The Living Daylights
September 30, 2011 1 Comment
Title: The Living Daylights
Year: 1987. In 1981, ABC newsman Hugh Downs first said the words AIDS, referring to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, on television. By the end of that year, 121 were dead due to an illness no one understood. Six years later actor Rock Hudson and 16,907 others were killed by a virus that had people so terrified they avoided public toilets, air kissing became the standard hello and monogamy was viewed as not merely prudent, but life saving. In a year when a comedy called A Good Old-Fashioned Orgy (2011) can be released by a major studio, the mid-eighties hysteria over AIDS must sound like something out of science fiction to those who did not experience it. For reference, picture the hysteria over the SARS, the bird flu, the swine flu and the “Rage Virus” in 28 Days Later (2002) all rolled into one and you get the idea. Mobilized by Hudson’s passing and the countless others in the creative arts who were stricken, Hollywood took the lead while Washington slept. In addition to producing PSA’s and throwing lavish fundraisers the entertainment industry issued mandates from on high stating that it was now not just irresponsible to show casual on screen sex, but a matter of life and death. The ultimate AIDS film, also released in 1987, doesn’t even mention the virus. But when Michael Douglas walked into his kitchen to find a boiled bunny, audiences of the day understood; sleep with a stranger and you very well could end up dead. No one was immune to this plague, including James Bond. 007 producers had to take a long hard look in the mirror and ask themselves if in a world of Fatal Attraction there was a place for the bed hopping Bond. The fact that the first shot of the 15th Bond film is a beachfront military encampment that immediately bringing to mind Normandy is no mistake, 1987 could very well have been Bond’s D-day, and for more reason than a deadly plague.
Film Length: 2 hours 11 minutes
Bond Actor: Timothy Dalton. For the Silver Anniversary of Dr. No (1962) EON had some business to attend to before they tackled a worldwide pandemic; mainly, who would be their 4th Bond? Kiwi Sam Neil (later of Jurassic Park (1993) fame) was at the top of everyone’s list. Everyone that is except the one guy who counted and after agreeing to a screen test with Neil, Cubby Broccoli issued his veto. Broccoli wanted the debonair Irishman Pierce Brosnan who as fate would have it was coming to the end of his contract on the TV show “Remington Steele.” When approached, Pierce told producers it was his dream to play Bond ever since he saw Goldfinger (1964) as a kid and he signed on immediately. Producers then went ahead and cast Maryam d’Abo as the Bond girl for The Living Daylights and she and Brosnan began rehearsing. Then, showbiz politics reared its ugly head. At the 11th hour “Remington Steele” producers reneged on promises and yanked Brosnan back to the small screen for five more episodes of the soon to be canceled show. And just like that Brosnan was unavailable. Broccoli went back his Rolodex and called Timothy Dalton, his #1 choice to replace Connery back in 1969. At that time, the 24-year-old Dalton turned Broccoli down, thinking he was to young to play Bond, hence the lone Lazenby film. Now 40, T.D. felt he was ready and accepted his license to kill. As they have with every new Bond, EON put the full court press on the press and Dalton’s face was everywhere. The royals even got into the act making worldwide headlines when during a visit to Pinewood studios Princess Di gave Prince Charles a whack on the head with a breakaway trick bottle.
Dalton was introduced to Americans in the July 16, 1987 issue of Rolling Stone which featured The Grateful Dead on the cover. After making their way through articles about the first Bruce Springsteen solo project and the debut of the entire Beatles catalog on compact disk, readers found the headline Meet the New Bond. Same as the old Bond? Above the 24 point type were four black and white photos. The biggest was a head shot of a leather jacket sporting Timothy Dalton oozing sex off the page. The three smaller photos off to the side showed Connery wearing nothing but a towel while pointing a gun at Daniela Bianchi in From Russia with Love (1963), a head to toe long shot of a kilt sporting Lazenby, and Moore and Lois Chiles in those terrible WWI flying ace caps they wore while piloting The Moonraker. Talk about going all in for the new guy and trying to make the other three cats look like heals. In case readers missed the point of the not so subtle photos, the article by Gerri Hirshey starts “Good news Ladies, the newest James Bond does not hold a woman as though she were a sack of gelignite.” Message delivered; this is not your fathers misogynistic Bond (and bonus, he’s hot!) The piece goes on to stress this new Bond is returning to his humble roots. Dalton confirms by saying “My approach can’t be how am I going to play it? But what did Fleming write about? What made these stories work?” Dalton goes on to describe a different 007 then the one we have seen on screen in the pervious 14 films. His Bond is one who gets knots in his stomach before the action starts and one who needs pills and/or a stiff drink once it’s over. Dalton didn’t want a superman but a “flawed and vulnerable” lunch pail Bond. He feels that with Roger Moore the films “lost the humanity” and he sights Connery as his favorite 007. However, he takes inspiration for his Bond from Bogart’s Sam Spade saying his spy will be a ragged investigator who is “down trodden” and gives into vices because he has “given everything to being a soldier and this is how he copes.” As for the ladies, “he can’t love because he might be dead tomorrow.” For what it’s worth, Connery gave his blessing and Moore, ever the gentleman, went so far as to host an American television special welcoming the new guy into one of entertainments most exclusive clubs. Additionally, EON held a press conference where Broccoli & Co. say all the right things about being on board with this new direction. Still, I would have to think that 
more than one observer found themselves asking if EON was truly ready to let Bond trade in his cuff links and tails for a leather jacket that to quote Chill Palmer is “like the one Pacino wore in Serpico.(1973).” This is after all, the most successful film franchise of all time (and reminded so until this year when a little punk named Harry Potter took the lead) and Hollywood’s first rule is you don’t mess with success. So, are the guys in charge going to let the new guy just waltz in and do his own thing?
Director: John Glen. Everything Dalton said about this harder edged Bond sounds great on paper. So good in fact that if I’m not mistaken his ideas about this “new” direction for 007 would met with wall to wall praise when a “Blonde Bond” is introduced in 2006. But here were are in 1987 and timing, as they say, is everything. And “timing” can mean many things in film. Releasing a film at a “time” when audiences are ready for it is one part, and no small part at that. But an equally important part is timing while making the film. First and foremost, what talent, cast and production folks alike, are available? (Brosnan out, Dalton in) Next, do all those folks share the same ideas about where the film should go this time? This kind of timing can get tricky and can derail a project before it starts. Michael Wilson and Richard Maibaum wrote the script before a Bond was cast. As a result Wilson, by his own admission, wasn’t “exactly sure how to go about writing the part so we wrote it fairly middle of the road.” Timing. The Living Daylights, first published in The Sunday Times Magazine in February of 1962 as a short story, was the last of Fleming’s works to make it to the big screen until the 2006 reboot. Wilson used the story of a cello playing female assassin as a jumping off point. By keeping the Bond character bland, Wilson focused on plot in a way that we haven’t seen in the past few entries and he crafted what amounted to a cold war thriller first and a Bond picture second. A true “spy” thriller, The Living Daylights features a strong narrative with more double crossing and triple crossing than Miller’s Crossing (1990). It’s also the most contemporary Bond picture to this point, featuring such “ripped from the headlines” plot points as defecting Soviets, black market weapons, drug dealing revolutionaries and the Afghan mujahedin. Someone with a strong vision and steady hand like Terrence Young could have navigated Bond through this world. However, he hasn’t directed a Bond picture since Thunderball (1965). Timing. Current Bond director John Glen has little on his résumé to suggest he’s up to such a task. With his debut, For Your Eyes Only (1981), Glen delivered a tight thriller with a nuts and bolts A to B to C plot. In its simplicity, it worked beautify. Octopussy (1983) is much more fun but it’s a Road Runner cartoon without a though in its head. A View to a Kill (1985) is an embarrassment and proves that when Glen is not storyboarding superb action sequences, he is utterly lost. He has very little sense of story, less interest in character and while his timing in action set pieces is impeccable, he has no idea how to pace or beat out two people talking over a cup of coffee. (Think that’s not important? Take a look at a few films by a guy named Quentin Tarantino and get back to me.) When Dalton talks about how the Moore films “lost the humanity” I don’t disagree when talking about the last few in his run. However, I think the guilty party is not the leading man but his director. Would it kill Glen to use a close up, the most basic cinematic way to get an audience more involved in a character and bring forth his humanity? Now, Glen is handed a film where characters are double and triple crossing each other left, right and center. To make that work the audience must see the motives, understand who is playing who, and most importantly, to what end. (Exhibit A: Miller’s Crossing) So, with The Living Daylights we have a script heavy on story in which the main character was purposely kept “light,” a new leading man who wants to put his stamp on the main character by making him “dark,” and a director who’s strength, action, will be undermine by all of the above. Timing.
Reported Budget: $30,000,000 estimated. Same as Glen’s previous film but the money is much better spent here. Instead of rampaging through the streets of San Francisco in a fire truck and blowing up blimps, Glen puts the budget toward create a world of shifty Eurotrash types playing a high stakes game. The gritty look is consistent with these characters and frankly, I was surprised by how “right” the atmosphere in much of the film felt. There is a whole lot of screen space delegated to military iconography giving the film an overall feeling of occupation which is appropriate. The Eiffel Tower of the last entry gives way to remote airstrips in the Afghani mountains where horses (beautify shot in the desert land scrape) are ridden by hardened Arab rebels; not privileged breeders. Sure, we still get planes flying into the sides of mountains, but not before a hand to hand battle takes place on a cargo net hanging out of the back of said plane to give us one of the tensest Bond moments in a long time. EON even put a few bucks down on a brand spanking new Aston Martin. Smiles all around.
At least Bond beat this 1987 movie
Reported Box-office: $50,096,000 USA and $191,200,000 Worldwide. A better take then A View to a Kill and right around Octopussy numbers. Spun as a success at the time, EON used the box-office numbers to prove audiences loved Timothy Dalton. In truth, the film came in at an underwhelming #19 for the year. This dark, topical Bond was passed over by audience who spent their hard earned money to place Three Men and a Babyin the pole position. Yah, you read that right. Ted Danson, Tom Selleck and Steve Guttenberg singing “Goodnight Sweetheart” to a shit covered infant was the #1 film in 1987. Have I mentioned how terrible main steam pop culture was in the 80’s? (I blame Ronald Reagan and Ernest) Timing is everything.
Theme Song: “The Living Daylights” performed by A-Ha or a-ha. Yah, these obnoxious pricks actually had their name spelled out a-ha in the opening credits. The Norwegian group, a one hit wonder in the states, managed to reach #5 with this tune in the UK. (The Brits also made Oasis the second coming of the Beatles so take this chart success with a heaping spoonful of salt.) To my ears, the song comes off as a poor mans Duran Duran tune and even features the same da da da staccato keyboard as the pervious Bond theme. But here is the true sin. Chrissie Hynde co-wrote (with John Barry) two Pretenders tunes, “Where Has Everybody Gone” and “If There Was a Man,” for this movie and both get buried. The former plays on hit man Necros’ walkman while the latter is featured over the closing credits. Are you kidding me? They picked Pal Waaktarr over Chsissie Hynde? “Take on Me” over “The Wait”? A-freakin-Ha … sorry a– freakin-ha, over the Pretenders???
Opening Titles: Less neon thankfully but more of the now standard naked chicks with guns. Near the end we get a little variation as one of the ladies looks to be covered in dirt as she emerges from water, another looks to be fishing with a hand gun, and the final woman, not in silhouette, makes like Dita Von Teese in a champagne glass. Meh.
Jose, Jose Jose Jose, Joooo se. Jooooo seeee!
Opening Action Sequence: Parachutes have become the Jose Reyes of Bond openings. For those not in the know, #7 bats in the leadoff spot for the New York Metropolitans and is often referred to as “the sparkplug of the offence.” For any fan of the game, every Reyes at bat is a must see because he is capable of doing almost anything at any given moment regardless of how poorly the rest of the team is going (this year, very poorly.) It’s like “pre-SUV meet tree” Tiger Woods at the Masters. When you saw him step to the tee it meant something great was going to happen. Ditto Reyes at the plate, you just know excitement is on the menu. Parachutes in Bond opens have become sparkplugs. Take the best three openings of the recent Bonds, Moonraker (1979), Octopussy, and most exciting, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977); they all feature parachutes in one way or another. So, when I saw four skydivers descending onto the Rock of Gibraltar, well, I was ready for some excitement. True to the “parachute promise,” The Living Daylights delivered. M explains that the penetration of the radar insulations at Gibraltar is only a training exercise, but it is one he doesn’t take lightly. Three of his double O skydivers land with no problem but 0013 gets stuck in a tree and is immediately shot with pink paint. “Your dead mate!” Oh 0013. He always did kind of suck at his job. Anyway, 004 is scaling a shear cliff when a carabineer is sent down his climbing rope. He reads the attached note, is none too pleased, and looks up to see an assassin cutting his line. As he falls to his death his screams catch the attention of another agent who turns to camera. Our first look at Dalton is dramatic and shows that this Bond is all business. It’s off to the races as Bond identifies the assassin and jump onto the roof of his escaping Jeep. Right away there is a physicality to Bond we have not seen since Lazenby flashed the 007 badge and it’s exhilarating to watch. The road, as all roads in Bond films must be, is on the edge of a cliff. Bond holds onto the roof of the speeding vehicle for dear life while fruit carts are upset, a Volkswagen Beetle has its doors knocked off, and monkeys are forced to react with displeasure. (Ed Note: I love monkeys). Somehow, someway, somewhere along the line the crates of explosives in the back of the Jeep catch fire and then the vehicle is launched off a cliff. In a fantastically executed stunt, Bond pulls his rip cord and is yanked out of the back of the falling, burning Jeep moments before it explodes. That the flaming debris from the exploded Jeep sets Bond chute ablaze is a nice touch. We cut to a bikini clad woman lounging on a yacht. She is on the phone, complaining about the quality of the local male population. “If only I could meet a real man” annnndd enter Bond, literally falling out of the sky. “Who are you?” she asks. Daltons Bond, James Bond response is a bit of a disappointment. I know he wants to make the character his own but this is your “I’ll be back.” Your “Go ahead, make my day.” Your “obviously you’re not a golfer.” Dalton just kind of under delivers the line as if it’s any other bit of dialog. Regardless, this open is an excellent intro for our new, more action 
oriented Bond. Further, the fact that a paintball exercise becomes a real fight with real bullets is a clever device. It’s a signal to the audience, letting us know that before it may have been a game but this time it’s for real. That said it’s still a Bond picture so of course Jimmy B must get the girl with a cheeky remark. Bond checks in with headquarters, informing them “I’ll report in an hour.” “Won’t you join me for a dink?” “Better make that two.” Dalton’s smirk when he delivers the line is as close to Connery as you can get without being the genuine article. We are off to an excellent start.
Bond’s Mission: “Stuff my orders” Bond barks at one point to his Venetian contact, a uptight snot named Saunders, who more then deserve our heroes scorn. The two meet at a Czechoslovakian concert hall just a stones throw from the boarder. Bond doesn’t even get a chance to take his seat and he’s greeted by a curt “You’re bloody late.” “We have time” a clearly annoyed Bond answers. Bond has always been the smartest guy in the room, but Dalton lets you know with a jab, not a smirk. Saunders points out their man, one General Georgi Koskov, who plans on defecting that evening. Gen. Georgi fears KGB snipers and he specifically requested Bond be on hand to protect him. After Bond and Saunders make their way across the street to a lookout perch, Saunders starts clucking about this being my mission so don’t muck it up and I planned this to the last detail and all of that kind of thing. When Bond asks what the actual plan is he’s told “Sorry old man. Section 26, paragraph 5, that information is need to know only. I’m sure you understand.” Dick. Georgi’s fears are realized when he no sooner sneaks out of the music venue and Bond and Saunders mark a sniper. Bond instantly recognizes the sniper as the female cello player from the concert. Saunders instantly proves to be useless by (A) not knowing how to turn on the night goggles and (B) jabber on as Bond tries to line up the shot on the sniper. Despite this nincompoop babbling away Bond has the presents of mind to smell a rat and simply shots the rifle out of the would be assassin’s hand. Georgi is grabbed by Bond and Saunders and quickly put into a car in the ally. When Bond discovers that Saunders master plan comes down to stuffing the General in the trunk (or as the Brits call it, the boot) 007 takes charge. “Where are you bringing him?” “Sorry old man. Section 26, paragraph 5, that information is need to know only. I’m sure you understand.” Touché ass hat! This is a crackerjack start that launches the plot twisting off into several directions. The coolest aspect from my point of view is Bond spearing the female assassin. In Saunders eyes, Bond missed the target because he didn’t want to kill a beautiful woman. We as the audience, based on our history with Bond, come to the same conclusion. However, it was not Bond’s weakness for the ladies but his professionalism that lead him to miss on purpose. 
“I only kill professionals, that girl didn’t know one end of a rifle from the other.” It was this decision to trust his gut that eventually allows Bond to unwrap the villain’s scheme. If Bond killed the woman, as Saunders points out he was order to do, the baddie would have succeeded and Bond most likely would be rotting away in a Gulag camp. Stuff my orders indeed. It’s a neat trick to play on the audience, taking our perception of Bond and his known soft spot for the fairer sex and turning it upside down. It’s also a sly and engaging way to reinvent Bond. A lesser film would have had an over written and awkward scene to tell us “this is a new Bond,” but here it’s seamless woven into the story.
Villain’s Name: General Georgi Koskov. Bond doesn’t buy his old friend Georgi’s defector story as well he shouldn’t. After all, “Nobody leaves the KGB!” Georgi is not your typical Bond villain. He’s a slimy guy who likes to mix it up who’s not so much bent on world donation as he is hooked on what gamblers call “the juice” or “the rush.” It’s not the winning, but the actual act of outplaying your opponent that supplies the enjoyment. The fact that he’s manipulating the Soviet and British governments ups the ante and for a true gambling junky; the higher the stakes the better. His deadly game involves knocking-off another Russian General, one Leonid Pushkin, and his convoluted plan involves getting Bond to do the dirty work. However, things go wrong right off the bat when Bond fails to kill Georgi’s would be assassin; actually Georgi’s girlfriend who the General was hoping Bond would kill as well. Whoops. No one, not even Bond, suspects any of this when Georgi is slurping down caviar during his debriefing. The debriefing, by the by, takes place at an MI6 safe house that somehow manages to scream MONEY and modesty at the same time. The MI6 headquarters was actually Stonor House which was built between the 12th and 14th century and was in the family for 800 years. As an American, this is the stuff of fairytales. Our “old” buildings have been around for 200 years. Hell, our country was “discovered” a short 500 years ago. Mind blowing. So, Georgi misdirects the Brits by giving them a list of agents that General Pushkin is supposedly 
going to bump-off. MI6 buys the lie and Bond is ordered to bump off Pushkin. No sooner is Georgi’s plan set in motion then he is immediately “kidnapped” by the KGB but not before the kidnapper and a faceless MI6 guard get into an amazing fight in the kitchen. Everything from an electric knife to a flaming grill to a scaling hot pot of water comes into play. It’s the best hand to hand fight scene in the film and Bonds not even in the building. It’s a strange choice and it’s also the point in the movies where things start spin a little out of control. Sadly, the film makers never quite catch up.
Villain Actor: Jeroen Krabbe plays Georgi perfectly. He finds the right tone and gives the character enough arrogance that you actually believe that he believes he can somehow pull this whole thing off. The other main baddie is Brad Whitaker. Whitaker is a black market arms dealer played by Joe Don Baker who is NOT that “Law & Order” guy who ran for president as I thought for about half the film. He is however that guy who chugs Pepto Bismol while watching the teddy bear on the wire in that wonderfully creepy scene from Cape Fear (1991).
Villain’s Plot: On the cover of the same Rolling Stone issue mentioned above, right next to Jerry Garcia’s beard is the headline “Inside the Weird World of Oliver North.” Before he was a conservative radio talking head he nearly sank the Reagan presidency with a little something called the Iran Contra Affair. Feel free to visit other corners of the internet to learn all the in’s and out’s of that ugly business but the CliffsNotes version boils down to U.S. Marine North being involved in dealing illegal weapons to our enemies. No doubt American audience saw a little of Ollie North in General Brad Whitaker. This guy is more in the classic mold of the broadly drawn Bond villain. He’s a crackpot who was never actually in the military but worships the intuition, kind of like those weird guys who were never cops but collect police memorabilia and talk like they know how to do police work. Wealthy thanks to his illegal exploits, Whitaker has men in uniform he commands but they are more like butlers and servants. His true army is a bunch of military figures in glass cases that he plays with as a 10 year old would GI Joe toys. Despite being bat shit nuts he is clearly good as his job as he lives lavishly and dines on what has to be the biggest lobster I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s good to be the fake General. He and Georgi are in cahoots and sell weapons and opium and diamonds and pretty much anything else you can unload illegally for large sums of money. Along with political assassination to attend to, the boys get spread a little thin. Perhaps they should have just focused on one international crime as opposed to all of them. The same goes for the writers. They create a situation where they must balance Georgi setting up Bond to take out Pushkin while setting up his girlfriend to be murdered. He’s also setting up MI6 to believe he’s defected while at the same time setting the Russians up to see him as a hero. That’s a lot of irons on the fire, but Glen and Co. then hook Georgi up with a faux General and the two run around smuggling drugs, weapons and diamonds? Why? Once again Bond producers fall into the trap of not trusting a nice tight story to be “big” enough. (See also The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)) So they drag in Whitaker and this whole other storyline that takes us away from what was interesting and different about this movie. It’s all starting to slip, slip away…
Villain’s Lair: Georgi is on the run and unable to return to the Soviet Union until his plan plays out so he spend most of his time at Whitaker’s compound lounging around the pool. This Moroccan base of operations is hidden in plain sight in the middle of the bustling city of Tangier. The massive building, situated on a cliff overlooking the sea, was actually owned by billionaire and motorcycle enthusiast Malcolm Forbes. Forbes housed his collection of 120,000 lead soldiers in the spacious home and was kind enough to let Bond producers use them in the film.
Villain’s Coolest Accessory/ Trait: Boys and their toys would be a wonderfully succinct way to describe Bond films to someone who’s never seen one. Whitaker takes this notion literally. A delusional nut, Whitaker walks around in a military uniform of his own design and insists his employee’s call him “General” even though he served less time then Dick Chaney. Kicked out of West Point for cheating, Whitaker fancy’s himself a military historian and master strategists. His little toy solders are displayed in beautiful glass cases where they are set up to reenact famous battles from history. Appropriately, Whitaker had hidden drawers installed into the cases which he can open with a push of a button to display his weapons for potential buyers. He also has the room rigged with strobe lights and speakers that pump out battle sound effects. Perhaps most bizarrely, the entry hall to Whitakers joint is lined with life size mannequins of famous conquerors from Genghis Khan to Alexander the Great to Napoleon to Hitler, all of whom have Whitaker’s face. If you’re starting to think the weapons dealer has a few veggies missing from his salad bar you’d be correct. Georgi on the other hand is a true General with an inflated sense of ego who’s a little to in love with his own scheming. He’s also merciless.
Badassness of Villain: Setting up your girlfriend to be killed by the Brits to legitimize your apparent defection is not a nice thing to do. Dealing weapons and drugs to finance freelance assassinations of high level government officials on both sides of the cold war certainty ups ones bad boy cred. But you want true badassness? Check this out. You know those big ass military cargo planes that can open up in the back so you can drive a dozen tanks onto the thing? There are big. I’d also imagine when they come in for landing they would be moving at a pretty good clip. Right, so if you put one of those planes coming in for a landing on one side of a runway and you had a Jeep speeding toward it from the other side of the runway, who do you think would win this game of chicken? Well, I don’t know who was piloting the plane but Georgi was driving the Jeep and the two hit head on. This would most likely reduce the Jeep to a grease spot but at the very least it would stop the Jeep dead in its tracks. However, the Jeep as driven by Georgi somehow goes through the cargo plane. I say somehow because we never see it happen but as the two collide we see an explosion the next shot shows the Jeep continuing forward but on fire. A dazed Georgi with a little dirt on his face is still at the wheel and jumps out of the Jeep which continues to roll along and then explodes. So yah, defying every law of physics to survive a head on collation with a plane while suffering not a scratch is rather badass … and bad directing. I’m calling you out here Glen. You had the dude jump out of the Jeep after he hit the plane. Why not have him jump out of the Jeep before the collision? A simple flip-flop of shots in the edit room would have done the trick.
Villain’s Asides/ Henchmen: Necros who very well could be the Arian James Bond. An expect assassin, he is fluent in several different languages, is a master of disguise and operates with a laser like efficacy. He can use exploding milk bottles or rigged sliding glass doors to take out targets (he’s not so good with a rolling pin.) However, his weapon of choice is his ever present Walkman. A Walkman is an ancient device used to listen to music while on the go.
Like Necros, Riff Randell rock and roller always has her walkman
Unlike an iPod it didn’t hold every song ever recorded, just the ones that were on the 90 or so minute “cassette tape” that was being played at the time. This limited setup required the listener think about what music he wanted to hear before he left his house. Once that decision was made the music fan then had to go rummage through all the other “cassettes” he owned, find the “album” containing the songs he wanted to hear, take the “tape” out of its case, and then get all pissed-off when he found GN’R “Lies” in his Cure “Boy’s Don’t Cry” case. Things were not easy in the 80’s. What the Walkman and iPod do have in common is the use of a wire to connect the “headphones” (an old listening device used before ear buds) to the component holding the music. Necros enjoyed walking up behind his victims and using this wire to choke the breath out of them. I enjoyed watching him do this. While not really henchmen, I want to point out two amazing Russian stereotype characters that I absolutely fell in love with. Rosika Miklos is a jump suit clad gasworks employee straight out of the “big girl. Strong, like bull” mold. (Picture Kristie Ally at her heaviest with a Russian accent.) Rosika, a MI6 contact who is tasked with getting Georgi out of the Soviet Union via the pipeline, introduces herself to the General by thrusting her amble bossism forward. After Georgi is put into the pipeline, pressure must be built up to launch him to freedom and Rosika must distract her supervisor because “switchboard will light up like Christmas tree” when Georgi is launched. Rosika enters her boss’s office and shoves his face into her cleavage only to push him away after Georgi is clear. “What kind of a girl do you think I am?” she protests and huffs out of the room. The other wonderful cliché is the Russian jailer. A short, thick, bald man (Picture Bob Hopkins at his least Roger Rabbitist with a Russian accent) he runs his four cell jail like a small town sheriff in a Western. When Bond and his lady are brought in he seems delighted. “I haven’t had a woman prisoner in a long time.” As he leads them to their cell he passes the only other prisoner, a scraggly bearded Arab man. “Good news!” the jailer barks at him, “you vill not be hung in the morning. (Beat) You vill be shot!” When Bond bends down to get his keys the jailer promptly thwacks him on the back with a stick. “I didn’t tell you to get down.” Bond begins to rise only to be thwacked again “I did not tell you to get up either!” It’s so nice to see someone who truly loves his job.
Bond Girl Actress: Maryam d’Abo. A former model of French and Dutch decent Abo parleyed her Bond girl role into additional “exposure” (wink, wink) in the September 1987 Playboy. In the issue she and other “Women of James Bond” take off all their clothes in a celebration of what it means to be a Bond girl. D’Abo can be seen posing with a white cat and cello. She also hosted a 2002 TV show called “Bond Girls Are Forever.” I love the idea of exploring what it means for actresses to be a Bond girl and the impact it had on their carrier etc. but the parts of the special I watched on Youtube don’t gets past the whole “I always dreamed about being a Bond girl” sound bites. I feel like the Playboy issue was more reveling. Thank you and good night! Don’t forget to tip your bartender. You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here. Thank you!
Bond Girl’s Name: Kara Milovy. A Czech cellist with bad taste in men, Kara is kind of ill define. She’s meant to be more bohemian than glamour girl but how crunchy can one who plays a Stradivarius cello in Vienna’s finest concert halls be? Regardless, I applaud the idea of trying to make the Bond girl more of a salt-of-the-earth type to go along with a rough and tumble Bond. Kara does have her moments in-between starting off as a plot devise and ending up needed to be rescued. At one point she reminded me of the babysitter in Goodfellas (1990) who ends up getting Henry busted thanks to insisting they go back for her “lucky hat.” Bond and Milovy are hightailing for the boarder with every cop in the country after them when she insists on stopping to pickup her cello. But instead of Bond ending up in his own private hell of dinning on ketchup and egg noodles, this turns out to be a good move on the part of Kara. Her insistence on retrieving the cello ends up saving her and Bond when the case is used as a snow-sled to freedom. There is also something classic, in a film noire/romantic/cinematic kind of way, about the idea of two fugitives running around Europe with a classical instrument in tow. The fact that it’s a comically large instrument such as a cello that can be used as a sleigh and a shield to block bullets gives it that Bond spin. Milovy herself is in the classic noire femme fatale model. She runs with exciting men who are more dangerous then she knows
The Red Headed Stranger
and makes out with the hero in one scene while smacking him in the face the next. Even though she’s in well over her head, Kara shows a remarkable ability to role with the punches, like when she blows off the bullet hole in her priceless instrument and plays it like she were Willie Nelson playing his famously shredded guitar.
Bond Girl Sluttiness: So, that was all the nice stuff. Now the problem which sadly is no small thing. Kara’s kind of a dope. However, it’s not her fault. As we were watching the amusement park sequence which I’ll get to in a moment, the wife, who has been kind enough to take the Bond journey with me (IE tolerate watching the films with me) turned to ask “what year was this one?” “87” I said. “Jesus, I would have thought it was the early 70’s with this chick. They update the Bond character but the keep the women stuck in some kind of time warp.” “Well” I responded without even thinking “they may have gotten rid of old man Moore, but it’s still the same old dudes who write, produce and direct these things, and they are just getting older.” As I was saying it I realized just how true it was. Kara is a woman who is accomplished in a ridiculously competitive field and has climbed her way to the pinnacle of achievement. So why is she so easily used by men? She let’s her boyfriend talk her into the whole fake assassination thing that by the by, takes place during one of her performances. She is almost killed. Then she just kind of sulks around until Bond bursts into her apartment and promises to take her to find Georgi. She doesn’t know him from Adam but yah, it’s off Vienna where the film goes sideways. Bond is to meet Saunders at the base of the Riesenrad Ferris wheel at midnight. With time to kill, Bond takes Kara to the opera and on a carriage ride in a sequence containing some of the most poorly framed and jarring shots I’ve seen in some time. It’s like they decided they need a few more shots to fill out the carriage ride sequence and they sent Joe the intern out to get em. As the sun sets, the couple makes there way to the amusement park where Bond’s courtship of Kara is reduced to a montage straight out of any number of hacky 80’s teen romantic comedies. We watch the two giggling as they ride a roller costar, a tilt-a-whirl and I shit you not, bumper cars. Can you picture Connery’s Bond riding around in bummer cars? It’s laugh out loud absurd but it’s treated with the upmost seriousness. Right about the point where Bond wins Kara a big stuffed animal at the shooting gallery … get it? He’s a skilled assassin playing a game with a gun where oh f it. Anyway, right after 007 uses his elite training to win his girl a huge elephant she is frightened into his arms by a funhouse ghost. She bats those eyes of hers and says “take me on the wheel” as organ grinder music sets the mood. And with that, all the coolness and intrigue the Riesenrad Ferris wheel gained in The Third Man (1949) gets sucked out of the room along with any coolness and intrigue this film managed to build up to this point. The two get on the wheel and as they reach the apex, Kara gets the undeliverable line “is it real, or just a dream?” just before the wheel stops. “What’s wrong?” “I arranged it” responds Dalton looking like a Jr. High boy asking his crush to dance at the homecoming ball. “We could be here all night” says Bond as he moves in for the kill. As Harrison Ford once famously told his Star Wars (1977) director, “You maybe able to write this shit George, but you sure as hell can’t say it.” Kara then gets the ultimate “no means yes” line.
Bond Girls Best Pick-up Line: “Don’t. It’s impossible. I’ve known you only two days and all I can think of is how we would be together.” Bumper cars will do that to a woman.
Bond’s Best Pick-up Line: “Don’t think, just let it happen” Bond says as he lays Kara on a stuffed elephant. It should be pointed out that while Bond is getting rapey on top of the Ferris wheel, Saunters is being set up to be wacked by Necros. Way to do your job Dalton. Connery or Moore you are not.
Number of Woman 007 Beds: 1, well 1 ½ is more like it. Not that Bond sleeps with half a woman. That would be just too weird for a PG film and besides, Jennifer Lynch’s debut was still a few years off. No, what I mean is in the open after 007 is offered a drink by the woman on the boat, we never see him actually drink the drink but it is assumed he is no longer thirsty. Got it? Cool. So, the other glaring error in regards to Kara and Bond’s relationship is the writers mistook the idea of “monogamy” for “love.” The two are not the same yet the film treats them as if they are as inseparable as Angus Young and power cords. Bond sleeps only with Kara and does so three times; the awkward first time on the wheel, in Afghanistan after she calls him a horses ass, and then finally in her dressing room after a performance. With each passing encounter Dalton gets more weak-kneed and gooey-eyed until it’s clear he’s fallen for this woman. For the record, I’m cool with Jimmy B not adding multiple notches to his bedpost, but he should not have fallen in love, especially with this chick.
For your consideration, Blog James Blog nominates AC-DC to perform the next Bond theme
For Bond to fall in love there needs to be a damn good reason that is integral to his character (See On Her Majesty’s Secrete Service (1969) and Casino Royale (2006)). Otherwise, Bond is a “don’t love em and leave em” kind of guy; all the more so with Dalton taking Fleming’s Bond to the screen. Bond nailing Kara to gain her trust so he can then nail Georgi makes scenes. However, with Glen and Dalton treating Bond like he’s in love, the relationship chafes against the rest of the movie and disconnects Bond from who he is and ought to be.
Number of People 007 Kills: 5ish. The number is on the lower side but the film makes the most of each one. We get a great reaction shot from the assassin who killed 004 right before he goes boom. Seeing Bond has escaped out the back all he can do is look up at the agent and scream. Much later Bond finds himself in Afghanistan fighting alongside the Afghan mujahedin, a rough bunch of tribal freedom fighters. This was yet another ripped from the headline plot point as at the time the US and UK were aiding Afghan rebels in their quest to keep the big bad superpower called Russia out of their country. These very same people are now called terrorists and fighting to keep another big bad super power out of their country but that’s a discussion for another time. Bond teams up with these men who are making a delivery IE drug deal. It just so happens that they are trading opium for diamonds with General Georgi and his men. Bond decides to go after Georgi but first asks Kamran Shah, the rebel leader, if he can get some plastic explosive and a detonator. “I’ll see what I can do” Shah responds and scurries off. Wait. A drug dealer who delivers anywhere on horse back and can hook you up with military grade explosives at a moments notice? Get me that dudes beeper number. Or on second thought, maybe not. There is also something slickly sly about delivering narcotics in satchels marked with a red cross. Anyway, the Afghani rebels ride into battle for an all out attack on the Russian base in a sequence reminiscent of the gypsy camp raid in Form Russia With Love (1963) with a health does on Lawrence of Arabia (1962) thrown in. The horses ridding into battle silhouetted by the desert sands and sun makes for some of the best images in the film. But I was talking about killing. At one point, Bond takes the above mentioned plastic explosive and throws it out of the back of a plane to take out a bridge and send a Russian tank and Jeep into a ravine. (I’m not sure how many were taken out in this stunt so lets call it 2.) Another fantastic sequence features Bond and Necros slugging it out while (A) hanging on a cargo net that is (B) filled with the red cross opium satchels and (C) 
hanging out of the back of an airplane that is (D) being piloted through the Afghani mountains by Kara who (E) doesn’t know how to fly. This is so much cooler than fighting on top of a Lear jet as Bond and Gobinda did in Octopussy. It’s also 1000 times more terrifying. The long shot shows the net bouncing up and down behind the plane like a tube being dragged behind a boat. At any moment the net could smack the fuselage and by-by buddies. And yes, they did indeed stick two stuntmen on a net hanging out of the back of a plane. After going at each other and dumping the net’s cargo Necros finds himself hanging onto Bonds boot for dear life. In a water torture moment Bond takes a knife and slices his shoe lace ever so deliberately until final his footwear comes off and Necros is sent hurling earthward still clutching the boot. Freaking awesome. Finally, Bond appropriately employees a gadget to take out Whitaker. Bond is pinned down in the toy soldier wing of the faux General’s lair. Whitaker is spraying the room with bullets while Bond takes cover behind a statue. “I should have known you would hide behind that vulture Wellington” Whitaker bellows. I know nothing of Wellington’s military exploits but I find his beef to be most enjoyable. Anyway, Bond puts his key ring, which is ridged with an explosive, on the back of Wellington’s head and when Whitaker gets close enough “BOOM!” The statue smashes down on Whitaker who crashes into one of his glass cases. Busted by a bust.
Most Outrageous Death/s: Remember the arrogant schmuck Saunders who planned out Georgi’s defection to “the last detail” and then screwed up the operation worse than FEMA’s response to Hurricane Katrina? Yah, well somehow that guy still has a job with MI6. When Bond meets him after his little “Ferris wheel ride” with Kara, Saunders actually proves to be slightly useful. He reports that Kara’s Stratevest, known as “The Lady Rose,” was bought at auction by Whitaker. 
This proves to be the bit of info that Bond needs to link Georgi and Whitaker. Well done and all that but really, Moneypenny in her new capacity (More on that below) could have just as easily provided this info. Anyway, Saunders gets up to exit and thanks to a Necros booby trap is wacked with the sliding door which kills him instantly. This is actually a lot cooler than it sounds and not at all what is outrageous about this death; its Bond reaction to the death by door that makes this murder noteworthy. Now remember, Saunders sucks. He’s been all problems few answers. But when Bond sees Saunders has been killed, he flips. I mean he gets crazy pissed and completely looses his head. So bonkers and blind with rage is Bond that he recklessly runs out into the amusement park and accidently pulls his gun a 10 year old kid. Jesus man, you’re a pro, keep it together. And by the by, why weep for this incompetent douche? In researching the movie it’s clear that the whole “Bond gets angry thing” was very important to Dalton and that’s fine but he needs a reason to get mad. If Kara was wacked I would get it. But this jerk? And then to go and pull a gun on a kid? It’s a choice that backfires badly. Instead of making Bond look harder and darker it makes him look unfocused and unusually vulnerable.
Miss. Moneypenny: Caroline Bliss. Imposter. I’ll admit that was my reaction when I first saw the sex kitten that is the new Moneypenny. The first few times I saw her and Dalton together all I could think was “They look like they should be on the cover of soap digest.” But I was quick to warm to the new Moneypenny, very quick. By the end of her first scene when she invites Bond over for dinner to listen to her Barry Manilow collection I was instantly won over. Moneypenny is out of M’s foyer and now stationed in Q’s lab where she dose research. This is one giant step for women in the Bond universe and 
I’m over the moon that it was Moneypenny who broke the glass ceiling. Who knows, maybe one day a woman may sit behinds M’s desk? When searching for female KGB assassins Q comes up with Helga who uses her thighs to strangle and a girl who uses teddy bears to bomb. However, it’s Moneypenny who IDs the cellist Kara Milovy. Not only is she now contributing in a more productive way, I dig the new look. The whole deceptively shy eyeglass wearing librarian with the guarder hidden under her skirt thing works quite well. Keep up the good work Moneypenny.
M: Right off the bat, M gets a nice bit of business to work with. We see him rise from his costmary desk to brief four agents. They, in black, have their back to camera as M paces in front of them expressing his pride in his 00 unit being chosen for the Rock of Gibraltar training exercise. Then suddenly M’s dignity gets suck out of the door, along with the papers on his desk, as we realize the briefing is taking place on an airplane and the open door has reduced M to crawling around chasing his files. It’s funny and gives M some heart but I still haven’t 100% warmed to Robert Brown’s M. I think he can be overly harsh to 007 but such is the way of things. One of the more disappointing aspects of The Living Daylights is General Leonid Pushkin but thorough no fault of his own. Pushkin is played by John Rhys-Davies who you might remember from such roles as Gimli in Mr. Jackson’s Lord of the Ring trilogy and Sallah in two of the three Indian Jones films. (There are only three Indian Jones films. I heard rumor of a forth somewhere around 2008 but it doesn’t exist. Hear me?) Pushkin is the Russian General Georgi accused of reinstating SMERCH (Death to spies) and going after British agents, like poor old 004. Bond gets orders to kill the General who M and 007 have “known for a long time” and had “several dealings with.” When Bond finally gets the General pinned down at gun point, Bond brings up the matter of the dead agents. “My condolences” Pushkin snaps “we had nothing to do with it.” The line is funny and perfectly delivered, but here is the rub, the Pushkin part was originally written as General Gogol. Think about our history with my favorite Russian and you start to see how this plot line of killing the General could have been so much more. Had Bond been sent to kill Gogol, and had he had the “My condolences” exchange with him, and had Georgi been trying to set Gogol up to be killed by Bond; well the film would have been so much tighter and much more emotional. Bond’s doubt in his good buddies Georgi’s story would have made a lot more sense. The double crossing would have had a stronger resonance. I mean, the movie would have just been better all around. Alas, Walter Gotell who plays Gogol was ill at the time and EON couldn’t insure the actor. Timing. So the Pushkin character was written and dear Gogol, in his last Bond film as it turns out, appears in only one scene at the very end. The scene not only feels shoehorned in (most likely because it was) but is so poorly done as to be eye rolling bad. Gogol, now with the arts and immigration department or some such nonsense is meeting up with M and Kara after one of her performances. After some silly back and forth about Kara now being exempt from all the bad things that go along with living in the USSR we hear a commotion and see Kamran Shah and 5 of his rebel buddies come bursting in the door. This is a black tie event and the Afghani folks, of course, are dressed in the same gear they wear into battle because those are the only clothes Afghani rebels would own you see. Also, being Afghani rebels, the go nowhere unless they are armed to the teeth. So yes, they enter the lobby of the exclusive concert hall brandishing AK-47’s. The crowd is horrified until a “no it’s cool, they are with me” moment happens. Kamran then apologizes for missing the performance, “We had some trouble at the airport.” Reuniting the cast on stage for one last comical bit where all loose ends are tie up with a laugh is simply hack work. But where’s Bond? Ugh, you, me, and everyone who has ever seen a bad movie knows exactly where he is as Kara slinks off to her dressing room. Garbage. I’m truly tiring of Glen, time for some new blood behind the camera as well.
Reason 489 the 1980's sucked
Q:All the press around the release of this film was about the idea of “making Bond more human.” However, it’s Q who becomes a real person. Again finding himself in the field, Q is forced to run up a rather long flight of stairs. As he reaches the top, he is understandably winded and pops some kind of pill before he can get on to the next bit of business. I enjoyed this bit of vulnerability and it added depth to Q, a character that sometimes gets the short shift. In his lab he now has Moneypenny as well as a boom box that shoots missiles. “It’s for the American’s; we call it a ghetto blaster.” Q also takes great amusement in making an underling sit on couch that promptly swallows him. Making like Nelson on the Simpsons, the old man enjoys the moment with a little Haaa Ha.
List of Gadgets: Saunters may have the operation to get Georgi out of the Soviet Union planed to the last detail, but he doesn’t have Q. Once Bond takes charge, he and the extremely capable Rosika Miklos stick Georgi into a pipe cleaner and launch him through the gas lines to freedom. In the 80’s there were two novelty items that were considered must haves for you average yuppie car owner. The first was some kind of variant of the “Baby on Board” sign suction cupped to the back window. The other was a keychain that would respond to a whistle. My parents had both and while our custom “Mets fan on board” sign was OK because it was a nod to me, the whistle keychain was a pain in the ass. The idea was, when you lost your keys, you could simply whistle and the keys would then respond with a beep beep beep. The problem was the keychain would beep at everything from a cat’s meow to a Prince song on the radio. I hated the God damn thing and soon enough so did my parents and apparently the rest of the county as the whistle keychain faded away with the tacky “____ on board” signs. Now, if we could get rid of those “My kid is an Honor Roll student at PS 105” and “Rick Perry for President” bumper stickers, well then we would be onto something. Anyway, Bond gets one of those whistle keychains only different. When he whistles the top of “Rules Britannia” the keychain emits a nerve gas, good for knocking out Russian jailers. If 007 gives a wolf whistle then the keys go all Michael Bay. And finally, it’s equipped with a key that opens 90% of the world’s locks. Making up for the lame-ass sunglasses Moore had in A View to a Kill, Dalton gets binocular spectacles. And that would be it. Except if memory serves, I saw Q monkeying around with some kind of four wheeled contraption…
RIP Big Man
Bond Cars: Aston Martin Volante. For Bond fans, seeing an Aston Martin is like being in the ball park for a 12th inning walk-off homer or sitting in the front row of a Springsteen show for a Jungleland encore; it’s a reason for celebration. What I’m trying to say is the Aston Martin is the official Bond mobile and its return is met with much joy in fanboy land. The Living Daylights gives us the latest model, a convertible in black (a new coat of paint according to Q) and while no adjustment would allow a cello to fit comfortably into the back, Q did add some of his trademark modifications. The radio has a police band so 007 can monitor the cops’ chatter which proves to be useful even if the chatter is in Russian and the scanner has no built in translator. That’s what the girl is along for. Lasers have come a long way since the grey Aston Martin driving Connery’s most precious parts were threatened by Goldfinger. Now the Aston Martin has its own Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation weapon which is shot out of the wheel hubs and can effectively cut a car in two at the baseboards while not slicing the tires in the wheel wells. The tricked out auto also comes with missiles that can shot out the front and a rocket booster that pops out of the back. The skis and the spiked tires however were a bit much. Kind of like the sling rope thing that Connery just happens to have when he needs to hang off the side of a building in Diamonds Are Forever (1971) the skis simply appear when the plot in the film demands. (Yes, I know Q made a quip about “winterizing” the vehicle but I don’t buy it and neither should you.) The car also comes equipped with a feature that frankly I’m shocked isn’t included on all of Q’s stuff; a self destruct button. This makes so much sense as to be silly to not include. Think about the most recent real life “Bond moment” we’ve experienced, the SEAL raid on bin Laden’s Abottabad compound. A super secret stealth Black Hawk, a creature we never even knew existed before this operation was shot down and the SEALS were forced to blow the bastard up. You think Q, Bond and crew want SPECTRE or the Russians getting their hands on precious teck like “Little Nellie?” Since the Aston Martin was blowed-up Bond needed other modes of transport including an Audi, a horse drawn carriage and the back of a fruit truck. Traveling like a hobo in the back of a fruit truck 100% succeeds in giving Bond that “gritty” edge that Dalton so strived for.
Gadgets/British Government Property Bond Destroys: The paint job on the Aston Martin didn’t survive the self destruct.
Other Property Destroyed: Monkey’s are awesome. (If you don’t get why I can’t explain it to you; you simply will never understand.) Monkeys perched on cliffs observe Bond upset fruit stands and knock doors off Volkswagen Bugs on Gibraltar. A guard wall is also smashed by a Jeep which then blows up before plummeting into the sea below. Bond also sends folks in Jeeps tumbling earth bound when he destroys an Afghanistan bridge and a few Russian military vehicles along with it. Speaking of the People’s Property, after tossing Necros off the cargo plane, Bond grabs his girl and drives a Jeep out of the back. The plane, along with it’s half a billon dollars worth up opium, goes up in smoke. Bond also takes out both Napoleon’s and the Duke of Wellington’s forces by sending Whitaker through the glass that enclosed the Battle of Waterloo. Finally, the single bullet hole thorough the Stradivarius cello could run the British tax payer a cool $175,000 American.
Felix Leiter: It’s the return of the CIA’s best man, Ladies and Gentlemen, put your hands together for Americas greatest hype, I mean hope, Mr. Felix Leiter! Not seen or heard from since the 1970’s, Felix comes back with a grand scheme to get Bond attention. He convinces two ladies to pose as prostitutes, puts them a red convertible, and sets them loose. They encounter their target right at the very moment he could use a set a wheels to evade those pesky Russian cops. They approach, they proposition, the porn horns kick in, and Bond is in the car. The chicks then pull a gun on Bond who thinks he is being robbed. Dear Bond fan, let us take a step back at this moment. This is James Bond, 007. He has escaped death countless times, killed the population of Road Island four times over, and completed ninja school in three days. You think he’s going to let himself get stuck up by two hookers? OK, it’s a new, darker Bond you say. That whole ninja school stuff is no longer relevant. Fine. This Bond, in this very movie, pulled a gun on a kid because he was upset. Don’t yah think two broads robbing him would, I dunno, send him into an OJ Simpson type killing spree? Well, that’s not what happens either. Our bigger, badder Bond smiles and offers his wallet. Ugh. Well, at least Felix had a good reason for kidnapping 007. When Bond is brought into the cabin of the boat where Felix is stationed everything becomes clear. Felix went through this big setup and risked getting two women killed by a skilled MI6 agent because… Ummmm……. Well, Felix and 
Bond have a drink together and then…Felix says something about working the same case from different angels and … oh screw it. Nothing. There is no reason, at all, to even remotely include Felix. He contributes zip, zero, nada. His return, after six films and 14 years means absolutely less than nothing. Have I mentioned how it’s time for Glen to be shown to the door, impolitely if necessary?
Best One Liners/Quips: While driving the Aston Martin, Bond delivers the understatement of the year “I’ve had a few extra options installed.” “We have nothing to declare… “… except the cello” aint bad either.
Bond Timepiece: I get the idea of having a less ostentatious Bond and a wardrobe to match. On the other hand, it’s not like Moore was flashing a Rolex or Patek Philippe around town. There are earthy, durable and dependable timepieces a man of Bond stature could be seen wearing without compromising his street cred. However, in the name of keeping real, I guess, Dalton decided that knowing what time it is isn’t important when embarking on international secrete missions.
Other Notable Bond Accessories: Now that’s very Bogart. Like any noire hero worth their salt, Bond smokes. Gone are the cigars and back are the Lucky Strikes (We don’t actually see a brand and I would be curious to know what tobacco Bond prefers.) He smokes in M’s office, he smokes at the dinner table and even thought we never see it, I could picture Jimmy B and his lady enjoying a post-coitus puff. Dalton himself was a chain smoker according the Rolling Stone article so it’s a bit odd that Bond doesn’t look like he knows how to hold a cigarette. When one is a smoker, the fag between the fingers becomes a sixth digit and rests naturally. Bond however looks like a 15-year-old sneaking a drag under the bleachers. Back to the wardrobe, Bond has a neat suit he wears for the Georgi mission which can be converted from a tux to a black ops outfit with the aid of some Velcro. Roger Moore didn’t care for guns so his Bond rarely brandished one and if he did, it was 007’s trusty PPK. Dalton on the other hand had no issue squeezing off a few rounds from a Walther WA 2000 sniper rifle which is an almost comically huge gun. He also sprays some lead around Afghanistan with an AK-47. Good on yah Timothy, break out tobacco and firearms.
See kids, smoking DOES make you look cool
Number of Drinks 007 Consumes: 5, and the majority are martinis. However Bond starts out with a glass of bubbly with the chick on the boat. The first drink Dalton orders is a Vesper … well, I don’t know if it’s a proper Vesper but he does request it shaken not stirred so let’s not bugger flies. The point being Moore never ordered a martini and now right out of the gate Dalton delivers the famous shaken not stirred drink request. While on the boat with Felix, Bond has an appropriately American drink, Jim Beam on the rocks. Kara mixes him a martini and asks “did I do it right?” Bond approves before passing out thanks to the Mickey Finn she shook (not stirred) in. Finally, he gets a non-Ruffie spiked martini at the end of the film in Kara’s dressing room.
Bond’s Gambling Winnings: I guess the gritty 007 doesn’t frequent fancy world class casinos. However, the concierge in Tangier recognized Mr. Bond immediately and asked if he would like his usual suite. It’s worth pointing out the joint was considerably nicer than a Holiday Inn. As if that wasn’t enough, Bond then simply picks up the desk phone and presto; he has two tickets to the opera that night. So would it kill him to walk into a decent casino? If so, there are more than a few dive gambling halls in the world, hell I’ve been in some of em myself. We could have had Bond sitting at a $5 blackjack table with a one armed dealer, or seen him shot some dice with vagrants in a poorly lit back ally, or he could have even visited Michael Vick’s place for some good old fashioned dog fighting; something to get the man some action. But no, not a penny risked or won.
List of Locations: The Rock of Gibraltar. It’s something I’ve heard all my life and knew nothing about. Turns out this “rock” is no Blarney Stone but more of a cliff. Located at the south end of the Iberian Peninsula this monolith stands like a century guarding the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea. A British position since 1713, Spain contested the UK’s presences and in 1991 the British removed all troops. Cool stuff! The pipeline Georgi is launched through ends up at some kind of castle fortress I wish we got to explore more of. Vienna is a city that just lives to be shot for a film as proven in The Third Man, one of those rare movies that actually succeeds in making the setting a character. A young John Glen worked on that film as a junior editor so he knows how to milk the old world town for all its intrigue and outside of the awkward fairground scenes he does a very good job. In fact, the whole film has a great feeling of “place.” 
Not quite as strong as say Don’t Look Now (1973) or the underrated Munich (2005) or the incredible The Third Man, but Glen does a very good job of using cold war Europe to establish a tone which keeps the audience aware that no one is to be trusted. This film is at its heart a first class cold war thriller and therefore unlike any other Bond and the intrigue is heightened by locations both grand and simple. The apartment where Bond first encounters Kara is everything I would think of a European city flat. From the height of the ceilings to the tiled floors to the long windows and wall paper between everything feels right. I was reminded of Krzysztof Kieslowski “Three Colors Trilogy” which simply blew my mind when I fist saw it. Red (1994) in particular just grabbed me an put in Europe unlike anything else I had ever experienced and while The Living Daylights doesn’t come close to that, it has shades of it. Glen, as much as I’ve been dumping on him, deserves great praise for making me feel like 
I’ve stamped my passport in a way that only From Russia With Love, Thunderball, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service have when it comes to past Bond films. It just a shame he couldn’t hold this sense of place for the entire film like in the fairgrounds or the final joke of a scene. The Afghani desert stuff is first rate and the Tangier scenes are equally strong making it all the more disappointing that the illusion was crushed by a few missteps. I also feel the need to point out, for no reason at all, that whenever I hear mention of Tangier I immediately begin to sing “If you see her say hello…” If you understand, you are indeed a fellow traveler.
Bonds Special Abilities Displayed: Welp, he’s driven it all and now’s he proves that he can outrun skiers, snowmobiles, cars and the entire Soviet Boarder Patrol while sitting in a cello case. That feat along makes the fact that he can get a cargo plane aloft on a short runway seems almost negligible. More impressive perhaps is rolling a Jeep out of the back of said plane moments before it crashes into a mountain. The Jeep is on skids you say? Jimmy B will simply smash into a wall. But how does that help get a Jeep off the skids you ask? Doesn’t matter, he is already off to a great restaurant in Karachi that he knows. All par for the course at this point in the game. What impressed me was Bond’s knowledge of US Civil War history. When he walks in on Whitaker reenacting the battle of Gettysburg with his toy soldiers Bond immediately corrects him “Pickett’s charge is up Cemetery Ridge, not Little Round Top.” Jesus man, I’ve been to Gettysburg several times and I couldn’t have told you that.
Final Thoughts: Bond the 15th could have been, should have been, one of the greats. From the opening shoot, the cold war bursts into the James Bond universe like never before. Add in a healthy dose of Afghani rebels, an Ollie North clone, the Middle East opium trade, and the unspoken AIDS epidemic hanging over everything like a cloud and The Living Daylights has some heavy lifting to do. Sadly, and somewhat predictably, the film nearly collapses under the weight. Writers do themselves no favors by piling on more conspiracy plot twist then were covered up in faking the moon landings or forging Obama’s birth certificate. Add the fact that the villains are not all that interesting and as the rash of recent comic book films have proven, every superhero needs a good villain. Then there is the not so small matter of Mr. Timothy Dalton. I’ve kind of skated around the new 007 and that was by design. I will tackle Dalton in the next movie when I have the entirety of his brief run to evaluate but I will go out on a limb and say, well… his Bond has issues. 
However, John Glen doesn’t do his new leading man any favors. Let’s once again return to the idea of timing. Take the scene where Bond fights Necros on the cargo net. Earlier, Bond had set a bomb to go off on the plane. Now that he finds himself and his lady on that plane, he must disarm the bomb. Bond gets up to leave the cockpit and Kara asks “Where are you going?” “To defuse a bomb” Dalton replies in an over delivered line straight out of the Bill Shatner playbook. He then encounters Necros in the back, they fight, and Necros falls out of the plane clutching Bond’s boot (which is freaking awesome.) When 007 returns to the cockpit, Kara asks “What happened to Necros?” This is a Bond staple that has been used in at least half of the films up to this point; Bond kills bad guy, Bond girl asks what happened to bad guy, Bond gives a piffy, punny response. But Glen steps on the punch-line. Dalton’s delivery of “He got the boot” is literally cut into so as to bury the line and kill the joke. Then, Dalton goes to leave the cockpit again and Kara once again asks “Where are you going?” “To drop a bomb.” Dalton delivers the nearly identical line in a nearly identical situation with the same urgency he used not 5 minute previous. Yes, Dalton oversells the line but make no mistake; this was not Dalton’s fault. Glen has his actor running around the plane like he’s Benny Hill chase women around a park bench and the director has no apparent interest in beating out the scene. It’s like he said “Oh man let’s just get thought this so we can watch the plane blow up, OK?” This is not Glen’s first rodeo; he and the writers need to support their new guy. Making him do all this unnecessary business, stepping on his lines, making him fall in love, having him pull a gun on a kid, putting him on freaking bumper cars… it’s no good. As I pointed out above, everyone working on the movie needs to be in the same ball park and at times it feels like Wilson, Glen and Dalton aren’t even playing the same sport. I can’t emphasize enough how much of a drag this is because Bond 15 does things no previous Bond has, does them well, and when it works, it’s enthralling. Glen actually manages to create atmosphere at points and individual scenes and sequences, especially at the top and in Afghanistan, are fantastic. The problems is other scenes are complete off tonally and as the movie progresses it looses focus until it’s one big mess. By the end the film has no clue what it wants to be. I’m reminded of a line from Roger Ebert’s (in my opinion overly positive) review of You Only Live Twice (1967). He called the film a “million-dollar playpen in which everything works but nothing does anything.” The Living Daylights is the other side of that coin. It’s a multimillion-dollar playpen which tries to do everything and in the end it doesn’t work. Timing.
Martini ratings:
Title: A View to a Kill
Above all, he represents the crown with dignity and is a natural ambassador for all the ideals England holds dear. In 1985, the States too had an action hero who represented everything Americans wanted to be in their wildest fantasies; Rambo from Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985). This John Rambo was very different than the one we met three years earlier in First Blood (1982). While that film was ham fisted and leaned too heavily on stereotypes, it was none-the-less an attempt to explore some heavy ideas. In the movie, Rambo is a Viet Nam vet who returns to find a very different America then the one he thought he was fighting for. Yes, the film finds him running around the North Western woods killing off redneck cops but he was also a deeply conflicted man who was at war with himself, unable to come to terms with being treated like an obsolete tool of war. The film was critical of our treatment of the men and women who served bravely in that controversial war and it didn’t paint the good old US of A in the best light. Rambo 2.0 on the other hand was a recruitment poster boy. He practically had “Be all that you can be!” tattooed across his six pack, a red, white, and blue propaganda action-figure selling Reagan’s vision of America. First Blood Part II gave us a steroid jacked, monosyllabic, one-man army recruited to single handedly correct the history books. (He even gets the line “Do we get to win this time?”) For $2.75 moviegoers got more explosions than the Fourth of July and as much nuance as you find at the bottom of a Bud pounder. Rambo was ugly, loud and carried a big stick called a freaking M60E3. He was the anti-Bond. (See also Schwarzenegger in Commando (1985)) Perhaps feeling their man could use a 1985 update, Cubby and Co. decided it was a good idea to shoehorn Bond (the film more so than the character) into this mold of the Ronald Reagan era action hero. It didn’t work out so well.
Film Length: 2 hours 11 minutes. It feels like 5 and change.
Director: John Glen, at the helm for the third time with 007 License to Dangle officially became the incredible shrinking director. After bursting out of the gate with For Your Eyes Only (1981) and hitting a triple with Octopussy, Glen himself admits on the DVD extras to having used up all his good ideas. He talked about how hard it was to “scour (his) brain” to come up with things for Bond to do that “we haven’t seen before.” His solution? A fire truck. “I mean, what little boy doesn’t love a fire truck?” he chuckles. Perhaps, but I think you’ll find, Mr. Glen, that you are not making Goonies, Police Academy II or Back to the Future, all 1985 films aimed at a younger demographic that, incidentally, beat your movie at the box office. I mean, what little boy doesn’t love pirates, cops who make funny noises or time traveling Delorean? Never the strongest director when bullets weren’t flying, Glen was always extremely talented when it came to putting together action set pieces. While there are strong moments in this film, most notably the base jump from the Eiffel tower and the brief shot of horses racing though the woods, these moments are swamped by what comes before or after. Most of the action sequences make absolutely no sense (the horse jumping bit) or are meant to play for laughs and are simply unfunny (the fire truck chase.) This is a movie where a woman is running on the ground and manages to get scooped up by baddies chasing her in a freaking zeppelin. A bit of free advice; if you find yourself on foot being chased by a zeppelin, a quick step to the right or the left ought to do the trick. Zeppelins are not known for their ability to corner tightly. Glen gives us detours involving Russians and audiotapes that take forever to develop with minimal pay-off. There are clichés from an elevator crashing to the ground seconds after characters escape to a drawbridge that is jumped by the chased but foils the pursuers. All the while Bond is dangling off this and that like a ragdoll in the wind. An example off all of the above rolled into one ugly mess; Bond has to save the girl from San Francisco’s City Hall before it’s burnt to the ground. Carrying her fireman style slung on his back, Bond makes his way to the roof as fire trucks arrive and a crowd gathers. We get a shot of a park bench across the street from city hall and see a drunk bum out of central casting. Bottle in hand, he is awaken by the chaos and looks across the street. As we cut from shots of Bond carrying the woman down a ladder on his back to fire fighters fighting the blaze to on lookers gasping and ohhhhing and ahhhing, we for some reason keep coming back to this drunk, watching the goings on in wide eyed amazement. At one point, Bond slips down one rung and the drunk drops his bottle. When Bond finally gets to the bottom, the faceless crowd cheers over the Duran Duran theme song being played triumphantly on horns. We never see the bum again. Why was he the surrogate for the people of the Bay Area? Was the experience mean to change his life? Did he run out and join the San Francisco Fire Department? Did he move into the burnt down city hall where he squatted for the next few years? Did he piss on a fire fighters leg? Did he drop to his knees and praise Jesus? We have no clue. This bum was made to be a big deal and literally zero happens with him. This is a microcosmic of the entire film. There are several characters that are introduced and dropped with no real flow or pacing. All they do is break up the action and then disappear without any real meaning for their existence. It’s like the editor traded in his Steenbeck for a blender.
Reported Box-office: $49,667,000 USA and $152,400,000 worldwide. Not a bust but down considerably from the $57,403,139 USA $187,500,000 worldwide numbers for Octopussy. While Sly Stallone was redefining what it meant to be an action hero in Rambo II and Rocky IV (#2 and #3 at the box office in 1985) Bond found himself sandwiched between Chevy Chase in Fletch (#12) and European Vacation (#14) for good old lucky #13. No mater how you slice it, this was the worst return on investment in Bonds 23 year history. In fact, the past few films have been soft at the box office and getting worse. Like many icons from the 1960’s, Bond was lost in 1980’s and didn’t truly rediscover his stride until the 90’s. (See also Neil Young, pre Untouchables (1987) Sean Connery, women who don’t shave, Charles Manson) One last note, Dolph Lundgren, who played Ivan Drago in Rocky IV has a blink and you’ll miss it role as KGB agent Venz in this movie.
sport of skiing that didn’t come ONLY in neon. You absolutely had no chose if you hit the slopes between ’84 and ’89 than to have some neon somewhere on your body. Anyway, a woman unzips her shirt to revile the films title which is clever I guess, and then amongst the neon is a fire and ice motif as chicks with Gene Simmons eye make-up (in neon) dance and do their thing.
loud, EON has a hit song full of energy from a super popular band that was record for this movie! Stick the Duran Duran tune in there if you need something. I think, think, this was all supposed to play has funny, and perhaps 1985 moviegoers were slapping their parachute paint cover knees, but I seriously doubt it. It’s simply not funny. So, to recap; we have third rate rip off performing a reference that makes no scene and stops the film dead while simultaneously sucking all the cool out of anything Bond maybe doing and is so unfunny as to be cringe worthy. Sadly, you can take the last sentence and apply it to 85% of this film. The one thing this open got right; it lets us know exactly what we’re in for.
entire film unfolds, which is to say it goes all over the place while standing still. Wouldn’t MI6’s equestrian expert, one who can quickly get himself and Bond an invite to this exclusive auction, have known about said event? This means Bond traveled all the way to Paris for nothing. Well, not nothing. If he didn’t go to Paris we wouldn’t get the fishing hook murder, the Eiffel Tower base jump, or the split car case scene. And why the hell do we care about the horse racing mystery in the first place? This is a very long walk away from that whole Russian’s steeling microchips thing that got 003 killed wouldn’t you say?
British secrete service … license to kill … extremely dangerous; Walken puts forth a little snort and giggle as if he can’t believe his good fortune to have been matched with such a skilled adversary. He has one more scene with Grace Jones that is note worthy but that’s kind of it. Much hay is made about Walken being the first Oscar winner (Best Supporting Actor for Deer Hunter) to play a Bond villain but they don’t do much with him and his talents are pretty much wasted. Perhaps because of Max’s ridiculous back-story, the writers had no idea who Zorin was or what to do with him. I’m sure Walken had no clue. It’s just one more missed opportunity in a film chock full of em.
Villain’s Coolest Accessory/ Trait: You mean besides being a steroid pumped, psychotic, KGB, capitalist, Jewish, billionaire, jockey? Well, I’d go with the hair. That blond dye job just screams “I’m crazy!” If you saw this hair on the subway, you would think “that’s something,” and then say something. The other interesting thing about old Max is he has more gadgets then Bond. He retrofit his 17th century stables with a huge cargo lift; good for transporting horses underground to conduct steroid experiments in private. The way the drug gets into the horse is thanks to an implant that holds the drug until it’s administered by the push of a button hidden a jockey’s whip or a gentleman’s cane. You would think the two devices would be able to talk to each other via a simple radio wave an you’d be correct, but somehow a microchip is involved and waalaa, the horses and Silicon Valley are connected. Weak sauce. Zorin, mad genius that he is, had the forethought to rig his steeple chase course with gates that can be raised and lower at the push of button in case, say, he’s ever on the course and being chased by a British agent. Zorin also has a camera hidden behind a gorgeous mirror in his office. This camera is hooked up to a device with advance face recognition software that reminds us how cool it is when stuff in Bond movies that seemed outlandish is commonplace 25 years later. Much ink has been spilled pointing out how similar Zorin and Auric Goldfinger’s plot for taking over the world are but I see the two as kindred sprits when it comes to large three-dimensional maps. Both baddies just can’t wait to get a room full of men to watch as they pull the maps out of the floor and dramatically spell out their plans for world domination. In fact, both men as so proud of these maps that if someone in the room doesn’t care for the presentation, they are killed off immediately; Goldfinger’s detractor in a industrial car compactor, Zorin’s by being dropped from a blimp via a trick staircase. The blimp itself is quite a nifty gadget that when deflated can look just like a run-of-the-mill-motor-home and with one push of a button becomes a high speed air-to-ground kidnapping device.
over the top and leading to this moment. The graphic slaughter in the first act of Saving Private Ryan (1997) brings home the horrors of D-Day and in a larger scene, war. Seeing Zorin kill hundreds by drowning and shooting has zero value and is beyond gratuitous. It draws attention to itself for all the wrong reasons because it has no context within the film and even less in the James Bond canon at large. It doesn’t even add to Zorin’s badassness, it’s just shoves more garbage into this ass bad film.
Not because helium is flammable you see (it’s not) but because it a bad idea to fumble dynamite when your in a enclosed container a few hundred feet off the ground. Lastly there is Scarpine who besides having a neato scar, looking like a soccer hooligan, and shooting up rooms full of men really serves no purpose.
Bond Girl’s Name: Stacey Sutton. What? We go from Octopussy to Stacey Sutton. There’s not middle ground here folks? As we discussed above, she took over an oil company from dear old granddad, studied geology in college and then…Zorin! Despite her credentials she spends the entire film saying the most moronic things and is not one bit of help in cracking the case. When she isn’t talking she’s simply a girl on Bonds arm and not the sexiest one at that. With her blond feathered hair she looks like every girl I went to school with in the 1986 or every housewife in the greater Milwaukee metro area in 2006. Considering the devastatingly sexy Grace Jones is over on the other side I’d say Bond got the short end of the stick in this adventure.
M: M and his Soviet counterpart, General Gogol get some of the best lines in the film. After briefing Bond on the microchip deal, M looks at the three piece suit sporting 007 and tells him to “get properly dressed.” A funny line because he his always so. General Gogol gets to yell at Zorin “nobody leaves the KGB!” and also gets the biggest laugh in the film. After all is said and done and Bond is still thought to be dead, Gogol shows up at Universal Exports to present “The Order of Lenin for Comrade Bond. The first time ever awarded to a non-Soviet citizen.” M seems perplexed “I would think the KGB would applaud the destruction of Silicon Valley?” “On the contrary Admiral” the giggle Gogol responds “where would Russian research be without it.” This is funny, and we could have cut to Bond in the bath here keeping Moneypenny out of it. There is also the MI6 equestrian expert Sir Godfrey Tibbett who is an interesting enough character and presents a good comic foil for Moore. And for the record, when he was running around the stables at night in a black leather jacket I was reminded of John Belushi sneaking around campus in Animal House (1978).
Felix Leiter: Having given up on Felix after his rather sold performance in Live and Let Die the CIA sent Chuck Lee who was played by David “I go first Indy” Yip of Temple of Doom (1984) fame. Since it’s not Felix we can assume the CIA agent will serve the same purpose as a red shirt on an USS Enterprise away team and sure enough poor old Lee gets it before we really got to know him. As always, the rules from Zombieland (2009) are wise to keep in mind at all times and not just during the end of days. After all, if Lee followed rule # 31 (Check the back seat) he would still be with us today. And that goes double for Sir Godfrey Tibbett.
Bond Timepiece: None which is better than the digital crap we’ve dealt with the last few films.
Every story point, location, character, line of dialog, costume, etc. etc is a choice. And then within those choices there are hundreds of more choices made by hundreds of very talent people working very hard to put out a film that they will be proud of and that audiences will enjoy. I have such appreciation for everything these craftsmen and women do. Added to which I have a nearly bottomless reservoir of good will for James Bond. I’m willing to overlook a lot, especially when everyone involved is working to get it right. But here, the entire crew just made bad, lazy, and all together wrong choices across the board. It gives me no pleasure to rip this thing up, but ripped up it must be. Octopussy may have been lacking on the plot front but it was fun as hell and everyone involved seemed to be having a blast. A View to a Kill is dreary drudgery that’s as much fun as the debt ceiling debates. No one involved seems to give a toss, almost like they are punching the time clock and looking forward to time off. Let’s just stick Bond on the screen, have him do something outrageous, and call it a day. The audience will feast on anything we feed ‘em. How else can you explain a movie where a cat food bowl with “pussy” written on it passes as wit? And I didn’t even get into the fifteen minutes of painful keystone cops antics. It was right about the point when half a dozen cop cars were falling off a rising draw bridge that I called bullshit on the entire affair. I simply gave up. Why not? 
The crew gave up on this puppy long before I did. Grace Jones is the only one even trying and she got labeled a diva for her efforts. When I finally got done watching I felt duped, cheated, like a sucker. “Step right up, step right up, see the most famous action hero of all time James Bond….” Only Roger Moore was right, this was not James Bond. It’s truly a bummer that this is how Moore and Maxwell leave the stage. By the end of the film, I got the feeling that even Glen and crew knew they had a clunker on their hands. For the first time ever, the end credits don’t give us the title of the next Bond movie, they simply promise “James Bond Will Return.” Well, that’s good news. He sure as hell wasn’t here for this crap fest. I truly hoped I would never have to issue this rating at Blog, James Blog but A View to a Kill earned every last drop.
Title: Octopussy
Film Length: 2 Hours 11 minutes
throws everything he’s got up onto the screen, including the kitchen sink. As you’d expect, some of it sticks, some of it doesn’t, but man it’s exciting to watch. The movie is fast. At one point, Bond is involved in a pedicab chase through the streets of India and a crowd has gathered to watch. They look left to right and back again in unison, as if watching a tennis match. It’s the perfect metaphor for the film audience. As Bond is thrust from one action set piece to the next, we crane our necks to keep up. But this is not a modern slash and burn, shaky cam sense of speed. As he always has, Glen proves himself to be a master at assembling action sequence. I was planning on dissecting one of these scenes, the fight in Octopussy bedroom, but after three pages I realized I’m not teaching Film 101 at the local county college. Lets just say the editing, pacing, and camera angles always keep us in the moment and establish a true sense of space so we feel as if we are able to understand exactly who is where doing what to whom. This is no small thing and it’s such a treat to see action sequences that are not just story boarded but crafted with love and logic. It’s so rare to see this in action films today that the whole thing seems almost quant. Add the fact that as early as 1983 directors knew their movies were going to get killed by pan and scan when converted to the 3 by 4 ratio of home video releases and many filmmakers just gave up trying to use the full screen and proper editing to tell a story. I always think of Armageddon (1998) when it comes to an easy illustration of how not to make an action sequence. I know the movie is crazy old by now but I always return to it because it was the first time I remember literally throwing my hands up while sitting in a theater. I challenge anyone to tell me who is doing what where for the entire finally 1/3 of that film. It’s like a game of 52 pick-up, just throw images at the audience and leave it to them to sort through and make sense of it. That not a movie, it’s an assault on the eyes and brain. But I digress. The point being, Glen cares and even gives Bond fans a bunch of winks and inside jokes. We get a pidgin flying out of a window to startle Bond while he scaling a wall, much like the pidgin did when he was climbing the cliff in the previous film (I saw an interview with Glen at some point where he said he tried to get a shot of a pidgin into all his films, like a trademark akin to Hitchcock appearing in all his films. Something to keep an eye out for going forward.) We get the guy seeing an impossible Bond stunt who then stares at his bottle gag. There are reference to classic Connery moments like the eyeball reflection in Goldfinger (1964), a car on two wheels like Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Octopussy leads a circus of woman performers much like Pussy Galore lead a flying circus of female pilots, (why must women have “pussy” as part of their name to have authority in these films?) and while there is not a fist fight in a sleeping car, we do get a classic and super exciting train battle. Glen even gets meta; when Bond arrives in India, he identifies his contact, disguised as a snake charmer, when he hears the notes to the James Bond Theme played on the flute. “That’s a charming tune.”
Reported Budget: $27,500,000 (estimated) $4 million of which went directly into Moore’s pocket which I suspect EON saw as a bargain considering the 1983 release landscape. At twenty-one years old, Bond was no longer the “A game” in town. I’ve never seen anything to confirm this, but I would wager Broccoli was wise enough to know he wasn’t in the same league as Return of the Jedi (1983). Likewise, he wasn’t going after the same 13-year-old girl audience as Flashdance (1983) (the first Simpson/Bruckheimer mega-production.) However, there was one film hitting theaters that was directly in Broccoli’s crosshairs. It was imperative, from both a business and personal standpoint, that this one particular Warner Bothers release be demolished by Octopussy critically and more importantly at the box-office. While Broccoli was courting Brolin, he had to have known that in order to win this battle, Roger Moore was essential. Cubby needed a familiar face in the role of Bond, since the man who invented Bond for the big screen was once again going to don a hairpiece and play 007. Way back in 1965 Kevin McClory co-produced Thunderball (1965) and somehow, someway got his hands on the rights to make a “sequel” with license to use the Bonds character. EON and UA have always guarded the rights to Bond more tightly then FOX News guards the GOP and Broccoli sued for copyright infringement. This lead to years of legal battles that ended up, among other things, holding up The Spy Who Loved Me for years and sucking up millions in legal fees, almost sinking Broccoli right around the time the was putting more money into Moonraker (1979) than any other Bond film. Finally, by 1983 EON had lost and McClory paid a kings ransom to Sean Connery to reprise the role of James Bond in the aptly titled Never Say Never Again(1983).
Why is there an equestrian event happening in spiting distance of this top secrete military hanger? Shut-up and watch the movie kid. Act II, our hero tied up in the back of jeep, surrounded by men with guns. Escape is impossible, but what is that? Here comes the lady driving a convertible with a horse trailer hitched to it. A convertible sports car with a trailer hitch you ask and I again ask you to lay off any and all questions regarding horses, OK? The lady pulls up next to the jeep, shows a little leg, and catches the eye of the two men charged with guarding Bond. A quick move by our hero and the two guys are up in the air, their parachutes having been deployed and pulling them off the back of the jeep. Safely in the car with the lady Bond then forces the jeep off the road and into a chicken coop. I found it interesting that Bond let all four of these men live, perhaps out of respect for fellow oglers of woman. Bond kisses his rescuer, telling her “Ill see you in Miami” which I assume is coded “spy speak” for we will fornicate when I get to Florida. End Act II. Having been rescued, Act III is about completing the mission that was foiled so long ago back in Act I. The horse’s ass in the trailer rises and out shoots Bond in a single-seat spitfire of plane known in aviation circles as the Acrostar BD-5. As soon as Bond is airborne he sees a heat-seeking missile in his “objects are closer than they appear” rearview mirror. Three years before Maverick, Goose and the Ice Man would rip-up the friendly skies with F-16’s (not to mention melt hearts with karaoke renditions of Righteous Brothers tunes) Bond was flying under bridges and over clouds in simply breathtaking aerial shots as the missile bears down on him. This would cause panic in a mere mortal but Bond sees an opportunity to turn sidewinders into lemon-aid. That is, after all, why he gets paid the homerun money. In a stunning move that makes the helicopter-in-the-warehouse trick from the last film look like amateur hour, Bond barnstorms the hanger and bursts out the back door, sending the missile into his original target to kill two birds with one stone; he evaded the missile while destroying the original target. As the building explodes in an incredible ball of flame behind him, Bond flies off into the sunset, and scene, But wait, a coda! The jet is low on fuel. Bond makes an emergence landing on country road and comes to a stop directly in front of a gas station. Setting the humorous light-hearted tone for the rest of film, Moore waits a beat, looks at the attendant, and smirks. “Filler up please.” This high octane set piece, by far the most jam packed and, one would assume, expensive Bond open, was actually scripted for Moonraker. However, it had to be shelved due to lack of funds, partly because of the big bucks space station set at the end of the film but also because the money originally set aside for the sequence ended up going to legal bills to pay for the battle with Kevin McClory. It’s ironic (don’t you think?) that just like Bond got a twofer in his escape/competition of the mission with his single barnstorm move, the barnstorm open was implemented by EON to take on whatever McClory came up with to open his Bond film after being shelved four years earlier because of McCloy’s film.
scenery, he vomits it back out and dances a jig on the remains. When his plan for world donation is shot down by the “old men who lack vision” he retunes to his chair to sulk like a three year-old who was told to go to bed without dessert. That is, until he decides to take things into his own hands Whaaa-haaaa ha ha ha ha! Orlov is by far the most fun and over the top Bond villain in some time and I wish he had a larger role. The fact the he and Bond only have one fleeting scene together is tragedy.
Villain’s Lair: Two of the three baddies get their own Indian palaces, neither of which would look out of place sitting next to the Bellagio on Las Vegas Boulevard. The pool at Octopussy’s floating palace has more hot chicks lounging around it than Rehab the Hard Rock on a Friday night. The spacious rooms, the floor to ceiling windows, the endless balconies and the perfectly appointed furnishings and are all out of a storybook but are also grounded in reality as many of the sets in the past few Bonds have been. She also has a bitchin private train car that comes complete with a masseuse. Kamal has the Monsoon Palace which sits high above the city and is equally impressive, thought the talent level in the female department is far below the high standard set in the house across town. Orlov on the other hand seems to never be out of his uniform and exists only in war rooms and shady underground forger workshops.
Villain’s Asides/ Henchmen: All the asides in this film are thinner than one dimensional and distinguishable from other characters thanks to (a) a signature uniform and (b) a signature action. We’ve got the evil knife tossing twins Tomax and Xamot AKA Mischka and Grischka who loomed very large in my memory of this film but in reality spend very little time on screen. These two use more hairspray than any Bond girl and work for … I don’t know exactly. They do a blind folded knife throwing act in Octopussy’s circus, they dutifully kill 009 but they take orders from both Kamal and Orlov so it’s unclear who wanted the agent offed in the first place. Gobinda on the other hand is firmly in Kamal’s corner. The physical heavy to Kamal’s intellectual baddie, he’s kind of a turban sporting Jaws who’s able to crush dice with his bare hands and has expert balance whether navigating the exterior of a speeding train or a spinning plane. For her part Octopussy surrounds herself with nothing but woman, “runaway’s mostly,” and trains them in the ancient arts of smuggling, circus acrobatics, and sieging Indian Palaces like an Orc army at Helms Deep. This bevy of beauties dress in form fitting red jumpsuits reminiscent of Dr. Suisse’s Thing 1 and Thing 2.
is approached by the maitre d’. “Your table is ready.” “I didn’t reserve one…” “Your guest is waiting.” When Bond approached the table, he finds Magda who thanks to some unfortunate framing appears to have her breast resting in two water glasses. When Bond sits down he does not engage in the typical song and dance but cuts right to the nut. “What does Kamal want?” “The egg or your life.” At this very moment, both parties know they will be sleeping together later in the evening, and that by morning the egg will be in Kamal’s hands. The rest is simply going through the motions but what the hell, we’re here, the moonlight is beautiful, and the wine aint so bad either. I really enjoyed how Moore and Wayborn handled this scene, the unspoken understand was broadcast expertly. One more note about these ladies; other than the panic upon learning a nuclear bomb is 10 second away from going off, neither of these Bond girls is ever in the thankless role of the victim. They kick ass in a fight, stand up to the men, and yes, Octopussy must be saved by Bond in the end, but she never comes across as a damsel in distress. She plays the scene more like a partner that needs to be bailed out this time, and then she will have her partners back the next round. As my Great Uncle King would have said, “I like those gals, they’ve got spunk.”
Bond Girls Best Pick-up Line: Bond “What is that?” Magda “That’s my little Octopussy.” They are talking about her tattoo.
someone? This would be like Wolverine sucking in his claws and shooting his opponent with a ray gun. It’s completely out of character. Anyway, Bond and Gobinda end up fighting on top of a Lear jet at 25,000 feet. Don’t worry, it makes no sense in the film either. Bond grabs the antenna on top of the plane and pulls it back, lets it go, and smacks Gobinda in the face, sending him hurling into the mountains below. Bond also had the forethought to cut the fuel line while monkeying around out on the plane’s wing so Kamal, the pilot, crashes the plane into the side of a mountain. Action sequences are Glen’s bread and butter and almost every one in this movie is expertly crafted, very exciting, and quite memorable, save one.
and save the great man his dignity? Things improve as Q once again goes out into the field, this time serving as a lookout for Bond. During this assignment, Q is lucky to dodge a bullet, or should I say Black n Decker yo-yo, that fell his counterpart. (More on that below) By the end of the film, Q is simply jubilant. He gets to pilot a balloon into the middle of a battle. Bond “I trust you can handle this contraption Q?” Q “It goes on hot air.” Bond “Oh, then you can.” And then when the balloon lands, Q is surround by Octopussy’s harem and even gets a little flirting time for good measure. See, it’s not just Bond who has all the fun.
Felix Leiter: Ladies and gentlemen, if you will please direct your attention to your program. For tonight’s performance the part of Felix Leiter will be played by Vijay who is played by Vijay Amritraj. Amritraj joins us while on break from the pro tennis circuit for this, his first appearance film. Producers use the casting stunt as another opportunity to get meta. Vijay’s character, Vijay, is an agent who’s cover is working as a tennis pro at Kamal’s private club “What have you learned so far?” Bond asks, “Well, my back hand has improved.” He even assaults a baddie by whacking him with a racket. Compare to Felix “the wet blanket” Leiter, Vijay is the life of the party. When he and Bond are being chased James announces, “I think we have company.” “No problem” Vijay responds “this is a company car.” In fact, “no problem” is Vijay’s mantra. If Bond asked for the moon Vijay would smile, say “No Problem” and promptly go about getting the moon. He’s a perfect sidekick to Bond and the two function almost like partners in a buddy-cop film. However, this is a partnership not meant to last. Poor old Vijay was taking over watchman duties from Q when he is grabbed and restrained by three men. A fourth, none other than Kamal’s right hand Gobinda, appears above him, staring down with those piercing eyes. Even worse for Vijay, he’s yielding the deadly saw blade yo-yo. A quick flick of the wrist, a horrible “snicked” sound, and a quick cut to birds flying out of a tree and we know that Vijay is no more. Game, set, match.
Best One Liners/Quips: This films chuck full of ‘em. “No ma’am, I’m with the economy tour,” “Having problems keeping it up Q,” “You better stick this back yourself” and even a perfectly time “umffff” when Bond is hiding in a body bag hoping to pass as a cadaver. But my favorite has to be when Bond comes across a tiger in jungle. The thing jumps out in front of Bond causing even the great 007 much concern. The look on Moore’s face is a perfect blend of fear, of shock, of annoyance, and of what the hell do I do next. Bond squares to the giant cat and though clinched teeth his hisses “SITTTTTTT – A!” and the tiger promptly obeys.
Number of Drinks 007 Consumes: 3. Bond’s evening with Magda starts with champagne pool side and ends with “a loving cup” in bed. When 007 breaks into Octopussy’s room she shakes and serves a martini before Bond even makes the request.
puts on the white tux when it’s time to carouse the casino floor. Our hero finds Kamal playing with the Major, who at present has the upper hand and giddily announces “you’ll have a job beating that.” “I feel lucky” the slippery Kamal counters “shall we double?” The Major takes half a beat, thinks his opponent mad, and agrees to 20,000 rubies. Kamal promptly hits his sixes to win the game. “It’s all in the wrist” he announces not knowing Bond spotted him introducing dirty dice into the game. “Shall we have another go?” “Yes” the Major replies “you luck has got to run out sometime.” (It should also be noted the Major is into Kamal for 200,000 rubies.) In short order the Major has once again backed Kamal into a corner and once again the prince wants to make it interesting, this time to the tune of 100,000 rubies. The Major feels his testicles crawl back into his inguinal canal and forfeits the game. “I can’t accept, not with your luck.” “I would have taken that double myself” Bond announces in one of his better introductions to a villain. Kamal, in black, arches his eyebrow and gestures to the empty seat across the table. “Why don’t you take the Majors position Mister ….” “Bond, James Bond. Thank you I’d be delighted” say Moore with a shit-eaten grin on his face screaming Ohhhhhh, you are going down BITCH! Game on. Have I mentioned I love when Bond gambles? Right, so the hero in white, the villain in black, the villain thinking he’s got this thing cinched with his loaded dice and the hero well aware the villain is cheating. Sitting back in his chair looking like a man who knows he can’t lose, Kamal casually rolls his double six. “It’s not such a good double to accept after all.” Bond does a little Hollywooding and swallows hard before picking up the betting cube to double. Kamal, not quite believing someone could be such a rube accepts. “You can only win with a double six. The stake is 200,000 rubies, do you have the cash?” Everything leading up this moment has been coming up Kamal, so when Bond places the very same Fabergé egg that Kamal had won at auction on the table as collateral, well… it’s the Gillette game changer and everyone in the room knows it. Kamal, for his part, keeps his poker face completely intact. “Play Mr. Bond, you need a great deal of luck to get out of this” states the cocky Kamal in a drastic overplay of his hand. Bond, who was shaking his own tumbler and about to roll dramatically stops and looks around until focusing on Kamal. “Luck? Well then I shall use player’s privilege and use your lucky dice.” And with that he grabs Kamal’s tumbler. The two lock eyes as Bond starts his roll. “It’s all in the wrist” Bond says without a hint of sarcasm and rolls. While never breaking eye contact with Kamal to look at the dice Bond announces “double sixes, fancy that, 200,000 rubies.” By this time half the population of India has gathered around the table so Kamal has no chose but to pay the man. He gestures for his checkbook when Bond pipes up “I prefer cash.” “Spend the money quickly Mr. Bond” and with that the gauntlet has been thrown down. As Bond leaves the table he passes the giggling Major and declares “It’s not really in the wrist you know.” A complete and utter take down on all fronts; never has there been such a decimation of an opponent. Any other man who received such a shellacking 
would slink home, crawl into a bottle of Jim Beam, and never go within 10 miles of a casino for the rest of his life. Kamal, however, is arrogant enough to think this is simply a bump in the road and continues to plow ahead like the Titanic in the northern Atlantic.
Bonds Special Abilities Displayed: You get the feeling that if Bond walked into M’s office and the boss man asked “What do you know about Babe Ruth 007?” Bond would cock his brow and respond “The sultan of swat sir? Born in Baltimore, George Herman Ruth Jr. started his Major League career pitching for the Red Sox where he threw seventeen innings including a Game 1 shutout for an ERA of 1.06 in the 1918 World Series before being sold to the Yankees where the three time MVP shifted to right field and hit .349 while slugging an unheard of .711 in twelve seasons to become what many consider the best to ever play the game. Hence the so called ‘Curse of the Bambino’ which wasn’t broken until Boston swept St. Louis in four on October 27th 2004. Why do you ask?” Well, that’s what he does in Octopussy but with Fabergé eggs. “Top marks 007!” He also manages to (deep breath) use slight of hand to steel an item from Sotherby’s, balance Spiderman like on the sides of buildings, avoid death while being hunted by an entire village not only from the men but also spiders, crocks, snakes, leaches, lizards and one big tiger, impersonated a dead man, a clown and gorilla, hang Spiderman like on the side of a speeding train, steal a car, break onto an army base, disarm a nuclear bomb, hang Spiderman like on a Lear jet, make love while in traction, and book a flight to Delhi before it is even official he is going. It’s this last thing that truly makes Bond Bond; he is always, without exception, one step ahead of everyone else. This is to say nothing of Bonds every growing list of stuff he can pilot, sail, operate, jockey and drive from point A to point B. In The Man with the Golden Gun we saw Bond
Title: For Your Eyes Only
For my money, the kick works. It fits in the context of the film and considering the baddies sins, Bond is more than justified. Early in the film, Bond and a lovely woman are taking a morning stroll on the beach after a romantic evening together. This idyllic serenity is broken when several dune buggies burst onto the beach and the cliff diving baddie runs over the woman, killing her, while Bond is defenseless to stop it. This ladies death is given even more weight when you consider the opening shot of the film, Tracy Bond’s headstone inscribe with the last words she heard, “We have all the time in the world.” Remember, Bond witnessed her murder as well, and could do nothing save his bride. All of this had to be playing out in Bond’s head when he gave the final satisfactory kick. If I may return to the Ramones for a moment, one of the beautiful things about da bruthads was how they could blend humor and violence, often in the same breath. “Beat on the brat with a baseball bat” is funny the same way Bugs Bunny getting it over on Elmer Fudd is funny. For Your Eyes Only pulls off the same trick; even with Bonds harder edge, Moore’s trademark humor is not lost. In fact, it’s as sharp as ever and Sir Roger is even willing to make himself the butt of the joke. Moore is quoted as saying he felt was getting a “little long in the tooth” at this point and he was “embarrassed” to be on screen with his 23 year old co-star, Lynn-Holly Johnson. So, when she shows up in Bond’s bathtub (this guy has a habit of finding bathing women in his hotel rooms) and jumps into bed, 007 uncharacteristically declines. “Why don’t you get your clothes on and Ill buy you ice-cream.” Again, this is correct. I just can’t see Bond, at any age, hooking up with a girl who skis in a cowboy hat and pink ear muffs.
This Bond gets his hands dirty by teaming up with smugglers on midnight raids; he is not eating cucumber sandwich and pheasant hunting with the villain. It’s a role you could see 1990’s era Bruce Willis or Harrison Ford playing. The upshot; twice during the film I felt like Bond was in real danger, something I haven’t felt since Connery’s heyday. But what Glen should get the biggest props for is pulling of a plot twist that is so simple, yet completely unexpected, because shockingly, it’s never been done in any of the previous 11 Bond films.
Reported Budget: $28,000,000 estimated. For all the credit I just heaped on Glen for his re-framing of our hero, the cold hard numbers necessitated, at least in part, that Bond be pulled back. After going to the stars, short of driving his Lotus to Venus, there was nowhere else for Bond to go but back to earth. The rookie director was told in no uncertain terms that he would not have the open checkbook that lead to the $34,000,000 budget for Moonraker (1979), a film that proved that too much money can be just that, too much money. If you’ve ever seen a movie with the words “Jerry” and “Bruckheimer” side by side in the credits, then you know exactly of what I speak.
separated from the pilot by one of those Plexiglas partitions you find in taxi cabs? And who is the bald fellow cackling to himself? Could it be???? YES, it’s Blofeld. As I’ve said before, I know I saw all these films at one time or another but I only remember bits and pieces and they all kind of blend together in my memory. Since beginning this project I’ve gone through great pains to avoid any kind of looking forward and this is one of the reasons why; I was sincerely thrown for a loop at the sight of Bond’s old nemeses, banged up and confined to a wheelchair, no doubt thanks to that business on the oil tanker a full 10 years ago??? This guy takes longer to come off the DL than Carl Pavano. (You’re welcome Yankee fans.) Oh well, still quite a shock. Blofeld kills his pilot and takes over flying remote control airways as the London skyline becomes Pink Floyd’s Animals album cover, sans the pig. Bond works his way outside the chopper and around into the cockpit to find wires with the red tape on em. What could those be for? F it, lets cut em. And not a moment to soon. Blofeld has flown the chopper into a warehouse where the chopper blades come with-in inches of hitting the ceiling and walls. The shots of a helicopter flying inside a building are some of the more impressive I’ve seen in film. Not to bore regular readers but this is just one more piece of film making that demonstrates things were better in the good old pre CGI days. There is simply no way anyone can convince me this open would look better/ be more exciting/ carry the same impact if it were done with the aid of CGI. (And don’t get me started on the newest trend in film. Let’s just say that if I’m required to put on additional eyewear to view new Bond flick, I’m official declaring jihad on 3D. I mean, what would they call it, Bond 23D? Oh Jesus, what have I done….) Now in control of the chopper and proving once again that man has yet to create a form of transportation that Bond can’t expertly drive, 007 flies out of the warehouse and chases Blofeld like he’s Cary Grant in North by Northwest (1959); that is if Cary Grant were bald, in a neck brace and had a cat on his lap while escaping in a motorized wheelchair which, come to think of it, is one of the few motorized contraption we have yet to see Bond’s skills at maneuvering. In a move that must of had the production crew in stitches, Bond mounts Blofeld’s wheelchair on one of the helicopter skids and flies off. This is one of the cooler and unpredictable turning of the tables I can think of in a movie as Blofeld suddenly goes from a scheming madman to a blathering baby, begging for mercy. Not happening. Jimmy B finally has the opportunity to avenge his wives murder and to do so all our hero needs to do is simply tip the chopper forward. Off slips Blofeld, plummeting into a 20 story smokestack while shouting his final words “Mr. Booooonnnnnnnnddddd…….” And with that one act James not only finally gets the one that always got away but he simultaneously kills of the “old” Bond. It’s the closing of a chapter and Bond can move on, unencumbered. The only loose end to tie up, what happened to Blofeld’s cat?
In the Greek underworld he is known as the dove.” Bond is given this bit of information as he dines in the casino owned by the very man of whom they speak, who also happens to be seated at a table just yards away. We as an audience know Columbo is bad because (A) Bonds contact said so (B) much like Nixon, has he own building bugged, (C) like every bad guy in every Bond he has a huge base of operation (the casino) (D) he is filthy rich to the point where money is no object and finally (F) he stages a fight with his woman in front of Bond so Bond will follow her. Sure as day follows night Bond beds the lady, and the next morning the lady is killed by the white dove assassin Locque and Bond is kidnapped and taken to the office of one Columbo, who is about to explain his diabolical scheme. This is all right out of the Bond bad guy handbook and we as an audience recognize all the signposts thanks to our long history with Jimmy B. For Your Eyes Only is able to take all this history and turn it on its ear. And in a very well acted scene (containing easily the most dialog in the film) this “simple” plot is able to pull a “simple” trick that in a non-Bond film would have been routine but here is a revelation. “What should I do with you?” Columbo asks Bond in perhaps the best accent I’ve heard on film in some time. He then tells Bond the fix is in and that H.M.S.S. has been duped. He, Columbo, is in fact the good guy, Locque works for Kristatos, and God only knows what’s up with that whole white salve thing. Bond must now make a choice; who to believe? This is the stuff of almost all good espionage stories but Bond has never encountered such a situation. Why trust Columbo? After all, he’s got the lair, he’s got lady, and he practically twirls his black mustache when he speaks. He fits the profile of every previous Bond villain and Kristatos on the other hand fits the profile of ever other Bond buddy. As a sign of good faith, the pistachio nut munching Columbo hands Bond his gun, and it is loaded. “Come to the docks with me tonight, I’ll show you.” Like any good gambler, Bond must make a decision based on all the info he’s gathered so far. Perhaps he remembers that Kristatos’ car gave him a ride to the countesses place last night and then lo and behold, come morning the beach is crawling with baddies. Perhaps 007 is also remembering even early in the evening he won a cool million at the Baccarat table by not playing the odds, but playing a hunch and riding a steak of good luck. Armed with this info, not to mention the gun in his hand, 007 correctly figures he is on a rush of good cards and decides to accept Columbo’s drink and invite for the midnight raid. It’s a thrilling change of pace to see Bond use his smarts and not just rely on his gun and gadgets galore. And wouldn’t you know it, Columbo is simply a sweetheart and that Ari Kristatos is not only working with the Soviets but he’s also trying to deflower that skater of his. White slavery indeed.
Villain’s Coolest Accessory/ Trait: One of the downsides to stripping the plot to its bare bones is little room if left to truly develop characters. While Columbo makes the most of his minimal screen time and fills out into an interesting person, Kristatos really is a blank slate defined only by his actions. But those actions, for the most part, are ruthless and quite badass.
Number of People 007 Kills: When the film opens with Jimmy B offing his long time nemeses in such a spectacular and unexpected way, you’ve got to figure the carnage in this film is going to be on the high side of things. Including good old Blofeld, Bond retires 12. Granted, not that high of a number by Bond standards but he gets mighty creative with some of em. Sure, during a warehouse raid he shoots two dudes, grenades another and violently tosses a forth into the sea. He also flips a dune buggy on top of a guy and throws another off a cliff after said guy tries to cut Bonds climbing line; all pretty standard. On the more creative front, Jimmy B attaches a detonator to the back of a diver’s helmet where he can’t possibly reach it. All the poor bastard can do is flap his arms about like the little brother in A Christmas Story (1983) and then boom. Speaking of boom, when a baddie breaks the window to Bond’s car, the thing instantly explodes in a moment that Glen claims had a 1981 New York City audience rolling in the allies. Auto theft was at an all time high in the city and I’m sure Gotham residents would have loved to have such an option on their cars. As for me, I was thinking what would Bond do if he lost his keys? After sticking a piece of lumber in the spokes of a motorcycle and sending the rider through a window, Bond is kind enough to place flowers on the corpse. To finish off the KGB baddie, Bond combines two of the above techniques; (A) throw the dude through a window after which he roles (B) off the cliff. In another surprise twist, Bond himself doesn’t finish off the head baddie, old man Kristatos. That honor goes to Columbo and his knife throwing skills.
Miss. Moneypenny: In a film where Bond has minimal toys, Moneypenny gets a gadget. When we first see Moneypenny she is putting on her face using a make-up kit and mirror hidden in her filing cabinet. Cool. We also see Bond toss his hat onto the hat rack, a first for Moore if I’m not mistaken and another reference to the Connery days. It’s also a little odd considering we never see Bond wearing a cap.
Q: “Forgive me father for I have sinned” Bond says when he enter the confessional. “That’s putting it mildly 007” responds the preacher, AKA Q. I live in Astoria Queens, home to the largest population of Greeks outside of Greece and there are several Greek Orthodox churches just blocks from my place. And I must say, while Bond has sported some dodgy disguises in the past, Q’s Greek Orthodox priest is spot on. Despite the small number of gadgets, Q has quite a presence in the film. His lab is chuck full of the typical good stuff like an arm cast that smash like Hulk (that will come in handy,) a umbrella that when rained upon closes and sticks knifes into holders neck (stinging in the rain,) but the coolest new toy is the identigraph. One of the many things that we take for granted now with the World Wide Web and memory clouds and smart phones is that we can get to the information housed in computers anywhere at anytime. In the past, one had to go to the correct terminal to get desired information. I remember being in the library and having to look up the card catalog on one machine, typing on a word processor on a second, and finding articles in periodicals on a third terminal (which used microfiche, which for all you kids who have never had the pleasure, was a total nightmare.) All three of these machines were in the same building but you could only use them for their specific purpose. IE you had to go to the computer that did the task you needed. In movies, this meant the astronauts had to go to a physical HAL in 2001 (1969). Even better for cinematic purpose, people would go into huge rooms with blinking lights to interface with the all powerful computer, like the crew of the Nostromo had to do in Alien (1979) to talk to “mother.” The identigraph is housed in a similar room deep in Q’s lab and is equipped with, for no reason at all except it looks cool, red lighting. There are also racks and racks of data holding devices, in this case, large white spools containing all the information on all the known criminals in the world. Bond and Q go to work on putting together a police sketch of Locque. After what must have been a very long time (Q and Bond both removed their suit jackets, the universal shorthand for burning the midnight oil) the two come up with Locque’s mug shot and file. I liked the identigraph, it was far out enough to be Bond but also close enough to realty that I’m sure police stations of today use a similar (and at this point far more advanced) program to make sketches of wanted suspects.
List of Gadgets: Bond is driving what appears to be the tricked out white Lotus from the previous two films but outside of the thing exploding we see none of its cool features. This was very much intentional Glen says on the DVD extras. The idea was to make Bond reliant on his own wits and in fact the destruction of his car is yet another way to separate this meaner, leaner Bond from his past. The only true gadget is a communication device, not a weapon. In the finally moments of the movie, bond gets a twitter message on his watch which displays the text like the news ticker in Times Square.
Number of Drinks 007 Consumes: 4 and not a martini, or any vodka for that matter, among the sprits. Bond joins Kristatos for dinner at Columbo’s casino before he knows who’s on what side (After all, <sung> “how was he to know, he was with the Russians too HEY!”) They sit and Bond orders ouzo for his pre dinner cocktail. When in Greece… But when Kristatos, Bond’s host for the evening it should be pointed out, makes a suggestion for the dinner wine, things go sideways. “May I suggest a white Ribolo from Catalonia, my home place?” Bond’s nose wrinkles up just slightly before he attempts to recover. “Well, if you forgive me, I find that a little too scented for my palate … I prefer the Theotaki Aspero.” Boom bitch! That would be like me meeting Bond and suggesting a Brooklyn Lager. “Forgive me, I find it a bit hoppy, I prefer the Yuengling myself.” No wonder Kristatos tries to have Bond killed, you don’t just slam a man’s suggestion for a drink, much less one from the dudes hometown, and get away with it? Shortly after, Bond is kidnapped by Columbo who offers James a whisky. Bond turns him down; a way of showing his distrust for the man and his motives. Columbo sees this as temporary set back “by tomorrow we will be good friends, let us drink to it.” After Bond gets his gun back he decides waiting to tomorrow is not necessary. His trust now completely in Columbo’s corner, he chugs away; ahhhh alcohol and firearms, the source of many a healthy friendship. A much more agreeable drinking partner is the Countess Lisl with whom Bond shares a bottle of bubbly and oysters while the two lounge on the couch.
Indeed, only and A-4 would improve Bond’s hand while all other cards will weaken it. Bond counters by saying “that is if you play the odds.” He then draws a 4 for the winning hand. The countess promptly splits, leaving Bunkie a million dollars poorer and with just a little bit of vomit in his mouth. Have I mentioned how much I love it when Bond plays cards?
later when Bond kicks the car off the cliff, I suspect most directors would have kept the teetering car as the focal point of the shot. Glen however pulls the camera back and places it at an angel so we see the surround country side which gives the cliff context. We feel like we are there and it adds to the power of the moment. There are countless examples like the above; the opening which features the derelict Beckton Gas Works which may or may not be the cover of Pink Floyd Animals but is where Kubrick shot scenes for Full Metal Jacket (1987) is amazing in its scoop. The night raid on the heroin smuggling operation takes place in a seaside shack that I would wager is actually somewhere in Greece. The monastery, a 15th century structure known as Hagia Triada, actually rests on a “Wild E Coyote” precipice and holds all the mystery and glamour of a typical Bond bad guy hideout but not the goofy hi tech lab room populated by faceless jumpsuit wearing minions. Not to mention the way one gets to the joint, in the film and in real life, is in a basket that ascends into a wooden shack hanging over a cliff. That is freaking cool and Glen makes the most of this unique location. The alpine village is the best “mountain ski town” we’ve seen since On Her Majesties Secrete Service (1969) and all of the skiing and Olympic stuff, shot in the northern Italian town of Cortina d’Ampezzo and the Dolomites mountains which hosted the 1956 Winter Games, is all simply beautiful. The additional locations around the Greek Island of Corfu which also plays stand-in for Spanish locations complete what is one of the better Bond films when it comes to taking the audience on a journey they will not soon forget.
who is not a baddie yet sees Bond more as an inconvenience, not a romantic interest. Between Margaret Thatcher with a cupboard that contains “All Brand” cereal to General Gogol laughing off the destruction of a device that could win him the cold war, this maybe the most political Bond yet, but it treats all of it in a light, matter-of-fact way. It’s at points quite silly; Bond learns the location of the much sought after A.T.E.C. from a talking parrot and also quite violent; the sinking of the St. Georges features men screaming and drowning in quite horrific ways. Glen balances all these elements well while giving us some of the best action we’ve had in a Bond film to date. I must admit, I feared the departure of Ken Adams and crew would be felt in a negative way but in fact the opposite is true. And that’s not speaking ill of those guys, they made Bond capital “B” Bond and created the most memorable, iconic images of the franchise. It’s just that like everyone one else, when you do something long enough the ideas get stale and it’s time for new blood. This movie is what I wanted from The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) in terms of stripping Bond down but it reminded me most of another Bond film. From the nuts and blots idea of beating the baddies to the prize, to the tougher Bond thinking on his feet with the minimal gadgets, from the Columbo character to the locations being more natural and the action feeling like part of those locations, I found myself thinking of From Russia With Love (1962) several times while watching. At this point in the Blog James Blog project, I have more films behind me than ahead and I can really see the push/pull pattern these movies are taking on. I kind think of From Russia With Love and Goldfinger (1964) as the gold standard (They are, after all, the only two movies so far to get the coveted seven martini glass rating.) Not only are they the best Bond movies, together they set off the pattern that has been repeating in one way or another since; the goofiness and gadgetry of Goldfinger was a reaction to offset the seriousness of From Russia With Love. All subsequent films have been some kind of attempt to mix and match what worked in those two very different ideas of what Bond should be. Some entries strike the balance expertly like The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and other end up a jumbled mess like Diamonds Are Forever (1971). And God only knows what they hell anyone was trying to do with You Only Live Twice (1967) but there you go. (The exception up to this point being On Her Majesties Secrete Service (1969) which just feels more and more like it was out of left field the further we go along, and I mean that in the best possible way.) For the first James Bond of the 80’s EON made a decidedly non-1980’s action film and came up with something closer to a gritty 70’s Dirty Harry film, ironic considering 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me provides the roadmap for glossy 80’s action heroes. Look, I love gadgets, I love the huge villain lairs, I love all the big stuff that is Bond, but I also love when the character can still be Bond while we get to see a different side of him. After Moonraker (1979) launched Bond into the wilderness, Glen and company took the reigns and put our beloved hero back on sold footing. For their first film, they put forth a clear vision of how they see James Bond and where they want him to go. While not a classic by any means, For Your Eye Only is a case study in how to keep a character that has been in 12 films in 19 years fresh without alienating long time fans.
Blog, James Blog 