the boxes. “OK Bond banged both ladies in the film, cut it, print it. Next set up please, let’s go people, time is money!”

Number of People 007 Kills: With all the bullets and minefields and plane crashes and ice racing and space laser shooting you would think more folks would have been killed but no, just a relatively tame 14 by Bond’s hand. (Jinx takes care of at least 6, which has to be an all-time high for a Bond girl.) Things start off in the minefield with a, ahem, bang. The hovercraft chase is actually cooler then I thought it would be. It has a lot to do with how the vehicles move kind of loosely unstable as they slide over literal landmines just below them. And when they do blow up, boy howdy. They flip and somersault and get caught up in trees and all kinds of stuff. Bond takes out at least 4 baddies before sending Moon over the falls to his “death.” Or did he? Much later in Iceland Bond runs over two snowmobile dudes. Dear old diamond faced Zao adds some bling to his grill when he ends up with a crystal chandler through his skull. However, given the record number of comebacks in this film, it is hard to be 100% sure that he was truly done in.

Shades of Dr. No, a helpful computer voice announces the plane is loosing cabin pressure after Bond shoots a hole in the fuselage. Apparently the four men, including Korean generals and Vlad, getting suck out into the wild blue yonder wasn’t sufficient evidence. While Jinx and Frost cross blades below, Bond goes hand to hand with Graves in the wind tunnel of a busted up cockpit. Graves, who is wearing some kind of Ironman armor that controls Icarus, gets the best of Bond and is about to parachute to safety, but not before he makes the fatal mistake of hanging around to taunt his adversary. “Time to face destiny.” “Time to face gravity,” Bond retorts which is not entirely correct, it’s more like time to face suction. None the less, with the sharp quip and a quick wrist Bond pulls Graves’ ripcord sending the baddie and his open parachute out of the hole and into the jet engine. Since we first meet Graves sky diving over Buckingham Palace, I was reminded of the old saying, live by the parachute, die by the parachute.

Most Outrageous Death/s: I was going to go with the old laser-pierces-back-of-dreadlocked-head-and-comes-out-of-dudes-open-mouth death but upon my second viewing I reconsidered. By the way, in regards to dreadlock dude’s death, this happens in the same scene with the galloping bench upon which Jinx is secured. If anyone, anywhere, can tell me what was happening in the scene; IE where people were and what was doing what, then I will personally pay for your doctorate at the University of your choosing because you clearly understand spatial relations better then anyone else on this planet. (Ed Note: Offer not valid on this planet) Anyway, the most outrageous death in the film is James Bonds. After getting out of the Korean prison he is being held in an English prison. This is a very big upgrade, instead of receiving beatings 007 is now receiving medical treatment, but a golden cage is a cage none-the-less. Naturally, Bond wants out. While lying in bed and hooked up to a heart monitor we see Bond flashback to the Korean prison. It a foggy single image of prisoner Bond sitting cross-legged on the floor. This three second shot has a lot of heavy lifting to do. The grainy image is meant to tell the audience that while Bond was being held as a POW he learned to meditate to the point where he could stop his heart. This is the film that felt the need to underline the fact that Bond is flying to London with a music cue that says London calling. This is a movie where Jinx, suffering from hypothermia, is dunked in what was long ago established to be a hot spring as Bond mummers “Come on, come on, it’s warm in here. This is warm you up.” (I can only assume he is saying this for our benefit since Jinx is unconscious.) This movie doesn’t trust us to get the most obvious points yet we are to discern Bond can stop and start his heart at will with a three second flashback? OK, so Bond stops his heart, which makes the machine that goes ping go flat-line and nurses come rushing in. Bond then makes like Nikki Sixx and kick starts his heart, going from 0 to 60 BPM in 2.3 seconds. He then jumps up, subdues two doctors, escapes the prison, runs to a river, and swims to freedom. I know some yoga masters can bring their heart rates down to a near stop, but I don’t think they do a triathlon immediately afterward. By the by, Zao, like Bond, it seems can also jump up from 100% unconscious sleep on a hospital bed and in immediately engage in the highest level of hand to hand combat.

Miss. Moneypenny:  GAAHHHHKKK!!!! What the hell is it with these later Bond’s and Moneypenny? She has not had a decent thing to do since the late 1970’s. This is a strong, intriguing character that can give you a ton of storytelling points and in the past few films she’s been reduced to a bad punch line. That said, she has never had to suffer the indignities Tamahori puts dear Miss. Moneypenny though in this film. This is a new low. At one point Bond is sitting at his desk at MI6 (He has a desk? He has an office? This has never come up before…) when he hears a noise. He runs into the hall, draws his PPK, and starts taking out intruders dressed like cat burglars right out of the Batman TV series. As he moves from room to room we get a quick pan of Moneypenny, slouched in her chair at her desk, bleeding from the face, dead. Moneypenny is dead?!?!?! But no no no dear viewer, EON has tricked you. See, Q has a new virtual reality toy and Bond, sporting Men In Black style sunglasses, is simply going through a training exercise. This is a cheat, and a cheep one, but it’s also a set up. After the mission has ended and Bond has saved the world, he is presumed killed in a fiery plane crash. Moneypenny, writing 007’s obit, looks up to see him standing in her office doorway. She gets up, walks over to him, and the two embrace, kissing passionately. Bond then pushing everything on Moneypenny’s desk to the floor and the two start going at it in her office. They are then interrupted by Q’s voice and cut to Moneypenny with the virtual reality glasses on, laying on her back and rolling around while wearing a skirt in the middle of Q’s lab, moaning “OH James.” First off, this is 100% inconsistent with the Moneypenny character in both her feelings for James and her workplace conduct. It’s played as a joke but what is the joke? That Moneypenny was caught masturbating by a co-worker? Could this be any tackier? Why yes it could, we cut to a cabin exterior where we hear Jinx asking James to “Just keep it in a little bit longer.” “Well it has to come out sometime…” Yes, they are in bed but the conversation is about a diamond resting in Jinx’s navel. If this film has shown us anything, it’s that Tamahori has stranger ideas about human sexuality then Rick Santorum.  As for Moneypenny I wish she’d been shot, she would have never suffered through this cheap, undignified, and totally unnecessary shaming.

M: A real life moment here if I may. I adore Judy Dench as M. Like Patrick Stewart as Jean Luc Picard, she brings a seriousness and dignity to a part that most other actors would view as slumming. That’s what makes both Picard and Dench’s M so endearing, they are sold as a rock and dependable every time, even when delivering subpar techno-babble dialog. So I was heartbroken when a few weeks ago I learned Judy Dench is going blind, to the point where she needs others to read her scripts to her. No doubt, this puts her future as M in jeopardy but on a more important note, Blog, James Blog wishes her the best of luck with her health in all respects. As for M in this film, she is backed into a position of playing the heavy; cutting Bond off and then pulling him back in when needed. M doesn’t sugarcoat it and explains her impossible position in such a frank manner that even if Bond doesn’t agree, he needs to respect her actions. She even gets a good jab in at Mr. Blonde near the end. Sold as a rock.

Q: John Cleese, no longer R, is now Q. Continuity between films, always a dice and fluid thing in the Bond universe, is quite odd here. Cleese’s character was introduced by his predecessor in the previous movie, so we know he is not Major Boothroyd. However, it is 100% understandable that he would become Q, the position at MI6, much like Dench became M even though she is not Sir Miles Messervy. All that said, Cleese is not the bumbling absent-minded professor of the last film but a sharped tongued Bond agitator in the exact same vain as Llewelyn’s Q. He has not the history with Bond nor the seniority to get away with such behavior but there you have it. And now that all said, Cleese can’t help but be funny. As an exasperated man trapped in a lab while Bond has all the fun with his inventions, the Monty Python vet is pitch perfect. Weather he’s calling Bond “double o zero” or telling Bond “I wish I could make you vanish” Cleese’s timing is perfect and he is a pure delight.

List of Gadgets: I dunno, perhaps I’m having an overly negative reaction to this movie but even the gadgets seem just kind of shoehorned in to serve a function but without the mystery or joy. I like the idea of hiding stuff in the surfboard, but really what do was have here? A pair of wire clippers and a radio? The binoculars Bond has on Cuba are more usefully as they serve two purposes, he can spy on the island and the “birds” at the same time. Bond dose get a neat ring which transmits a frequency that can shatter bulletproof glass. Then there are the switchblades. Let us break down the switchblade bit as just one self contained example of why the film on a wider level is a Frankenstein of poorly put together, incompatible parts that never comes to life. The battle of Hoth, I mean Iceland, is done. Bond rescues Jinx by jumping into the hot spring. When revived, Jinx asks “What took you so long?” This exact line, delivered by Bruce Willis when he saves Julia Roberts from a gas chamber at the last second, was held up in The Player (1991) as representing everything that is wrong with Hollywood movies. And here it is, 11 years later. The writers should be ashamed. Anyhow, try to keep up because here we go. We cut from hot springs of Iceland to a base in South Korea where Bond’s boss M tells Bond he needs to stop the “Icarus,” currently raining fire on the DMZ. It’s being controlled by Graves who is at a base in the north. Jinx’s boss Damian Falco tells her to tag along. Cut to the cargo bay of a plane where Bond and Jinx get on one-man glider things called switchblades and jump out of the plane. Cut to a shot of them flying. Cut to a shot of them looking through a chain link fence that would be better suited for a tennis court then protecting a military instillation. In .03 seconds they pick out Graves and see him boarding a plane. “We’ve got to get on that plane.” They start to cut the fence. Cut to them running down the runway of a North Korean airbase, catching up to the taxiing plane, and jumping in the wheel well. Cut to them in the cockpit about to take out the pilot. This all takes up about a minute of real estate. Why bother? It’s so clear the story matters not a hoot, it just about slamming us into the next action set piece. I can see the production meetings now. “Too much talking in this part, we might loose the audience. Cut it down to half a page.” Hitchcock once famously broke it down like this; four guys are sitting at a table playing cards. If the bomb under the table goes off, that’s action.  But if the card players don’t know about the bomb under the table and the audience does, that’s suspense. Die Another Day takes the four guys and the table, throws the whole lot out of a 60 story building, and while the guys are falling they get attacked by rabid hawks with laser eyes.  It’s not action, its not suspense, it’s a Red Bull induced fever dream determined to keep you so off balance you won’t realize nothing makes sense. So much of this movie plays like a hacks shortcut to film making, and it just plain stinks.

Gadgets/British Government Property Bond Destroys: Nope, everything comes back in tip-top shape. Including the car that has been flipped upside down, skidded on ice upside down, been driven through a melting ice castle, smashed throw the melting ice castle walls and shot at by more projectiles then one gets bombarded with during the average Call of Duty session. To be fair, the windshield was broken but Bond did that to save Jinx and no, other then that, not a scratch.

Other Property Destroyed: For as much destruction as there is in the film; melting of major glaciers, annihilation of the entire North/South Korean boarder, the melting of a huge hotel, the downing of an enormous cargo plane, Bond himself was responsible for little damage. Before the credits 007 blew up Moon’s Jay Leno car collection and took out a few of his hovercraft and some jeeps. Indeed this incident alone would cause a war but please move along, nothing to see here. He blows several holes in the walls of the Cuban DNA hospital and in the side of a plane. However, it’s Jinx who sends the aircraft into the sunbeam from hell. This leave the fencing club which, as a dreadlocked attendant pointed out, “needed some redecoration anyway.”

Best One Liners/Quips: Bond: You know, you’re cleverer then you look. Q: Still, better then looking cleverer then you are.

Felix Leiter: The CIA man has been replace by the head of the NSA, one agent Damian Falco. We first see Falco, played by Michael Madsen of Mr. Blonde and Free Willy (1993) fame, standing on the boarder during Bond’s release from North Korean custody. “Look at him. You would think he was some kind of hero” Madsen moans, to which I reply “you got arrested for beating the shit out of your kid dude, so lets not throw stones hey.” I much preferred two other characters that functioned as Bond contacts, Mr. Chang and Raoul. Mr. Chang is awesome from the moment he comes on screen acting as a concierge at the Hong Kong Yacht Club. While the man behind the desk of the swanky establishment is turned off by Bond post prison Soundgarden roadie appearance, Mr. Chang recognizes 007 immediately and sets him up in the presidential suite with a bottle of Bollinger and a masseuse named Peaceful Fountains of Desire. The tone here is correct. The film takes an outrageous moment and makes it plausible because it’s done with everyone involved knowing it’s meant to be a lark. Moments later, 007 breaks the mirror in his room to reveal Mr. Chang and three other men spying on him. “You didn’t think I knew you were Chinese secrete service all along Chang.” To which Bond ads “Put your hands down.” Again, in this moment, everything is in the Bond universe we have come to know and love; Bond turning the tables, defusing the situation, and moments later is getting the info he needs, that Zao is in Cuba. It’s all handled with wit and charm, two elements that are rare in the film and completely absent by the time we arrive in Iceland. Bond’s man in Havana is Raoul, a Cuban out of central casting. We meet him drinking coffee and smoke a cigar while working in his open air roof top office that sits above a sweat shop. Then he speaks. Raoul deliciously rolls the cigar smoke around his cheeks as he purrs every line in a low, seductive, monotone. He sums-up his feelings about his communist county by observing “our heath system is second to none.” I wanted to spend the rest of the film with Raoul, watching as he and Bond jumped into a 1957 Chevy and went on a rum soaked adventure across the island. Someone at EON should get on that, along with the evil Q thing.

Bond Cars: While in Cuba, Raoul hooks Bond up with a convertible 1950’s shark-fin Chevy rolling on whitewalls down beach side highways. It’s by far the coolest car in a film that’s silly with high-end automobiles. MI6 also supplies Bond with a V12 that “Aston Martin calls the Vanquish” but Q “calls it the vanish.” Q goes on to explain that the car is made invisible with “adaptive camouflage.  Tiny cameras on all sides project the image they see onto a light emitting polymer on the other side” so “to the casual eye it’s as good as invisible.” It’s also got “all the usual refinements; Ejector seat, torpedoes, target seeking shotguns.” IE The works.  Zao also gets his very own James Bond car with the all the usual refinements on a green Jaguar XKR. I know these neon compact cars are all the rage as demonstrated in the Fast and the Furious films (Rick Yune, who plays Zao, is one of the series stars) but to me they lack the weight and substance of older autos and look like candy colored toys. At the risk of sounding overly negative I feel the need to once again pick apart an action sequence, this time the car battle on between Zao and Bond on the frozen lake. First off, Bond was already chased out on to the frozen lake by the Icarus sunbeam, a sunbeam that melted the lake we are about to go out onto again. But forget that for now. What we have is Bond running away from the ice hotel, returning (on snowmobile) and then running away again, and then return again. We get two chases in a row that narratively and literally go absolutely nowhere. On the DVD extra, much is made of the ice chase, as crew member after crew member, including director Lee Tamahori pat themselves on the back for this “car chase on ice. Something that has never been done before.” Since this is a film that is meant to pay homage to all past Bond movies I would have thought that Tamahori and crew would have done their research but apparently like the rest of the world they overlooked George Lazenby wonderful film. But even if there wasn’t already an ice car chase in On Her Majesties Secrete Service (1969) just because something has never been done doesn’t mean it should be done. I hold up Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) (2011) as exhibit A. (That said, the first Centipede has it’s merits and is worthy of discussion.)

Anyway, the cars slide and swoosh this way and that as the camera does the same and film speeds change on a whim. Scenes like this boggle the mind from a film making standpoint. If I was a director, and I spent three weeks and god knows how much money shooting an elaborate case like this, I would want the audience to, you know, see it. We never see a shot for more then 2 seconds as it’s cut/cut/cut/cut and we have no idea what’s going on. The way this thing is put together EON could have saved a ton of time and money and just rented the rink in Madison Square Garden, stuck two cars on it, draped the stands with a green screen and it would have looked the same. By the time they are chasing each other inside the melting ice castle it truly doesn’t matter what’s going on, all semblance of film making has joined Elvis and left the building.

Bond Timepiece: His 20^th as Q points out. It’s got a detonator for C4 and timer as well as a laser Bond used to cut a hole in the Icelandic ice to do some fishing. As for the watch itself, for the third film in a row Bond has his trusty Omega Seamaster Professional, the automatic variety.

Other Notable Bond Accessories: Once again, 007 uses glasses in the open to become another man. In fact, Bond sports several different kinds of sunglasses in the film leading me to suspect either the folks at EON think Pierce looks good in dark spectacles or they have a contract with LensCrafters. Bond is finally smoking again and how could he not; after all when in Cuba … Speaking of Brosnan’s good looks and Cuba, our hero looks simply smashing in his Havana shirt. For a guy who is always dressed up it was a delight to see him in comfy and looser island attire. Again, we should have had Bond & Raoul: Havana Nights.

Number of Drinks 007 Consumes: When comes to booze I have zero issues with the 20^th Bond. They even get a sly joke in at the top that involves the British doctors checking out Bond’s health after his 14 months of being held captive. “Liver not to good. It’s defiantly him.” While cleaning up at the Hong Kong Yacht Club, Bond enjoys his first post prison drink, a bottle of ’61 Bollinger. At a beach side bar in Cuba Bond has a Mojito. In the next scene while rolling around in bed with Jinx we see two champagne glasses on the dresser. 007 also has two martinis, both with a bad joke chaser. The first is served to him on a turbulent flight, bound for London if memory serves; making Jimmy B glad he ordered his drink shaken. The second Vesper Bond orders at a bar in the hotel made of frozen H2O. “Martini, plenty of ice if you can spare it.” We also see him with a drink in hand, some kind of whiskey I would wager, while sitting at his desk but since this turned out to be a “holodeck episode,” I don’t think it was real.

Bond’s Gambling Winnings: The late, great George Carlin had a bit where he declared that baseball, football, and basketball were the only three real sports. Everything else is an activity. He then goes on to list all the other activities we think of as sports and comes up with a reason to disqualify them as such. When he gets to fencing, he says it can’t possibly be a real sport because you can’t gamble on it. “When is the last time you placed a God damn fencing bet?” Bond being Bond, he proves there is nothing he won’t put money on, including fencing. Bond tracks down Graves at the Blades Fencing Club, named after a social club that appeared in the “Moonraker” novel. After some flirting with Madonna, the hero and the villain get down to business. It all starts out very friendly; $1000 a point, three points wins. As is the case every time Bond places a wager, the match takes place in the most gorgeous room imaginable; huge windows, wooden floors, impeccable furnishings and ceilings as high as the heavens. The two seem evenly match but Graves gets the first point. For the second bout, Graves comes at Bond in a much more aggressive manner when scoring his second point. “Two nil, do you wish to continue?” asks Graves. “Would you like to up the wager? Let’s play for this” Bond says presenting one of Graves’s diamonds. “I picked it up in Cuba.” We’ve seen Bond play this card many times in the past and every time it works. By putting something he has of the baddies on the line Bond accomplishes three things; he lets the bad guy know he’s on to him in no uncertain terms, he throws down the gauntlet to say “Hold on, I’m coming,” and he puts the baddie on tilt, big time. Bond drops his mask, game on. When the two go at each other this time, they are out for blood, literally. Bond swipes Graves between his glove and his sleeve, cutting his wrist. “Oh dear, you want to continue?” patronizes Bond. “Of course I want to bloody continue” an apocalyptic Graves shouts while grabbing two swords from a display on the wall. He tosses one to Bond, “We’ll do this the old fashion way, first to draw blood from the torso is the winner.” The two remove their protective shirts and go at. They move from room to room, smashing glass cases and slashing paintings, until they end up outside on a staircase, recalling Errol Flynn at his swashbuckling best. It all comes to an end when Bond strikes a cut across Grave’s belly, sending him flying into a fountain. At this point Frost breaks the two men up as Graves laughs it off, “Just having a bit a fun.” This is everything that makes Bond Bond. The build from fun to serious to deadly is perfectly paced (and look ma, no slow motion!) Brosnan and Stephens have the right amount of swagger and together they strike the perfect balance of humor and hubris. The villain, in a proud 007 tradition, underestimates Bond and then, once bested, laughs the whole thing off. Better still, the contest against Bond revolves around a privileged activity that takes place on the villains turf much like the pheasant hunt in Moonraker, or the tiger hunt in Octopussy, or equestrian steeplechase in A View To A Kill. This scene is by far the best in the film and is so steeped in the Bond tradition that it feels as if it were flown in from Thunderball (1965) or another classic. As for that bet, Graves makes good and hands Bond a check, the amount is not reviled.

List of Locations: The wonderful opening surfing was shot in Maui on Christmas day. The waves wait for no man dude. The Korean DMZ scenes were shot at a military training base in Aldershot, England. The part of Havana was played by Cadiz, Spain where terrible weather almost forced the crew to abandon the location.

As I stated before, almost nothing works in the film once Bond touches down in Iceland and after learning the location of the shoot I know why. The crew spent three weeks shooting the car chase in Jokulsarlon, Iceland which also happened to the location for one of the all time worst images in Bond history, the iceberg boat in A View To A Kill. Indeed London called and Bond 20 answered with shots of Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, and an abandon underground station. The Blades Fencing Club was the Reform Club in London. Opened in 1841, the club became famous as Phileas Fogg’s starting/finishing point in Jules Verne 1872 classic, “Around the World in 80 Days.” Finally, Graves’ eco-diamond mine was based on England’s Eden Project, then the world’s largest greenhouse.

Bonds Special Abilities Displayed: Bond makes like Brody in Point Break (1991) by night and para-surfs digital tsunamis by day. He may have piloted a hovercraft before but never one this big or through a minefield. Other vehicles include an invisible Aston Martin, a stolen snowmobile and a rocket iceboat that hits 325 mph.  He proves himself to be an expert swordsman and has now gained the ability to make like Lazarus and come back from the dead. All in a days work.

Final Thoughts: Die Another Day bends over backwards to remind us of the rich history of the James Bond character. The idea is the audience will see these moments and think back fondly on films we enjoyed over the past forty years. Fine, I’ll play. If we are meant to think of Ursula Andress entrance in Dr. No and the laser-meet-crotch of Goldfinger (1964) and the mini-jet of Octopussy, what are the signature moments we are to remember when recalling Bond 20? I’ll give you the foggy bridge during the hostage exchange was quite good and the sword battle is a true Bond moment but before I rewatched this film that’s not what I recalled. What really sticks out is an invisible car climbing a melting ice wall, an airplane melting away in thin air, and Bond surfing down a melting glacier while being chased by a sunbeam. (By the by, is it just me or doesn’t “Surfing down a melting glacier while being chased by a sunbeam” sound like the title of a long lost Donavan song?) We give Bond films quite a wide birth when it comes to suspension of disbelief but this film just goes to Crazy Town. No doubt the cast and crew had a ton of fun push everything to 11 but it’s simply not much fun audience. “Big” in and of it self is not bad, as we saw in say The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). However, the bigger the circus, the stronger the central poll holding up the tent must be or it will snap causing the entire thing to collapse. That central poll, no matter how nutty things are around it, must be based in reality. Back to the Spy Who Loved Me, the grounding force was the relationship between XXX & 007. What held the film together was watching these two professionals worked on a human level to overcome their difference, in this case political loyalties, for a shared goal … and having great sex while doing so! It’s a tale as old as the hills and it gave the audience something to relate to. Since we have a baseline understand who these characters are and what their motivations are the action sequence in turn mean something. The huge battle in the belly of a ship had purpose and weight because we are invested in the out come; we want to see these two people succeed. Without them, the battle becomes just a clip-reel of special effects, IE any Bruckheimer production.

Bond should be better then that, because we should care about him. Despite all his superhero qualities, he is still a person, an ideal of who we want to be. But not in Die Another Day. This is the Los Angeles of Bond films, there’s no there there. It has no identity as a movie and there is the paradox; in attempting to anchor itself in the rich forty-year history of Bond, EON has created perhaps the most ephemeral 007 picture to date. To put it another way, in trying to give the fans little bit of everything the movie ends up being a whole lot of nothing. I realize I get kind of hung up on theme, pacing, and structure when looking at these films, I mean it’s just James Bond right? Popcorn fun! The truth is, 20 films into this project, I have come to realize that these more “arty” and technical bits are the key component in separating the good from the bad from the ugly. As for this outing, there is zero connective tissue tying the “torture plot” to the “Graves framing Bond by using his very own MI6 agent plot” to the “melting the world with a sunbeam weapon plot.” These three things are totally separate stories speeding away from each other. All three are made all the more opaque by pointless action set piece after pointless action set piece. Think of how Harold Ramis and Bill Murray starting World War III with a Winnebago at the end of Stripes (1981) had zero to do with “I’m a lean, green, fighting, machine” and you get the idea of how separated all these ideas are. Like Madonna’s voice in “Die Another Day” everything in this film is artificial and forced. This isn’t a movie, it’s a collection of moments edited together, poorly. Brosana deserved a better send off. Bond is barely a character here. I really want tip my cap to Wilson and Broccoli for having the balls to torture their hero for 14 months but they botch the play terribly. Bond learns nothing from his ordeal and grows not a bit, keeping perfect pace with the film around him. Forgive me for pulling 9/11 back up on stage, but in the decision to turn a blind eye to the trauma of that event, it’s almost as if the film is afraid to look at what would happen to Bond after his ordeal. And if that is the case, then don’t torture Bond at all. We smell the dishonesty a mile away. The movie doesn’t need to reference 9/11 directly but the filmmakers need to understand that we as an audience were still very raw in 2002 and we knew something as traumatic as what happened to Bond changes a person. It must! But Bond keeps his head in the sand, destroying any sense that he is remotely human and by extension rendering the rest of the film bloodless and soulless. I am giving extra credit in the rating for the fencing scene, which was wonderful, but man-o-man I did not like this movie. Some people would argue that such a judgment is a matter of taste, which is correct; as in do you have good taste or bad. On the DVD extras Wilson talks about how Cubby told him to protect Bond at all costs. Whelp, you failed buddy. In paying tribute to past 007 films we are left with the least “Bond” of the Bond films yet.

Martini ratings:

 

The World Is Not Enough

Title: The World Is Not Enough

Year: 1999. Way back in 1982, The Artist Who Will Now and Forever Be Known As Prince (TAWWN&FBKAP) declared that 1999 would be the year the planet Earth would throw a worldwide party to end all parties. Who knew Prince was a profit? The dawn of the millennium was indeed a perfect occasion to celebrate the end an era and beginning of something new. Why not party? After all, the stakes couldn’t have been lower. True, we didn’t live in George Jetson houses with robot servants but it sure felt that way. The 90’s produced unprecedented growth in America and those under 30 viewed “work” as something their parents did. The Internet made it possible to make millions by not working; simply have an idea, the implementation of that idea be damned. For those poor souls who did have a job type job, “going to work” often meant showing up to the office in sandals to conduct meetings around a foosball table. I know more then a hand full of guys, and I swear this is the truth, who worked at dot com start-ups in the late 90’s who would charge a night of coke and hookers in Vegas on the company credit card. And why not? Capitalism won. With the evil U.S.S.R. long gone some pundits were going as far as calling war obsolete. Sure, we had impeached The President but not over something as sinister as Watergate, just a simple romp in the oval office. Yes, some dude named Newt Gingrich was shutting down the government because of his bruised ego but after he left DC in disgrace we knew we would never have to hear that guys name again. Everything was coming up roses. Mayor Giuliani turned Times Sq. into a mall for tourist from Nebraska. Who were we to ask where all the homeless people went? Sluggers the size of Paul Bunyan were smacking balls into stadium parking lots left and right. Why were they bigger, stronger, and faster then ever before? Why ask why? Drink Bud Dry. Just giggle through life like Jimmy Fallon and Horatio Sanz on SNL. Join Cher and “Believe” in auto-tune. What could possibly go wrong? Yes, yes, some good hearted, God fearing folks thought the world was going to end when the calendar clicked over to 2K, but we laughed at them just like we do the jack-asses who assign meaning to the Mayan’s lack of planning past November of 2012. There were some dire warnings that the “Millennium Bug” would blast us back to the stone-age but this was mostly fodder for jokes, like the one Q’s assistant makes at the close of this film. It was a time when men’s fashion said hell with it! Sure you can wear that electric blue dress shirt with a pink tie and beige kakis, as Pierce so nicely displays in the third act. It was a time to make crass jokes at our President’s expense like when Bond hands Moneypenny a cigar and she replies “I know exactly where to stick this.” After two years of X rated headlines we knew exactly what she was referring to as we smugly giggled in the theater. It was out with the old and in with new so a young up and comer like John Cleese could replace the aging Desmond Llewelyn. It was time to look forward to the 2000’s with grand projects like London’s Millennium Dome, featured in the fantastic opening of this film.

The fact that the stadium turned out to be such a colossal money suck it was renamed the 02 Arena in the hopes of erasing all memory of the boondoggle is not so much ironic as it is prolific. Indeed, in 1999 we were all at the dawn of a great new age and the world was not enough; we already had the world and we had it now with no inconvenient truths or pain in the ass consequences. But back to profit Prince who warned “two thousand zero – zero party over, Opps out of time.” In the first 20 months of the aughts we would see a presidential election stolen by an oil man’s son and experience unprecedented terrorist attacks, both of which would shake the very foundation of our democracy for at least the following decade. These two events in turn would result in two wars that would cost untold thousands of innocent lives. They would destroy our moral standing as the world learned of places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Our economy would collapse due in no small part to military spending and the unchecked brand of “capitalism” that was cheered on by the White House. And our environment would be pushed to the brink of destruction. To this day all of the above casts a cloud of doom that hangs over our country like the think, black smoke that hung over lower Manhattan and Brooklyn in the fall of 2001. And without taking any huge leaps, all of this can be traced back, in one way or another, to what one wise man called “our addiction to oil.” In 1999 Bond foresaw the killing, the terror, and the torture behind our addiction to oil and made an action thriller for the New Millennium. Rather forward thinking for a nearly 40 year old popcorn franchise don’t ya think? But all that stuff is a drag. And besides, look! Denise Richards in a tank top! “If you didn’t come to party, don’t bother knocking on my door.”

Film Length: 2 hours and 8 minutes

Bond Actor: Pierce Brosnan. “I feel we got a good one on our hands,” announced a reenergized Brosnan at a The World Is Not Enough press event. Sporting a more closely cropped quaff, Pierce had the look of an older and wiser man. Having done two Bonds; one one of the best and the other one of the worst, he knew what both sides of the Bond coin looked like. I’m sure he was also aware that two duds in a row could prove to be disastrous, what with the budgets for these films now equaling the GNP of a small country. Brosnan knew Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) was a bummer on the first day of shooting and in saying his third film was a “good one” his instincts are again proven correct. Yes, as I pointed out in my rather piffy rant above, 1999 was all gloss on the surface, the Backstreet Boys were selling millions of records for Christ sake, but for those willing to ignore the new coat of paint, the ominous writing was right there on the wall. This movie looked ahead and saw that world dependence on a product that came largely from the world’s most unstable regions was a ticking time bomb. The filmmakers took this potential for worldwide catastrophe and expertly wrapped it in a Bond adventure. Terrorism and torture are at the forefront of this film and indeed those topics would be at the forefront of our national conversation in the decade to come. There are a lot of shades of gray in this film and Pierce is given room to explore them. But these ideas, as well as other dark elements, are so stealthy introduced that they very easily could be missed. While a lot of that has to do with the expert writing, I think Brosnan’s natural charm keeps everything from getting to heavy. Bond kicks ass a plenty but he must also use his head in this one, playing to another one of Brosnan’s strengths. 007 connects the dots before we as an audience do, so when the twist comes, it’s a genuine surprise. The entire enterprise is made even stronger by the fact there are no cheats (until the very end, and that one is almost forgivable.) Bond uses the same information the audience has to put the bigger picture together. And while I’m sure all these smart elements are what had Pierce so excited, let us not over look the action which is absolutely first rate. Without it, this may have been a heavy slog but all of the weighty ideas spin like balanced plates as just one act in this extremely entertaining three-ring circus. I thought I was past the point of being surprised by a Bond film and in his 19^th go around, Bond proved me wrong. Oh and I did I mention Pierce’s hair? Perfection.

Director: Michael Apted. The concept of linking international terror as related to the world’s oil supply and economy is rather forward thinking and I would wager Mr. Apted, one of the most forward thinking directors I can think of, saw this plot point as something could hang his hat on. Not known for blockbuster action, most Americans would be familiar with Apted’s successful dramas like Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980) (Ed. Note: I love Loretta Lynn) and Gorillas in the Mist (1988) and his terrible comedies staring big name comedians like John Belushi in Continental Divide (1981) and Richard Pryor in Critical Condition (1987). But to think of Apted as the guy who made the Jennifer Lopez vehicle Enough (2002) would be like thinking of David Bowie as “that guy who puts on make up.” Indeed, Apted has been president of the DGA (Directors Guild of America) since 2003 but his crowning achievement is what is commonly referred to as “The ‘Up’ series,” a series of documentary films that are not only unique but are ongoing this very day. In 1964, a 24 year-old Apted interviewed a group of seven-year-old English children, learning who they were and what they wanted to be, for a Granada Television program. He has revisited these same subjects every seven years, checking in to see how things have progressed in Seven Plus Seven (1970), 21 Up (1977), 28 Up (1985), 35 Up (1991), 42 Up (1998), and 49 Up (2005). Will 2012 see 56 Up? We can only hope. “This is not reality TV with its contrivances and absurdities, but a meditation on lifetimes” Roger Ebert points out. Watching these people grow-up and have children and grand-children of their own makes for riveting viewing. We also, in a way, watch film grow up as the footage goes from black and white to color to digital. Additionally, we see Apted mature as a storyteller making these documents all more fascinating. Perhaps the idea of following characters as they move through time intrigued Apted when it came to Bond, a character who has changed, while not changing, with the times. The title of this film has nothing to do with the plot and everything to do with James as a man. “The World is not Enough” was reviled as the Bond family motto in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) and I think Apted was eager for the opportunity to play in a world with a character so firmly established over time. First things first, for a guy not know for action films, the set pieces in this movie are off the charts. From skiing away form flying snowmobiles (known as Para Hawks) to diving between docks that are being destroyed whirling blades to literally flying though the air while being chased by a fireball, this film ups the ante on stunts and action in a series that has made its name on both. Locations, another Bond staple, manage to be both magically exotic and lived in at the same time. With simple singular moments, like the masterful establishing shots of the Caspian Sea at dusk featuring industrial stacks climbing out of the water and belching smoke, Apted puts Spottiswoode’s Bond picture to shame. The image of the sleek, speedy, BMW knifing its way thought the baron, dead oil fields of Azerbaijan is an image I’ll never forget. Ditto a man in a white suit drowning in a tub of caviar. And was that Kuntz’s “Puppy” in the background? Indeed it was. And the open…. Oh the open. The entire film is directed with such confidence that only in the final battle did I loose my perspective, and then I would bet it was done on purpose for effect. Apted hits all the classic Bond notes and tastefully adds a few of his own. He even manages to take the stale tried cliché of a sinking sub and spin it, by putting the boat on a 90 angle to the ocean floor, and get true suspense, by having Bond swim outside the craft to reach another section. The sterile removal we felt from the last film vanishes and we are planted back in the exciting and exotic world Bond inhabits. And did I mention the open? Ohhh dear gods of cinema the open…

Reported Budget: $135,000,000 estimated. 1989’s Licence To Kill coast $32,000,000. What a difference 10 years makes. Bond budgets have entered what the Occupy Wall Street crowed would refer to as the 1% to be sure.

Reported Box-office: $126,930,660 USA and $352,000,000 worldwide. The American take wasn’t even enough to pay for the film but was good enough for #14. A quick look at 1999 shows a few cheaper films made more; the $33 million Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me made $206 (#4), the $63 million Matrix made $171 (#5), and the produced for the same price as a corn beef on rye at Katz deli Blair Witch Project made $140 million (#10). (OK OK it cost $60,000 or the same as a dozen cupcakes from Magnolia.) But this is the 21^st century (almost) and it’s all about that international gross. Based on that number, EON claimed Bond 19 was “the most successful Bond yet.” One more box office footnote, Pierce Brosnan’s The Thomas Crown Affair remake came in at #31 and made $69 million which I would wager is the most successful “Bond actor side-project” to date as well.

Theme Song: “The World Is Not Enough” performed by Garbage. The jokes are just too easy with a band name like that so I’ll refrain. Truth is, I know next to nothing about rubbish, I was a little too old and set in my musical snobbery to take them seriously when they began making noise. In my eyes they were always one of those post-grunge poacher bands, which may or may not be fair but there you go. After doing a little research I guess Butch Vin and some other producers got together and tried to be Sonic Youth meets My Bloody Valentine which is exactly what producer types trying to be hip in 1995, the year of Garbage’s self titled debut, would say. Indeed, I hear none of either of those bands in this Bond theme. Too bad. It got me thinking about what a Sonic Youth/Bond theme would sounds like and I think they would have killed it. Alas, I will say lead singer Shirley Manson has some pipes and the song itself manages to avoid embarrassment even when including the films title.

Opening Titles: You know those oil rainbows you see sometimes on the street after it rains? They are odd things, both beautiful and sickening. Those colorful pools of pollution are the inspiration for these opening credits. Using a color pallet that makes the women look like New Order’s Technique album cover, the drippy thick liquidy look is both sexy in a T2 (1991) morphing way and gross in a seagull covered in gook on a Gulf Coast beach way. Oil is indeed the blood the runs through this film’s veins and if you don’t think those oil pumps like the ones you see on La Cienega Blvd when driving from LAX to Hollywood are meant to make you think of sex, well then you haven’t seen enough Bond. What, you take the 405 from the airport? Amateur.

Opening Action Sequence: There is a theory in comedy involving repetition. The classic example often sighted is the Sideshow Bob rake gag from an episode of The Simpsons.

The idea is the first two times Bob hits his face it’s funny. Then the joke keeps going until it gets old and isn’t really funny anymore and then it becomes down right annoying. Yet it keeps going “too long” and then it becomes absurd and therefore once again funny. This idea is similar to the Shooting the Moon theory I went into in the Final Thoughts on Moonraker (1979). It’s the idea of taking something so far that it goes full circle and reaches beyond what we as an audience thought was the farthest it could go to once again pull us back in. I think the open to The World Is Not Enough pulls off the Bond equivalent of the rake gag by pushing action, as opposed to comedy, too far. But first things first as we join James Bond, 007, license to kill, doing his best Clark Kent. By simply sporting eyeglass the hard core MI6 agent becomes a mild manned banker right before our eyes. We see the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Jeff Koons’ “Puppy” in the background so we know exactly when and where we are but when Bond enters a banker’s office all the beauty and art from outside melts away to be replaced by delightfully tacky quips and innuendo. Bond is here to collect some money that was in the care of a MI6 agent when he was killed. A lovely secretary hands him the brief case as heavies in suits look on. “Would you like to check my figures?” “I’m sure they are perfectly rounded.” Bond then takes off his glasses and becomes Superman, demanding the Swiss banker give him the name of whoever killed his colleague. “I’m offering you the opportunity to walk out with the money,” “And I’m offering you the opportunity to walk out with your life.” As the heavies pull out their guns the banker notes “the odds are not in your favor Mr. Bond.” “Perhaps you fail to recognize my hidden assets.” This is all handled with tongue firmly planted in cheek and everyone in the room knows it’s just a prelude to the inevitable ass kicking. An explosion here, a judo chop there and Bond has a gun to the banker’s head. However, just before he gets the name of the killer the banker himself is finished off by a knife in the back. A second man who gets the drop on Bond is shot by another unseen killer who takes the man out with a single bullet though the window. Sometimes the Bond films can feel like cop movies or strictly action films, but here, right away, thanks to the setting and mystery (Who’s money is it? Who killed the agent? Why is Bond being protected?) this feels like a European spy thriller. It also starts super fast. At the 3 minute 30 second mark the Bond theme kicks in and we are off to the races. Bond escapes thanks to a daring leap out a forth story window and an extremely strong Venetian blind cord. Before we can blink Bond is back in England at MI6 greeting Q who is working on some kind of jet boat, flirting with Moneypenny who makes the terribly tasteless cigar joke, and drinking with M who is back behind her customary desk. M is chatting with Sir. Robert King, the oil baron who’s money Bond recovered. However, after King leaves M’s office, Bond figures out the money has been booby trapped. Bond chases King but it’s too late, the money explodes killing who knows how many and blasting a hole in the side of MI6’s headquarters. This is a neat twist because at this point we don’t know if King was set up or if he’s a suicide bomber. Bond has no time to find out as he is nearly shot by an assassin on the River Thames. Since she is shooting at him through the gaping hole blown into the side of the building, we can assume she too is in on the bombing. Bond rushes back to Q’s lab, jumps into the jet boat and like Batman flying out of the Batcave, Bond blasts out of the side of the building, on to the water, and off down the river after the female assassin he goes. A reminder, this is just the open and already we’ve done more then some films get done by the close of the third act. That said, the brisk pacing is deftly handled and while the film is moving incredibly fast, it never seems rushed. Speaking of fast, Q’s little Bat-boat, despite his claims of it not being ready, moves down the river at a rather good clip. Much of the DVD extras are given over to the boat chase on the Thames and great detail is presented on how much work the seven week shoot required. It was all 110% worth it. Seeing famous landmarks fly past as the boats chase each other is a thrill. The scope of the chase is staggering as the two play cat and mouse by ducking into coves, zooming under the London Bridge, knocking over docks, and even getting mileage out of the tried drawbridge impeding a chase gag; since we are on the water, it’s a drawbridge being lowered that causes the obstacle. Bond’s jet boat has an assortment of gadgets, which are used to great effect (but miss the target) and Bond even gets to flip the watercraft in a 360 barrel roll before he looses the assassin behind an impenetrable wall of fire. A quick look on MapQuest shows Bond a shortcut he can take to cut off the baddie further up river. The only problem is this shortcut would require Bond’s Bat-boat to climb up locks in a cannel and travel over land for a good six blocks. And this is where the Sideshow Bob rake theory comes into play. Bond soaks some ticket writing cops and smashes through a kayak rental shops to bring his boat up onto the cobble stone streets of London Town. At this point I was thinking OK, we saw boats slide over land in Live and Let Die (1973) and that worked for me. But then Bond goes down an ally, turns up a block to avoid cops, and then outruns them down another ally. Jesus that’s a bit much I thought, I mean all they had to do is add one shot where Bond hits a switch and wheels pop out of the hull and Bob’s your uncle. Then he blasts through a fish shop and I’m calling bullshit. But, by the time he crashes through a restaurant, upends several tables, and breaks out of the back window to land back on the river in front of the lady assassin, well it was just so over the top surrounded by other outrageous moments that I was back on board. It’s James Bond for Christ sake; of course he can do that! Go James! Now facing his target, Bond launches two torpedoes chasing the assassin out of her boat, up onto a dock and into the basket of a hot air balloon. Bond jumps his boat up out of the water (a four second clip that took 6 days to film, explaining at least a part of the huge budget) and he grabs one of the lines on the balloon basket as he floats up over the Millennium Dome. I can not express how exciting it is to see Bond, for the first time, doing his business in his home town of London. It’s astounding it took this long but well worth the wait. By the time the balloon explodes thanks to a suicide bid by the assassin (she would rather die then disclose the name of her employer) and Bond goes tumbling down the side of the Millennium Dome we have hit the 14 minute 20 second mark and I was on the edge of my seat for almost all of it. And somehow, some way, for all its action and Rising Arizona (1987) pre credit length, I didn’t remember a beat of this open. And once I realized that, my heart soared because it occurred to me, outside of Denise Richards trying to act, I didn’t recall any of this film at all. And wow we are off to a smashing start.

Bond’s Mission: Turns out Sir Robert King was set up, the first of many surprises in this film as I assumed he was a baddie. Bond was saved while he was in the bank so he could deliver the rigid money to the target. So, it’s murder most foul and the game is afoot. Bond attends King’s funeral while wearing a sling, thanks to the nasty fall he took on the dome. This injury threatens to sideline 007 until be goes heels to Jesus with the good lady doctor in exchange for a clean bill of health. “Promise you’ll call this time James.” Don’t count on it sister. Back on the case, Bond researches King and learns his daughter, Elektra King was being held for a ransom amount equal to the amount of money lifted off 009, the agent who’s murder we learned about in the open and now were are back to where we walked in. M confirms King was going to pay the kidnappers off, against her advice, but Elektra escaped all on her own. 009 did manage to put a bullet in the kidnappers head yet he lived and in fact has become more dangerous. So, connecting all the dots, this baddie who bumped off King is most likely his daughters kidnapper and now that the father is gone and the daughter has inherited his oil business, logic dictates Elektra could be next on the hit list. This is a lot to unpack but it’s handled briskly and logically, setting all the parts moving in a satisfactory way. And now Bond is off to Azerbaijan where Elektra is overseeing the construction of a huge oil pipeline. Our hero is official meant to babysit and act as a bodyguard as he and MI6 hope to use the girl as bait to draw out the terrorist. “Remember James, shadows always stay in front or behind, never on top.”

Villain’s Name: Viktor Zokas AKA Renard. Like the Joker or a masked Dom Deluise, Renard’s only goal is chaos. In a neat narrative choice, we learn everything there is to know about the international terrorist before we meet him. The KGB cut him loose because he was a liability which sounds a little like Steven Adler getting kicked out of GN’R for doing to many drugs. (Not to mention, NO ONE EVER LEAVES THE KGB!) We learn he set Bond up to kill the father of the woman he kidnapped. We even learn a superhero like origin story, complete with super powers, told to us as we stare at a three dimensional holographic image of his head which is four times human size. All of this effectively works so by the time we do finally meet the terrorist on screen he has become a Keyser Soze like mythic figure. For his introduction, he emerges from a cave surrounded by natural flames so it looks like something out of Middle Earth. It turns out Renard’s days are numbered (more on this below) so he plays his cards like a man who has nothing to loose. And boy is he nasty. He taunts Bond telling 007 he should have had Elektra back when she pure, before he broke her. This is rough business that backfires on the villain down the road but he is certainly one of the more bastardly baddies we have seen in a Bond film.

Villain Actor: Robert Carlyle. Fair or not, I will always think of the Scottish actor as “that guy in that movie about the dudes who get naked that I never saw because it looks so God damn terrible but was somehow popular.” So big was the Full Monty (1997) that when it came out on video my neighborhood video store plopped a larger then life size cardboard cutout of Carlyle smack in the middle of the joint to promote the movie’s releases. The actor would stare out at me from under his blond Denise Leary looking hair, freaking me out as I sifted through 50 copies of My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) only to be told all two copies of 28 Days Later (2002) are out. (Thank Tebow we no longer have video stores.) Speaking off 28 Days Later, Carlyle is super scummy in a truly great way in 28 Weeks Later (2007) and while not as good as the first, its got zombies and I am a sucker for zombies. With a shaved head, a lazy eye and scars here and there, Carlyle’s brand of creepy is used to maximum effect as the ambitious yet reserved Renard.

Villain’s Plot: The plot of The World Is Not Enough is the most convoluted yet and that is saying a lot when considering the Bond series is legendary for thick and hard to follow stories. The nut of the thing boils down to control of the worlds oil supply. We learn that most of the oil exported from Russia, Iran, Azebaijan, Turkey, and Kazakhstan is sent to the Caspian Sea via three pipelines to the north. King is in the middle of building a pipeline in the south, threatening the monopoly of the other three. It’s unclear which of the interests Renard is working for at first but once his full plan comes into view, it’s a shocker. And like every Bond villain plot worth its salt, the plan involves a nuclear bomb and 8 million innocents as collateral damage.

Villain’s Lair: The Middle Earth fire and brimstone cave is cool but it’s more of a backdrop for a creepy intro, not where the bad man truly spends his time. He’s mobile for most of the movie, what with having to steal the raw ingredients for the nuke and then hijacking a submarine, but when he finally settles down it’s at a nifty spot called Maiden’s Tower. At first it appears to be a beautiful old stone lighthouse on the coast of the Caspian Sea. The attached building is stunning with huge windows, beautiful antiques, and a fully functioning dungeon. But what pushes this joint over the edge is the secret submarine dock hidden underneath. Now I know, “a secret submarine dock, have we not seen that 20 times before” and yes you have but! This is not you average 007 villain secret sub dock. As Valentin Dmitrovich Zukovsky explains, (yes, that Valentin Dmitrovich Zukovsky so lets us all rejoice) the Soviets had dozens of safe house along the sea during the cold war where the Commies could hide subs and kick the tires and change the plutonium and do whatever other general maintenance nuclear subs need. When the Soviet Union fell these bases didn’t just go away so there are a ton of places on the Caspian anyone could use do the same. This is the cloak and dagger European spy/intrigue stuff I love. It’s like knocking on the door in an empty Brooklyn ally and giving a password to a guy who looks out from behind a sliding shutter and then being let into a grand gambling hall. Not that I’ve done that … but if I did, it would be the stuff of great stories. What’s more, the sub base is in the same style as the lighthouse and surrounding building, which is to say, old stone. This isn’t Moonraker where Bond steps through a door to go from the inside of an Incan Temple to mission control at NASA. This is an organic spot that looks real and lived in. Is it real? Damned if I know, but it is 100% consistent with the look and feel of the rest of the film. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if on the coast of Istanbul stood just such a lighthouse.

Villain’s Coolest Accessory/ Trait: Rage Against the Machine had a tune called “Bullet In the Head.” Remember Rage? They were a band in the mid 90’s that had that video with the cute bee girl? Ohh, that Rage. Anywho, a line from a “Bullet In the Head,” “I give a shout out to the living dead” kept ahem… running though my head when it came to Renard the anarchists. M’s explains in her briefing, given while MI6 VIP’s are standing around a huge holographic image of Renard’s head, that while attempting kill the psychotic terrorist 009 put a bullet in his head. “That bullet is still there.”

Indeed, there it is in the holograph, leaving a tunnel from his left temple into the middle of his brain which Bond thoughtfully sticks his finger in. Turns out the bullet has damaged the baddies noodle in such a way that his sense are dying, “touch, smell, he feels no pain,” and he can push himself harder then any normal man. “The bullet will kill him, but he will grow stronger every day until the day he dies.” How cool is that? Kind of a like zombie, no? “I give a shout out to the living dead” indeed.  This also gives us the ticking clock scenario turned inside out. The baddie must finish his mission because it is he who is racing against time and Bond’s job is to catch-up. This is super cool and it’s not even the coolest bit about the baddie. Renard, for all his superpowers and anarchist tendencies, turns out to be the least of Bond’s problems.

Badassness of Villain: Bond catches up with Renard as the villain is personally overseeing the theft of a nuclear warhead. Dressed as one of Renard’s men, Bond makes his way over to Renard, grabs him in a headlock, and sticks the business side of his Welther PPK on Renard’s melon. “I don’t miss.” But the baddie keeps on talking shit because, as he points out “You can’t kill me, I’m already dead.” This is as badass as badass gets but the ex-KGB man overplays his hand. Bond is about to pop him but he keeps yapping. “Normally I hate killing an unarmed man but in this case I will feel nothing, like you.” “But then again, there is no point in living if you can not feel alive.” At that moment, Bond pauses and everything comes into focus. I complained in the last film that we saw the events unfolding well before Bond and it made him look dumb. Here, he proves why he’s the superspy and we are just along for the ride. 007 heard that exact sentence before, spoken by one Elektra King. Could she and Renard be in cahoots? Bond’s suspicion are confirmed moments later when Renard, after turning the tables and now holding a gun to Bond’s head, squeezes the agents broken collar bone causing extreme pain. How did Renard know about the injury unless Elektra told him? Unless we were really paying close attention we have no idea what Bond has learned. He is two steps ahead of not only the baddies, but the audience as well. What Bond knows, and we will learn, is that Ms. King has been playing MI6 all along and Renard is in fact her stooge.

Villain’s Asides/ Henchmen: Loyal readers know that we here at Blog James Blog enjoy watching Bond participate in Alpine sports and throwing chips around a card table above all else. (Drinking coming in at a not too distant third.) Well, the skiing sequence in The World Is Not Enough is a doozy. Yes, Bond’s skills on the sticks are impressive as ever (he even pulls a twisty backscratcher) but what makes the sequence stand out is the four biddies who give chase. As Bond and Elektra, still thought to be on the same side at this point, inspect a section of the pipeline reachable only on skis, four black “Para Hawks” appear on the horizon. Picture a snowmobile with a fan-boat back and a para-glider/ultra light parachute wing on top and you get the idea. These things are badass and their pilots even more so. Dressed in all black and wearing black helmets with black goggles they look like alien bugs piloting strange flying snowmobiles. Elektra’s personal bodyguard Gabor, played by American Gladiator John Seru, reminded me of Lobot, Lando Calrissian’s aside in The Empire Strikes Back (1981). Not so much in appearance, Lobot was a bald white man and Gabor is a dreadlocked black man, but in personality. Lobot never speaks a word but communicates with Lando through shared looks only the two of them understand. Ditto Elektra and Gabor who other then one spoken line (I’m assuming to justify Seru’s SAG card) just kind of hovers in the background until needed.

Bond Girl Actress: Ursula Andress, the original Bond Girl, once said “Bond girls don’t sweet, they just glow.” I wasn’t sure what she meant by that until I saw Sophie Marceau first appear on screen at King’s funeral. She not only glows, she radiates. Hot is one thing, beautiful is completely another, and never have I seen a woman who possess each trait quite like the native Parisian Marceau. The daughter of a truck driver, she got her big break at 14 and never looked back working as a actress, director and writer in both English language and French films. Smart, stunning and a striking screen presence Marceau can also act circles around most Bond women. She pulls off the role of Elektra King in a way where even after Bond knows she’s the baddie, a fact she never lets on and would have kept concealed successful if not for Renard’s slip by the by, she is still able to cast doubt with a few lines and an incredible convincing act of innocents. Then, once the cat is fully out of the bag, she keeps the same focus and intensity as she had previous, only now with an evil glint in her eye. She could have over played this and went full bat shit crazy as the baddie, but she lets Renard play that role, she just keeps going forward with her diabolical plan, convinced she can use her feminine wiles to talk her way out of any situation that comes up. Marceau makes all of this look effortless and gives one of the best Bond girl performances of the series. If Marceau is the glowing example of what Andress spoke then Denise Richards, the other woman in Bond’s life, is a dying florescent bulb, blinking and buzzing while casting a harsh, shrill light. Let’s start out as nicely as we can. I truly enjoyed the former Mrs. Tiger Blood Sheen in Starship Troopers (1997). While I’m not sure she’s in on what makes the film absolutely genius, her flat, vacant line reading is in perfect line tonally with the rest of the cast and fits the style of the film perfectly. I think she is in on the joke for Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), an unsung comedy gem with a very strong cast. She plays the over confident beauty queen who can say nothing that is not incredibly offensive and shallow but since she is so pretty no one ever calls her out. You could say typecasting and I will not argue but she hits the comic notes and makes the most of the role. That’s all I got. To put this as charitably as I possible can, Mrs. Richards is wildly miscast as nuclear physicist. Being in the same film as Marceau just makes this fact all more glaring. Next to her sexy and sophisticated cast mate, Richards looks like a child playing dress-up. In press conference on the DVD extra Pierce proves how much of a gentleman he truly is when he sticks up for his leading lady saying “those who don’t get her performance are missing the mark.”  I truly appreciate what Brosnan is doing here but the truth is, it’s Richards who is so far off target that her presence in the film, mercifully not coming until the second half, single handedly holds this movie back from being one of the all time Bond greats and knocks a full martini glass off the final rating.

Bond Girl’s Name: Elektra King. What’s in a name? In Greek mythology Elektra kills her stepfather and mother to avenge the death of her natural father. In Bond 19, Elektra contracts the killing of her father in order to regain control of the oil empire which was owned by her mother’s side of the family for generations, Sir. Robert got in on the action through marriage. So it’s kind of the same thing but with a modern feminist cum OPEC twist. Elektra is by far the most complex Bond girl to date. We learn of her kidnapping and escape before we even meet her. Then when we do, she is seen diverting her pipeline to save a historic church. As peasants cheer, she confidently walks among the oil drilling rough necks proving she is tough and compassionate at the same time. When the Para Hawk case ends with she and Bond huddled together under an avalanche her tough exterior cracks and her claustrophobia, no doubt brought on during her captivity, causes her to freak-out and cling to Bond like a lost girl. This further wins our sympathy; so much so that we don’t even notice all four Para Hawks chased Bond and left her alone. Bond has always had a weakness for the fairer sex and Elektra plays Bond like fiddle well before she disrobes. She matches him with her wits and seems to see though his hard exterior. “Who is afraid now Mr. Bond?” She is so sly in he misdirection that she pays-off Valentin to the tune of one million dollars in direct sight of Bond and manages to make it look like the act of a wounded woman not yet fully recovered from either her fathers death or her hostage ordeal. Even after Bond has her pegged she still manages to cast doubt, to the point where she is able to draw M right into a trap set in plan sight. This is a woman who we are told escaped the sinister Renard by seducing her guards, cutting off her own ear, and now has the man who held her for ransom working for her. This is a woman who blew up her own father in MI6’s headquarters with the hopes of killing M as part of the collateral damage. And you know what, I 100% buy that she is not only capable of pulling it off, but that she would do so without blinking. She is a ruthless shark, a woman straight out of a 1940’s film noire who sees all the angles and uses her body and brain to keep the private dick spinning in circles. She is the most fully realized Bond Baddie and Bond girl rolled into one package. It’s a work of quantum physics on a level that would confound Stephen Hawking that she could possible occupy the same film as Dr. Christmas Jones, who is as much as physicists as Dr. Demento. From the moment Jones emerges from a mine and steps out of a jumpsuit wearing green tank top, short shorts and displaying perfectly manicured nails its like we’ve been warped to an episode of “Archer.” This could have been a sly tongue in cheek joke but Richards is actress incapable of pulling such a complex idea off. Then, to make matters worse, she opens her mouth. Listening to Richard read lines is like hearing a second grader read the Gettysburg Address out loud in front of the class. She can’t even pull off the lowest form of humor, the pun, without coming across as clueless and crass. I literally groaned out loud at “I have to get that plutonium back or someone is going to have my ass.” Even Brosnan looks like he has no idea how to field that one. And man she looks just scared shitless up there on the big screen. Her eyes are always wide and blank, as if it’s taking all of her energy to concentrate on hitting her next mark. I don’t think I can overemphasize how out of place this character is in this film. Picture Rachel Maddow running for Vice President on the “Santorum 2012” ticket and your not even in the ballpark. It’s just beyond all reason that this woman would be cast in this role. All that said, the thing that Jones and Bond ride thought the pipeline on is cool. See, I said something else nice about her.

Bond Girl Sluttiness: In The World Is Not Enough, sluttiness and badassness ignore Egon’s important safety tip and cross streams in an unprecedented manner. Indeed, Pussy Galore started out working for Goldfinger but after a roll in the hay with Sir Sean she helps Bond fake the gassing of half of Kentucky, more then making up for her sassy talk on the Learjet. Thinking about Goldfinger (1964) got me to thinking about how far everything has come since the 60’s. Back when Bond was a baby, the sight of Andrees in a two-piece or the name Pussy Galore was boundary pushing, shocking stuff. So was the idea that Bond, a good guy, would kill, and sometimes even enjoy it. By the 70’s Bond films relied on increasingly complex action sequences and stunts to keep audience shocked and awed. By the 80’s and most certainty the 90’s Bond had lost his ability to truly shock us. That’s not to say the films didn’t dazzle, excite, and thrill, they just no longer shocked. Hearing the name Pussy Galore was shocking, hearing the name Xenia Onatopp was cute. To bring shocking back into the Bond universe it took a cocktail of sex shaken, not stirred with violence. Elektra King is in a room in her lighthouse lair. Bond is strapped to a chair, bound by four heavy metal clamps, one around each ankle, one around each wrist, and a nasty, thick leather strap around his neck. On the back of the chair is a huge wheel looking not unlike a large wooden wheel one would find at the helm of an old sailing ship. This is attached to a large flat-headed screw that goes into the back of the chair. When turned, the screw moves forward into the back of the neck of whatever unfortunate son of a bitch is strapped to the chair, forcing his esophagus up against the large leather collar holding his head to the back of the chair. Three full turns and it’s curtains for Bond. His face is red. He’s gasping, pleading, spitting and all together struggling to breathe as Elektra walks slowly around the chair, each pass tightening the screws. Her walk is seductive and she is clearly getting off on holding Bond’s life in her hands. Throughout the film, Elektra makes a point of let everyone know she is not above using her body to get what she wants, but you never get the sense she enjoys the sexual encounters. But here, with Bond bound, she’s truly getting a sexual rise on the power she has over this man’s life. At one point she straddles Bond while he’s on the chair and while it never said, it’s clear she now is using his body, thanks to erotic asphyxiation or hypoxyphilia. Sexualized torture in a Bond film? Indeed, and it’s shocking as shit.

Bond’s Best Pick-up Line: Since pick up lines are not Elektra’s style, we will go bizarro for the next two categories and make them “Bond/Bond girls WORST pick up line.” Without further ado, we give you Bond while trying to score with Dr. X-mas Jones in the former Ottoman Empire. “I always wanted to have Christmas in Turkey.”

Bond Girls Best Pick-up Line: “Why don’t to unwrap your present?” And if you not gagging yet, a Worst pick-up lines bonus round! Post coitus Bond remarks “I though Christmas only came once a year.”

Number of Woman 007 Beds: 3, all of which have been covered in one way or another by now so we will keep it brief. The MI6 doctor, who not only gives 007 a clean bill of health but notes his stamina, wink wink. (I also greatly appreciated the cutaway to a man playing bagpipes.) Elektra King in a between the sheets encounter that, at the time, seems out of place following a comment about how Bond couldn’t afford to play her high stake reindeer games. However, in retrospect I think this horizontal mambo was yet another calculated move on Elektra’s part. She saw her fish slipping way, so she set the hook and reeled him in. And finally Dr. Christmas and while the two participants display no dignity in the act, John Cleese, of all people, does when he pulls the plug on MI6’s infrared spy cam.

Number of People 007 Kills: 22, give or take. Despite all the shooting and exploding and boat-on-land driving and Millennium Dome tumbling, only a single soul is lost by Bond’s hand in the open, that of a stooge in the Swiss Banker’s office. Bond takes out all four Tie-fighter pilot looking Para Hawk dudes; two by collision with tree and two by collision with each other. Bond shoots Davidov, an Elektra and Renard go between, as guards with dogs patrol nearby. The dog got me to thinking; the proud tradition of Bond fighting everything from tarantulas to sharks to tigers to snakes to out-of-control horses has fallen by the wayside in recent entries. I say get wild life back into the picture, I miss Bond vs nature stuff. Bring on a pack of wild dogs. Have him go mono a mono with an angry ape. Hell, I’d pay to see 007 go 5 rounds with a boxing kangaroo. I want to see Bond killing something with fur or scales stat! Anyway, he shoots three of Renard’s nuke thieves in a tunnel, the second being a miraculous shot from behind a moving train car. At Valentin’s caviar harvesting facility Bond takes down two helicopters which I will assume had a pilot, a co-pilot and two dudes to operate stuff like guns and four story spinning buzz saw towers so let us say that counts as eight kills. Bond shoots Elektra’s dreadlocked bodyguard leaving the lovely lady exposed. She runs to the top O the lighthouse (in heels and a long dress, this woman can do it all) and even when Bond sticks a gun in her face she is still trying to work her magic. Standing next to a bed, she puts on her best come hither look as guards are heard preparing to move in. Bond hands Elektra the radio and orders her to call em off. When he sees this is not sinking in with the lady, he give her a look of his own, one that says you had me for a while, but sister, the act is getting old. “Call em off!” he screams and her face crinkles, she realizes he means business but this is a woman who has had an ace up each sleeve all her life and she makes one last play. “James, you couldn’t kill me” and she might even believe it as she shouts an attack order into the radio a split second before she gets a bullet in the head. (There’s that song from the bee girl band again!) M watched as one of her double O’s killed an unarmed woman and you can see in this moment, out from behind the desk and in the field, M learns to appreciate her #1 agents all the more. (Have we discussed how Judy Dench has taken the M character and completely transformed her?) There is a submarine battle for the climax in which Bond kills two guys and uses one as a human shield.

Most Outrageous Death/s: A loose translation of Deus ex Machina would be the machine blowing a gasket at the exact right time and that is literally what happens at the climax of this movie. Bond is trying to stop Renard from inserting the last rod into a gizmo which will make the nuke go boom. As the baddie slllooooowwwwwlllllyyyyy pushes the rod into place a pressurized hose bursts loose right in front of Bond. Also in front of Bond are several holes one could hook this steam shooting hose up to. Bond plays eenie meenie miney moe to find the exact right plug-in at the exact right second to put the exact right amount of air pressure into the exact right tube sending the rod exactly into Renard’s right ventricle.

Miss. Moneypenny: Samantha Bond needs to call her agent. After an excellent introduction in GoldenEye (1995) she has been reduced to making awful Monica Lewinsky jokes. Open letter to Michael Wilson, Moneypenny and Ms. Bond deserve better.

M: Judy Dench on the other hand gets the most involved and satisfying M plot yet in any Bond film. After nearly getting killed in the MI6 bombing, she reviles to 007 that “against all instincts as a mother” she recommend against paying off Renard for Elektra’s safe return. This is fascinating not only because it sets up a neat little morality play for M but it reveals she indeed has a life and family outside of MI6. That said, I do think the idea that Elektra went bad because M didn’t rescue her is a bit over played. “You made her this way,” Renard tells M at one point but I don’t buy it; M made her a man hating killer of her own father who is hell bent on controlling the world’s oil supply? That’s just a bridge to far. None the less, it is great to see M question herself and MI6’s policies. I’m also not so sure M would jump on a plane and walk right into what is so obviously a trap but perhaps she was feeling guilt when it came to the whole “let Elektra rot in a cell” thing. (Yes, she did send 009 to rescue her and all that but let’s stay in the moment shall we.) M is warned by Bond that Elektra is up to no good but by the time she herself sees the plot it’s too late. M is indeed imprisoned by Elektra in what is supposed to be a shoe on the other foot moment but M is way to smart for that. She immediately goes about plotting her escape, using her brains in contrast to Elektra using her body. It was very enjoyable to watch these two smart women matching wits and there is even a moment where M admits Bond is her best agent, although she would never tell him that. All of this enriches the M character and goes miles to explain the close yet distant relationship between she and Bond.

Q: There are countless studies that show when people retire they increase their chances of dying. No one knows why but the prevailing theory is if you have something to live for, a reason to get out of bed in the morning, it keeps you living longer. Desmond Llewelyn, who was born in Newport, Wales in September of 1914, did a lot of living. The son of a coal mining engineer he got his first taste of show biz working as a stagehand in high school. Upon graduation he wanted to be a cop but failed the eye exam. In his later years he would say it was in fact the test administrator who was not seeing straight thanks to a hangover. He went on to study ministry but after a week-long retreat he realized he no longer heard the calling. Next it was off to the Royal Academy for the Dramatic Arts where he found his groove only to be interrupted in the mid 30’s by the Second World War during which Llewelyn served with distinction in the British Army. At one point he and his unit held off a division of German tanks until “eventually, the tanks broke through and many of us jumped into this canal and started swimming down it to the other side, figuring that our chaps were still over there. But the Germans were the only ones there.” Second Lieutenant Llewelyn was captured and held as a prisoner of war for five years. According to IMDB at one point Llewelyn and some other prisoners “had dug a tunnel and were planning to escape the next morning. Llewelyn was down in the tunnel doing some maintenance work in preparation of the escape when the Germans found out about the tunnel and caught him down in it, a crime that earned Llewelyn 10 days in solitary, which Llewelyn called ‘a blessing of sorts. After spending every day of several years sleeping in a room with 50 other people, the quiet and privacy was rather nice.’” I have visions of Q as the Steve McQueen character in The Great Escape (1963), throwing a baseball against the wall. All I can say about this is rock star. After the war, Llewelyn returned to London where he rejoined his wife, Pamela Mary Pantlin who he married in 1938 and who was with him till the day he died. As Major Boothroyd, Llewelyn has appeared in more Bond films then any other actor. Introduced as “Q” for quartermaster in From Russia With Love (1963) Q appeared in every Bond film save Live and Let Die (1973). His absents from Moore’s first film caused such a fan uproar producers were forced to bring the character back. For his part, Llewelyn, who regularly admitted that gadgets and technology were fields he knew nothing about, was also confounded by the popularly of his Bond persona. As he delighted in pointing out, his total on screen time in 17 films was less then 30 minutes. 84-years-old at the time the 19^th Bond film was being produced, Llewelyn planned on The World Is Not Enough being his last. Indeed, Bond steals and destroys his retirement fishing boat in the open. I’m not sure what Q was planning on catching with all that weaponry; perhaps he was going to join Chief Brody and Capt. Quint on their quest for Jaws? (Not him, the other one.)  In announcing his retirement, Q hands over his duties to his successor, R. For the last shot of Q on screen, we see him sinking into the floor, giving advice to Bond. “Always have an escape route.” The World Is Not Enough was released on November 19, 1999. On December 19, 1999 Desmond Llewelyn was driving home from a book signing to promote his autobiography in East Sussex when his car collided head-on with another. I always thought that as I got older I would grow more cynical, but a strange thing has happened. I’ve actually gotten more romantic and sentimental. I will miss Desmond Llewelyn and his Q greatly. He was as much a part of the Bond films then the music and the opening gun barrel shot. Brosnan described Q as “the Merlin” of the Bond films, which I think is spot on. The next time I have a martini, I’ll toast to Q.

List of Gadgets: Bond meets up with Q at the MI6 headquarters in Scotland which is inside a castle, naturally, where the gadget guru introduces “the young fellow I’m grooming to follow me.” Monty Python vet John Cleese is one of the funniest men on the planet and I can see the allure of making R an absentminded professor type. We will hold off judgment on this choice until the next film where R will, presumably, take center stage. In the meantime, R has a very funny bit where he is displaying the new ski jacket to Bond.  “Watch closely please 007. The right arm goes in the right sleeve thusly” and “the lower part of the zipper and insert it into here like so…” until Q hits the button and the jacket becomes an inflated ball trapping R inside. As for this weeks BMW it has “the very latest in intercepting countermeasures, titanium armor, multi-tasking heads up display and 6 beverage cups holders. All in all rather stocked.” Bond gets two sets of glasses this go around; the Clark Kent glasses from the open also function as a detonator and a second pair have X-ray vision. Making a return is the credit card skeleton key and his watch has a light bright enough to illuminate Las Vegas Blvd. Finally, Bond has a program on his computer that can instantly convert dollars into pounds, it’s amazing what these desk tops can do.

Gadgets/British Government Property Bond Destroys: Pretty much all of the above, the jacket, the glasses, the boat, and the car which is sliced in half prompting Bond to lament “Q’s not going to like this.”

Other Property Destroyed: After Bond uses some window blinds and a table to escape an office in Spain, the Swiss banker will need to make a trip to IKEA. Not five minutes later Bond blows up 3 million pounds, all be it inadvertently. Thanks to 007’s complete disregard for no wake zones there is some riverfront property on the Thames that’s going to need some work including a kayak rental kiosk, a fish market and a swanky seafood restaurant. The would be assassin’s boat also has a few leaks. 007 recklessly shoots up a nuclear bomb storage faculty including a train car which is cut in half. He has a chance to disarm a bomb but says ahh screw it at the last second and takes out a good 50 yard section of a mercifully empty pipeline. Then there is the Caspian Sea caviar factory, which has to be in the top three most inspired locations to hold a shoot out. The facility itself is a series of wooden shacks and storage houses built on pillions in the middle of the sea. These buildings are connected to each other and to the near-by shore by a series of wooden docks and walkways, some large and strong enough to support vehicles and other simply two foot wide pedestrian bridges. Bond drives his BMW out to one of the buildings and goes inside where the floor has several cut outs giving free access to the water below. In some of these cut outs are large vats of freshly harvested fish row. Then the two helicopters show up, one of which has a pole with six or seven huge whirling saw blades hanging under its belly. This device’s out of the box purpose is to trim the top of tall trees but it’s also good for reeking havoc on wooden docks and warehouses. Bond swings, dives, swims and shoots doing battle with these two choppers while splinters fly everywhere in a truly fantastic action sequence that works because there are no cheats. It also delivers enough explosions to give Jerry Bruckheimer a woody. At the end, when Bond blows up the chopper with the saw blades, the saws come flying every which way imbedding themselves into walls and floor boards just inches from several of Bond allies. Bond also sinks a sub in a sequence that makes no sense and is full of cheats, the Deus ex Machina leading to Renard’s death not least of which, but somehow still almost works. Almost…

Felix Leiter: Valentin Dmitrovich Zukovsky and his limp return and we here at Blog James Blog say hell yah! I absolutely adore the Valentin character and here his role is much expanded upon from his debut in GoldenEye. It appears the Russian gangster is trying to put a ligament face on his criminal empire and has opened a casino. Since literally every single person in the joint is carrying a concealed firearm, I’m not so sure we can say his desire to go legit has been successful. When Bond makes his way into Valentin’s office (after threatening Dennis Rodman at gun point) he finds the ex-KGB man sitting behind his desk feeding caviar to two women, one on each knee. “Bond, James Bond! Meet Irnia and Varuska.” This guy gets all the lines. Bond visits Valentin to get the low down on Renard but it also turns out Valentin is doing business, as far as he knows independently, with Elektra King. The $1 million she drops in his casino is payment for what Valentin thinks is a “smuggling job.” Little does he know that his nephew, a submarine captain in the Russian Navy, is being set up to deliver and detonate a nuclear bomb. Bond puts it together eventually and confronts Valentin at his caviar factory. “I’m a slave to free market economy.” They are, of course, attacked by all of King’s men and the big battle ends with Valentin, in an all white suit, drowning in a pool of oily black fish eggs. As they say in those credit card ads, priceless. Did I mention Valentin’s number two, Mr. Bouillon, looks just like Dennis Rodman? Anyway, he’s also a little punk like Rodman and he sells Valentine out and tries to kill him. Valentin escapes and makes his way to Elektra’s lighthouse only to discover his nephew has been killed and Bond is strapped to a torture chair. Elektra then shoots him and with his dying breath, he shoots Bond free with the gun he has hidden in his cane. I was bummed to see him go but his dying act is to be applauded.

Best One Liners/Quips: Bond makes his way into the nuclear bomb cave by impersonating a famous nuclear scientist. He is doing well until he gets busted by Dr. Christmas Jones. “I talked to him, but he is not a nuclear scientist.” Neither are you sister.

Bond Cars: BMW Z8. The sporty convertible looks great, especially slicing though the oil fields of Azerbaijan. While poking around the internets I learned that Brosnan, in addition to whatever seven digit salary he was receiving for the films, got to take home the featured BMW for the last three Bond outings. So, in his garage he’s got the BMW Z3 from GoldenEye (1995), an 8-series BMW (instead of the 750iL) from Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), and the Z8 from The World Is Not Enough. This is a super smart call on both EON and BMW’s part. After all, Brosnan is Bond and it simply would not due to have him tooling around London in a Fiat. This way, he gets a great car and every time he leaves the driveway he’s promoting his films as well. The jet boat featured in the open has a V8, which is insane; the tiny boat is not much larger then a V8. This sucker can reach up to 80MPH, go as shallow as 4 inches of water, and turn on a dime. If I were Brosnan I’d insist on hooking a trailer to the Z8 with this little baby on board.

Bond Timepiece: Omega Seamaster Professional. This is the same as the Tomorrow Never Dies Omega in that it’s automatic as opposed to the quartz number 007 had in GoldenEye.

Other Notable Bond Accessories: When Bond visits Elektra at the oil field he is already sporting a full ski outfit, he just needed to grab the sticks and go. This I can understand. However, later, when he is impersanationg the nuclear scientist, he is about to get on board a helicopter that will take him to the nuke sight. One of the baddies asks if he has “it.” Bond hands over a gym bag containing sneakers. This is good to get him onto the helicopter. I have no idea why and from the look on Bond’s face, neither dose he, but he simply roles with it. That’s why he gets paid the big bucks.

Number of Drinks 007 Consumes: And once again, Bond’s borderline alcoholism pays off. As he sits with M in her office about to drink some bourbon, he notices a fizz coming from the glass. This alerts him to the bomb. How? Turns out that when he handled the money he got whatever explosive residue (you know, the stuff they swab your laptop for at the airport) on his fingers and that in turn reacted with the ice. So as always, drinking is not only good for you, it could save your life. A personal bourbon note, I was just in Louisville (pronounced by natives as Luh’vulll) for work recently and being Kentucky there was more good bourbon to be had then you could shake a stick at. That said, if you ever come across a creature called Kentucky Bourbon Ale I suggest you belly up and buy a pint. It’s one of the more incredible beers I’ve ever had in that it tastes like beer and bourbon in equal parts. Simply delightful. At Valentin’s casino Bond orders a martini, shaken not stirred, to steady his nerves after nailing a baddie to the bar with a knife staked into his tie. Bond then pays for the drink with the baddies gun. While lounging in bed with Elektra the two share some Bollinger.

Bond’s Gambling Winnings: Jimmy B walks around Valentin’s casino but decides not to play. Perhaps the fact that everyone is armed dissuaded him from tossing a couple of chips around. Ms. Elektra King on the other hand has quite a bit of gamble in her. She strolls into the casino drawing the immediate attention of Valentin who is happy to extend her the same line of credit given to her late father who apparently enjoyed Blackjack. She declines but then for no (apparent) reason decides to put $1 million on the turn of a single card, high card wins. Bond, still tasked as her bodyguard, first attempts to protect her by making sure the first three cards are burned. Then, he tries to talk her out of this rash act. “You don’t have to do this you know.” “There is no point in living, if you can’t feel alive” she replies while drawing the Queen of Hearts. Got to feel pretty good about that one, only Kings or Aces can beat her with the other 3 Queens pushing the bet. In other words she is trying to avoid 11 cards out of 51 giving her a 78 and change percent advantage making her slightly better then three out of every four times a winner. She seems not a bit phased when Valentin draws the Ace of Clubs. Bond takes this as another act of a women completely damaged by recent events but he’s still on the ball enough to tuck the whole “no point in living” comment into his back pocket.

List of Locations: EON return to Pinewood for the first time since 1987’s The Living Daylights which explains why MI6’s home base of London is featured more spectacularly then ever before. The return to home base may also explain why this is one of the better looking Bond in terms of sets we’ve had in quite some time. All the locations are presented in a way that makes them both exotic and real, not an easy balance. As mention previously, MI6’s Scotland headquarters is in a castle and while I’m sure the interiors were soundstages the look quite castley. We also already pointed out the fantastic use of Bilbao, additional Spanish locations of Bardenas Reales and Las Majadas served as stand-ins for Kazakhastan and Azerbaijan but the striking oil field location actually was Azerbaijan. The fields were owned by the state in 1847 when a tobacco man drilled a well and this sight became the first ever oil filed. As seen in this film the landscape looks absolutely alien and demonstrates how our quest for oil has been raping the land for the first. The Istanbul Caspian Sea locations are real places and the skiing bits were shot in the French Alps in the same valley that hosted the First Winter Olympics in 1924 and is said to be where “Mountaineer” sports were born.

Bonds Special Abilities Displayed: This is the most physical Bond I can remember. The sequence in the nuclear bomb storage tunnel alone qualifies Bond for a spot on the Olympic decathlon team. Bond is just getting warmed up in the open when he flies around the Thames in a boat that is not done being built and he’s never driven while bouncing it over land. His outer limits skiing haven’t seen any decline in skill but all of this is to be expected. It’s later in the film where James truly outdoes himself when he runs up to the top of a lighthouse, pausing only to shoot a perfect shot to hit the lock on M’s cell door, and reaches the top without even break a sweet. Then, after he kills the lady he swan dives out of the top of the tower getting a 9.6 from the judges after the Russian’s 6.4 was thrown out. He also has to swim from one section of a sinking sub to another and holds his breath for what I think is about a half hour, give or take.

Final Thoughts: Timothy Dalton has often complained in his post Bond years that the audience didn’t accept his take on the character because it was too dark. I would argue this film is 10 times darker then anything Dalton attempted and 100 times more fun. In some ways this movie reminded me of Octopussy (1983) and not just because 009 gets wacked in both films. I found them similar in so much as they both work despite a convoluted plot that falls apart under any scrutiny. Because the action is so good and the characters are so well define and the individual moments work so well and the goings on are so fun and funny, I was willing to forget the big picture in both cases and just enjoy the ride. But the two films are also very different in that Octopussy had not a thought in it’s head where as The World Is Not Enough is one of the smartest Bond films to date. The big twist works because of the superb set up despite it also being absolutely ludicrous. In order for Elektra’s grand scheme to work she not only needs to be seeing 20 moves ahead on the chess board, but everyone one of those moves must go her way or the entire plan collapse around her. And you know what, I was fine with this because it was so smartly executed and it stuck to its own logic. Each event played on what happens before and after making a logical, tight and wildly entertaining story. Bonus points for giving us incredible insight into M and Bond’s relationship, the most complex Bond girl and baddie rolled into one character, and twisty-turny misdirection throughout. On top of that, it tackles heavy themes like terrorism, torture, and petroleum politics in the Trojan horse of an expertly executed Bond film. All super smart indeed. I think much of the credit needs to go to Apted who brings both a grace and a light touch that allows these characters to breath where we want them to but then when called for, he tightens the screws and bring the action-oriented “wow!” I love seeing Bond get hurt, I love seeing Bond navigate the shady underground, and I love seeing Bond match wits with intelligent women who are his equal, and we get it all here. This movie plays like a character driven spy thriller and rewards the viewer at nearly every turn. The elephant in the room is of course Denise Richards. At one point she and Bond are racing through the pipeline on a speeding platform they want to slow down. But they can’t because as Richards tells us “the controls are jammed.” Have you even been unable to stop anything from moving because the controls were jammed? Ever? What the hell does the controls are jammed even mean? While this film does so much so well every single time the Richards character, named Dr. Christmas Jones in case you forget, is on screen she acts as an anchor pulling the film into tried cliché. The worst part, her character is 100% superfluous. We could have gotten all the same info/hit all the same story points without suffering through “could you translate that for those of us that don’t speak spy?” She is this film’s Kryptonite. Back to Brosnan’s previous outing, I liked Tomorrow Never Dies a whole lot less than I thought I would. The other side of that coin; I liked The World Is Not Enough a whole lot more then I anticipated. The 19^th Bond was a surprise in the best way possible and when placed in the Bond canon I think it fits squarely in the bottom of the upper halves middle.

Martini ratings:

Tomorrow Never Dies

Title: Tomorrow Never Dies

Year: 1997. Tomorrow Never Dies was a breakthrough artistic achievement that forever changed pop entertainment. It’s been called “a masterpiece,” the producer declared it could “never be recreated,” and one of the two writers said it’s like “the Dalai Lama chanting from a hilltop.” Wait a second, Oh man, I got confused. I’m talking about “Tomorrow Never Knows,” the last track on 1966’s Revolver that broadcast an end to the mop-topped Fab Four and established the Beatles as true innovators of music. My bad, Tomorrow Never Dies is actually the opposite of all that and is in fact a step backwards for the Bond franchise. Yah, sorry to get your hopes up but mine were pretty high for this film as well coming off the superb GoldenEye (1995). Tomorrow Never Dies is not as dreadful as its title (which is bad even by Bond title standards) but more like a stopgap film. Picture an odds and sods record put out to keep the fans quite and fulfill contractual obligations and you get the idea. All the things we want to see Bond doing are here, they’re just not done all that well. It’s almost as if everyone at EON took a great deep breath after proving Bond could be relevant in the 90’s with GoldenEye and decided to coast. As plugged in as he was in the last movie, here Bond is out of sync with the world around him. I’m reminded of another film about a man out of time that came out in 1997, and I only mention it because sometimes there’s a man… I won’t say a hero, because what’s a hero? But sometimes, there’s a man. And I’m talkin about the Dude here. Sometimes, there’s a man, well, he’s the man for his time and place. He fits right in there. And that’s the Dude, or maybe His Dudeness, or Duder, or El Duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing. The running gag of The Big Lebowski (1997) is that The Dude, while appearing completely oblivious to everything going on around him, is in fact 100% tuned in, thanks mostly to keeping his mind limber. He is not the 60’s culture casualty that can’t function in the 90’s as he first appears to be (That would be Walter) but he is, as The Stranger said, a guy who fits right in there. And that’s the geniuses of the film, The Dude is so much a part of what’s happing while, Zen like, not actively participating that any lines between the character and the LA of the film are invisible. Dude and his world are in fact one while everyone he encounters is out of sync in one way or another and therefore become a complicated strand on old Duder’s head. The opposite can be said of the Bond character in Tomorrow Never Dies. He is a 60’s product who never feels like he’s part of the modern world he inhabits. 007 simply moves from point A to point B as dictated by the script. The plot, as it is, exists as an engine to move Bond forward while he is simply a passenger on the train, watching it all go past his window. This is the difference between “character driven” and “plot driven.” Both can be effective means of story telling. Hitchcock characters for example do what the plot demands because it demands them to, but if you’re going to go plot driven, you better have a damn good story. Sadly, for Bond’s 18^th adventure, as Jackie Treehorn once lamented, “standards have fallen.”

Film Length: 1 hour and 59 minutes

Bond Actor: Pierce Brosnan’s early life is like something straight out of Dickens. Born in Ireland, Pierce moved to England at a young age (hence his accent) to live with his grandparents after his father left and his mother could not afford to keep him. When Pierce was 6, his grandparents died and the young boy floated between relatives and boarding houses until at 10, his mother was finally able to take him back. While a teen in London he became interested in acting and eventually moved to New York with Broadway dreams. He got some smaller roles and met his future wife, actress Cassandra Harris, who was in For Your Eyes Only (1981) and introduced Pierce to Cubby Broccoli. He then landed the lead on “Remington Steele,” a role that would make him known while costing him his first shot at playing Bond in 1987. Tragedy continued visiting Brosnan when in 1991 he lost Cassandra to ovarian cancer. (He was remarried in 2001 to Keely Smith.) Brosnan is undoubtedly an incredibly handsome man but he is far more then a pretty face. When called upon to do so, he can play hurt and vulnerable in ways that suggest he’s pulling from his difficult life. You got ta pay you’re dues to sing da blues and Brosnan has done so in spades. Tomorrow Never Dies gives him exactly one opportunity to do some dramatic acting and he makes the most of it. Circumstances are such that one of Bond’s old flames is now married to the main baddie. Having laid his cards on the table at a party earlier in the evening, Bond now waits in his hotel room wondering who will show up, the girl or an assassin. Or will they be one in the same? 007 sits in chair, facing the door, drinking straight vodka from a glass he re-fills with a bottle that rests at his side. This is not martins at a glamorous dinner; this is a man drinking for answers. When the lady does show up the two cut right to the case and old wounds are reopened. Pierce plays the scene as a man who has been hurt and has drank just enough to wash away the filters of politeness. This is not a shouting drunk but a confrontational one. Brosnan plays it perfect and it gives us a peak behind the Bond curtain. I wish we had more moments like this and as it turns out, so dose Pierce. That said, he’s a mixed bag for the rest of movie. He has a few great moments where he gives what I call the “Indy Smirk.” One of the best things about the almost perfect Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) is all those little, subtitle smiles Indy allows himself in his prouder moments. Recall the “Throw me the idol, I’ll throw you the whip” scene. After Indy misses the jump over the pit he is hanging on the ledged when he finds some roots sticking out the ground. He grabs them, begins to pull himself up, and smiles. With this smile he seems to be thinking “Wow, I’m going to get out of this after all.” Then, the roots get pulled loose, he beings to slip, and the smile instantly becomes concern and panic. Ahhh, when Harrison Ford used to act. Anyway, there are moments here, like when Bond “returns” his rental car by smashing it through the front window of the Avis shop, where Brosnan embraces the absurdity of the moment gives himself the “Indy Smile.” But then there are other points where it is clear the actor is simply hitting his marks. Peirce was accidently hit by a stuntman during production resulting in a knee injury and a scar on his top lip. Perhaps Peirce was “playing hurt” but I think his flat performance is thanks to more then an injury. There is something about the role of James Bond that beats actors down. You can see it on Brosnan’s face in his interviews on the DVD extras for this movie. All the enthusiasm from the last film is gone. He looks worn out and answers the questions like he’s giving the correct answers at a job interview. After only two films, the shine has worn off for Pierce. That all said, after we watched Tomorrow Never Dies the wife declared Pierce is her favorite 007 and a far better action hero then any previous Bond, so what the hell do I know? To quote my friend Brian Pappis, “It’s good if you like it.”

Director: Roger Spottiswoode. Who? Let’s look em up … Yikes. To glance at his IMDB director credits is to see a man hell bent on destroying A-List actors’ careers. He got his start as an editor for the late, great Sam Peckinpah and like John Glen before him Spottiswoode should have stuck with cutting. His directorial debut was the second rate John Carpenter rip-off Terror Train (1980) which even stared Carpenter’s “queen of scream” James Lee Curtis. Spottiswoode went on to firmly establish himself as a hack-for-hire and Carpenter sloppy second aficionado by directing Kurt Russell in Best of Times (1986). He helmed Turner & Hooch (1989) with a pre A League of Their Own (1992) Tom Hanks staring opposite a dog, the very definition of carrier suicide, the unwatchable Air America (1990) staring Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr., and he put the final nail in Sly Stallone’s career coffin with Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992). What did EON see in this cat? Martin Campbell was asked back but turned the job down not wanting to do two Bond films in a row. I suspect Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson weren’t necessarily broken up about his decision to not return. Everything I’ve read and seen about Campbell says he’s an incredibly strong personality with a stronger vision and not easily controlled. With Cubby gone, his daughter and her husband were now running the biggest and most profitable show in town, and I think they felt the need to flex their muscle. Take this quote from Brosnan. “That was always the frustrating thing about the role. Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson play it so safe. The pomposity and rigmarole that they put directors through is astounding…” Based on that and other things I’ve read, I’d imagine Broccoli and Wilson wanted someone they could push around and impose their own vision upon sitting in the director’s chair. All they needed was a guy who knew his way around a film set enough to not trip over the cables and deal with all that annoying “techie stuff.” Indeed, this is a Bond film with no vision at all except to promote “the 007 brand” and push products like BMW in the process. It a movie where the trailer plays better then the film. It hits all the marks but does so as an exercise in hitting the marks. OK, make sure Q makes the joke about getting the car back in one piece and perhaps we should make sure he says BMW again, just to make sure the audience gets it. I’m not sure how handcuffed Spottiswoode was but he’s managed to make a lower case “b” bond film. For a former editor its unreal how bad he is at creating a scene. Establishing shot is a dirty word to this man and pacing is non-existent. With few exceptions this is a film that gives the audience only what’s necessary, unless setting up a bad joke, and hurdlers gracelessly onto the next bit of business. I had no idea where I was or what was happening in the climatic boat battle. The set was black and everything is so dark that all sense of perspective is lost, a pity since everything is taking place on what is clearly a huge set. Stuff was just exploding everywhere, missiles were being shot into the deck of a boat, and yet not one leak was sprung. At other moments, in the middle of action, Spottiswoode would insert a slow-mo shot for no reason what-so-ever. I’m not taking about slowing the film down in an attempt to emphasize something; it was just random shots out of a sequence. This happens several times in the film with no continuity as to when or where it will happen. All I can think is the shots weren’t long enough to fill the hole so he simply extended them in edit. It’s like no one storyboarded this thing and if they did, they did so poorly or Spottiswoode didn’t stick to the game plan. The entire enterprise has a slapdash “lets fix it in post” feel, remarkable when you consider the budget. There are great moments in this movie and a few of the action set piece are quite well done but I can say without a doubt that this is the most poorly directed Bond film up to this point.

Reported Budget: $110,000,000 estimated. Wow, that would be nearly double the last film which was made just two years previous. This ridiculous jump, as far as I can figure out, was courtesy of billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, who had taken over MGM (for the third time) shortly after GoldenEye was released. Kerkorian’s dream was to get MGM listed on the NY Stock Exchange and he saw James Bond has one of his blue chip assets. In a move that could have been dreamt up by Elliot Carver, the billionaire media mogul baddie in this film, Kerkorian ordered that the new Bond film’s release coincide with his big IPO. Kerkorian threw money at the project to rush it along and with the 9 digit budget came immense pressure on Broccoli and Wilson to deliver on time. Shit, as they say, roles down hill and Spottiswoode was handed a compressed production schedule forcing him and his crew to work quicker then they would have like in order to meet the tight deadline. “Ars Gratia Artis” indeed.

Reported Box-office: $125,332,007 USA and $335,000,000 worldwide. I’m not so sure the investors were doing cartwheels over this one. To be fare, Tomorrow Never Dies happened to open on the same day as Titanic (1997) so that little movie sucked up a bunch of the box-office. Good enough for #10 in the US, Bond was also good enough to fight off other Bondesque entries like The Saint #28, The Jackal #33, and The Peacemaker #55. However, take away the Bond name and I feel this movie would be just as forgettable as those other offerings. This movie is about branding and product, which is fine I guess but if you keep adding water to the martini, people will eventually notice the lack of punch. 1997 also saw the release of Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. A dud at the box-office (#36) the film gained a huge cult following on video and the rest, as they say, is history baby. Forget the two horrendous sequels for now, the first Austin Powers film is fantastic and a better made movie then Tomorrow Never Dies. That is to say, the Bond parody is better then the genuine article, providing the short and dirty answer for exactly where the Bond brand was in 1997.

Theme Song: “Tomorrow Never Dies” by Sheryl Crow. I feel for Sheryl Crow, I truly do. I’d imaging two days with Lance Armstrong would be the longest two months of your life. “Hi, I’m Texas born Lance Armstrong and your not. Let me first say I never did steroids. Indeed cancer ate away most of my lungs but I can still climb mountains and win Le Tour 37 times in a row. I, Lance Armstrong, am living proof you can beat cancer. If you want to help you can buy my armband to support cancer research and what? My girlfriend has cancer? Tell my press agent to tell Sheryl I’m dumping her. LIVE STRONG!” So yah, that’s terrible, truly sorry Sheryl. However, when it comes to Sheryl Crow as a performer I don’t particularly care for her brand of benign L.A. pop. I know she gets respect from everyone from Keith Richards on down but every time I hear her whine “All I want to do is have some fun…” I need to listen to Lou Reed’s “Berlin” just to cleanse my palette. So, with my personal taste in mind, this song sucks. Problem one is Crow who is doing her best torch singer impression and simply can’t pull it off. She also co-wrote the tune that I swear to God has the following lines “martinis, girls, and guns, it’s murder on our love affair. But you bet your life every night, while you chase in the morning light, you’re not the only spy out there.” It’s perfect in a way for this film; a checklist for dummies on what James Bond is all about. The end credit music manages somehow to be more embarrassing. It a remix of the classic Bond theme done by Moby which actually samples Connery saying “Do you expect me to talk?” and Goldfinger’s famous reply.

Opening Titles: Bond audience, meet CGI. Even the gun barrel looks all kinds of digital. The credits are kind of clever in that they embrace this new form of film making head on. The sequence starts with some binary code inside some circuitry that gives way to morphing women and black and white negative images. We get TV scan lines and x-ray images all layered one below the next implying we are going deeper, behind the tech, into the internet, pulling back the curtain to see what makes it all tick. Great idea but a false promise, the film that follows is all surface and gloss. Oh, and martinis, girls, and guns. Plenty of that.

Opening Action Sequence: Speaking of digital, the first DVD I ever saw happened to be this movie. My best friend growing up moved to Seattle and I went out to visit him. Let’s call him Tom. Tom had gotten a place in Capital Hill with another mutual friend who had been in Emerald City for a few years. Let’s call him Jonas. It was my first time in Seattle and it was one of those magical trips I’ll never forget. It had to have been 1999 because the Billy Bragg / Wlico record Mermaid Ave. had just been released and it became our non-stop soundtrack for the trip. Tom and I went out to The Comet and The Elysian my first night in town and proceed to limber our minds. When we returned to the apartment Jonas, who is one of the biggest movies guys I know, told me he had recently gotten a DVD player. Did I want to check it out? Hell and yah! He had a bunch of movies but said the best thing to watch to see the true superiority of DVD over VHS when it comes to both picture and sound was the latest James Bond. The opening alone he promised would blow my mind. The jump from VHS to DVD, and this was before HDTV, was truly life changing. When is the last time you’ve watched a VHS? The colors blur, blacks get crushed, any kind of background is non-existent, and the audio sounds like your listen to everything though a soup can string phone. As for the DVD, the shots of the missile screaming forward, the sound of the jet engine blowing over a jeep, the vivid red and orange explosions on the white snow covered mountain background; I couldn’t turn away. Needless to say the first two things I picked up when I returned to New York were a DVD player and Mermaid Ave. Thanks for the memories Tom and Jonas. As for that opening, Bond is spying on a “terrorist arms bizarre” which I picture would be something like “The Rockaway Flee Market” in North Jersey where as a kid I could buy anything from a butterfly knife to nun chucks to Chinese stars. M and her MI6 crew are watching the goings on from headquarters, which is nice because they can provide the commentary. Look, that’s the dude who was responsible for the Tokyo subway attack. And wow, that guy looks just like Ricky Jay, who according to MI6 “practically invented techno terror.” Henry Gupta is his name and he started as a radical at Berkeley in the 60’s now works for highest bidder which is perfect; he’s a sellout just like the rest of the baby boomer generation. Sorry Mom and Dad, you know its true; your generation ruined it all. I digress, turns out Gupta is spotted holding a missing American encoder which controls this new fangled GPS. Yes, there was time when GPS was a military tool and not a toy used to check into Starbucks on Four Square. Enter Admiral Roebuck, one of the most annoying characters in a Bond film since Sheriff J.W. Pepper. We will get to him a moment but for now he decided to blow up the flea market and take out half the worlds terrorist in one shot. M protests, he ignores her, and well after the missile is launched, Bond sends back photos of a Russian jet with nuclear warheads on it sitting right in the middle of the targeted zone. “Can’t your people keep anything locked up?” the Admiral asks a Russian who happens to be in the war room (But he’ll see the big board!!!) So, Bond must get in the plane and take off before the missile hits the sight. This involves him getting into the cockpit and destroying half the base before he even takes off. It’s exciting and well edited but it also never quite gets going because we are constantly cutting back to M and crew watching on the monitors like a room full of fans waiting to see if the game winning felid goal is good. Bond ends up playing chicken on the runway with another jet and the two take off, just missing each other, as the entire bizarre goes boom. It’s a good thing Bond knows how to pilot a Russian MIG because he instantly finds himself engaged in a dogfight having to not only deal with his enemy but also the surrounding mountains and Oh, that guy in the back of his plane who just woke up and is strangling Bond with some kind of lanyard. Making like Jack Nicholson’s least favorite waitress, Bond holds the yolk “between his knees” to keep flying while he fights the backseat dude. It’s around this time Bond remembers the “look at the birdie” scene from Top Gun (1986) and flies his plane directly under the second MIG. A quick hit of the eject seat and his passenger flies up into the other plane’s back seat and then the plane spins off and blows up. “Ask the Admiral where he’d like his bomb delivered.” If the writing here feels a little passionless and utilitarian that is by design, it’s what this sequences feels like as well. The open stands on its own rather well and works on an action level but it fails to bring us into Bond’s world. The GoldenEye open had amazing stunts but more importantly it transported us to the time and place where the action was happing. Here we feel like M, removed and just watching it all on the big screen. But damn does that DVD look good.

Bond’s Mission: We join the HMS Devonshire, a British frigate dealing with two MIG’s they believe to have hostel intent. Jesus, this is Top Gun. Anyway, the Chinese MIG’s insist the ship is in the South China Sea while the boat’s radar shows them to be in international waters. The Brits are mistaken but since they have a satellite fix telling them otherwise they continue to rattle the saber. See, if just one of these alleged “sailors” knew basic seamanship he could break out his sextant and put the whole matter to rest. Alas, standards have fallen in the Royal Fleet. Turns out Henry Gupta escaped the missile attack on the terrorist swap meet with his decoder (How? We have no idea) and is now helping an Aryan named Mr. Stamper screw with the GPS system on the Devonshire. Stamper and Gupta are not far off the bow of the Devonshire aboard a “stealth boat,” kind of a catamaran crossed with the Bat-plane. True, it’s the most astatically unpleasing mode of transport since the AMC Pacer but it allows the baddies to lurk about in the dark seas undetected. The stealth boat then launches a torpedo that looks more like one of those tunnel digging rigs with the several spinning rock cutters on the front and sinks the Devonshire. We are treated to all the Hollywood sinking boat shots that truly terrify me but amidst the exploding bulkheads and trapped crewmen drowning we get our first of the random slow-mo shots for no reason. Kind of sucked me right out, reminding me I was not on a sinking ship but sitting in my living room so I took another sip o Yuengling. Meanwhile these poor bastards are drowning and even worse they radio back the wrong position thanks to the tomfoolery with the GPS so any chance of being saved is erased. Not that it would matter; Mr. Stamper shoots and kills all the survivors with “Asian ammo,” whatever the hell that is, so that the Brits would think the Chinese sunk the ship and killed the sailors. Stamper works for a media mogul who set the Brits and Chinese against each other with the hopes of starting WWIII. Back at the Bat-cave, M has this all pretty much figured out, well at least the “who” bit, and here comes Admiral Roebuck. The first issue is the MI6 war room. So effective in the last film, here the space works against the M scenes. Throughout the movie Spottiswoode proves he has no clue how to shoot large spaces and since the MI6 room is very big and very dark the characters just kind of float in a limbo. The scene would be so much more effective if taking place in say M’s old office, with M behind the large desk giving the proper weight to what’s being disguised, mainly should they start WWIII. Instead the players look like four co-works standing outside a freight elevator taking a smoke break. So, England is on the brink of war and the PM has M, the head of MI6, and Admiral Roebuck, some kind of military muckety-muck, standing before him in this void of a space. M wants to investigate further and Admiral Roebuck wants to drop the bomb. We remember how well Roebuck’s “drop the bomb” strategy worked out at the terrorist bizarre five minutes ago but somehow no one in the film recalls the Admiral’s colossal blunder. No matter, the Admiral’s function in the film is to make the wrong decision every time. He is a useful idiot (useful as far as creating easy if unnecessary tension) who is one of the laziest of lazy plot devices. I became keenly aware of this character thanks to Siskel & Ebert’s review of Die Hard (1988). A split, Gene liked the film’s action well enough but Roger couldn’t get past the police chief played by Paul Gleason. Ebert’s point; how did this guy get to be in charge? All he does is make wrong choice after wrong choice putting everyone in further danger. He ignores Sgt. Al Powell, who’s been on the scene from the get go, and blindly plows ahead when all evidence suggests he ought to do the opposite. Now, it is true M can’t give up the name of the media mogul she suspects is behind everything because of his ties to the PM. I also like the idea of the military and MI6 chafing when it comes to dealing with an extremely volatile situation but none of those arguments are made here. Instead, we get chirping and snipping until the Admiral calls M out for not having “the balls for the job.” She and Bond just bailed you out ass hat! And besides, we got the M-doesn’t-have-balls-joke in the last film and that time it was, you know, funny. So now we have an exasperated PM delivering a line out of countless Dirty Harry rip-offs, “Tell your man he has 48 hours.” So, Bond has two days to prove M’s theory and stop WWIII. Giddy up.

Villain’s Name: Elliot Carver AKA The Emperor of the Air. The first time we see him is in an extreme close-up, only one of his eyes is visible. The other is hidden behind the reflection of a newspaper headline on his spectacles. Indeed, Elliot Carver is the kind of guy who doesn’t wear glasses. He wears spectacles. He is an all powerful media baron capable of “swinging an election with a single broadcast” and now he needs a big ongoing story for the launch of his new 24-hour news network. A war would do nicely. Much like Charles Foster Kane, Carver has the power to tell people what to think. Carver, like Kane, is said to be based on William Randolph Hearst who Carver even quotes at one point “You provide the pictures, I’ll provide the war.” Hearst said his famous line during the build up to the Spanish-America War, a war many feel was pushed along by Hearst and his main competitor Joseph Pulitzer in 1898. I remember when Tomorrow Never Dies came out one of the criticisms was a media CEO is not a diabolical enough villain for a Bond picture. I don’t think that’s the issue, I think the problem is Michael Wilson, to quote Admiral Roebuck, doesn’t have the balls for the job. To use a 100 year old war started by newspapers in the age of 24 hour news cycles is disingenuous at best when you consider the fact that a real life, living, breathing, Elliot Carver was controlling the media in the UK as the film was being made. Elliot Carver should be Rupert Murdoch. If anyone who was making this film was honest with themselves, Elliot Carver would be Rupert Murdoch. Indeed, in 1997 Murdoch’s FOX News had yet to sway the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election when candidate Bush’s first cousin, John Ellis, the “freelance political advisor” at FOX, called Florida, a state where his other cousin Jeb Bush was governor, a win for Bush when every other network had given it to candidate Gore or saw it was too close to call. Also true Murdoch had yet to be exposed for the vial phone tapping scandal that very well may have cost a kidnap victim her life. (The investigation is still on going as of this writing.) But in England, where Murdoch and his minions openly pulled the strings of members of British Parliament and had a standing invitation to 10 Downing Street, the head of News Corp. was known to be a villain, and a powerful one at that. Perhaps EON, like the PM standing before M in the war room, couldn’t take on Murdoch head-on. In fact, Michael Wilson casts himself in the film as one of Carver’s puppets (“consider him slimed sir”) making it almost too easy to see the producer as fearful of Murdoch’s wrath. This is a franchise that prides itself on up-to-the-minute ripper-from-the-headlines plot points (Bond was the first movie to ever show a laser!) yet here they go back to a war most people have never even heard of for their inspiration?

Why go after someone that can really hurt you, much easier to pick on a guy who’s been dead for 75 years. The idea of Murdoch as a Bond villain is spot on, but Carver is no Murdoch and I can’t help but see the character as an opportunity missed. Taking it the next logical step, I can’t help but see the opportunity being missed because of a lack of courage … and balls.

Villain Actor: Jonathan Pryce. For me, Price will always be Sam Lowry lost and losing it in Brazil (1985). He’s a fantastic actor who does what he can with the role, like when he mocks an Asian woman’s kung fu, but ultimately he’s flat. I can’t pin it all on Price, the script doesn’t help and unfortunately for him, Carver is one of the less memorable Bond villains. Not because the idea of a media mogul is a bad one, but because the film refuses to pull the trigger and make him a compelling villain with true motives.

Villain’s Plot: Carver (like Murdock) is a newspaper man at heart. Even at his elevated position, Carver e is constantly writing and rewriting headlines. Now, he is launching himself into the 24-hour cable news world and that is given as his reason for starting the war. I don’t buy it. Yes, he wants eyeballs on his news network and indeed, ratings are nice. After all, the first Gulf War put CNN on the map in 1991. However, it’s not really about ratings for guys like Murdoch or Hearst or Carver, it’s about power. It’s not about delivering the news but shaping a worldview. I’m a Mets fan….done laughing? No really get it out, it’s cool. OK, so as a Mets fan I hop the 7 train to Citifield as often as I can. Like most ballparks there are a bunch of advertisements hanging all over the outfield. One of the ads is for FOX Business Network. The only other word on the billboard other then the name of the channel is POWER. Not information, not accuracy, not timeliness, but POWER, in huge letters right over Jason Bay’s head. Carver talks about ratings, saying he wants exclusive TV rights in China for the next 100 years so he can have one billion people watching and he stops there. This is 100% wrong. It’s the fact that those one billon people live in a closed society with a government controlled internet and will have no choice other then to believe everything Carver tells them. The China deal is about having a pipeline to control the country that controls the largest Army on earth. It’s about being a modern day Joseph Goebbels. It’s about having absolute power. The film only needed to go half a step further to say all of this. Shit, Bond films love to have the villain make grandiose speeches. All you would need is a little something like “Ratings Mr. Bond? Ohhh, I’m afraid you’re thinking too small. The problem with the press is we are given too much freedom. Freedom to say whatever we want! Freedom to control the message and to control the message is to control the people. Say, I want to cover up Golden Saks shady sales of toxic loans. Done and I get a little kickback for my trouble while the people do their business as usual. Or, say I want to suppress that nasty torture bit at Abu Ghraib, claim global warming is a hoax, or even declare evolution itself is a myth, all I need to do is say it enough times and people will accept it as fact. If I want people to think Kim Kardashian is happily married and doing charity work in Calcutta, so be it! I can make the sky green and the grass blue and everyone of those people out there will not only believe me, they act according to my whim whhahhahhha!” Done and done. With a little bit of dialog Carver is a king maker and a Kardashian defender; in other words a true threat to the free world.

Villain’s Lair: I have never seen a TV studio that looks like Carvers. He hold his opening party in space that is the most “set” looking set in a Bond film since Blofeld’s volcano in You Only Live Twice (1967). The place looks like a Euro-trash disco which is OK I guess, this is after all Hamburg, but later when everyone clears out Carver is in this space with absolutely no one. Have you ever seen a 24-hour news gathering operation? It makes those shots they show of traders on the floor of the NYSE in films look organized. In fact, no one works at Carver’s TV station, the paper, or anywhere in Carver’s empire, unless they are employed in security. It’s one more example of the film beginning lazy, not well thought out, and once again exposes our director as unable to handle the large sets that dominate Bond films. Take the other space where Carver spends his time, the stealth boat. The interior is again a dark, huge, soulless room but at least there are a few people turning knobs to give the appearance of a crew. By the by, we are told the boat can hit 48 knots which is 55.2 MPH. Not bad for a craft with no discernable propulsion system.

Villain’s Coolest Accessory/ Trait: I like his smugness. He not only assumes he is the smartest guy in the room; he disregards everyone, including his wife, unless he can use them for something. His arrogance is boundless “I will reach and influenced more people on this planet then anyone in history save God himself, and all he managed was a sermon on the mountain.” That’s good stuff and something that Carver no doubt believes. Indeed, his company is not only run as a dictatorship, it looks like one as well, what with his image everywhere, looking down on his kingdom like big brother. It’s a little odd, I can’t picture Les Moonves draping a 20 story banner of his face on Black Rock but then again, he is the boss of the extremely Bond villain sounding company Viacom so it might happen one day.

Badassness of Villain: Citizen Kane (1941) is essentially about a quest to find out why newspaper baron Charles Foster Kane did what he did. Kane is a villain who ruined many lives but he wasn’t a bad man as much as he was misguided and empty. Kane didn’t realize he was destroying everything around him to fill the large emotional void left by his father until it finally destroyed him. Carver on the other hand is the boy running around on his sled. He’s got a toy, this media empire, and man wouldn’t it been neat to start a war. He does it because he can. We over hear him delivering an amusing anecdote at his party where he denies spreading the rumors of mad cow disease to get back at a beef baron who stiffed him 100,000 pounds at a poker game. However, he didn’t dispute that he received 1,000,000 from a French cattleman to keep the stories going for another year. I guess he’s saying he’s for sale for the right price? I’m not sure. He displays such detachment I don’t know if he is so much badass as much as soulless. He orders 17 British sailors to be shot as you or I would order a ham sandwich. He barely blinks after having his own wife killed and is more concerned with writing her obit. The only moment we see a hint that perhaps this man is human is when Bond breaks into his safe to steal the American decoder. There, locked up with this most powerful tool, are baggies of dope, a few syringes and some porn. What does this man do when he’s alone?

Villain’s Asides/ Henchmen: Someone like Carver needs a good #2, a buffer between him and his evil deeds. Murdoch, for example, has Roger Ailes. I know for a fact that when Ailes had his office on the second floor of the FOX News building in Manhattan it was encased in bomb proof glass and was as accessible as Ft. Knox even for his own employees. (He has since moved to higher floors in the same 6^th Ave. building.) The man has several security men as well as members of the NYPD walk him to his car parked in the underground garage and he is never, ever seen in public, especial in New York City. He fears not only al-Qaeda but, and I’m not making this up, the homosexual plot against him. If that’s not a Bond villain then I don’t know what is. Mr. Stamper is no Roger Ailes. He functions in the Jaws role as a henchman; an enforcer who gets physical while the villain waxes philosophical. He’s fine but not all that memorable. The other two henchmen on the other hand are by far the best things about the movie. The underused Ricky Jay, who is hands down the most interesting man in Hollywood, plays Henry Gupta. His credits and accomplishments are so vast I will not get into it here but only to say that in the same year this film came out he also played the porn film cameraman in Boogie Nights (1997). His bitching about the integrity of his shot and lighting to Burt Reynolds “there are shadows in life babe” is movie magic. Please allow me once again give an example of Spottiswoode’s complete lack of understanding of what makes a good film. On the DVD extras there are some outtakes. One of them features Ricky Jay, as Gupta, doing his famous trick where he throws playing cars so hard they slice fruit and even become imbedded in hard surfaces. The scene is a visual nod to Oddjob’s hat trick. It also adds a human level to Gupta, despicable baby boomer that he is. It lasted all of 15 seconds. It was cut…for time. Thank God for Dr. Kaufman played by Brooklyn born character actor Vincent Schiavelli. In a film allergic to detail and nuance, Kaufman embraces both. Dressed in a suit two times too big, wearing a wispy mustache, and speaking in a cartoon evil German accent, he is a hit man of the highest order. He enters Bond’s hotel room and sits in a chair. A dead woman is on the bed next to Bond. Kaufman killed her and now plans on framing Bond after he kills him to make it look like a murder/suicide. “I am an outstanding marksman’s take my word, yah?” Bond points out the hit man is standing in the wrong spot, it will not look as if Bond killed himself due to the trajectory of the built. “Believe me Mr. Bond I could shot you from Stuttgrad un still create ze proper effect.” Just then the doctor gets a call on the radio. It turns out Stamper and his goons are having trouble breaking into Bond’s BMW which contains the decoder. “Did you call ze auto club? OK, ya I ask. This is very embarrassing, they want me to make you unlock ze car, I feel like an idiot. I don’t know what to say.” It’s fantastic, a professional being thrown off his game by incompetent accomplices. Of course this gives Bond an opportunity to turn the tables and in short order he is pointing the gun at the doctor. “Please, I’m only a professional doing a job.” “Me too” says Bond as he pulls the trigger. Kaufman is only on screen for about three minutes but he absolutely steals the show and goes down in the annals as one of the best Bond villains.

Bond Girl Actress: Michelle Yeoh. I instantly recognized her as Yu Shu Lien from the wonderful Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), one of the best films of that year. Already a star in Asia, this was one of her first English roles and as many times as I write that for various Bond women, I never tire of it. Bond films catch a lot of flack, more often then not deservedly so, for being misogynist. Fare enough, but then they must also be praised and given credit for going out of the way to cast different nationalities and different forms of beauty in the Bond girl role. At least a dozen actresses have waltzed through Hollywood’s front door on a red carpet thanks to being cast as the Bond girl. The other lady in Bond’s life in this movie is Terri Hatcher who unlike Yeoh is right off Hollywood’s A-list.

Bond Girl’s Name: Colonel Wai Lin of the Chinese People’s External Security Force outranks Commander Bond of the Royal Navy. In the press materials for every Bond film someone, typically the director or leading lady, says something like “This time it’s not your typical Bond girl.” This maybe the first time they are correct. Yes, Triple-X was a Major in the Russian military and Dr. Goodhead was a CIA agent but they always kind of took a back seat to Bond when the bullets starting flying. Not Wai Lin. She has a hand-to-hand combat scene all to her own in which she kicks some serious baddie ass before Bond waltzes in at the very end. She also has her very own Q lab, a Saigon bicycle shop that with a few key strokes on her Chinese character keyboard (red of course) turns into a spy’s paradise complete with a fire breathing dragon statues that could double as Benihana lobby décor, a fan that sprays deadly darts and more guns guns guns then the parking lot at a Virginia NRA convention. Much like 007 and XXX in The Spy Who Loved Me(1977), Bond and Lin are forced to overcome the political divide between their two governments and work toward the greater good. In one of the few displays of wit in the movie, Bond and Wai Lin spend a good portion of the film literally glued together at the hip thanks to a pair of handcuffs. The central set piece of the film involves the two escaping Carver’s men on a motorcycle. They are cuffed left hand to right so in order to operate the bike Bond has one hand on one handle while she controls the other. “Pop the clutch.” The motorcycle chase thorough the market streets of Saigon starts out exciting enough but by the time it was halfway over I started thinking about video games. Now, I hate when someone says an action sequence or a movie is like a video game. Typically what they mean by the criticism is to say the movie is all action and no soul. This is very unfair to video games as anyone who has ever played Portal or Bioshock or Red Dead Redemption or Mass Effect or countless other video games will tell you.

At this point, technology is such that video games are able to create worlds and characters as rich as any found in film or literature. When I say I was reminded of video games during the chase I’m referring to the “structure” and “build” of the sequence. Form the days of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong until now, video games have worked best when they incorporate some kind of leveling up as the player progresses through the game. Complete level one and the level two may be faster, the enemies may be more powerful, the environment may throw you a few more curve balls, or maybe all three. The idea is that as you advance, things get harder. This is done to avoid repeating the same thing over and over and keep the player involved. This form of storytelling of courses goes back to the Greeks, with each increasingly difficult trial the hero proves his worth and gets closer to the goal. Films build to the final showdown between the protagonist and the antagonist so this is not new. But this leveling up typically walks hand in hand with another video game staple, which is the game will provide the solution to any problem, always. Otherwise, you couldn’t finish the game, which is designed to be played and eventually won. (That is unless you’re playing Dark Souls in which case all bets are off and you’re on your own.) So, if you need a gun, look around the board long enough and you will find a gun. Need to cross that river, sure as shit you will find something in the environment you can fashion into a bridge. Back to the motorcycle chase, the whole thing happens on city blocks that look like they were designed for Mario Cart. There are ramps and levels and pop up obstacles that exist only to make Bond and Wai Lin deal with increasing difficult driving conditions. But whenever they need to get up onto a roof, there is a board perfectly positioned to act as a way upward. They need to jump from one roof to the next and there is a ramp for their convenience. When they need to take cover to hide from a helicopter, there is hut they can drive right into. All of this of course builds up to what in video game speak is called a “boss battle.” Everything you do in many games is a warm up to prep you for the finally show down with the baddest of badass baddies. This will at first seem to be an unwinnable fight, until you find the bosses weakness. There is always one. So here the motorcycle chase all builds up to the point where Bond and Wai Lin are trapped in an ally with nowhere to go. The helicopter is at the other side of the street and the two face each other like gunfighters in the streets of Tombstone. The helicopter pitches forward and starts to move in on Bond and Wai Lin, the blades making minced meat of anything they come in contact with. “Trapped” says Wai Lin, “never” answers Bond as they look around the environment and find the exact thing they need to beat the boss, a clothesline. Our two heroes grab the line, gun the bike toward the helicopter, slides under the blades and once safely on the other side, toss the line into the blades. As the chopper spins and explodes the environment once again proves the ideal solution, a washbasin large enough to fit two people. Our heroes jump in and hide safely underwater as the chopper explodes in a fireball overhead. To top it all off, none of this was necessary. Now in the clear, Wai Lin picks the handcuff lock with her earring, and she’s off and running. Like Dorothy, she had the power to go home the whole time. Then there is Paris Carver, I can only assume the long suffering wife of Elliot. She and James have a past that is wisely kept opaque. We do get a sold hint that way back when she was quite a handful. “He will have a vodka martini, shaken, not stirred…” “…and the lady will have a shot of tequila.” “Mrs. Carver will have some champagne from Mr. Carver’s cellar.” Perhaps they met on spring break. As discussed earlier, Bond’s best bit in the film is his drunken bedroom meeting with Mrs. Carver. But like almost everything in this film, what starts as interesting ends in cliché as these two talented actors have to deliver dialog like “Did I get to close?” as the music swells.

Bond Girl Sluttiness: This is one of the stranger films when it comes to Jimmy B’s sex life. First off, he not only sleeps with Carver’s wife, it’s an encounter that means something to both of them. They make love as opposed to have sex, if you will. Bond has banged the baddies babe before but (alliteration rocks!) sleeping with a man’s wife is a little different. Particularly if you care for his wife and you know he’s going to find out and more then likely kill her. Take For Your Eyes Only (1981) where Bond sleep with the baddies mistress, Countess Lisl von Schaff who was played by Brosnen’s future wife Cassandra Harris. She is killed by Locque and when Bond finally gets his revenge, he kicks Locque over a cliff in one of the more memorable moments in Bond history. Here in Tomorrow Never Dies, the grim reality of what Bond did and the outcome, a dead woman, is never dealt with in a direct way. Why not? Because that would require some work on the filmmakers’ part, so like so many other things in the movie, it’s glossed over and then dropped entirely. As for Wai Lin, she is all business and in a rather refreshing fashion, spurns every advance by the spy from the corrupt capitalist nation. Bond in fact never sleeps with his leading lady, which if I’m not mistaken is a first.

Bond’s Best Pick-up Line: Bond to Paris Carver when they first come face to face “I always wondered how I would feel if I saw you again…” smack to the face. “Now I know.”

Bond Girls Best Pick-up Line: Paris Carver to Bond shortly after the slap “Do you still sleep with a gun under the pillow?”

Number of Woman 007 Beds: 2. Since he doesn’t get to have the Bond girl I guess they needed to throw in a blond at the top. The first time we see James after the open he is “brushing up on a little Danish” with his language tutor Prof. Inga Bergstorm at his alma mater Cambridge. Then there is the Paris meeting in Hamburg, which leads to her death. That’s it. True, after the stealth boat is distorted Bond and Wai Lin share a kiss while floating on wreckage but there is no position in the Karma Sutra that Bond and his marshal arts expert partner could pull of without end up at the bottom of the sea.

Number of People 007 Kills: In the days of yore, Bond had his trusty Walther PPK and we could keep track of where his bullets landed. Now, Bond prefers picking up a machine gun from a downed baddie and going to town. This is surely much more effective for the agent but its hell on the body count department. We will, in the interest of accurate reporting, do our best. In the open Bond gets into a cockpit and lets loose with both bullets and missiles. Many trucks, planes and crates of weapons are destroyed and our spotter counted three terrorist killed. Once airborne, Bond’s little ejector seat trick takes out two more baddies. After getting Paris killed, all be it indirectly but I think 007 bears some responsibility, he puts a single bullet into Dr. Kaufman. Bond breaks into Carver’s TV station where he gets his hands on a machine gun and shoots down at least one guy while escaping. This maybe a good place to note that Carver’s men have the aim of drunken imperial storm troopers on ice skates. Watching them shoot at Bond I was reminded of the scene in The Dead Pool (1988) where Harry and his lady are in a glass elevator, literally fish in a barrel. Two baddies with machine guns open fire on the elevator and unleash 300 or so bullets, not hitting either of the people trapped in the glass box. Harry then fires off three bullets to kill both men. We counted four guys in the chopper that Bond downed with the clothesline leading us to the climatic battle. While running around under the stealth boat (it’s like a catamaran) he knifes one baddie and once inside he once again gets an automatic weapon and takes out five. Another aside if I may, I don’t know much about guns. The last time I pulled the trigger on one I was 10-years-old shooting a .22 at Boy Scout camp. I was not very good at it. Anyway, my understanding is guns, automatic weapons in particular, have what is called a kick, or recoil, in which the gun moves backward with some force as the bullet leaves the chamber. This is why, I’m told, guns have a shoulder stock, so the shooter can steady the gun and absorb the kick with his body. Right. While ripping apart the stealth boat with bullets Bond waves the gun about this way and that as if he were Gene Kelly twirling his umbrella in Singing in the Rain (1952). Would this not at the very least hamper his aim and more then likely rip his arm off? Please feel free to comment if you are in the know. Anyway, when it comes to what weapons can do we should really be discussing missiles. Bond gets behind a missile launcher on board the stealth boat and starts to fire missiles at baddies who are on the boat. This causes them to jump off the catwalks they were perched on while large red fire balls flair up but no holes are ripped in the hull, no water comes rushing in, and in fact, the boat suffers little. Now, I know this is a movie but it must be consistent. Earlier we saw the Devonshire go down thanks to one projectile hitting it. We saw water rushing in and sailors getting blasted around thanks to the force of incoming water. Here, a piece of piping falls with loud clank. Mr. Stamper is undone by a missile but not as you would imagine. Bond traps the henchman behind a missile that’s about to launch and when it does Stamper disappears in a great ball of fire. Goodness gracious.

Most Outrageous Death/s: I couldn’t decide so we’ve got a tie. Turns out Carver’s got a huge printing press, not far from his TV studio which I’m sure annoys the audio engineers to no end. Bond is above the whirling LOUD machinery as reams of paper fly by underneath. He is struggling with a baddie who … $5 dollars to the one who gets it first! Right, falls into the press. The only reason this press exists, in a location it never would, is so we can see paper turning red with a man’s blood and hear Bond say “They’ll print anything these days.” For the other outrageous death we get the worst head villain demise since Mr. Big got really big in Live and Let Die (1973). Carver is on the bridge of his sinking ship. Bond physically confronts him and the two are struggling when Bond hits a switch to starts the tunnel digging torpedo a-whirling and heading for them. Both men turn around to see the torpedo coming. Bond holds Carver and himself in front of the approaching blades. “You forgot the first rule of mass media Elliot! Give the people what they want.” Bond then jumps out of the way of the torpedo, which is still coming. Cut to the torpedo still coming. Cut to a close up on Carver’s face as he looks at the torpedo, still coming. If the close up shot had been an extreme close up showing only one eye and the reflection of the approaching torpedo in his spectacles that would have been something. Not only would it reference the first time we saw the villain creating a nice little bookend but it would also indicate that Carver is so accustom to watching things happen on a screen that he is unable to react to events that are actually happening to him. A simple shot choice would have gone miles, however, no one involved with the production was thinking in cinematic terms so no, we get none of that. What we do get is Carver screaming, then raising his hands in front of his face, then another cutaway to see the torpedo finally reach him and cutting him up. We are left wondering why he didn’t step to the side.

Miss. Moneypenny: I really don’t enjoy continuing this negative tangent but here again I must. Moneypenny and M both are robbed of any humanity and function only as the plot requires. It’s incredibly frustrating because we’ve spent so much time with these characters at this point we want more from them then just function. Add the fact we have in Moneypenny and M two incredible actresses who are new to the series and showed such promise in GoldenEye and it all the sadder. Here poor Samantha Bond is reduced to chiding Bond over the phone for his sexual exploits. When she hangs up Judy Dench is standing behind her. “Don’t ask” says Moneypenny “Don’t tell” responds Dench. I can only imagine both women returning to their trailers depressed after that exchange.

M: M has one scene outside of dealing with the pain the ass Admiral and it’s a rather enjoyable one. Since Bond has only 48 hours to get his mission accomplishes he receives his briefing on the way to the airport. Bond and M get a full police escort through the streets of London which is super crazy cool. The two sit in the back of the car and discuss how to proceed as they wiz through the city, M with drink in hand. Awesome.

Q: Tomorrow Never Dies, the one where Major Boothroyd becomes a walking, talking billboard. He approaches 007 at the Hamburg airport dressed in a red Avis jacket. The gag, which wears thin before it even starts, is Q is a car rental rep. “Would you be needing collision?” horn blast in the sound track. “Accidents do happen.” “Fire?” Another horn blast. “Defiantly.”  And so on. When they reach the garage Q becomes a used car salesman on Northern Blvd. “The BMW 750, the finest in automobile technology.” And if you put 20% down right now I can throw in the headlight stinger missiles free of charge. Some other stuff happened but I missed it, I was to busy wondering why a caged tiger was in the background of the shot.

List of Gadgets: Phish once sang “with the right device you can make a pattern grow, or you can tune up your car.” Or in the case of Bond’s new phone, drive your car. Way before Steve Jobs dreamt up the iPhone, a device that makes everyone James Bond, 007 had a mobile with a fingerprint scanner, a 20,000 volt security system and “this I’m particularly proud of, a touch pad remote control used to drive the car.” At least that’s what Q shows us, but say Bond needs to pick a lock? There’s an app for that. Bond also has a lighter that doubles as a detonator for a magnetic grenade, which is pretty cool.

Gadgets/British Government Property Bond Destroys: The BMW 750, the finest in automobile technology.

Other Property Destroyed: At one point Ricky Jay is walking through Carver’s media complex and for no reason at all points to a satellite sitting in what appears to be a lobby. “That’s a $300 million satellite so be careful. You break it you bought it.” The plot’s ludicrous, you can guess what happens next. Bond fixes the cable? In the open alone Bond destroys more military equipment then in any previous film including one truck which he blows over with a jet’s afterburner, which I thought was inspired. Carver has a room in his TV station set aside to beat people up in which is actually quite realistic. Bond trashes the room much to the delight of several Carver News associate producers. Half of a neighborhood in Saigon is wiped out during the motorcycle chase including one block lost to a fire works mishap and a shopping district chopped up by a falling helicopter. Bond and Wai Lin also rip a 20 story banner that must of cost a small fortune right down the middle. He also blows up the stealth boat. Something of an error on 007’s part considering the Chinese and British governments were both hip to Carver’s scheme and working in concert to get him. Also, I’m sure Q would have loved to get a look at the stealth boat to figure out the technology. But you know, the villain’s lair must be blown up and so it is. There is also an Avis rental shop and parking garage in Hamburg, which we needs to look at more closely.

Bond Cars: BMW 750. Before he picks up the baby blue beamer from Q we get a glimpse of the classic Aston Martin. But it’s really all about the BMW and the car chase in the Hamburg parking garage. After Bond kills Kaufman he enters the garage to see half a dozen goons milling about the car. Her breaks out the remote control phone, drives the car to him, jumps in the back seat and navigates through the multiple levels of the garage while being chased. The idea of a car chase that goes nowhere is a good one. So good, in fact, that one of the greatest films of all time is about just that, the classic The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006). I have never seen a frame of any of the other 27 Fast & Furious films and I hope I never will. That said, I could watch Tokyo Drift 100 times it still wouldn’t be enough. I’m not kidding, I adore that film. Anyway, back to the “Hamburg Slide,” a compromised second draft of the “Tokyo Drift.” The car chase is a microcosm of why this film is ultimately flat. It starts with a great premise; have Bond driving, from the backseat, getting chased in a parking garage. We see the gadgets that Q pointed out perform as we would expect, the missiles take out the baddies and the guns do the same. The spikes getting dropped out of the back, while not pointed out by Q, work in the grand tradition of the oil slick/smoke coming out of the back of the Aston Martin. But then when Bond ends up running over the spikes, his tires self inflate. Then, the baddies put a chain up in front of the car, which suddenly becomes a Swiss Army knife. Bond pushes a button and whala, the hood ornament pops up and a cable cutter is underneath. Back to the video game thing; throw an obstacle out there and the environment, in this case with no context, will provide the answer. What purpose other then cutting the cable would the devise serve? Did Q sit up late and night and consider what would happen if say a dead elephant was in Bond’s way? Just as likely a scenario. Everything in this film exists in the moment it is needed and has no context to the rest of the goings on. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to move Tokyo Drift to the top of my queue. After all, If You Ain’t Outta Control, You Ain’t In Control! Freaking geniuses.

Felix Leiter: Jack Wade is back and this brings a smile to my face. What started as a gag in the last film here becomes a running joke that I rather enjoy. That is, Wade just kind of appearing, unannounced, out of nowhere, ready to assist in anyway he can while at the same time taking pains to let Bond know he’s “not really here. The CIA has no involvement or official position in this matter what-so-ever.” It’s also cool that Wade’s wearing an even more obnoxious shirt then he had in the last film while Bond is in his dress blues. Wade and Bond quickly figure out the location of the sunken Devonshire, and since it’s in the South Sea of China, Bond has a little favor to ask Wade. In this situation Felix would have shook his head and said something like “ohhh no James, you remember what happened last time.” Wade on the other hand has our man suited up and jumping out of a plane in the very next scene. “He didn’t even say good-by.” I rather like Jack Wade.

Best One Liners/Quips: “I wonder if the CIA will be more upset that they lost it or that we found it.” M on discovering GPS decoder.

Bond Timepiece: Looks to be the same Omega model from GoldenEye which is handsomely displayed on the DVD cover.

Other Notable Bond Accessories: Nothing really of note but it’s cool to see Commander Bond in uniform on occasion.

Number of Drinks 007 Consumes: After his vodka martini at the party he hits a bottle of Smirnoff in his hotel room for some serious soul searching. By the time Paris shows up the bottle is half empty so whatever the math is on that, there you go.

Bond’s Gambling Winnings: Nope, and you can’t win lest you put your chips in.

List of Locations: In the open, the French Pyrenees stood in for the unavailable Afghani location. London plays London as well as the parts of Hamburg that were not shot in Hamburg, like the parking garage and the exterior of Carver’s media complex. One of the most interesting shots in the film shows the waterways of Saigon while Bond and Wai Lin fly overhead bound for Carver’s CGI created tower. Ho Chi Minh City fell through so producers used Bangkok as a stand in for the Vietnamese local. Indeed, we go to these places but it’s all perfunctory. None of the locations feel real or lived in. Instead, I feel like I’m on vacation with Clark Griswold. Kids, look. The Grand Canyon, OK let’s go.

Bonds Special Abilities Displayed: He can expertly pilot a MIG through the mountains while engaged in a dog fight and holding the stick between his knees. The fact that he can drive the BMW with the remote expertly on his first try is fine; the banter between he and Q while he does so is not. The motorcycle skills have been well covered by this point, which leaves the Halo Jump. Halo, or High Altitude Low Opening jump, is a way to get into a hostile location while avoiding radar. The jump is from 29 thousand feet, the top O Everest for those keeping score, and requires a 5 mile freefall during which the jumper reaches a speed of 200 MPH before opening his chute as close to the ground as possible. I don’t know if people do this for real but if so it’s very, very James Bond.

Final Thoughts: The finally credit on screen for Tomorrow Never Dies says the film was done “In loving memory of Albert Cubby Broccoli.” The old man deserves much better then this, one of the weaker entries in the Bond cannon. I found this film to be the most frustrating Bond film yet. All the pieces were in place, and yet it never worked. While writing the review I often thought back to an episode of “The Office.” In the episode, Andy Bernard was contemplating becoming a critic. “Perhaps I could be a food critic. These muffins are bad. Or an art critic, that painting is bad.” My intent was not to be negative for the sake of being negative, but to explore why this film didn’t work. The point of this blog from the get go was to look at Bond films, which more or less have the same ingredients, and figure out why sometimes they work and other times they fall flat. I think Tomorrow Never Dies is a failure with many architects. The movie is Bond paint by numbers, checking off the boxes listed in the song, “martinis, girls, and guns.” I often think about the people working on bad films, at what point do they realize they have a turkey on their hands? “I remember starting the first day on that film in an aircraft, flying a jet and it was 102 degrees, and I’m wearing a helmet and sweater, and then I’m being strangled over and over again, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, this bloody character is going to kill me.’ The press tour for that film was 22 countries. When I did it I knew the movie wasn’t up to speed; it wasn’t as good as GoldenEye (1995) and you have to bang the drum loudly to get the attention.” I found that quote by Pierce Brosnan on IMDB. He had given it after he was more or less fired from the James Bond role so perhaps there are some sour grapes delivered along with the quote but I have a feeling he’s being 100% honest. I’m reminded of a story George Clooney tells about promoting his 1997 film, Batman & Robin. He was sitting backstage waiting to go on Letterman when he realized he had to go on TV and lie. He had to talk about how great the film was to promote a product he knew to be garbage. He decided he never wanted to have to stand behind a project he didn’t believe in again. Take a gander at his IMDb page post 1997 and while you may not love all those films, this is not the trajectory of someone making easy choices. This is someone doing what they want and what they believe in. However, when you’re the lead in something so much bigger then you, like Batman or James Bond, you’re at the mercy of a large machine that creates such an inertia that the show, as they say, must go on, regardless of quality. I believe even EON, like Brosnan, knew the movie was not up to snuff. Roger Spottiswoode is a one and done Bond director. The DVD extras, typically packed with great insight into the thinking and techniques that went into the making of the Bond film, are quite sparse for this outing. (But we do get a Moby music video, so we’ve got that going for us.) Maybe part of GoldenEye’s greatness can be attributed to the six years of prep time. This movie feels rushed and incomplete and perhaps the every other year schedule for Bond releases works against the creative process. Add the fact the studio brass was forcing the issue with an accelerated production schedule and the problem becomes compounded. The film simply doesn’t come together even on the most basic level. Bond had 48 hour to prevent a war, yet we saw many nights and days pass and more front page headlines; the Devonshire sinking incident, Paris’s obit, the “Empire Will Strike Back,” Bond’s obit, etc., then could ever be written in the given news cycle. Bond runs around at the climax trying to prevent what? The missiles have been launched and the British government and Chinese governments are working in concert to get Carver. Bonds job was done, yet he hangs around and almost gets Wai Lin killed in the process. Everything done in this film, with a hand full of exceptions, has been done better in previous Bond films. It’s one of the worst directed Bond films to date (that damn slow-mo!) and everything is backed by wall to wall, over the top, thumping music broken up by poorly written one liners.  I could go on and on but I already have. The movie has its moments here and there and is therefore not a total failure but to take a page out of Andy Barnard’s book, this film is bad.

Martini ratings:

GoldenEye

Title: GoldenEye

Year: 1995. GoldenEye finally saw the dark of the theater in November of 1995 putting an end to the longest hiatus between 007 celluloid adventures ever. This six year gap, like the longest previous gap of three plus years between The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), was due to legal issues. The CliffsNotes; in 1989 Danjaq, the Swiss parent company of EON sued MGM/UA over issues surrounding the licensing of Bond television rights. At the time ABC among others were still making big bucks airing Bond on primetime TV and EON/Danjaq wanted more of the pie. The upshot was a freeze on all further Bond films until the suit was settled in December of ’94 for a reported $13.5 million according to Variety. In the meantime, those jonesing for their 007 fix had to settle for a shot of 003 ½. I wish I were kidding. In 1991 Bond fans could turn on Saturday morning cartoons and catch the animated program “James Bond Jr.” Now, you may be thinking, “But Bond never had kids” and you would be right. I’ll let IMDb.com explain:

James Bond Jr. is the nephew of the famous international spy. Determined to follow in the footsteps of his famous uncle, James Jr. enrolls in Warfield, a prep school based on the grounds of an old counter intelligence training base in the UK. Along with his schoolmates IQ (grandson of Q) and Gordo Leiter (son of CIA agent Felix), James Jr. fights against SCUM (Saboteurs and Criminals United in Mayhem), an international cartel of terrorists and mad scientists.

Wikipedia has more:

James Bond Jr. is a fictional character described as the nephew of Ian Fleming’s master spy James Bond. The name “James Bond Junior” was first used in 1967 for an unsuccessful spinoff novel entitled 003½: The Adventures of James Bond Junior written under the pseudonym R. D. Mascott. The idea of Bond having a nephew was used again in 1991 as an American animated series for television in which the title character defeats threats to the safety of the free world. The series was mildly successful and spawned six episode novelizations by John Peel writing as John Vincent, a 12 issue comic book series by Marvel Comics published in 1992, as well as a video game developed by Eurocom in 1991.

Wow! So they didn’t just pull 003 ½ out of their anuses, he’s been around since the days of Fleming. Obviously all of this is absolutely absurd except the idea of SPECTRE being replaced by SCUM. That’s awesome. If only there was a song spelling out how James Bond Jr. has a job to do and he chases SCUM around the world. Let’s go to the videotape!

 

When a movie as disastrous as Licence To Kill (1989) is followed by a six-year gap only to be filled by 003 ½, well, that would be enough to kill a lesser franchise. Additionally, Bond had to contend with the events of November 9, 1989. On that day crowds of East Germans and West Germans took hammers to the most visible symbol of the “evil empire,” the Berlin Wall, and Germany once again became united as one country. The U.S.S.R., bankrupt thanks to over spending on military ventures in Afghanistan and the arms race with NATO, ceased to be. The cold war superpower once again became Russia and the satellite countries that made up the rest of the U.S.S.R. regained their independence and those living behind the iron curtain were now free to buy all the Levis their hearts desired. Elated to be free at last, free at last, Lord almighty, free at last, the former Soviet citizens took to the street of Berlin in a frenzied celebration cumulating in a concert given by David Hasselhoff. The Hoff, standing on the ruins of the wall while donning a jacket lined with Christmas lights, serenaded the crowd with “Looking for Freedom,” a song that became the unofficial anthem of the historic event. After the Hoff left the stage, many East Germans concluded that if this was freedom then they wanted no part of it. They begged for the wall to be re-erected and the strict media blackout to be once again imposed but to no avail; the wall stayed down and the ex-Soviets had to live with David Hasselhoff like the rest of the world. With the cold war officially over, unless some enterprising individual adopted a white cat and sat down in the long abandon #1 chair at SPECTRE headquarters, James Bond’s services were no longer required. But the redrawing of the world map wasn’t the only major change to pass Bond by, the world of film also shifted while he slept. Young Sherlock Holms(1985) featured a scene early in the film where a Mid-Evil knight etched in stained glass becomes alive, jumps off the pane, and walks down a church aisle. He was crudely animated, two-dimensional and only on screen for a few second but he was the first use of computer-generated imagery or CGI in a film.

Four years later James Cameron’s The Abyss (1989) gave us the first fully realized CGI character, a morphing worm-like alien, and the digital genie was not only out of the bottle, he made Robin William’s Aladdin (1992) character an antique. In the following years moviegoers got to witness robots walking through steel bars in T2: Judgment Day (1991), dinosaurs plucking lawyers off toilets in Jurassic Park (1993), and a legless Garry Sinise being a total asshole in Forrest Gump (1994). In some ways I’ve come to terms with my personal CGI demons but the technology still gives me the fits. CGI is one of many tools in a filmmaker’s toolbox and should be treated as such. But it’s a terrifyingly powerful tool and as we all learned from dear Uncle Ben Parker, with great power comes great responsibly. Some can handle it (Peter Jackson with the Lord of the Ring trilogy) but most can not (George Lucas with the Star Wars prequel trilogy). What would Bond producers, they of the over the top stunt, do with this new gadget? Hollywood movies had also shifted in a more fundamental, story-telling way since 1989. The hippest heroes of 90’s weren’t globe hopping action stars but hard-boiled tough guys who ate your tasty Kahuna burger before shooting you in the face. Add it all up and you could picture Bond turning in his double O license and retiring to the Florida Keys where he would pass his days fighting off drug lords and taking the occasional PI case for the local ladies a la Thomas Magnum. But then again Glen and Co. tried something like that with the last film and I would rather watch “James Bond Jr.” on YouTube then witness James suffer such an undignified fate. Thank the movie gods Bond has EON in his corner. The last time it looked like Bond would be put out to pasture, Broccoli and Co. blasted back with the stellar The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), the strongest Bond film of the 70’s and 80’s. That’s a lot to ask for once, could EON and 007 actually pull it off twice?

Film Length: 2 hours 10 minutes

Bond Actor: Interior EON Production offices, London. May 1994. Buzzzzzzz “Mr. Broccoli, Mr. Dalton is here for his 10 O’clock.” “Good send him in. Hi yah, Timothy, good to see you, come on in. No, don’t bother to sit down this will just take a second. So, I think it’s fair to tell you that we are going a different direction for the next Bond picture. We just feel the audience should, you know, like James Bond. And our research backs this up. Across the board we found that when people think of Bond, they want to think of him as someone likable, someone who is pleasant to be around, someone they want to spend time with. I’m sure you understand. Anyway Timothy, it was a good run and thanks so much. Talk to the girl on your way out, she can validate your parking, and remember, don’t call us, we’ll call you, or not. OK, good?” Buzzzzzzz “Yes, security, please escort Mr. Dalton to his car and make sure he’s off the lot in 15 minutes. Good luck Timothy, I’m sure you’ll land on your feet. Helen! Can you get me Pierce on the line?” That is made up. This isn’t “I thought Pierce Brosnan was a good choice. I liked GoldenEye. Timothy Dalton never got a handle on the role. He took it seriously in the wrong way. The person who plays Bond has to be dangerous. If there isn’t a sense of threat, you can’t be cool” and “Timothy Dalton has Shakespearean training but he underestimated the role. The character has to be graceful and move well and have a certain measure of charm as well as be dangerous. Pierce Brosnan is a good actor – he added some new elements to it.” Both of those are Sean Connery quotes and who’s going to argue with the man who invented to role? As for my thoughts on Pierce Brosnan’s Bond before I started this project, I didn’t really have any. I refer to the mid to late 90’s as my pop culture blackout period. I was a junior in college when this film came out and at that time I did not read any periodicals, I did not own a TV, and I could not listen to commercial radio. (Nor could anyone truth be told. The bliss of Nirvana and Pavement actually getting airtime on Top 40 radio was replace by 24 hours of Hootie and the Blow Fish and the Dave Mathews Band interrupted only by the Spin Doctors’ “Two Princes.” I’m not exaggerating one iota. Seriously, my private hell is FM radio in 1995.) As for other links to the outside world, my experience with that new thing called the World Wide Web at the time consisted of one room on campus. In that room were 12 computers with monitors displaying a green blinking cursor. The only function these terminals could perform was to send something called an “E-mail” which was “the future of communication” according to the sign on the door.

Yet, every time I walked past the room all I heard was typing and absolutely no one talking or you know, communicating. The irony was too rich for my 21-year-old mind so I swore I would avoid everything having to do with this “internet.” I guess what I’m saying is at this time in my life I was very focused on me and enjoying it. After spending every Friday night of my high school years at the record store and the local AMC 12 checking out the hot new releases, my head was now very much elsewhere/everywhere/nowhere. I took immense pride in the fact that I was willfully ignorant and cut-off from the rest of the world. “No, I’m sorry, I’ve never seen ‘Friends.’” (Still haven’t, not a single frame of a single episode.) I did still make my way to the cinema on occasion and I know I’ve seen all four Pierce films at some point. In fact, I think I caught GoldenEye in the theater over winter break, but Brosnan is by far the Bond I’m least familiar with/ have the weakest attachment to. So, it’s almost like I’m coming at the next four films blind (almost), which is super exciting. So, we’ve had a Scot, an Aussie, a proper Englishman and a Welshman. Now the Irish get their crack at it and after having the role snatched out from underneath him in 1987, Brosnan is beyond grateful for his second chance. On the DVD extras he is simply giddy when discussing the role. “My names Bond, James Bond! It’s a hoot.” His joy carries over to the film and shows in every frame. From the get go, this is a guy you want to hang out with. I never read any reviews of the Bond films until after I’ve written about them myself. It’s one of the ways I try to keep this as “pure” an experience as possible, but I do enjoy reading what other thought after I post. When I went back to read Roger Ebert’s review of The Living Daylights (1987) I was struck by his take on Dalton.  “He’s a strong actor, he holds the screen well, he’s good in the serious scenes, but he never quite seems to understand that it’s all a joke. The correct tone for the Bond films was established right at the start, with Sean Connery’s quizzical eyebrows and sardonic smile. He understood that the Bond character was so preposterous that only lightheartedness could save him. The moment Bond began to act like a real man in a real world, all was lost.” Brosnan not only has the quizzical eyebrows and sardonic smile but he flirts like Cary Grant, he’s as physical as Jason Statham, and he can wear a suit like George Clooney. In short, he is more then a breath of fresh air; he is a brilliant blast of helium. His joy is infectious and I found myself smiling like a fool at points in the film. Perhaps I’m over reacting slightly having just come out from under the wet blanket of gloom that was Dalton, but I don’t think so. I have hazy memories of invisible cars and Denise Richards in our near future so it’s quite possible the Brosnan era goes off the rails but for this film at least, Pierce Brosnan is Bond, James Bond, and it’s a hoot.

Director: Martin Campbell. The great purge continues behind the camera with a new director and for the first time ever, no Cubby Broccoli. Barbara Broccoli, Cubby’s daughter and her husband Michael Wilson, who has been increasingly involved since the mid 1970’s, are listed as the Executive Producers. They worked “under the supervision of Cubby” which I read to mean Cubby was present in name only. Indeed, GoldenEye would be Albert “Cubby” Broccoli’ last film as one of the men most reasonable for the Bond films passed away on June 27, 1996 at age of 87. Campbell, who was well known in the UK for his work on the BBC show “Edge of Darkness,” brought a modern sensibility to the Bond franchise. More importantly, unlike Glen, he is a capital “F” Filmmaker. On the DVD extras, the Kiwi director is painted as a precise craftsman and a tough love taskmaster. The cast and crew talk about how intense Campbell is on set and “There is lots of yelling…” is a familiar refrain but across the board everyone agrees he’s “sharp as a knife” and “keeps your head in it.” Pierce in particular talks about how Campbell pushes but keeps the energy up and can be trusted. Listening to this stuff reminds me of the classic baseball scenario where a “player’s manager” is sacked after losing 90 plus games to be replaced by a spitting-from-the-mouth-screamer who drops F bombs and throws the occasional chair. The players all snap to and in the end are a much better team for it. This is exactly what the lazy Bond franchise needed, a new guy to take over the clubhouse and kick some ass. The #1 best thing about this film, and this goes back to Campbell, is balance. The director seamlessly balances the classic Bond conventions we love with a new modern flare he brings to the picture. The humor and action play together like rhythm and melody in a well crafted pop tune. The use of the old school filmmaking, stunts, miniature models, and actual locations are mixed in effortlessly with minimal, tasteful CGI and quick cut modern editing. The film simultaneously plays out as a 50’s spy noir and updated post cold war thriller. The script even expands on James Bond character, dropping nuggets like the fact Bond was orphaned when both his parents died in a climbing accident. Most importantly the romance is back, and I’m not talking about Bonds relationship with women. I’m talking about the romance of going on an epic adventure with a spy who is out to save the world. From the get go, I couldn’t believe how much more juicy and enjoyable the action sequences were and how everything fit together organically, one moment rolling into the next with expert pacing and seamless ease. Add the numerous nods to James past and winks to long time fans and Campbell delivers everything you want in a Bond film and then some.

Reported Budget: $58,000,000 estimated. Shot in 110 days with a crew of over 500 almost all the money is, as they say, on the screen. At first glance, $58M is some big bucks. Not quite double the $34 million for Moonraker (1979), the most expensive Bond to date, but well over the $32 for Licence To Kill (1989). However, in the context of 1995 big budget films, the number is just about right. Other ‘95 films like Jumanji, Casper, Crimson Tide, Congo, Braveheart, Outbreak, and Nixon all had budgets in the $50 million range. Meanwhile, the big ticket items of the year were Money Train and Under Siege 2 ($60M estimated), Apollo 13 ($62M estimated), Judge Dredd ($70M estimated), Die Hard: With A Vengeance ($90M estimated), Batman Forever ($100M estimated) and one of the most notorious budget busting flops of all time which was also the most expensive film made at the time, Waterworld ($175M estimated). Now here’s the kicker; only two of the above films made more money then Bond.

Reported Box-office: $106,600,000 USA and $351,500,000 worldwide. Nothing will ever come close percentage wise to the 1960’s Bond heyday where seven digit budgets could turn into nine digit returns, but GoldenEye made more in terms of dollars than any previous Bond both in the US and abroad. (The record holder was Moonraker with $70,308,099 USA and $210,308,099 worldwide.) GoldenEye finished at #6 on the year in the U.S. beat by #2 Batman Forever ($184M) and #3 Apollo 13 ($172) while #10 Die Hard: With A Vengeance ($100M), #12 Waterworld ($88M), #52 Judge Dredd ($34M), and #100 Nixon ($13M) staring Anthony Hopkins who passed on playing a Bond villain to play someone much more sinister in Oliver Stone’s film, all fell short of the newly jump started Bond machine. Bond Forever, With A Vengeance.

Theme Song: “Goldeneye” performed by Tina Turner. I love Tina Turner. I could listen to her sing my grocery list. Her sultry, sex vocals work overtime here but the issue is the Bono and Edge penned tune. U2 was in the middle of their post-ironic Zooropa, Pop Mart, super hero costume period and I just don’t think it’s the right fit. Would something from the Joshua Tree or even Achtung Baby vintage have worked? Perhaps but Tina and the pounding, faux industrial lite “GoldenEye” work at crossed purposes. However, when the bridge threatens to collapse under the weight of the tune, Tina belts out “now I’ve got you in my siIIIIIIIIITTTTTTES with a golden EEEYEEEEEEEEEEEE!” to keep everything afloat. As for the clip, I think the stage setup speaks to just how huge a star Tina was at this point. Also, take note of the keyboard player who is clearly a hold-over from Tina’s previous big film soundtrack hit, “We Don’t Need Another Hero” from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). Take it away Tina!

 

And for the record, an avant-garde noise infused take on the Bond theme can be fantastic as John Zorn proves on his 1989 album “Naked City.”

 

Opening Titles: And the hits keep coming. Reimagined yet grounded in tradition, these are the best titles we’ve had since the early 70’s. Right off the bat, the high symbolism that is inherent to the Bond titles tie directly to films theme. Juxtaposed to the shimmering soft bodies of the every present “Bond credit women” are cold, heavy stone statues of imperialistic Russian leaders. So we see oppressive busts of Stalin and Lenin float past inviting busts. Yes, thanks to vertical gun barrels and sickles bulls eyeing hammers there are phallic symbols aplenty but everything here seems to speak to one whole as opposed to just tossing five or six naked dancing women on the screen and calling it a day. All the images finally merge about ¾ through when the women take the hammers and break apart the statues in an obvious nod to the tearing down of the wall. Bond is not running away from the fall of the Soviet Union, he’s embracing it head on and in his signature style to boot. Additionally, everything is shot with a gold tint as if one were observing all of this thorough a golden eye. By the time we get sucked back into the gun barrel (after violently being cased out by a bullet at the top of the sequence) GoldenEye’s credits have upped the ante considerably. When you look at the actual credits themselves; Famke Janssen, Sean Bean, Alan Cumming, Robbie Coltrane, and Judi Dench as “M”, it would appear that Bond 17 has the cards to win back anything 007 lost in his six year absence.

Opening Action Sequence: James Bond is running. Fast. Hauling ass really. We have seen Bond run many times, but never like this. This is not “actor” running. This is a man who is moving with purpose and actually, really running. He’s in black, with a rope slung over his shoulder, trucking out onto a narrow walkway with reckless abandon. If you, I, or any mortal human were to walk five paces out onto this wall of concrete wedged between two cliffs we would be spinning with vertigo. But Bond is running to the center at top speed.  The dam, the film tells us, is the Arkangel Chemical Weapons Facility, deep in the now defunct USSR. When Bond reaches the middle, he Carabiner clamps himself to the structure and in the first of many stunning shots in the film, he swan dives off the dam in one uninterrupted take. As his bungee cord brings him to near stop, he shots a grapple gun with a motorized winch to draw himself to the ground. Then he pops the hatch and into the enemy’s lair he goes. With the bungee jump, producers immediately demonstrate that this modern Bond is up to date on the latest trends. I recall a trip I took to Orlando in the mid-90’s and the skyline was dotted with crazy jackasses paying $50 a pop to bungee jump off construction cranes in what is now hopefully an illegal form of recreation. While jumping on this bungee trend (snicker), the film wisely avoid another, relying on CGI for everything, especially stunts. Following the proud Bond tradition of “doing it for real,” stuntman Wayne Michaels actually bungeed of the Verzasca Dam in Locarno, Switzerland. When we finally meet Bond up close he is still hanging upside down but not on the bungee. Like our T-Rex friend from Jurassic Park, he is about to take a man who is sitting on the toilet out. “Beg your pardon, I forgot to knock” is well delivered with just the right amount of smirking (upside down smirking for what it’s worth.) The kidding quickly become serious when out of the dark comes a gun, pointed right at James’ head. This establishes the humor/serious back and forth that will play out for the entire film and Brosnan handles the switch from comedy mask to drama mask effortlessly. And hey, good news! The man with the gun is just good old 006. “For England James?” “For England Alec.” As the two break into the main generator room it quickly become clear they have worked together before. Like a QB needs to be in complete sync with his star receiver in order to orchestrate a 2 minute drill, James and Alec work the room as tightly as a Swiss watch; that is until James peeks out to see Alec on his knees with a gun to his head and 50 or so Ruskie soldiers. “Come out with your hands up.” “How original.” It’s all pearls with this Brosnan fellow. Before 007 obeys the clichéd order he resets the timers on the explosives he and 006 planted from 6 minutes to 3. Make note of it, it becomes important later on. The man holding the gun to 006’s head by the by is wearing possibly the best police state military uniform since Ralph “don’t call me Ralph” Fiennes stomped around in Nazi boots in Schindler’s List (1993). He is General Arkady Grigorovich Ourumov and his name says it all. Ourumov is a deliciously evil cartoon military tyrant who would fit seamless in with the cast of Dr. Strangelove (1964). Just to prove how nasty he is, he puts bullet in 006’s head when it didn’t quite seem necessary to do so. Make note of it, it becomes important later on. Like every room in warehouse looking structures in Bond films, this room is filled with vats of nasty chemicals and explosives but since this is a Chemical Weapons Facility I guess it’s understandable. Perhaps they ran out of room in the pantry and the just stacked the stuff on empty shelves, like the one above everyone to the left. A quick gun blast from Bond and the canister come pouring down upon all the soldiers’ heads. As the fire starts Bond blots out the door mowing down machine gun toting baddies like he’s a 15-year-old boy on Red Bull playing “Call of Duty.” As Ourumov and half the Soviet army chase him down, Bond jumps into a plane which is headed toward the edge of a cliff. At this point, we expect him to fly off into the night but the film, not for the last time, sweeps the carpet out from under our expectations. When Bond goes to toss the pilot out the door, the pilot grabs Bonds arms and pulls them both out onto the tarmac. Always a great improviser, Bond grabs a Russian motorcycle and jumps on to chase the pilotless plane that’s continuing down the runway to the cliffs edge. While Ourumov looks on with more admiration then disappoint at loosing his prisoner, Bond guns the motorcycle and like he did 18 years earlier on skies, jumps off the cliff into the void. Kicking the bike aside and turning himself into a missile, Bond, Superman like, flies through the air to catch up with the plane, makes his way into the cockpit, grabs a hold of the yolk, and pulls up before going head on into the mountain to cap off what is hands down the most exciting open since The Spy Who Love Me.

Bond’s Mission: After the credits we learn the events in the open happened 9 years earlier, and now we are in the present, 1995. We join James as he is engaged in some high-speed road flirting a al Chevy Chase and Christie Brinkley in National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983). The girl is still in a red Ferrari and the guy still needs to peer over a more conservative woman in his passenger seat to catch the red Ferrari girl’s eye however, this time the part of Clark W. Griswold is played by Bond, the green wood paneled family truckster is now the classic grey Aniston Martin DB5, and the flat highway of the American Midwest is replaced by a mountain road in the French Alps. The conservative woman in Bond’s passenger seat (on the left side of the car, though the girl in the red Ferrari is driving from the left. Europe is just crazy…) has been sent by the new M (who we have not met) to observe Bond in the field. She’s a one-dimensional prop who I immediately pegged as a misstep in the film. That was until Bond slams on the breaks to stop the car in the middle of the mountain road, produces a bottle of Bollinger (chilled), and gets an “Oh James…” all in 15 seconds. Ahhh, I get it now. This is silly and outrageous. With this 15 seconds all the ill will of the PC uptight Dalton Bond is erased and we are once again allowed to not take it all so seriously. Not for nothing is 007 in a grey Aston Martin; this is the return of the rakish hero we all know and love. The Bond who drives fast and chases skits is back and not a moment to soon. Need more proof? In the next few shots we see Bond in a tux, entering a casino, drinking a martini made to his liking, and playing baccarat with the girl in the red Ferrari, one Ms. Xenia Onatopp. “On a top?” The first 10 minutes of GoldenEye firmly puts us back into the proper Bond world of hyper-realty where the cars a little faster, the drinks a little stronger, the stakes at the table are a little higher and women …ahhh the women. If Bond’s your bag, you’re in clover. 007 movies generally work best as elaborate case films with twist and turns along the way. GoldenEye, like the classic From Russia With Love (1963), is essentially Bond and the baddies both trying to get their hands on the same technological dingus with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. The MacGuffin this go around is the French prototype stealth helicopter TIGER. Not only is it invisible to radar, it can still fly after a magnet pulse from a nuclear blast, an event that would render every other electronic device useless.  Not two seconds after we learn how kick-ass the TIGER is Onatopp and her accomplice, General Ourumov, committing Grand Theft Huey. But in a classic film noire twist, the MacGuffin is a red herring! The real MacGuffin, like the Lektor before, is much more sinister and dangerous. Ourumov and Onatopp (not to be confused with Bonnie and Clyde) stole the TIGER to be used as a getaway car in the theft of the Goldeneye. The dingus, named after Ian Flaming’s Jamaican home, is a space-based magnetic-pulse weapon that simulates the shutting-down-all-electrical-devises havoc of a nuclear blast without all the messy fallout. You now see why they needed the TIGER. All of this business is handled in an entertaining and efficient manner that’s on par with mid 90’s pacing but also in a way than demands the audience keep up to speed. In other words, it’s a smart film that treats you, the viewer, as an equal, unlike its predecessor, which fed us garbage and told us it was a gourmet meal. Anyway, now the baddies have the Goldeneye and Bond must get it.

Villain’s Name: Alec Trevelyan. AKA 006. Well, I certainty didn’t see that one coming. I recalled the dam dive from when I saw GoldenEye in the theater but I didn’t remember this twist at all so I nearly jumped off my couch in a genuine “Oh shit!” moment when Alec emerges from the shadows to revile himself at the leaded of the Janus Gang. The first time Alec came out of the dark was at the Arkangel Chemical Weapons Facility where Bond was happy to see 006; this time James looks as if he’s seen a ghost and indeed, ghosts are all over this fantastic scene. It turns out, Alec Trevelyan was a sleeper double agent all along and he and Ourumov faked his death at Arkangel. Alec then went underground and after the fall of the Soviet Union rounded up Ourumov and Onatopp and a bunch of ex-Soviet loyalist not yet ready to wave the white flag and stole the Goldeneye. From a structural standpoint the Bond films are perfectly positioned to blindside audiences with this villain switch-a-roo (from Ourumov to Alec). After 17 Bond films we have been programmed as viewers to keep the opening sequences in its own box. Yes, the open can tie into the story or not, but we have come to accept that characters introduced in the open can stay there and not be referenced again, especially if we think that character was killed. Add the fact that nine yeas have passed since the events of the open and it nearly guarantees we’ve all forgotten good old 006 until like Lazarus he comes back to life. We have also become accustom to Bond shedding partners like Spinal Tap goes through drummers. Remember dear departed Sharky from Licence To Kill, Saunders from The Living Daylights, Sir Godfrey Tibbett from A View To A Kill (1985), Vijay from Octopussy (1983), and Luigi Ferrara from For Your Eyes Only (1981) just to name recent examples. Basically, if you team up with Bond and you’re not a woman or named Felix, chances are you’re the red shirted ensign on the away team. The unmasking of the true villain is also shocking thanks to the fact that General Arkady Grigorovich Ourumov is so well written. The General could have just been placeholder keeping the chair warm until the big kahuna showed up but Ourumov is credible as the head baddie in both appearance and action. In the open, after he “shoots” 006 in the head, he orders his men to not shoot at Bond for risk of hitting the chemical drums. (Those damn chemical drums again.) Bond grabs a cart loaded with said drums and uses the combustible canisters as cover. The General cocks his head and smirks in wide-eyed amazement as Bond squeaks across the floor. He has a look on his face like a man who’s just flopped the nuts and simply can’t believe 3 players are betting into him. Later, when the tables have turned and Ourumov finds himself in the back of a car trying to outrun Bond, who happens to be chasing him in a tank, all the General can do is go between a nervous giggle and shear panic while pulling off a flask. It’s these little moments that I cherish because they are so simple yet go such a long way toward making movie characters real people. This shift in focus from one villain to the next, much like the shift from the TIGER to the Goldeneye, could have so mangled the plot as to destroy any of the pacing and flow. But in Campbell’s steady hands the shift from one focal point to the next is so expertly handled that it has the proper impact while remaining nearly invisiable.

Villain Actor: Sean Bean, a perfect choice to play Alec Trevelyan. As he proved playing Boromir in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) six years later, even when he is the good guy, he’s still got the coiled up intensity of a baddie. You just feel like he could jump over the line at any moment. I hear he’s also fantastic in “Game of Thrones” but I have yet to dive into the series. Hey back off, the wife is reading the books and wants to finish them first. Shesh. Gottfried John, who plays General Ourumov, was born in Berlin and after a quick glace at his IMDB page I think we can official name him the Samuel L. Jackson of Germany for his unwillingness to turn down any role offered to him. He is not pretty man but I just love his look. He looks like he would be at home in front of the local OTB picking up half smoked butts off the sidewalk and finishing them off. He would have no problem hanging out with those dudes who watch old boxing matches on the TV’s at Record Mart in the Times Square subway station. He has a face that just says Character. He’s seen it and you can tell just by looking at em.

Villain’s Plot: Alec Trevelyan planned this one out pretty well. As the head of the Russian space division, General Ourumov is above suspicion and therefore the perfect inside man to pull off the Goldeneye heist. Once he and Onatopp shoot almost everyone at the remote Siberian base that housed the Goldeneye, they use the super weapon to blow up the base and disable all the incoming MIG’s while they take off with the loot in the TIGER. A quick aside, to launch the Goldeneye weapon, two people must turn two separate keys simultaneously. This is a cold war film convention so common at the time as to be cliché, but I had completely forgotten about it. Seeing it again brought a nostalgic joy to my heart. But back to the grand plan, Ourumov, as the head of space division, heads up the investigation into his own theft which he pins on a band of separatist. Meanwhile Alec gets the prize and since he knows MI6 will send their best man after it, he gets revenge against Bond in the barging. It turns out that way back when, 006 didn’t not escape the Arkangel Chemical Weapons Facility unscathed. Thanks to Bond resetting the timers on the explosives from six minutes to three, Alec didn’t clear out of the room in time and ended up scaring the right side of his face. His gang is named the Janus group after the double-faced Roman God but he could have taken inspiration for the modern mythology of Bob Kane. Like Batman’s foe Harvey Dent, Alec is the physical embodiment of two faced; a man who betrayed Bond and MI6 and has the scars to show for it. So revenge is the motivating factor here, revenge against not only Bond but all of England.  Trevelyan descended from Cossacks, a group of Russians that sided with the Nazis during WWII and surrendered to the Allies after Berlin fell believing they would join the Bits in fighting the communist. However, England sent them back to Stalin who had them all shot, including women and children. “Not exactly our finest hour.” Bond declares but I think one Lt. Aldo Raine would disagree.

Anywho, with his parents dead young Alec worked his way into becoming a deep mole in MI6 with the idea of avenging his families betrayal at the hands of the crown. In a related note, the 3 by 5 index card application that asked for name, race, gender and birthday in way of a background check for getting into MI6 has been abandon for a more thorough process in direct reaction to what is now referred to as “the 006 incident.” Now, Alec plans on using the Goldeneye to electro-nuke London. And since he knows all of MI6’s tactics, he very well could get a way with it. See, I told you he had this well thought out. It’s also a brilliant workaround as a plot device. Filmmakers solved the end of the cold war issue by just continuing it. Much like the Japanese on Lubang Island who continued to fight well after WWII had ended, the movie gives us isolated Siberian dead enders who are still ready to throw down with those capitalist pigs. These folks are more then happy to hitch their wagon to this very sinister and calculating baddie who is playing both sides against the middle. It all works quite well thank you but… but… but for some reason all of this is not enough for old Alec, or for that mater, the film. Before he blasts London back to Stone Aged level technology, Alec plans on hacking UK banking computers and making off with all the money right before the Goldeneye erases the records of said money. Truth be told, the film handles this development rather well and it almost avoids feeling like a tacked on thread but it’s also wholly unnecessary. I know it’s a quibble but the whole robbery bit kind of undercuts the Alec character. In fact, Bond himself points this out by calling Alec nothing more than a common thief at which point I expected 006 to get all Hans Grubber and scream “I’m an exceptional thief Mr. Bond!” Not that there is anything wrong with being a thief. As Clooney and crew prove in the Ocean’s films, it can be a noble occupation affording one the opportunity to romp around with your mates while correcting the injustices of the world through grand larceny. But back the impending destruction of London at the hands of old Alec. In Alec, we have a villain of Shakespearian scope, a man who literally has spent his entire life planning and scheming to visit tragedy upon many innocents all in the name of vengeance. What more motivation do you need? To add bank robber to Alec Trevelyan’s résumé cheapens it.

Villain’s Lair: When we meet up with Alec again, it’s in a junkyard full of broken imperialistic Soviet statues. The symbolism could be seen as a bit too on the noise but I think it works. Here we have a dead ender still fighting the cold war among the decaying symbols of that war, his face a battered and broken as those of the stone Lenin and Stalin. When not stomping around the junkyard Alec lives on an old train that was used during the cold war to store missiles. The idea was with the train always moving, the West could never track down the warheads. Alec uses this steal tank of a train to hide himself in similar fashion. He hangs out in an over appointed car with all the refinements of a 5 star hotel room while another car holds a helicopter in case he needs to get off the train quickly. (Spoiler alert: he does.) I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it, any movie with a train is a success on some level. Finally, Alec and crew manage somehow to take over a Cuban base containing the most advanced deep space tech on the planet, good for, say, controlling the Goldeneye bombs. This base is essentially one huge parabolic dish built into the side of a mountain and hidden under a lake. This is similar to the trick Blofeld pulled with the volcano crater in You Only Live Twice (1967) but Bond is still slow to recognize it. When Bond finally does uncover the base and sets about to stop the Goldeneye, there is a nice bit of fun in 007 stymieing the entire deal by literally shoving a pipe into the gear works; an old fashion low tech solution to disable the most advanced weapon in the world.

Villain’s Coolest Accessory/ Trait: Like all the classic Bond villains, Alec has a physical deformity but his was caused by Bond. The scaring on the left side of his melon has come to define the two-faced villain and it’s something he’s quite pissed about. 006 feels as if his old partner betrayed him when he halved the time on the detonators from 6 minutes to 3. This is a bit of the kettle calling the pot black since Alec was a double agent setting up not just Bond but all of England. And, let’s not forget that Bond thought he was dead; a death he faked to betray Bond. So yah, get over it jerk.

Badassness of Villain: General Ourumov, head of the Russian space division, betrayed and killed the best and the brightest under his command. He marched into the bunker where the Goldeneye was hidden and asked the man in charge to fetch the device. “I’m timing you” he announces as the poor bastard scurries off, grabs the dingus, and hand delivers it to the thief. For his trouble, he and (almost) everyone who works at the base get mowed down in a spray of machine gun fire. And Ourumov is just the opening act. For the main event Alec has mastered the mind screw. Both Bond and he were orphaned and adopted by MI6, so Alec is able to call out Jimmy B as only a sibling who is out for blood can. (To continue the analogy, that would make M the dad, regardless of gender, Moneypenny the mom and Q the crazy, drunk uncle.) Yes, Alec knows how to turn off Q’s hidden detonators but it’s when he calls Bond out for using martinis and one night stands to wash away the guilt he feels for all the men he’s killed that he hits a nerve. He is, in fact, one of the few villains to actually rattle Bond and it’s a thrill to see the unflappable 007 become flapped. All Bond can do is raise an eyebrow, curl his lips knowingly, and look to the ground as if to say “well played.”

Villain’s Asides/ Henchmen: Both henchmen are future X-men. This factoid has no doubt bridged the Bond/ Marvel universes in such a way that Daniel Craig’s 007 will report to Sam Jackson’s Nick Fury in The Avengers III: West Coast Avengers Assemble staring Ryan Goslings as Hawkeye, coming in the Summer of 2015 to a theater near you. Oddjob had his bowler, Jaws had his teeth, Necros had his walkman and Xenia Onatopp has her thighs. As Onatopp, Famke Janssen is deliciously campy and in full on femme fatale mode with the outfits and blood red lipstick to match. A black widow, Onatopp not only crushes her prey with her legs but appears to climax while doing so… unless she’s faking. In the wrong hands, err, legs, this could have been beyond silly and sucked us out of the film but here the gag is played with just the right tone as to be bizarre, a little hot, and in one scene, delightful fun. A dozen years before Viggo Mortensen’s rightly celebrated naked sauna brawl in Eastern Promises (2007), Brosnan and Janssen slammed each others heads off the title in a steamy Russian bath. Sadly, they are both wrapped in towels but it still registers as a violent and visceral scene, even if Pierce proves to be more of a gentleman then some of his predecessor and refuses to slap a lady around. Alan Cumming also goes balls out as the Russian computer nerd Boris Grishenko and while it works in some scenes, by the end he’s gone to 11 and it proves to be a bit much. That said Cumming is given an impossible role. With the invention of the internet thrillers have had to solve the problem of finding drama while characters type at a keyboard and stare into a monitor. See another film that came out in ’95, Sandra Bullock’s The Net (1995) for a master course in how difficult it is to make people working on computers exciting. Most directors solve the problem by having their characters scream at the screen like drunken football fans during the third quarter of the 4PM game. “Come on, down load GOD DAMN IT!!!!!” It seldom works. Cumming does all he can, spitting out “I spike dem, Slugheads” like a rabid weasel with Tourette’s and while it’s over the top, he is still entertaining at points, like when his jittery persona sets up a great gag involving his nervous clicking of a pen.

Bond Girl Actress: Izabella Scorupco. The Polish born actress immigrated to Sweden as a child and appeared in a few films before making her English language debut with GoldenEye. More beautiful then hot she is a throw back to the good old days of classic beauties playing Bond girls. The problem is she’s in the same film as Famke Janssen and well, when you’re up against Marvel Girl crushing men with her gams, you’re going to be runner up every time.

Bond Girl’s Name: Natalya Simonova, a handle even Bond has trouble getting his tongue around. The two at introduced in one of the better meet cutes Jimmy B has had. Bond has been knocked out and tied down inside the cockpit of the TIGER. He is awakened by Natalya, who is tied up in the seat behind him, screaming and kicking. “WAKE UP!” Again, we have seen Bond do so many amazing things we sometimes take the “smaller” moments for granted. So, picture, if you will, you’ve been knocked out and when you wake up your tied in the cockpit of a helicopter with a strange Russian woman behind you screaming and kicking your seat while the stinger missiles from the chopper launch, crisscross in a 180 degree turn, and are now haling ass right at you. Me personally? I would need at lest two cups of coffee before I could even consider my options. Not Jimmy B. He head butts the seat eject and that folks is why he gets the girl, every time and twice on Sundays. Well, not at first. Natalya gives him a swift kick in the shin the first chance she gets but she comes around, they all do. She is a computer programmer who survives Ourumov’s attack on the Goldeneye base and therefore knows the General and her co-worker Boris are with the Janus group. The scene is one more example of the film playing with the idea of technology failing. Surrounded by flames and exploding equipment, Natalya can’t get out of the collapsing base because the voice recognition lock is destroyed. She climbs the crippled satellite antenna, not unlike the survivors of the capsized Poseidon climbed the Christmas tree, to escape the base only to find herself standing alone, in only a blouse, in the Serbian night. She is saved by a decidedly low tech dog sled. As a skilled technician she is not the useless damsel in distress but she still falls into Alec’s clutches and needs to be rescued. However, this routine story point remains fresh thanks to the absolute creepiness of Alec. “You know James and I shared everything. Everything…” Gross.

Bond Girl Sluttiness: There is a scene on a Cuban beach that could have been something more. Natalya calls Bond out in a way no Bond girl ever has. He’s distant and she chastises him for not letting her in. Bond then feeds her a line about needing to keep his angst close and inside. “It keeps me on the edge, sharp, where I got to be.” Actually, that was Pacino in Heat (1995) which I’m sure was playing across the hall when I saw GoldenEye in the theater but you get the idea. And besides, Al says it better. Anyway, Natalya takes this macho posturing and throws it back in Bond’s face “No, it’s what keeps you alone.” This one exchange hits harder and is more “dark” then anything Dalton ever did with the character. Sadly, it’s also totally undercut by the fact that (a) Natalya enters the scene wearing a white bikini that (b) we see in a close up crotch shot. One of the few missteps in the film.

Bond’s Best Pick-up Line: “Now now, no more foreplay” says Bond while pointing a gun at Onatopp to end the Russian bath house fight. “Hummmfff” responds the disappointed and deflated lady.

Bond Girls Best Pick-up Line: Natalya. “Do you destroy every vehicle you get into?”

Number of Woman 007 Beds: Two. We barely get settled into our seats and have yet to open our Milk Duds and Bond is boffing a babe in the middle of the road. (Cue the Beatles “No one will be watching us, why don’t we do it in the road?”) More notable on the location front, this make-out session is taking place in an Aston Martin. Now, I know Q has put some extra options on the car but dude, that’s a tight fit with an inconveniently placed stick shift. Bond and Natalya get off to a slow start, what with the exploding chopper and shin kicking and kidnapping and all but then after fleeing an exploding train Natalya proves that she knows Bond, perhaps even better than his late wife. She looks at 007 and asks “Do you destroy every vehicle you get into?” Bond turns and stares into her eyes as if to say “you understand me so well” and the two go at it for the first of three confirmed times. While in Cuba they engage in the Havana Mahna Mahna (Do do daaa do-do) at least twice. They try for a third before getting caught up in the proud tradition of getting caught. All the baddies are dead, all the bases have been destroyed, and Bond and Natalya are all alone in the jungle. Or at least that’s what Bond assures his lady until they are interrupted by the CIA and US Marines who insists the couple march off to be debriefed at the near by Guantanamo Bay Navy base. Wow, remember when Guantanamo Bay was nothing more than a place where Jack Nicolson was God Damn right he ordered the code red and not a living, breathing monument to our national shame? Ahhh, the 90’s what an innocent time.

Number of People 007 Kills: Classified. Or more accurately, the official Blog, James Blog spotter can’t confirm an accurate number. Such was the killing in GoldenEye that our official body count man not only lost track but curled up into the fetal position and begged for Ben & Jerry’s. Needless to say we wish him well and hope he recovers in time for Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). And with that, onto the carnage! In the open Bond gets his hands on a machine gun (you already see the spotters issue) and did in at least five Ruskies while running about with his finger firmly on the trigger. Then, after he jumps off the cliff to catch the plane to pull up and fly away the entire base explodes. We know Alec made it out with roughly 90% of his face intact but as for the others? Bond again gets a hold of an automatic weapon when fleeing a St. Petersburg jail and mows down at least ten more. He then manages to use the machine gun like a snipers rifle and shoot old Ourumov in the head while missing Natalya who the General was using as a human shield. He kills a helicopter pilot while someone is tied to said chopper (that someone to be revealed below!) and shoots at least three guards while escaping the Cuban dish base; a base that yes, gets blown up and unlike the Dr. No (1962) lair destruction, we don’t see any baddies running out before the big boom. So yah, countless folks met their end at James’ hand including one Alec Trevelyan. I’m happy to report that the final battle between 006 and 007 lives up to its billing as the title bout. The hand to hand feels tougher then some fights we’ve seen in Bond films which is to say when the punches land, they hurt. Yes, by the time the two combatants end up hanging on the end of the satellite antenna like Luke under Cloud City it’s a bit much and your right; Natalya showing up in the helicopter to scoop up James as Alec falls to his death is a huge cheat but since our official spotter had his face in a pint of Chunky Monkey by this point we missed it and just enjoyed the whole rig falling on Alec’s crippled body stuff. “For England James?” “No, for me.” Kick ass!

Most Outrageous Death/s: Bond actually opens his eyes twice to find himself in helicopter danger. The first time he is blasted into consciousness by Natalya kicking his chair. This time he wakes up to Onatopp kicking him in the face. She comes slipping down a zip line hooked to a helicopter that hovers overhead and proceeds to get all crushy with her python femurs. Bond gets out of this tight spot, which is to say between Onatopp’s legs, by getting a shot off. Not at Onatopp but at the chopper. Since his assailant is still tethered to the aircraft when it goes crashing down she goes flying up to be crushed between to huge tree branches. “She always did enjoy a good squeeze.” The other outrageous death involves the other henchman, Boris. Just as Natalya stood alone in the burning ruins of the Goldeneye base, Boris finds himself the soul survivor in the destroyed deep dish Cuban base. As he raises his hands in victory a bath of liquid nitrogen washes over him freezing him in his Rocky pose. Those damn chemical vats again. There are several circular and repeated themes that tie GoldenEye together and it just a delight to have someone behind the camera thinking about these things after the flat set up/action/switch location/repeat formula the Bond films took on for the 1980’s. After the Glen years I almost forget Bond films can be so well crafted.

Miss. Moneypenny: Samantha Bond. The latest Moneypenny has the correct look, demeanor, and yes, age. Caroline Bliss was a little too young and a little too hot. Samantha is a more sophisticated beauty and she has the wisdom to pull of the witty banter. “What would I do with you Moneypenny?” “As far as I can remember, you’ve never had me James.” That’s good stuff. Loyal readers know about Blog, James Blog’s soft spot for dear Moneypenny and while we think we will grow to like Samantha, she has too little screen time in her debut so the jury is still out. We hope to see more of her in the future. The other point of note here is MI6’s offices have been blasted out of the 60’s and landed squarely in 1995. Gone are the classic wooden desks and grand book shelves, replaced the sleek, sterile, teck look of Silicon Valley chic. While I will miss the warmth of the old office, this is 100% correct in keeping with the times. Bond has always been about technology when it comes to the gadgets and the British secret service office should be a buzzing war room full of the latest and greatest inelegance gathering gizmos. Thumbs up.

M: Dame Judi Dench. In a first when it comes to recasting in Bond films, Dench doesn’t seamlessly replace M. In the past when a new actor came in for James, Moneypenny, Felix and even M, that actor simply became that person. No one in the Bond world acknowledged the new face associated with the name. Felix was always just Felix. Dench does indeed come on board as M, the head of MI6, but she is not Sir Miles Messervy. Her M is Barbara Mawdsley and the characters in the film know she is not the same person who sat behind the desk in the past. Dench’s M proves to be the deepest and best established of the series in her very first film. In the past, hints of M as a person were given but basically he existed to (a) offer exposition and (b) harrumph and wring his hands when Bond Fed up. Dench’s M is a three dimensional real life boss and I have a feeling that Dench being cast in the role had a ton to do with the deeper direction of the character. She can act and carry the weight of anything she is handed and unlike past M’s, she has, in her words “the balls” to trade body blows with Bond. She kicks it all off with a wonderful entrance. While king douche Mr. Tanner is insulting her as the “evil queen of numbers” she appears behind him. The scene establishes her as a modern intelligence officer, one who analyzes the data and makes decisions based on research. She sees Bond as a “sexist,  misogynist dinosaur. A relic of the cold war.” Bond and M mistrust each other from the get go and even chafe on the most baseline issues. “Your predecessor kept some brandy in the cupboard” Bond offers as both a way of being polite and proving he knows the ins and outs of MI6. “I prefer bourbon” M shoots back. Touché. By the end of the exchange, M has verbally put Bond in his place and all he can do, like any good poker player, is fold, go out into the field, and hope to draw a better hand. This is a classic “Moneyball” conflict, new fangled smarts vs. old school gut reactions. I couldn’t be more thrilled. This is the kind of boss Bond should have, one who is just as smart and serves as a counterweight to his swashbuckling pirate. Goldeneye does so many things so well but this reimagining of M might be the masterstroke simply because it lays a foundation on which future films can build. Oh, and Dench, as always, is flawless. She even hits the humor with pitch perfect delivery. “Unlike the American government we prefer to not get our bad news from CNN.” If just for M alone, I’m beyond optimistic about the Brosnan era moving forward.

Q: When Pierce walks into Q’s lab it’s like Norm walking into Cheers after he’s been gone for two weeks. He looks around and exhales; even though he’s been gone everything is in place and as it should be. This is Desmond Llewelyn 15^th Bond film and at 82 years old he is absolutely thrilled to be back after 6 years. Showing more energy then he has in years, Q jokes (“Sorry about the leg Q, skiing?” “Hunting”), makes like its 1964 and breaks out Goldfinger (1964) era lines (“I’m particularly proud of this, headlight singer missiles!”) and even turns his cranky character upside down. When Bond reaches out to touch a sandwich on a plate, Q scolds him as he would if Bond were about to touch an explosive device. “Don’t touch that!” He then picks up the sandwich adding “It’s my lunch.”

List of Gadgets: The winch/laser cutting gun at the top is not the sexiest gadget but it’s the unsung hero in making the extremely sexy bungee jump possible. Moments later 007 uses a keycard lock pick for a blink and you’ll miss it break in. After racing Onatopp down the mountain Bond takes her photo and with the push of button sends the image from his camera to Moneypenny at MI6 who faxes him Onatopp’s bio, a fax he receives on his car fax machine. This is another in a long list of Bond gadgets that were fantastic at the time but have becoming commonplace in the world of today. Q hands Bond a few goodies while he’s in the lab including a watch that can trigger a bomb and shoot lasers, a belt with a 75 foot repelling cord built into the buckle, (which gives us the opportunity to learn Bond has a 34” waist), and a pen that doubles class 4 grenade. Three clicks arms the four second fuse, another three clicks disarms it which plays beautifully into Boris’ nervous tic we mentioned above. Q also has a tea tray the doubles as a document scanner just incase you forgot this is after all England.

Gadgets/British Government Property Bond Destroys: Bond manages to get both cars, the Aston Martin and the Beamer back in one piece. However, the French owned multi-million dollar prototype TIGER does not make it back. This is huge lose when one considers the never previously, and never will again, develop a weapon.

Other Property Destroyed: Indeed, Natalya could have said “Do you destroy everything?” and left it at that. Yah, he drives a motorcycle off a cliff and blows up a base in the open but here is the larger question. To get to that base, he jumped off a dam. Now, I think it’s safe to say that when one explodes a chemical faculty attached to a dam said dam is not going to be in good shape. So, how much of the Russian country side ended up swimming around like Clooney and crew at the end of O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000)? In addition to the TIGER, Bond downs the Onatopp chopper and while it’s technically Natalya and Boris that blow up the deep dish Cuban base, Bond wreaks enough havoc to keep a dozen insurance adjusters busy for years. Then there is the historic city of St. Petersburg. Located at the mouth of the Neva River, this port city was renamed Leningrad in 1924 and like the rest of Russia was shut off to the outside world for most of the cold war. Then, in ’91 after the fall of the wall, St. Petersburg retook its original moniker and opened up its doors reminding the world that Russia’s second largest city was home to some of the most stunning architecture in all of Europe. Four years after that James Bond tore it all down. Natalya is kidnapped by General Ourumov. They take off into the streets of St. Petersburg in a government car and Bond grabs the only set of wheels, err, treads available, those under a tank. The first shot where we see Bond come crashing through a brick wall is in 2D better 3D then anything any director not named Martin Scorsese has ever done. Perhaps inspired by 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis’ famously wrong headed photo op, Bond proceeds to drive the tank with his head pop out of the top while wearing a suit. And just like that photo destroyed Dukakis’ presidential run, Bond destroys all of St. Petersburg. He barrels the 12 foot wide tank down six foot wide allies, he crushes car after car and wall after wall, until finally, in what is played for humor more than blatant product placement (although it is also that) Bond splits a Pierre truck in two sending bottles of water flying everywhere. And for his parting bow, 007 rams the base of a bronze horse statue in such a way that the horse becomes perfectly balanced on top of his tank until it’s knocked off, a la the double-decker top in Live and Let Die (1973), by a low bridge. But Bond still has one more trick up his sleeve for the encore. Ourumov and Natalya join Alec and Onatopp on board Alec’s iron plated missile train. Like Alec did twice before, Bond appears from the shadows to surprise his former comrade, only this time the shadows are the mouth of a railroad tunnel the train is rushing toward and the gun is the barrel of a tank. James jumps clear before the unstoppable train hits the unmovable tank and while not as thrilling at the train derailment in The Fugitive (1993), it’s a hell of a wreck.

Felix Leiter: I guess that whole having his leg bitten off thing sidelined the CIA’s man of lukewarm mediocrity. In his stead the US chose to send their latest medical and scientific break through, Agent Jack Wade. Agent Wade is the first and to date only known successful patient to come out of the super double secrete program known as Operation Zombie or Oz for short. This experimental and highly controversial program involves collecting the deceased from government assassinations; in this case the body of international arms dealer and all around nut-ball Brad Whitaker who was killed by British agent 007 in Tangier in 1987, and reanimating these once dead enemies as a CIA agent. You figure with this technology the US could just grow another leg for Felix but truth be told, Wade is just more fun. The man wears Hawaiian shirts for crying out loud, you know he’s a blast. OK, that zombie stuff is all bullshit (or is it?) Truth is, EON probably felt bad about saddling Joe Don Baker with the worst villain in Bond history and decided they needed to make it up to him. The Jack Wade character is basically the rube American Sheriff J.W. Pepper updated for the 90’s minus the slapstick and racism. And you know what; I like him, especially when he calls Bond Jimbo. In everyway the anti Bond, Wade drives a piece of shit car, he looks like a goof wearing the big Russian hat, and he has a tattoo on his waistline that says “Muffy.” And of course, just when you start to think he’s as useless as Felix, he comes though in a pinch and keeps Bond on the right track. Bond also has a contact in the Russian underground and in a film chock full of great names like Xenia Onatopp and General Arkady Grigorovich Ourumov, I must give the blue ribbon to Valentin Dmitrovich Zukovsky. As played by Robbie Coltrane the ex-KGB man lives up to his fabulous handle and before we even met him he’s a legend. When Wade tells Jimbo a man with a pronounced limp named Zukovski is his contact, Bond is none to happy. “You know him?” “I gave him the limp.” Bond visits the underground boss in his night club and introduces himself by … stepping out of the shadows and putting a gun to his head. (Man that happens a lot in this film.) Zukovski, without looking to see who is holding the gun, delivers a line for the ages. “Welter PPK. Only three men I know carry one and I believe I’ve killed two of them.” Ladies and gentlemen, if you ever find yourself in a spy film, you want that to be your first line. None to happy about the limp, Zukovski is even more reluctant to help Bond after 007 insults his mistress Irina’s singing. (Hey look! Irina is played by Minnie Driver!) I’ve touched on this in the past but anytime Bond hooks up with underground contacts I’m a happy guy, all the more so if there is a history. For a spy, Jimbo doesn’t do enough of this.

Best One Liners/Quips: Valentin Dmitrovich Zukovsky, mulling over why he should help Bond; “He stole a helicopter? I have 6.” “Three” Bond corrects him, “and none that fly.”

Bond Cars: Back again to this idea of balance. For every new update Bond gets in this movie Campbell wisely gives us a link to his past. Nowhere is this more pronounced then in Bond’s two cars. The first shot we see of Bond after the opening credits has him racing on a cliff side road in the classic grey Aston Martin DB5. My neighborhood of Astoria Queens is home to the largest population of Greeks in the world outside of Greece. Whenever the older Greek men and women walk past an Orthodox church they cross themselves in a sign of reverence and respect. I do the same thing when I see Bond driving a grey Aston Martin DB5. But this is also a 90’s Bond and along with that comes product placement. I remember when this film was in theaters much was made of the multi-picture contract BMW signed with EON. The blitz was huge and even featured Bond tie-ins to BMW ads in print and on TV. If I may for a moment, I watch a ton of sports. 85% of the ads during any giving sporting event are for alcohol products or cars. Now, when I’m watching the game and see an ad for say Jim Beam, I may say to myself, “Hummm, it’s been a while since I’ve had some bourbon. I think I’d like some now.” However, I can’t picture getting up for the seventh inning stretch and thinking “You know, maybe I will drop $45,000 for a two seated car that gets shit gas millage and can’t move more then two blocks if there is a flake of snow on the street.” I could be wrong about this, I haven’t owned a car in years and clearly companies wouldn’t be spending money on ads if they didn’t work but still, who the hell buys a car because they saw an ad for it on TV? Right, BMW Z3 Roadster, baby blue convertible with the Q adjustments that Bond never gets to use. Cool looking car. Maybe I should look into getting one…

Bond Timepiece: A handsome Omega Seamaster. What appears to be a black face is actually blue on this stainless steel cased chronographer with precision Swiss automatic movement and stainless steel interlacing band. It’s also got a laser.

Other Notable Bond Accessories: You mean other then his smile, his charm, and ability to turn every head in the room? Oh that Pierce is just dreamy…

Number of Drinks 007 Consumes: … and he can drink! He keeps a bottle of chilled Bollinger in the armrest of the Aston Martin. You know, just in case. Not two minutes after popping the cork on that baby he’s tableside in the casino ordering a martini, shaken not stirred. He has a bourbon on the rocks with M and though we don’t see it I’d bet dollars to doughnuts he has a glass of vodka with Zukovsky.

Bond’s Gambling Winnings: And we get some baccarat! Oh be still my heart. Martin Campbell once again proves he’s done his homework by giving us a similar set up to the baccarat scene in Dr. No where Bond is playing against a sultry woman who he is simultaneously trying woo and beat. She takes the first hand we see and proposes rising the stakes. An agreement from Bond and a nod from the pit boss and the next hand is double or nothing. Bond takes the pot down and Onnatop storms off. Bond catches up to her and wonders why she’s so sour. After all, “One rises to meet a challenge.”

List of Locations: Unable to sit around dormant for six years Pinewood went ahead and rented out the 007 studio for a variety of productions. Hey, we all gots to pay the bills. When EON finally came calling the soundstage the Bond built was booked. Long time Bond set designers Peter Lamont found an abandoned Rolls-Royce factory at the Leavesden Aerodrome in Hertordshire, England and converted it to create, say it with me, one of the largest soundstages in the world. I think working in this new location was key in helping Brosnan feel like he could make Bond his. Extremely conscious of the legacy of past Bond’s, Brosnan talks on the DVD extras about the “factory having a good feel because there are no ghosts of Sean or Roger.” (Funny, he never once mentioned Timothy.) Shooting inside Russia for the first time, St. Petersburg is the background to the biggest set piece, the tank case. That said, several St. Petersburg streets were recreated on a back lot so the tank could smash walls without smashing real walls. Cuba however was still a no go zone so Puerto Rico stood in for the island nation. The deep dish base is actually a real dish radio telescope located at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Also seen in Contact (1997), the 1000 feet wide dish with a 500 foot transmitter is used to look for signs of alien life and is the largest radio telescope in the world. The Principality of Monaco, a country so small it could fit inside Central Park, is home to the Casino de Monte Carlo where Bond first meets Onnatop. The opening bungee jump took place at the Verzasca Dam in Locarno, Switzerland where tourist can bungee jump from the same perch as Bond if they are so inclined. MI6’s new exterior is the actual Ministry of Intelligence building on the River Thames which is just so cool. Finally, the train and tunnel bit was shot on the same stretch of track as the Octopussy circus train sequence. I thought I recognized it …

Bonds Special Abilities Displayed: Let us get the driving bit out of the way shall we. He drives a boat, a Russian tank, and a motorcycle which he jumps off a cliff to catch a plane. Speaking of airplanes, at one point Jimbo is piloting a Cesena which catches on fire. So, Bond simply makes like Captain Sully and lands the plane in a creator lake.  He not only smacks the eject button on the TIGER with his brow but he uses his head in others ways. Thank you! Try the veal. After taking Onnatop’s money at the tables Bond figures out her game by picking up her Georgian accent and IDing the license plates on her red Ferrari as fake. This is no small thing since it’s this bit of info that prompts Bond to tail her so he learns she ripped off the TIGER which is linked to the Goldeneye which gets Bond in touch with Wade who leads him to Zukovsky who hooks him up with Alec which ends with Bond saving the world. It’s all in the details.

Final Thoughts: If Goldfinger (1964) is the high water mark by which all Bond films are judged then GoldenEye comes damn close. (And look, both titles are gold body parts!) The script is one of the best Bond has ever had to work with. It’s rich in detail and the twists and turns keep us (and Bond) on our toes. In many films, we as an audience know what’s going on well before the characters and it makes the hero seem dumb for not picking up on the dropped hints. Here, we learn everything with Bond, and therefore experience the same emotions he does. It’s a basic but fundamental element of the film that sucks us in and makes us care about Bond and everything going on around him. I’ve written at length about the balance and repeated themes that Campbell brings to the film and not since Terrence Young has someone so well understood both what makes Bond tick and what makes for an exciting Bond film. The subtle but ever present theme linking the fall of the Soviet Union to failures in their overreliance in technology and rigid ideals hits home more today then it possibly could have in 1995. Are we in The West not now seeing the fall of our society and culture due to faith in technology that gave us incomprehensible financial models and the ability to move billions of dollars in mere seconds? Are we still to this day not continuing to rocket forward with this failed system under the false idea that this is what capitalism is a about?  Heavy stuff for sure but this Bond movie has a thought or two in its head and as much as it tied to a time and place, the newly free Russia of the early 90’s, the timeless theme of governments collapsing under their own hubris then needing to reinvent themselves hangs over everything. So we have that, plus a rock ‘em sock ‘em, gadget filled, sexy, slick Bond film; everything humming along in perfect balance. In the past, I’ve complained about Bond filmmakers feeling the need to go big, and here, from the first shot, everything is big. The difference, it not just the explosions but also the themes and ideas that are big and thanks to the balance between all these moving parts, it all works. As for Pierce’s debut, I will say this; in GoldenEye, he gives the best Bond performance since Connery. I know I’m touching the third rail here but please understand, I am not saying Pierce is the second best Bond (working on the assumption Connery is the best), but simply that in this film, taken as a single entry, Pierce’s performance as Bond is better then any of the previous entries going back to the Connery days. Let’s put it another way. If a 12-year-old boy came up to me today and asked “Who is James Bond?” out of all the 17 movies up to this point, GoldenEye is the film I’d show him. Is it the best one yet? No. Maybe not even top 3. But the 17-year-old and counting GoldenEye still feels up to date enough to hold the attention of a kid raised on Harry Potter and “Halo” while also laying out all the classic elements that define Bond and Bond films. While watching the helicopters fly off into the sunset in the final shot, I did think of Pierce and Campbell and Wilson and Lamont and everyone else involved in this project as heroes. With GoldenEye, they made the movie that saved the franchise.

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