James Bond movies have often had a predilection for the preposterous, but this was always tethered to the line that everything you see has been or could be achieved. In the world today we are sending seventy year olds into space, atomic weapons do disappear, satellite technology helps produce computer programed weaponry, stealth planes have been developed; these examples fit in with the more outlandish elements of previous Bond films. There are a few rare exceptions to the rule, You Only Live Twice contains a lot of them, but in Die Another Day there is an invisible car – and I cannot accept it. Not because I can’t see it happening (ha!ha!) but because the execution of the car’s invisibility is abysmal. And so is the remainder of this extremely thoughtless movie.
The premise of Die Another Day isn’t bad, but the writers pack in a tremendous ammount of plot for a slight story. The beauty of Ian Fleming’s novels was the simplicity of the tale, which he expanded with horrific action. Purvis and Wade, who return from the equally tedious The World Is Not Enough, have not learnt this lesson and they are not helped by a director in Lee Tamahori who appears unfamiliar with how to make a decent Bond picture. He blinds and deafens us with bangs, crashes and explosions but this is no substitute for decent content. I could go on about the special effects, the overuse of computer images, the bland almost pale photography, the jump cut editing and the slow motion, but I won’t. It’s just a mess from start to finish.
The film’s teaser is another twelve minute chase scene, tiresome in the extreme, during which Bond wreaks so much havoc you wonder if World War Three hasn’t broken out already. The next three minutes are the most interesting of the film as Daniel Klienman’s fine title design contains scenes of Bond’s torture in a Korean prison. Madonna’s funky stop-start song fits the sequence well.
Bond starts to look a bit like Robinson Crusoe, but he soon smartens up once he escapes. He does this by stopping his own heart. I always knew Bond was a talented agent, but sending himself into a coma is quite a feat. He should have patented the trick, it might have helped poor old Gustav Graves, a villain who suffers permanent insomnia. He’s actually a genetically altered Korean general, but Toby Stephens is pitiful as this spoilt little boy who isn’t funny, intelligent or threatening. He’s aided by an equally pointless group of henchman, one of whom is called Mr Kil, and doesn’t, and another whose face is covered in diamonds, which you think he might have removed, after all they are hardly a disabling injury.
Not even the appearance of Halle Berry, a good looking lass if ever there was one, can spice up this sour concoction. She’s an American agent called Jinx and we first see her impersonating Ursula Andress. It’s one of many throw backs to all the previous nineteen films. When she meets Bond there is supposed to be sexual tension, but it’s unbearably obvious and borders on the indecent. We’ve never seen Bond make love before; we do this time and it’s a disconcerting scene, more Basic Instinct than Dr No. It lacks the good natured humour of the earlier Bonds.
That Halle Berry is out acted by Rosamunde Pike as the deliciously named Miranda Frost is not a suprise as she is given the meatiest role and the best lines. The best scenes belong to Brosnan and Emilio Echevarria as Raul, a Cuban sleeper agent who runs a cigar factory. Their three brief slots recall some of Fleming’s best writing, like From Russia With Love, On Her Majesty’s and You Only Live Twice, as they both reflect on the world and how they fit into it. There’s a neat touch when Brosnan picks up a book called “Field Guide to Birds of the West Indies” by James Bond, but the tribute is lost to many as we don’t see the authors name.
There’s nothing else of interest to write about, suffice to say David Arnold does a quality job with the music, sampling previous themes, but you have a hard time hearing them under the noisy sound track. I don’t understand what’s happening here. James Bond has become as invisible as his car and no one much seems to care.
Casino Royale starts in grainy black and white. James Bond has carried out his first hit, a vicious encounter in a gentlemans lavatory. The traitor in Prague knows it wasn’t easy. “He made you feel it,” he states. Bond is stoic; the second kill is considerably easier and the traitor is dispensed with one bullet. It’s an excellent beginning, recalling the clever, tense openings to the earliest Bond films. There is some mystery to the short gamut. But the questions are unanswered and it doesn’t matter. The purpose is to introduce us to James Bond.
As played by Daniel Craig, Bond is much more than a blunt instrument. Certainly he is cold, ruthless, reckless and determined. But Craig’s versatility gives gravitas to Bond, while exuding considerable charm and, at times, passion. He also has a fine physical prescence.
Craig is excellent as Bond, in a portrayal that owes much to Connery’s formative years, treating other’s possessions with contempt and exchanging barbed, bitter conversations with an equally scornful M. This Bond doesn’t even own a decent dinner suit.
He feels very close to the one written about by Ian Fleming in Casino Royale, his debut and one of his better novels. The writers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis have taken a bold step in returning to the source of the Bond series. For all the excitement of recent years, the soul of James Bond has been missing. Barring a few scenes in a few films, any trace of Fleming’s 007 had all but disappeared in the last three decades. That is put right here and the middle section of the film follows the novel much as Fleming wrote it, including passages of dialouge and scenes of torture.
The producers call the film a “re-boot” of the world’s greatest film franchise. If by that they mean a good kick up the arse, I think they’ve just about it got it spot on. If the producers believe this film genuinely points Bond in a more realistic direction, perhaps even back to his literal roots, then the debate has to remain open. Casino Royale doesn’t quite dispense with cinema’s action packed Bond, but is does re-establish him for modern audiences, who have been fed a seemingly never ending diet of gadgets and sci-fi style plots.
The early scenes around Prague, Madagascar, the Bahamas and Miami, reveal Bond as tough and focussed, if slightly out of control. He takes more of the rough than the smooth – he turns down the offer of a bout of love making in favour of chasing the bad guys – but still suffers from a sense of the overtly spectacular. There are two long winded pursuits, first around a building site and then, incongruously, Miami airport at night. The first of these is well edited and features some excellent stunt work, particularly from the free-runner Sebastien Foucan. The latter however is pure Die Hard and reminded me of the worst offences of the Pierce Brosnan era.
What makes the scenes paricularly heavy going isn’t just their excessive length,a problem in itself, but the later impression that they are not neccessary to support the story. After forty minutes of Bond chasing small time baddies, the kingpin, Le Chiffre, organises a high stakes poker game in Montenegro. Thanks to Bond’s unintentional involvement, Le Chiffre’s stock market investments lost his terrorist employers millions and he needs to recoup the money. It resembles the story concocted by Fleming, but in the novel Le Chiffre’s profligate spending was entirely self inflicted and his ruse to generate money an elaborate cover to avoid the Russian secret service. Here it is done with full knowledge of his backers, which makes his eventual demise unlikely.
Equally difficult to understand is the behaviour of Vesper Lynd, Bond’s love interest, here played affectingly by Eva Green. The writer’s retain Fleming’s thread of betrayal, but in expanding the story they have left only one significant indication of Vesper’s love for Bond – at her death she kisses the finger she descibed as being “on it’s own, more of a man than any I have met.” We also have to accept Bond’s love for Vesper with something of an intake of breath, given that their relationship is a prickly one. It is not though devoid of tenderness, as shown by two exchanges which take place in the bathroom of their hotel suite.
The first has them dressing for the opening night at the casino, the second takes place following Bond’s killing of two Ugandan thugs and has Vesper sitting shell shocked and fully clothed under the shower. Director Martin Campbell allows Craig and Green to offer the glances, expressions and sighs that tell us more of their growing relationship than the dialogue, which while clever does not have emotional depth. As in the novel, their most wordy exchanges take place over two meals, but while Fleming used these to develop Bond’s emotions and Vesper’s duplicity, here they are used for some pseudo psycho analysis. Entertaining it may be, character developing it is not.
Mads Mikkelsen is wonderful as Le Chiffre. He is frighteningly calm, an asthmatic who suffers a weeping eye. There is an early scene in Uganda where his stern, solid face speaks volumes about his character. He offers little conversation, he is a powerful, rich man, who will go to any lengths to succeed, including having the arm of his mistress cut off if need be. When he finally confront’s Bond, it is a sweaty raging Le Chiffre, a man whose world has fallen apart, who has lost control.
The other protagonists are Giancarlo Giannini’s Mathis and Jesper Christensen’s Mr White, but while well inhabited by their respective actors, the characters they offer little to the story as a whole. The CIA agent Felix Leither also appears, but is reduced to nothing more than a background figure, and Jeffrey Wright is wasted. Judi Dench does her best work so far as a more irritable M.
The film looks good and Peter Lamont’s interiors are decadent and colourful. Phil Meheux’s photography is perhaps too colourful, the brightness making a weighty contrast to the darkness of the proceedings on screen. It’s well edited and costumed. The score by David Arnold utilises Chris Cornell’s theme song “You Know My Name” to good effect and while he still has a tendancy towards melodramtic strings, he handles much of the action with restraint. Daniel Klienman’s excellent title sequence blends fighting silhouettes, playing cards and roulette wheels, to resemble animated covers of the original paperback novels.
The film ends in Venice, with another untidy action sequence in a collapsing Venetian palace, and the loose ends are almost all tied up. There is however an ultimate, more satisfying finale, as 007 traces Mr White to a gorgeously radiant Lake Como villa and introduces himself as “Bond, James Bond.” The James Bond Theme crashes into the final credits.
There appears to be scope for an immediate sequel to Casino Royale and if the standard of this film can be maintained, James Bond will continue to entertain and enthrall for several more years. Ian Fleming’s now more human hero has at last been returned to his rightful place at the top of the world’s list of super spies and action heros. And long may he stay there.
Sweepy the CatHalifax, West Yorkshire, EnglaPosts: 986MI6 Agent
Casino Royale starts in grainy black and white. James Bond has carried out his first hit, a vicious encounter in a gentlemans lavatory. The traitor in Prague knows it wasn’t easy. “He made you feel it,” he states. Bond is stoic; the second kill is considerably easier and the traitor is dispensed with one bullet. It’s an excellent beginning, recalling the clever, tense openings to the earliest Bond films. There is some mystery to the short gamut. But the questions are unanswered and it doesn’t matter. The purpose is to introduce us to James Bond.
As played by Daniel Craig, Bond is much more than a blunt instrument. Certainly he is cold, ruthless, reckless and determined. But Craig’s versatility gives gravitas to Bond, while exuding considerable charm and, at times, passion. He also has a fine physical prescence.
Craig is excellent as Bond, in a portrayal that owes much to Connery’s formative years, treating other’s possessions with contempt and exchanging barbed, bitter conversations with an equally scornful M. This Bond doesn’t even own a decent dinner suit.
He feels very close to the one written about by Ian Fleming in Casino Royale, his debut and one of his better novels. The writers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis have taken a bold step in returning to the source of the Bond series. For all the excitement of recent years, the soul of James Bond has been missing. Barring a few scenes in a few films, any trace of Fleming’s 007 had all but disappeared in the last three decades. That is put right here and the middle section of the film follows the novel much as Fleming wrote it, including passages of dialouge and scenes of torture.
The producers call the film a “re-boot” of the world’s greatest film franchise. If by that they mean a good kick up the arse, I think they’ve just about it got it spot on. If the producers believe this film genuinely points Bond in a more realistic direction, perhaps even back to his literal roots, then the debate has to remain open. Casino Royale doesn’t quite dispense with cinema’s action packed Bond, but is does re-establish him for modern audiences, who have been fed a seemingly never ending diet of gadgets and sci-fi style plots.
The early scenes around Prague, Madagascar, the Bahamas and Miami, reveal Bond as tough and focussed, if slightly out of control. He takes more of the rough than the smooth – he turns down the offer of a bout of love making in favour of chasing the bad guys – but still suffers from a sense of the overtly spectacular. There are two long winded pursuits, first around a building site and then, incongruously, Miami airport at night. The first of these is well edited and features some excellent stunt work, particularly from the free-runner Sebastien Foucan. The latter however is pure Die Hard and reminded me of the worst offences of the Pierce Brosnan era.
What makes the scenes paricularly heavy going isn’t just their excessive length,a problem in itself, but the later impression that they are not neccessary to support the story. After forty minutes of Bond chasing small time baddies, the kingpin, Le Chiffre, organises a high stakes poker game in Montenegro. Thanks to Bond’s unintentional involvement, Le Chiffre’s stock market investments lost his terrorist employers millions and he needs to recoup the money. It resembles the story concocted by Fleming, but in the novel Le Chiffre’s profligate spending was entirely self inflicted and his ruse to generate money an elaborate cover to avoid the Russian secret service. Here it is done with full knowledge of his backers, which makes his eventual demise unlikely.
Equally difficult to understand is the behaviour of Vesper Lynd, Bond’s love interest, here played affectingly by Eva Green. The writer’s retain Fleming’s thread of betrayal, but in expanding the story they have left only one significant indication of Vesper’s love for Bond – at her death she kisses the finger she descibed as being “on it’s own, more of a man than any I have met.” We also have to accept Bond’s love for Vesper with something of an intake of breath, given that their relationship is a prickly one. It is not though devoid of tenderness, as shown by two exchanges which take place in the bathroom of their hotel suite.
The first has them dressing for the opening night at the casino, the second takes place following Bond’s killing of two Ugandan thugs and has Vesper sitting shell shocked and fully clothed under the shower. Director Martin Campbell allows Craig and Green to offer the glances, expressions and sighs that tell us more of their growing relationship than the dialogue, which while clever does not have emotional depth. As in the novel, their most wordy exchanges take place over two meals, but while Fleming used these to develop Bond’s emotions and Vesper’s duplicity, here they are used for some pseudo psycho analysis. Entertaining it may be, character developing it is not.
Mads Mikkelsen is wonderful as Le Chiffre. He is frighteningly calm, an asthmatic who suffers a weeping eye. There is an early scene in Uganda where his stern, solid face speaks volumes about his character. He offers little conversation, he is a powerful, rich man, who will go to any lengths to succeed, including having the arm of his mistress cut off if need be. When he finally confront’s Bond, it is a sweaty raging Le Chiffre, a man whose world has fallen apart, who has lost control.
The other protagonists are Giancarlo Giannini’s Mathis and Jesper Christensen’s Mr White, but while well inhabited by their respective actors, the characters they offer little to the story as a whole. The CIA agent Felix Leither also appears, but is reduced to nothing more than a background figure, and Jeffrey Wright is wasted. Judi Dench does her best work so far as a more irritable M.
The film looks good and Peter Lamont’s interiors are decadent and colourful. Phil Meheux’s photography is perhaps too colourful, the brightness making a weighty contrast to the darkness of the proceedings on screen. It’s well edited and costumed. The score by David Arnold utilises Chris Cornell’s theme song “You Know My Name” to good effect and while he still has a tendancy towards melodramtic strings, he handles much of the action with restraint. Daniel Klienman’s excellent title sequence blends fighting silhouettes, playing cards and roulette wheels, to resemble animated covers of the original paperback novels.
The film ends in Venice, with another untidy action sequence in a collapsing Venetian palace, and the loose ends are almost all tied up. There is however an ultimate, more satisfying finale, as 007 traces Mr White to a gorgeously radiant Lake Como villa and introduces himself as “Bond, James Bond.” The James Bond Theme crashes into the final credits.
There appears to be scope for an immediate sequel to Casino Royale and if the standard of this film can be maintained, James Bond will continue to entertain and enthrall for several more years. Ian Fleming’s now more human hero has at last been returned to his rightful place at the top of the world’s list of super spies and action heros. And long may he stay there.
Your best review yet, hopefully you'll be reviewing QOS soon
I certainly will Sweepy, although due to work commitments, I'm not viewing it until the second week of release. It's going to be hard not to prejudice myself by reading all the journalistic reviews. Glad you enjoyed reading my efforts; I personally thought my review of TSWLM was pretty good too. -{
chrisno1, now that you have finished...let me thank you once again. I printed out each of your reviews and read them during my evening commute (on a train, lest you think I drive while distracted!) over the past couple of weeks. While you and I differ on a few of the movies (probably most on FYEO, TND and TWINE) your reviews were consistently thoughtful and extremely well-written -- each with a bit of "Fleming sweep" to them! -{
Wonderful, entertaining stuff. Made we want to go back and re-watch them all. {[]
Sorry this has taken me so long! I had a lot od work commitments. Needless to say I did get around to seeing QOS but having written the review, I then wanted to see it again, in case I was too harsh. I don't think I was, so you get to read it pretty much as I originally wrote it.
After the spectacular commercial and critical success of Casino Royale, the new Bond epic, Quantum of Solace, has become the most eagerly awaited 007 adventure since Thunderball. Rarely has there been such media frenzy about all things James Bond. It is disappointing, therefore, to find the end result does not match the expectation.
Taken at face value, Quantum of Solace is entertaining and a modern filmgoer who is potentially not steeped in “Bond tradition” will revel in the prerequisite chases, fights, gun play, exotic women, even more exotic locations and the general blood and thunder on display. What the film unfortunately lacks is a coherent plot and significant characters, the two important ingredients in the very best Bond films. This is particularly frustrating given how carefully these elements were re-introduced for Daniel Craig’s debut.
The premise of Quantum of Solace appears to be that Bond is out for revenge, hunting the killers of Vesper Lynd, the woman he loved. Bond’s investigations lead him to the shady eco-entrepreneur Dominic Greene, who is a front man for the mysterious criminal co-operative called Quantum. Greene is stock piling water for profit using underground reservoirs in South America and is negotiating land deals with dictators-to-be and the CIA. Bond follows him everywhere, globe trotting to Haiti, Austria, Italy and Bolivia, killing everyone who gets in his way. It’s a relentless, downbeat, serious, soulless affair, accompanied by the merest ripple of humour and a conspicuous lack of irony.
However Bond’s lust for vengeance was never apparent at the end of Casino Royale and the writers make several unsuccessful attempts to introduce the theme. During these uncomfortable scenes, Daniel Craig’s impassive expression and unblinking cold blue eyes become an impenetrable mask that hides any development of Bond’s personality. It isn’t always his fault. Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade are so determined to present Bond as a ruthless single minded killer they forget to give him anything personable to say. Craig’s best moments come when he is swapping acid tongued barbs with Judi Dench’s M. He has plenty of opportunity, for this is Dench’s best and biggest turn to date, as once again M joins the jet set in pursuit of her errant operative.
M’s constant presence squeezes out the potential in the other supporting roles, of which there are many. Mr White, Mathis and Leither all return, there is a CIA bigwig, a discredited general, a bent police chief and Vesper’s ex-boyfriend, Yusef. If any of them has anything interesting to say, and most don’t, it’s the odd sentence, inserted to chivvy the story along a little. This drip-drip explanation of everybody’s circumstances doesn’t aid the clarity of events, which is muddled at best. The traditional reveal-all confrontation between Bond and the chief villain does not feature here; in fact the two hardly meet. There is a brief exchange at a party and another at the finale, although we are deprived to witness this conversation.
What this serves to do is underline the fact that Dominic Greene, like Le Chiffre before him, is not the kingpin of the organisation he represents. The element of menace goes missing and subsequently Greene is a poor adversary. He isn’t even a conventional villain, more a businessman with little respect for people’s lives. Mathieu Amalric tries to present him as arrogant and threatening, but only succeeds in making Greene aloof, weasely and slightly pathetic. It’s no surprise he ultimately betrays his conspirators in an attempt to spare his life.
Bond is aided by two beautiful women, but in an almost de-sexed film, they also disappoint. Gemma Arterton has the smaller role as a British consul agent who sets out to entice Bond to bed –possibly on orders, it isn’t clear – by meeting him at an airport dressed in nothing but a raincoat. For her boldness she’s drowned in oil. Olga Kurylenko’s Camille is given a revenge background similar to Bond’s, but despite this connection there is no emotional warmth between the two; her (and his) determined facade destabilises any sexual subtlety.
Like the two actresses the film looks wonderful, being well photographed and designed, particularly Bond’s black and white hotel suite in La Paz and a solar powered resort in the Atacama Desert. David Arnold’s score still owes much to John Barry, but it blends well with the action and is one of his best efforts. Not so the theme song, which is dreadful. During a musical low point, lost for words, the singers perform some obnoxious wailing. Horrible.
This stodginess also applies to the sound and film editing. It’s noisy, brash and difficult to follow. Frequently the dialogue becomes indecipherable under the music or special effects; Bond’s visit to the Opera is an example of this over dubbing and the result confuses rather than clarifies. Similarly the bewilderingly rapid fire editing means we often fail to identify what is happening and to whom. Sometimes it isn’t even clear which person is Bond. These mishaps ruin what should be some excellent early sequences: the pre-title car chase, a rooftop pursuit in Siena and a speedboat joust in Port au Prince. There’s no let up throughout the movie and gradually the action becomes a less diverting blur.
Amongst all the killing and chasing and exploding there’s no time to concern ourselves with Bond and Camille’s plight. There is a rare quiet moment when Bond gets drunk and is consoled by Mathis, yet the scene feels contrived and out of place. I would have expected this discussion to have been between Bond and Camille; when they do talk of their hurt, it is in a scene reminiscent of Honey’s childhood recollections in Dr No and comes not in a moment of calm, but one of crisis. Their dual motivations have also ceased to interest the director, Marc Forster, who is more preoccupied with Bond and M’s furtive mother-son relationship that rears its ugly head again during the films epilogue.
It’s hard to find the moment of comfort, the quantum of solace, for Bond in this film. It probably arrives in the final scene when he disposes of Vesper’s Algerian love knot, but it’s hard to tell. For all the thrills and spills delivered here, James Bond is plunging into a characterless chasm. Having toiled to resurrect Ian Fleming’s hero as a human individual, the producers, writers and director now seem to have forgotten all about him and what makes his adventures special.
Wow, here's one for re-vitalising old posts. I was out at the job centre yesterday and passed HMV on the way back, more out of curiosity I popped in - after all they don't sell much music in there anymore, but I purchased a copy of Never Say Never Again on DVD, one of the old ones, I guess coz the cover looks the same as I remember it .I don't even know if it ever got a revamp in the UK, my mate at Blockbusters couldn't track it down, though equally they don't seem to sell many DVDs either.
Anyway, when I did these reviews, I didn'y own NSNA, and despite it not being in the "official" canon, I thought I'd dust it off and give it a look. First time I've watched it for about 10 years or so.
So here, especially for Loeffelholz, who might enjoy it, is my additional extra to Two Weeks of Bondage.
Enjoy the read
Never Say Never Again opens with a screen covered in see-through “007”s, the camera sweeping across the Florida Everglades. It’s an excellent opening shot and writer Lorenzo Semple Jr wastes no time in introducing us to his James Bond: a tanned, somewhat aged and greying Sean Connery, who is performing a training exercise to justify his position as a “double-O” agent. M remains unconvinced and urges Bond to cut out the “red meat, white bread and dry martinis.” Connery is suitably ill at ease, his disdain for his new boss, played by a pompous Edward Fox, clear in his facial expressions and witty ripostes.
Connery carries this film in much the same way as he whole heartedly takes centre stage in TB, possibly his most natural performance of the ‘60s. The superficiality of his last two Bond efforts is replaced by a knowing authority. Sometimes he looks bewildered at the proceedings, but he deftly fences this off with a series of knowing facial asides and one liners.
Bond’s trip to Shrublands is gently humorous and throughout the film Connery is prepared to mock the image of James Bond he helped to create. His manner is more the naughty schoolboy who got expelled from Eton than the seriously deadly spy; early on his portrayal feels quite close to Fleming’s literary hero, although later on this Bond is hardly ruffled by any of the scrapes he gets into.
None the less Connery is a joy to watch in this film, his twinkling eyes and smile disturbing a stern facade. It’s a mature performance; this is 007 at the end of his career, a man who has seen it all and doesn’t need to be told what to do or say. He is jovial in the presence of Rowan Atkinson’s attaché, brusque with his bosses, tactful with Kim Basinger’s beautiful heroine Domino, playful with a bevy of assorted admiring females (a roll call of British talent including Valerie Leon, Pamela Salem and Prunella Gee) and equally intrigued and amused by his nemesis Maximillian Largo.
Perhaps NSNAs biggest failure is with its chief villain, played by Klaus Maria Brandeur. During the film Largo admits he is crazy and we rather figured that out before hand, but he comes across as a sort of dirty old man, a voyeur who toys with people and their possessions, unable to appreciate what he has. Maybe that is why he joined SPECTRE, here headed by an underused Max Von Sydow.
The true villain of the piece is Barbara Carrera’s Fatima Blush, a black widow assassin determined to kill Bond at all costs. Carrera is wonderful in this role, completely over shadowing Largo. She is both alluring and deadly; each kill is performed with a relish, each failure met with a scowl of anger and her anticipation of the moment is joyous: for instance she dances down a flight of stairs when told to eliminate Bond. Carrera and Brandeur share a wonderful scene moments before this, where, in the casino shadows, they discuss what will become of his mistress; she licks her lips sensually when informed she will kill Domino. When Fatima finally meets her end, director Irving Kirshner shows us her smoking shoes, invoking memories of the Wicked Witch of the West.
Kim Basinger could almost be Dorothy, so out of her depth is her character, but she makes up for this by being gorgeous to look at, wearing as little as possible most of the time and being photo checked in a poster for Helo Saunas. Bond receives a little help from Bernie Casey as an underused Felix Leither and even less aid from Saskia Cohen Tanuei’s Nicole, who isn’t even around long enough to be window dressing.
Nicole’s death scene is one of the best moments in the film, as Bond prowls his cavernous villa chewing over an apple and his thoughts, the sun rising and footsteps echoing in the distance. It’s a well constructed, atmospheric scene, but sadly Kirshner doesn’t give us too many of these. The action is well paced, without being particularly tense or exciting and the prerequisite fights and chases pass by without incident. Luckily there are some good verbal exchanges between the actors to hold our interest; full marks to Semple’s clever screenplay. He’s less clever with the plot which has gaping holes all over the place, but like its predessor, it doesn’t seem to effect our enjoyment of proceedings.
Douglas Slocombe photographs it all in slightly smudgy colours, which suit the goings on, as it’s all a bit tawdry, despite the exotic surroundings and Charles Knode’s well cut suits and gowns. Michel Legrand’s score is at its best when Bond is in France and he evokes the lazy, hazy Riviera lifestyle excellently. His music is less effective during the action and melodrama, often being intrusive and over the top.
All five gentlemen come up trumps during the tango scene which is beautiful to look at and listen to, moves the plot forward and allows Connery to dance better than he did in TB. It’s curious then that the most bizarre element of the film precedes it: a computer game called “Domination” which is voiced by the Cylon from Battlestar Galactica. NSNA is a curiously timeless film and, along with the hairstyles and glasses, this is one of the few phases of the movie that really dates it. Indeed some of the characters and situations feel as if they could be dropped into any Eon Bond film of the 1980s without so much as a by-your-leave.
There’s a scene in Nassau that sums the whole affair up, neat, quick, witty and with as little fuss as possible. Bond meets the assassin Fatima first time, she has been water skiing and she apologises for spraying him; “I made you all wet,” she says. “Yes,” comes the unflustered reply, “But my martini is still dry.”
NSNA is cosy, funny and enjoyable. It's something of a guilty delight. Bond saves the day virtually single handed and with the minimum of fuss; he gets the girl and retires. Job done! That goes for Connery too; whose wink to the camera is the final hurrah for his James Bond.
LoeffelholzThe United States, With LovePosts: 8,998Quartermasters
So here, especially for Loeffelholz, who might enjoy it, is my additional extra to Two Weeks of Bondage.
Enjoy the read
Thanks, chris---I definitely did {[] A nice writeup; you said it well...though I probably enjoyed Brandauer more than you did!
Cheers!
Check out my Amazon author page!Mark Loeffelholz
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
So here, especially for Loeffelholz, who might enjoy it, is my additional extra to Two Weeks of Bondage.
Enjoy the read
Thanks, chris---I definitely did {[] A nice writeup; you said it well...though I probably enjoyed Brandauer more than you did!
Cheers!
No worries my friend,
if I ever hit 7k+ posts I will gladly retract my KMB assertion.
Mind you, I think you spelt his name right while I didn't !
chris
Nice review, however I'm not sure how much of a hand Semple had in the final product. British writers Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais were brought in for script doctoring, more of a heart bypass in this case I understand.
Not bumping my own topic as such. I had the fortune / misfortune to watch this movie this afternoon. I was doing a ton of ironing and had nothing else to accompany me for two hours. So here goes, cover your eyes as I review Charles Feldman's 1967 romp Casino Royale....
CASINO ROYALE (1967)
30/08/15
Putting aside the chaotic history of this mind bogglingly bad film, it’s worth a look to appreciate what might have been had Ben Hecht’s original ‘serious’ screenplay been adapted, or at least if some of it had survived to the filming process. It’s probably too late now to fully analyse the ins-and-outs of the production of Charles Feldman’s 007 spoof, but what we can say is that the chaos is up there for all to see on the cinema screen. In this 1967 form, Casino Royale is a genuine movie going disaster. Five directors, none of whom deserve a mention, and at least three credited screen writers, all of whom have done better and also should remain nameless, really ought to be able to do better than this. The worst offence however is that for a spoof the film lacks any strain of humour.
The film starts in a fairly conventional manner. We have a brief, almost unconnected pre-credit scene, followed by a briefing sequence. The latter scene, indeed all those featuring David Niven as Sir James Bond, Britain’s greatest ever spy, a retired aging man who listens to Debussy until the sun sets and pines for the love of his life, Mata Hari, were shoehorned around the original script after the nominal star, Peter Sellers abandoned the project for what can only conclude was professional frustration. Apparently he thought it was a serious adaptation. In fact the scenes which do feature Sellers are far and away the most serious of the film and follow reasonably closely the basic plot of Ian Fleming’s novel.
Here Sellers is a baccarat expert called Evelyn Tremble recruited to impersonate James Bond. One of the best lines in the movie is his introduction to the devious double agent Vesper Lynd: “Isn’t Evelyn a girl’s name?” she asks, “No,” he replies, “It’s mine.” Sellers is rather good, although you always feel he’s tense playing it straight and, when forced to, reluctant to ham it up. He has some excellent scenes with Ursula Andress, who looks even more stunning that she did in Dr. No, thanks to Julie Harris’ gorgeous costumes and being allowed to share her real, beautifully accented voice with the audience. These scenes make perfect sense to the overall narrative and if occasionally they dip further from parody into slapstick, the overriding arc is retained. They are also fantastically well filmed, gaudily bright and flashy.
This is probably the work of Val Guest (supervising director and sequence editor) who was charged with making something tangible of such a mess. There is a dreamily romantic shot through an aquarium, constant close ups of the players’ faces, the best most sparkling dialogue and slow motion is used to heighten the seduction and give full reign to Burt Bacharach’s signature theme, “The Look of Love.” As delivered by Dusty Springfield this is a song which really deserves better than being crammed into such a generally dismal show.
Later Seller’s Tremble is presented with a raft of daft gadgets, seduced by a young Jacqueline Bisset, beats Orson Welles at baccarat and experiences a hallucinogenic torture. You can tell the producer was trying to salvage a project because Tremble is dramatically killed off mid movie. Many of his scenes and lines are subsequently given to David Niven, who came to the project late.
Frankly this is how the thread of the film begins to unravel. Asked to solve a series of baffling murders, the real Bond, Sir James, refuses to return to help the international espionage society; that is until the heads of four agencies, including M from MI6, are killed off at his country estate. This appears to be an accident perpetrated by M, a fact which defeats all logic and is never referred to. Sir James’s sudden return to MI6 and the several episodes designed to give Niven’s character something to do fail to unsmooth the storytelling - although we do get to meet Miss Moneypenny, played by the wonderfully exotic Barbara Bouchet, who twenty five years before Silvia Saint was the original Czech sex-bomb. Throw into this spiraling mix all those extra 007s and an out of sorts Woody Allen as the diminutive villain Dr. Noah [yes, really!] and you can really tell this one is floundering.
The early scenes set at Castle McTavish are truly awful, condescending and cringe-worthy. Quite how the actors make it through such blatant bad scripting is a miracle. Niven at this point concocts a stutter, which disappears later in the film, and Deborah Kerr delivers her lines with a much too broad and bogus Scots accent when her character is in fact French. Her briefly used Gallic accent is dreadful too. There are a plethora of sexy women all over this Scottish enclave, all of them SMERSH agents, but it’s unclear why they need such elaborate ruses to seduce, discredit and kill James Bond. The ensuing grouse shoot is hopelessly childish and the car chase little better. Both end in huge explosions.
There’s another sequence featuring a female 007, Mata Bond (played with effervescence, and for the most part in bras and panties, by Joanna Pettet ), that takes place in a Dr Caligari inspired house in West Berlin. Here at last we discover that Le Chiffre is short of funds and urgently needs to raise cash, so he’s auctioning compromising photographs to foreign governments. But this information is never transmitted to Tremble. It has to be taken for granted.
These scenes, devised with more care and attention, could play well in a ‘straight’ version of James Bond. Indeed the grouse shoot idea was pinched for Moonraker, and the idea of all secret agents becoming sex maniacs was often chided by Bernard Lee’s M in Eon’s own series. Yet there is something hopelessly flawed about Casino Royale. Basically nothing is very well observed and the humour, when it does arrive, is heavy handed and rather obvious. The deliberately confused plot jumps all over the place and you have to concentrate hard to follow any of it, which doesn’t aid any idea of fun. By the time the cast assembles for a catch all climax at Dr. Noah’s underground lair, things have gotten so bad Woody Allen deliberately loses his voice. His observation that Einstein was considered crazy (“No one said he was crazy,” says Daliah Lavi’s version of 007; “They would if they saw him doing this.”) could almost speak for the whole production.
In fairness, there are some redeeming features. The movie looks good. It’s well photographed and costumed. Orson Welles makes a sterling short-lived villain and delivers his lines with panache. Sellers is good, so is Andress. The soundtrack is at times first-class. In fact by 2015 the movie has a nostalgic feel to it, that unmistakable 1960s razzle-dazzle. Where else could you have dream sequences, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, robots, deadly doubles, cowboys, parachuting injuns and psychedelic mazes all set to the music of Burt Bacharach except in a sixties spy spoof? Unfortunately that means it isn’t James Bond’s territory; it’s really Austin Powers’s.
I tried to watch CR67 this afternoon but after fifteen minutes decided to watch CR06 instead )
After I get some beauty sleep (I will need a good few hours worth) I will be reading your reviews which appear to be excellent -{
Great stuff, Chrisisall, I am doing my own reviews at the moment using the pros and cons threads but nothing as erudite as yours. Like yourself my favourites seem to be the early ones and I am updating my "league table" as I continue my viewing which I have not done for a long time.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,746Chief of Staff
It has recently been brought to my attention that i never posted a review of Skyfall.
Exactly why i never did is hard to tell - i think I was too busy to bother.
Any way, like Loeffelholz who recently posted his belated review, I feel the time is probably about right to make amends. Watching Skyfall after almost 3 years was an eye opener.
My review will follow hence forth.......
When Skyfall was released in November 2012 it was met with almost universal acclaim by the critics and public alike. So good was the response to the fiftieth anniversary edition of James Bond that the production even garnered Academy Awards and nominations.
It’s fair to say the producers threw a lot of expertise at this film and got their just rewards: Sam Mendes directs with a broad panache, Roger Deakins photographs the action with rarely a wasted shot, Thomas Newman’s score is top notch, the set design is suitably understated and the acting honours shared fairly evenly amongst the cast, although Javier Bardem’s villain just about steals the gold medal. So it was always a category one affair before we even took our seats. A few years on it’s still an impressive film, but it doesn’t feel quite as special as it did when I sat in the tenth row of the Odeon Leicester Square.
Watching it now, it’s easier to recognize the three distinct phases of action which inhabit Skyfall. More so perhaps than any other Bond film, this makes it episodic and not on a miniature scale in the way The Man with the Golden Gun or Live and Let Die were merely stunts linked by a cohesive plot, but with a grand almost operatic style which doesn’t matter in the early parts, but becomes wearisome by the end, as if we’ve heard all the good arias and are waiting generously for the symphonic climax.
The movie starts at a relentless pace. Bond is in Istanbul trying to recover a stolen hard drive which contains the identities of every covert worldwide British agent. An assassin has beaten him to it and a spectacular if faintly ridiculous chase ensues. This sequence bares all the hallmarks of the worst excesses of the Brosnan era. It’s so long it’s virtually a film in its own right. At the end our hero is shot, a case of friendly fire. His death scene is so robust the audience knows he really ought to be dead, hence his Superman-like resurrection, indeed his three months in limbo living like some sort of new age hippie in a beach shack, passing his days and nights drinking and f*****g, seem the most torpid section of the movie.
It’s curious, given the film’s overarching themes of betrayal and loyalty, that Bond’s sabbatical is never specifically explained. He utters some nonsense about ‘perspectives’ but his motives really ought to be better explored, especially as they are questioned and referred to several times throughout the narrative. I sense an over- zealous editing decision may have chopped out more than necessary. In general this kind of cod-soul searching never sits well with OO7; it’s more the filmic preserve of Stallone and Seagal. Bond is usually better balanced than this.
Meanwhile MI6 comes under cyber-attack and so begins the second and best phase of action. Bond comes back to the fold and begins to share spiky conversations with M, Tanner, Moneypenny and Gareth Mallory, the Chairman of the Security and Intelligence Committee, played with some gravitas by Ralph Fiennes. London is suitably grey. Dispatched to Shanghai and Macau, Bond pursues his only lead on the stolen hard drive. This is OO7 at his most recognizable: he seduces a lady, hangs off elevators, fights in gorgeously lit skyscrapers and visits a wickedly opulent casino. It’s very memorable stuff and all passes too quickly. Most telling, we never see these cities by day. Even when Bond battles the assassin Patrice, he appears to be fighting a silhouette. Everything is shrouded in darkness, a nether world whose only brightness is artificial neon light. It is as if M’s warning about the enemy lurking in shadows is coming true.
We finally meet the villain, Raoul Silva, on an abandoned island. A real location, Hashima Island has everything a Bond set should need. It looks beautiful in its decay and provides a suitable nesting place for a grand confrontation. It’s sadly wasted. Instead we merely learn of Silva’s ability to perfect cyber-crime and his warped oedipal reasons for doing so. Luckily Javier Bardem convinces as the deranged ex-field agent, who may or may not be homosexual. He makes a fantastic entrance in a slow moving lift, a single take long shot which builds suspense and supplies the prerequisite menace. The dialogue exchanges between him and the ever effective Daniel Craig are excellent.
What spoils the show however is that we’re only ninety minutes in and, at the end of this scene, Bond’s mission has been completed. What else is there for OO7 to do? As it turns out, quite a lot. The third act of the movie resembles one long chase sequence with oodles of diverting violence and noisy explosions most of which don’t really need to occur. Skyfall becomes a revenge thriller and the characters cease to be interesting. The ground work carefully laid is torn up in favour of a blood and guts forty minutes which, while entertaining, stretches credulity and is ultimately unsatisfying.
There are a few neat touches. Ben Wishaw’s Q is a fallible techno genius, Bond disrupts a gun battle by shooting out fire extinguishers, the James Bond Theme comes in for a welcome reprise as the 1964 vintage Aston Martin is revealed and the producers throw in a discarded idea from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service to create a panic-ridden chase through the London underground. For all that the back end of the movie, like the front, feels rather brutal. Those mysterious ‘shadows’ crop up again and again, code for something and everything. They even infect computers; ‘Security through obscurity’ says Q as he fights off another hacking virus. At this point Bond becomes rather robotic. He’s even taking instructions over a head set. He does better when he abandons technology and deserts London for his boyhood home in the Scottish Highlands, the titular Skyfall.
The climatic action is basically a western scenario reinterpreted for the modern day. The trio of Bond, M and Silva conclude their business in a bloody finale, a stand-off that is excessively long and tremendously loud, the cacophony of explosions designed surely to only please the Xbox generation. It’s knowingly clever but equally daft. For instance, Albert Finney’s gamekeeper uses a flashlight when darkness – the shadows? – would be more appropriate. It’s also unclear how Silva obtains all his men and arms. Perhaps they simply melt out of those very same shadows.
As if to underline the overriding antagonism between the three main players, there’s no love interest for anyone to worry about. Bond shows most emotion at losing the beloved Aston Martin. Poor deluded Severine, played with muted tension by Berenice Marlohe, is dispatched early and Judi Dench’s aging ever-irascible M later. Bond shows more interest in Naomi Harris’s Moneypenny, but we always knew that was on the cards.
So the traditional ingredients have been spiced up a little too much here and there and not enough everywhere else. The producers deserve some plaudits for trying to reinvent and reinvigorate a fifty year old product. However while Skyfall is certainly entertaining, if a little long, it simply doesn’t grab me in the same way those short, sharp early movies do. Something’s missing and I think maybe it’s a sense of light heartedness. The exercise is a little too precise, too clever and too intellectual. For all the awe inducing spectacle and fast paced, slickly edited action, no one seems to be enjoying themselves. It’s a serious, leaden film whose revelations are slow to come and buried beneath a riot of pseudo-psychobabble and political intriguing.
Writers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan would probably respond by arguing that this is what modern day thrillers are all about, but James Bond was never about being modern, that’s why he’s lasted fifty years. His irreverent adventures have always been just that and for the most part it’s kept the franchise timeless. Skyfall, with its three part structure and lashings of savvy dialogue, is of its time and we’ll probably only tell how well it stands up if people still celebrate it in fifty years in the same manner they did in 2012.
Well written review, and covers a lot of what I think about it. I would go further and say the film is divided into more than three parts. It's easy to watch all the parts in isolation but I would not like to watch the whole movie from beginning to end
{[] , Nice review, although I'd rate SF much higher than a 6.5 out of 10.
It's worth explaining how I rate these movies.
Basically, I watched the first one (way back when) and when writing the review I very carefully considered how enjoyable DR NO was compared to some of my all time favourite movies: Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, A Matter of Life and Death, Once Upon a Time in the West, Raging Bull, Singin in the Rain, The Ipcress File, Get Carter, Apocalypse Now, A Bridge Too Far, El Cid, Doctor Zhivago, etc, etc... you get the idea.
Questions I considered: How good technically is DR NO compared to these movies? How much more / less do I enjoy it? What makes it better or worse? Is the acting / writing / music up to standard? Am I bored ever?
My rating of SEVEN was how I rated DR NO against the very best of that output. So if Casablanca is a 10, DR NO for me ranks a 7. This doesn't mean DR NO is a seven compared to Casablanca - its probably a 6 - but I factor in the enjoyment value to how I appreciate and rate Bond films - so it gets an extra mark for being IMO great entertainment. Other less enjoyable examples (OP for instance) did not get an entertainment mark factored in.
So if DR NO is a 7, every other film is rated against it.
Therefore if FRWL is a 9 and I prefer GF as a cinematic & entertainment product, it must rank 10. If I prefer QOS less than DAF, then it must be a 5.
Regards SF. I didn't enjoy it as much as TND, TB or MR, which I gave a 7. It lost an entertainment mark.
I think its production values were very high and in many ways it is a brave film, hence the half mark (the only one I have given) which moves it above movies like TLD and DAF which gained entertainment marks but only got a 6.
Of course its all subjective, but quite fun.
If I were to rate Bond movies on my Blade Runner scale (BR being a solid cinematic 10), then they'd all rate very differently indeed. For instance, DN & TLD would rate an 8... SF would rate a 4... 8-)
Comments
23/10/08
James Bond movies have often had a predilection for the preposterous, but this was always tethered to the line that everything you see has been or could be achieved. In the world today we are sending seventy year olds into space, atomic weapons do disappear, satellite technology helps produce computer programed weaponry, stealth planes have been developed; these examples fit in with the more outlandish elements of previous Bond films. There are a few rare exceptions to the rule, You Only Live Twice contains a lot of them, but in Die Another Day there is an invisible car – and I cannot accept it. Not because I can’t see it happening (ha!ha!) but because the execution of the car’s invisibility is abysmal. And so is the remainder of this extremely thoughtless movie.
The premise of Die Another Day isn’t bad, but the writers pack in a tremendous ammount of plot for a slight story. The beauty of Ian Fleming’s novels was the simplicity of the tale, which he expanded with horrific action. Purvis and Wade, who return from the equally tedious The World Is Not Enough, have not learnt this lesson and they are not helped by a director in Lee Tamahori who appears unfamiliar with how to make a decent Bond picture. He blinds and deafens us with bangs, crashes and explosions but this is no substitute for decent content. I could go on about the special effects, the overuse of computer images, the bland almost pale photography, the jump cut editing and the slow motion, but I won’t. It’s just a mess from start to finish.
The film’s teaser is another twelve minute chase scene, tiresome in the extreme, during which Bond wreaks so much havoc you wonder if World War Three hasn’t broken out already. The next three minutes are the most interesting of the film as Daniel Klienman’s fine title design contains scenes of Bond’s torture in a Korean prison. Madonna’s funky stop-start song fits the sequence well.
Bond starts to look a bit like Robinson Crusoe, but he soon smartens up once he escapes. He does this by stopping his own heart. I always knew Bond was a talented agent, but sending himself into a coma is quite a feat. He should have patented the trick, it might have helped poor old Gustav Graves, a villain who suffers permanent insomnia. He’s actually a genetically altered Korean general, but Toby Stephens is pitiful as this spoilt little boy who isn’t funny, intelligent or threatening. He’s aided by an equally pointless group of henchman, one of whom is called Mr Kil, and doesn’t, and another whose face is covered in diamonds, which you think he might have removed, after all they are hardly a disabling injury.
Not even the appearance of Halle Berry, a good looking lass if ever there was one, can spice up this sour concoction. She’s an American agent called Jinx and we first see her impersonating Ursula Andress. It’s one of many throw backs to all the previous nineteen films. When she meets Bond there is supposed to be sexual tension, but it’s unbearably obvious and borders on the indecent. We’ve never seen Bond make love before; we do this time and it’s a disconcerting scene, more Basic Instinct than Dr No. It lacks the good natured humour of the earlier Bonds.
That Halle Berry is out acted by Rosamunde Pike as the deliciously named Miranda Frost is not a suprise as she is given the meatiest role and the best lines. The best scenes belong to Brosnan and Emilio Echevarria as Raul, a Cuban sleeper agent who runs a cigar factory. Their three brief slots recall some of Fleming’s best writing, like From Russia With Love, On Her Majesty’s and You Only Live Twice, as they both reflect on the world and how they fit into it. There’s a neat touch when Brosnan picks up a book called “Field Guide to Birds of the West Indies” by James Bond, but the tribute is lost to many as we don’t see the authors name.
There’s nothing else of interest to write about, suffice to say David Arnold does a quality job with the music, sampling previous themes, but you have a hard time hearing them under the noisy sound track. I don’t understand what’s happening here. James Bond has become as invisible as his car and no one much seems to care.
26/10/08
Casino Royale starts in grainy black and white. James Bond has carried out his first hit, a vicious encounter in a gentlemans lavatory. The traitor in Prague knows it wasn’t easy. “He made you feel it,” he states. Bond is stoic; the second kill is considerably easier and the traitor is dispensed with one bullet. It’s an excellent beginning, recalling the clever, tense openings to the earliest Bond films. There is some mystery to the short gamut. But the questions are unanswered and it doesn’t matter. The purpose is to introduce us to James Bond.
As played by Daniel Craig, Bond is much more than a blunt instrument. Certainly he is cold, ruthless, reckless and determined. But Craig’s versatility gives gravitas to Bond, while exuding considerable charm and, at times, passion. He also has a fine physical prescence.
Craig is excellent as Bond, in a portrayal that owes much to Connery’s formative years, treating other’s possessions with contempt and exchanging barbed, bitter conversations with an equally scornful M. This Bond doesn’t even own a decent dinner suit.
He feels very close to the one written about by Ian Fleming in Casino Royale, his debut and one of his better novels. The writers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis have taken a bold step in returning to the source of the Bond series. For all the excitement of recent years, the soul of James Bond has been missing. Barring a few scenes in a few films, any trace of Fleming’s 007 had all but disappeared in the last three decades. That is put right here and the middle section of the film follows the novel much as Fleming wrote it, including passages of dialouge and scenes of torture.
The producers call the film a “re-boot” of the world’s greatest film franchise. If by that they mean a good kick up the arse, I think they’ve just about it got it spot on. If the producers believe this film genuinely points Bond in a more realistic direction, perhaps even back to his literal roots, then the debate has to remain open. Casino Royale doesn’t quite dispense with cinema’s action packed Bond, but is does re-establish him for modern audiences, who have been fed a seemingly never ending diet of gadgets and sci-fi style plots.
The early scenes around Prague, Madagascar, the Bahamas and Miami, reveal Bond as tough and focussed, if slightly out of control. He takes more of the rough than the smooth – he turns down the offer of a bout of love making in favour of chasing the bad guys – but still suffers from a sense of the overtly spectacular. There are two long winded pursuits, first around a building site and then, incongruously, Miami airport at night. The first of these is well edited and features some excellent stunt work, particularly from the free-runner Sebastien Foucan. The latter however is pure Die Hard and reminded me of the worst offences of the Pierce Brosnan era.
What makes the scenes paricularly heavy going isn’t just their excessive length,a problem in itself, but the later impression that they are not neccessary to support the story. After forty minutes of Bond chasing small time baddies, the kingpin, Le Chiffre, organises a high stakes poker game in Montenegro. Thanks to Bond’s unintentional involvement, Le Chiffre’s stock market investments lost his terrorist employers millions and he needs to recoup the money. It resembles the story concocted by Fleming, but in the novel Le Chiffre’s profligate spending was entirely self inflicted and his ruse to generate money an elaborate cover to avoid the Russian secret service. Here it is done with full knowledge of his backers, which makes his eventual demise unlikely.
Equally difficult to understand is the behaviour of Vesper Lynd, Bond’s love interest, here played affectingly by Eva Green. The writer’s retain Fleming’s thread of betrayal, but in expanding the story they have left only one significant indication of Vesper’s love for Bond – at her death she kisses the finger she descibed as being “on it’s own, more of a man than any I have met.” We also have to accept Bond’s love for Vesper with something of an intake of breath, given that their relationship is a prickly one. It is not though devoid of tenderness, as shown by two exchanges which take place in the bathroom of their hotel suite.
The first has them dressing for the opening night at the casino, the second takes place following Bond’s killing of two Ugandan thugs and has Vesper sitting shell shocked and fully clothed under the shower. Director Martin Campbell allows Craig and Green to offer the glances, expressions and sighs that tell us more of their growing relationship than the dialogue, which while clever does not have emotional depth. As in the novel, their most wordy exchanges take place over two meals, but while Fleming used these to develop Bond’s emotions and Vesper’s duplicity, here they are used for some pseudo psycho analysis. Entertaining it may be, character developing it is not.
Mads Mikkelsen is wonderful as Le Chiffre. He is frighteningly calm, an asthmatic who suffers a weeping eye. There is an early scene in Uganda where his stern, solid face speaks volumes about his character. He offers little conversation, he is a powerful, rich man, who will go to any lengths to succeed, including having the arm of his mistress cut off if need be. When he finally confront’s Bond, it is a sweaty raging Le Chiffre, a man whose world has fallen apart, who has lost control.
The other protagonists are Giancarlo Giannini’s Mathis and Jesper Christensen’s Mr White, but while well inhabited by their respective actors, the characters they offer little to the story as a whole. The CIA agent Felix Leither also appears, but is reduced to nothing more than a background figure, and Jeffrey Wright is wasted. Judi Dench does her best work so far as a more irritable M.
The film looks good and Peter Lamont’s interiors are decadent and colourful. Phil Meheux’s photography is perhaps too colourful, the brightness making a weighty contrast to the darkness of the proceedings on screen. It’s well edited and costumed. The score by David Arnold utilises Chris Cornell’s theme song “You Know My Name” to good effect and while he still has a tendancy towards melodramtic strings, he handles much of the action with restraint. Daniel Klienman’s excellent title sequence blends fighting silhouettes, playing cards and roulette wheels, to resemble animated covers of the original paperback novels.
The film ends in Venice, with another untidy action sequence in a collapsing Venetian palace, and the loose ends are almost all tied up. There is however an ultimate, more satisfying finale, as 007 traces Mr White to a gorgeously radiant Lake Como villa and introduces himself as “Bond, James Bond.” The James Bond Theme crashes into the final credits.
There appears to be scope for an immediate sequel to Casino Royale and if the standard of this film can be maintained, James Bond will continue to entertain and enthrall for several more years. Ian Fleming’s now more human hero has at last been returned to his rightful place at the top of the world’s list of super spies and action heros. And long may he stay there.
Your best review yet, hopefully you'll be reviewing QOS soon
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Wonderful, entertaining stuff. Made we want to go back and re-watch them all. {[]
12/11/08
After the spectacular commercial and critical success of Casino Royale, the new Bond epic, Quantum of Solace, has become the most eagerly awaited 007 adventure since Thunderball. Rarely has there been such media frenzy about all things James Bond. It is disappointing, therefore, to find the end result does not match the expectation.
Taken at face value, Quantum of Solace is entertaining and a modern filmgoer who is potentially not steeped in “Bond tradition” will revel in the prerequisite chases, fights, gun play, exotic women, even more exotic locations and the general blood and thunder on display. What the film unfortunately lacks is a coherent plot and significant characters, the two important ingredients in the very best Bond films. This is particularly frustrating given how carefully these elements were re-introduced for Daniel Craig’s debut.
The premise of Quantum of Solace appears to be that Bond is out for revenge, hunting the killers of Vesper Lynd, the woman he loved. Bond’s investigations lead him to the shady eco-entrepreneur Dominic Greene, who is a front man for the mysterious criminal co-operative called Quantum. Greene is stock piling water for profit using underground reservoirs in South America and is negotiating land deals with dictators-to-be and the CIA. Bond follows him everywhere, globe trotting to Haiti, Austria, Italy and Bolivia, killing everyone who gets in his way. It’s a relentless, downbeat, serious, soulless affair, accompanied by the merest ripple of humour and a conspicuous lack of irony.
However Bond’s lust for vengeance was never apparent at the end of Casino Royale and the writers make several unsuccessful attempts to introduce the theme. During these uncomfortable scenes, Daniel Craig’s impassive expression and unblinking cold blue eyes become an impenetrable mask that hides any development of Bond’s personality. It isn’t always his fault. Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade are so determined to present Bond as a ruthless single minded killer they forget to give him anything personable to say. Craig’s best moments come when he is swapping acid tongued barbs with Judi Dench’s M. He has plenty of opportunity, for this is Dench’s best and biggest turn to date, as once again M joins the jet set in pursuit of her errant operative.
M’s constant presence squeezes out the potential in the other supporting roles, of which there are many. Mr White, Mathis and Leither all return, there is a CIA bigwig, a discredited general, a bent police chief and Vesper’s ex-boyfriend, Yusef. If any of them has anything interesting to say, and most don’t, it’s the odd sentence, inserted to chivvy the story along a little. This drip-drip explanation of everybody’s circumstances doesn’t aid the clarity of events, which is muddled at best. The traditional reveal-all confrontation between Bond and the chief villain does not feature here; in fact the two hardly meet. There is a brief exchange at a party and another at the finale, although we are deprived to witness this conversation.
What this serves to do is underline the fact that Dominic Greene, like Le Chiffre before him, is not the kingpin of the organisation he represents. The element of menace goes missing and subsequently Greene is a poor adversary. He isn’t even a conventional villain, more a businessman with little respect for people’s lives. Mathieu Amalric tries to present him as arrogant and threatening, but only succeeds in making Greene aloof, weasely and slightly pathetic. It’s no surprise he ultimately betrays his conspirators in an attempt to spare his life.
Bond is aided by two beautiful women, but in an almost de-sexed film, they also disappoint. Gemma Arterton has the smaller role as a British consul agent who sets out to entice Bond to bed –possibly on orders, it isn’t clear – by meeting him at an airport dressed in nothing but a raincoat. For her boldness she’s drowned in oil. Olga Kurylenko’s Camille is given a revenge background similar to Bond’s, but despite this connection there is no emotional warmth between the two; her (and his) determined facade destabilises any sexual subtlety.
Like the two actresses the film looks wonderful, being well photographed and designed, particularly Bond’s black and white hotel suite in La Paz and a solar powered resort in the Atacama Desert. David Arnold’s score still owes much to John Barry, but it blends well with the action and is one of his best efforts. Not so the theme song, which is dreadful. During a musical low point, lost for words, the singers perform some obnoxious wailing. Horrible.
This stodginess also applies to the sound and film editing. It’s noisy, brash and difficult to follow. Frequently the dialogue becomes indecipherable under the music or special effects; Bond’s visit to the Opera is an example of this over dubbing and the result confuses rather than clarifies. Similarly the bewilderingly rapid fire editing means we often fail to identify what is happening and to whom. Sometimes it isn’t even clear which person is Bond. These mishaps ruin what should be some excellent early sequences: the pre-title car chase, a rooftop pursuit in Siena and a speedboat joust in Port au Prince. There’s no let up throughout the movie and gradually the action becomes a less diverting blur.
Amongst all the killing and chasing and exploding there’s no time to concern ourselves with Bond and Camille’s plight. There is a rare quiet moment when Bond gets drunk and is consoled by Mathis, yet the scene feels contrived and out of place. I would have expected this discussion to have been between Bond and Camille; when they do talk of their hurt, it is in a scene reminiscent of Honey’s childhood recollections in Dr No and comes not in a moment of calm, but one of crisis. Their dual motivations have also ceased to interest the director, Marc Forster, who is more preoccupied with Bond and M’s furtive mother-son relationship that rears its ugly head again during the films epilogue.
It’s hard to find the moment of comfort, the quantum of solace, for Bond in this film. It probably arrives in the final scene when he disposes of Vesper’s Algerian love knot, but it’s hard to tell. For all the thrills and spills delivered here, James Bond is plunging into a characterless chasm. Having toiled to resurrect Ian Fleming’s hero as a human individual, the producers, writers and director now seem to have forgotten all about him and what makes his adventures special.
Anyway, when I did these reviews, I didn'y own NSNA, and despite it not being in the "official" canon, I thought I'd dust it off and give it a look. First time I've watched it for about 10 years or so.
So here, especially for Loeffelholz, who might enjoy it, is my additional extra to Two Weeks of Bondage.
Enjoy the read
12/06/2009
Never Say Never Again opens with a screen covered in see-through “007”s, the camera sweeping across the Florida Everglades. It’s an excellent opening shot and writer Lorenzo Semple Jr wastes no time in introducing us to his James Bond: a tanned, somewhat aged and greying Sean Connery, who is performing a training exercise to justify his position as a “double-O” agent. M remains unconvinced and urges Bond to cut out the “red meat, white bread and dry martinis.” Connery is suitably ill at ease, his disdain for his new boss, played by a pompous Edward Fox, clear in his facial expressions and witty ripostes.
Connery carries this film in much the same way as he whole heartedly takes centre stage in TB, possibly his most natural performance of the ‘60s. The superficiality of his last two Bond efforts is replaced by a knowing authority. Sometimes he looks bewildered at the proceedings, but he deftly fences this off with a series of knowing facial asides and one liners.
Bond’s trip to Shrublands is gently humorous and throughout the film Connery is prepared to mock the image of James Bond he helped to create. His manner is more the naughty schoolboy who got expelled from Eton than the seriously deadly spy; early on his portrayal feels quite close to Fleming’s literary hero, although later on this Bond is hardly ruffled by any of the scrapes he gets into.
None the less Connery is a joy to watch in this film, his twinkling eyes and smile disturbing a stern facade. It’s a mature performance; this is 007 at the end of his career, a man who has seen it all and doesn’t need to be told what to do or say. He is jovial in the presence of Rowan Atkinson’s attaché, brusque with his bosses, tactful with Kim Basinger’s beautiful heroine Domino, playful with a bevy of assorted admiring females (a roll call of British talent including Valerie Leon, Pamela Salem and Prunella Gee) and equally intrigued and amused by his nemesis Maximillian Largo.
Perhaps NSNAs biggest failure is with its chief villain, played by Klaus Maria Brandeur. During the film Largo admits he is crazy and we rather figured that out before hand, but he comes across as a sort of dirty old man, a voyeur who toys with people and their possessions, unable to appreciate what he has. Maybe that is why he joined SPECTRE, here headed by an underused Max Von Sydow.
The true villain of the piece is Barbara Carrera’s Fatima Blush, a black widow assassin determined to kill Bond at all costs. Carrera is wonderful in this role, completely over shadowing Largo. She is both alluring and deadly; each kill is performed with a relish, each failure met with a scowl of anger and her anticipation of the moment is joyous: for instance she dances down a flight of stairs when told to eliminate Bond. Carrera and Brandeur share a wonderful scene moments before this, where, in the casino shadows, they discuss what will become of his mistress; she licks her lips sensually when informed she will kill Domino. When Fatima finally meets her end, director Irving Kirshner shows us her smoking shoes, invoking memories of the Wicked Witch of the West.
Kim Basinger could almost be Dorothy, so out of her depth is her character, but she makes up for this by being gorgeous to look at, wearing as little as possible most of the time and being photo checked in a poster for Helo Saunas. Bond receives a little help from Bernie Casey as an underused Felix Leither and even less aid from Saskia Cohen Tanuei’s Nicole, who isn’t even around long enough to be window dressing.
Nicole’s death scene is one of the best moments in the film, as Bond prowls his cavernous villa chewing over an apple and his thoughts, the sun rising and footsteps echoing in the distance. It’s a well constructed, atmospheric scene, but sadly Kirshner doesn’t give us too many of these. The action is well paced, without being particularly tense or exciting and the prerequisite fights and chases pass by without incident. Luckily there are some good verbal exchanges between the actors to hold our interest; full marks to Semple’s clever screenplay. He’s less clever with the plot which has gaping holes all over the place, but like its predessor, it doesn’t seem to effect our enjoyment of proceedings.
Douglas Slocombe photographs it all in slightly smudgy colours, which suit the goings on, as it’s all a bit tawdry, despite the exotic surroundings and Charles Knode’s well cut suits and gowns. Michel Legrand’s score is at its best when Bond is in France and he evokes the lazy, hazy Riviera lifestyle excellently. His music is less effective during the action and melodrama, often being intrusive and over the top.
All five gentlemen come up trumps during the tango scene which is beautiful to look at and listen to, moves the plot forward and allows Connery to dance better than he did in TB. It’s curious then that the most bizarre element of the film precedes it: a computer game called “Domination” which is voiced by the Cylon from Battlestar Galactica. NSNA is a curiously timeless film and, along with the hairstyles and glasses, this is one of the few phases of the movie that really dates it. Indeed some of the characters and situations feel as if they could be dropped into any Eon Bond film of the 1980s without so much as a by-your-leave.
There’s a scene in Nassau that sums the whole affair up, neat, quick, witty and with as little fuss as possible. Bond meets the assassin Fatima first time, she has been water skiing and she apologises for spraying him; “I made you all wet,” she says. “Yes,” comes the unflustered reply, “But my martini is still dry.”
NSNA is cosy, funny and enjoyable. It's something of a guilty delight. Bond saves the day virtually single handed and with the minimum of fuss; he gets the girl and retires. Job done! That goes for Connery too; whose wink to the camera is the final hurrah for his James Bond.
Thanks, chris---I definitely did {[] A nice writeup; you said it well...though I probably enjoyed Brandauer more than you did!
Cheers!
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
No worries my friend,
if I ever hit 7k+ posts I will gladly retract my KMB assertion.
Mind you, I think you spelt his name right while I didn't !
chris
Oh FFS! Dick Clement rhymes with prick.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
CASINO ROYALE (1967)
30/08/15
Putting aside the chaotic history of this mind bogglingly bad film, it’s worth a look to appreciate what might have been had Ben Hecht’s original ‘serious’ screenplay been adapted, or at least if some of it had survived to the filming process. It’s probably too late now to fully analyse the ins-and-outs of the production of Charles Feldman’s 007 spoof, but what we can say is that the chaos is up there for all to see on the cinema screen. In this 1967 form, Casino Royale is a genuine movie going disaster. Five directors, none of whom deserve a mention, and at least three credited screen writers, all of whom have done better and also should remain nameless, really ought to be able to do better than this. The worst offence however is that for a spoof the film lacks any strain of humour.
The film starts in a fairly conventional manner. We have a brief, almost unconnected pre-credit scene, followed by a briefing sequence. The latter scene, indeed all those featuring David Niven as Sir James Bond, Britain’s greatest ever spy, a retired aging man who listens to Debussy until the sun sets and pines for the love of his life, Mata Hari, were shoehorned around the original script after the nominal star, Peter Sellers abandoned the project for what can only conclude was professional frustration. Apparently he thought it was a serious adaptation. In fact the scenes which do feature Sellers are far and away the most serious of the film and follow reasonably closely the basic plot of Ian Fleming’s novel.
Here Sellers is a baccarat expert called Evelyn Tremble recruited to impersonate James Bond. One of the best lines in the movie is his introduction to the devious double agent Vesper Lynd: “Isn’t Evelyn a girl’s name?” she asks, “No,” he replies, “It’s mine.” Sellers is rather good, although you always feel he’s tense playing it straight and, when forced to, reluctant to ham it up. He has some excellent scenes with Ursula Andress, who looks even more stunning that she did in Dr. No, thanks to Julie Harris’ gorgeous costumes and being allowed to share her real, beautifully accented voice with the audience. These scenes make perfect sense to the overall narrative and if occasionally they dip further from parody into slapstick, the overriding arc is retained. They are also fantastically well filmed, gaudily bright and flashy.
This is probably the work of Val Guest (supervising director and sequence editor) who was charged with making something tangible of such a mess. There is a dreamily romantic shot through an aquarium, constant close ups of the players’ faces, the best most sparkling dialogue and slow motion is used to heighten the seduction and give full reign to Burt Bacharach’s signature theme, “The Look of Love.” As delivered by Dusty Springfield this is a song which really deserves better than being crammed into such a generally dismal show.
Later Seller’s Tremble is presented with a raft of daft gadgets, seduced by a young Jacqueline Bisset, beats Orson Welles at baccarat and experiences a hallucinogenic torture. You can tell the producer was trying to salvage a project because Tremble is dramatically killed off mid movie. Many of his scenes and lines are subsequently given to David Niven, who came to the project late.
Frankly this is how the thread of the film begins to unravel. Asked to solve a series of baffling murders, the real Bond, Sir James, refuses to return to help the international espionage society; that is until the heads of four agencies, including M from MI6, are killed off at his country estate. This appears to be an accident perpetrated by M, a fact which defeats all logic and is never referred to. Sir James’s sudden return to MI6 and the several episodes designed to give Niven’s character something to do fail to unsmooth the storytelling - although we do get to meet Miss Moneypenny, played by the wonderfully exotic Barbara Bouchet, who twenty five years before Silvia Saint was the original Czech sex-bomb. Throw into this spiraling mix all those extra 007s and an out of sorts Woody Allen as the diminutive villain Dr. Noah [yes, really!] and you can really tell this one is floundering.
The early scenes set at Castle McTavish are truly awful, condescending and cringe-worthy. Quite how the actors make it through such blatant bad scripting is a miracle. Niven at this point concocts a stutter, which disappears later in the film, and Deborah Kerr delivers her lines with a much too broad and bogus Scots accent when her character is in fact French. Her briefly used Gallic accent is dreadful too. There are a plethora of sexy women all over this Scottish enclave, all of them SMERSH agents, but it’s unclear why they need such elaborate ruses to seduce, discredit and kill James Bond. The ensuing grouse shoot is hopelessly childish and the car chase little better. Both end in huge explosions.
There’s another sequence featuring a female 007, Mata Bond (played with effervescence, and for the most part in bras and panties, by Joanna Pettet ), that takes place in a Dr Caligari inspired house in West Berlin. Here at last we discover that Le Chiffre is short of funds and urgently needs to raise cash, so he’s auctioning compromising photographs to foreign governments. But this information is never transmitted to Tremble. It has to be taken for granted.
These scenes, devised with more care and attention, could play well in a ‘straight’ version of James Bond. Indeed the grouse shoot idea was pinched for Moonraker, and the idea of all secret agents becoming sex maniacs was often chided by Bernard Lee’s M in Eon’s own series. Yet there is something hopelessly flawed about Casino Royale. Basically nothing is very well observed and the humour, when it does arrive, is heavy handed and rather obvious. The deliberately confused plot jumps all over the place and you have to concentrate hard to follow any of it, which doesn’t aid any idea of fun. By the time the cast assembles for a catch all climax at Dr. Noah’s underground lair, things have gotten so bad Woody Allen deliberately loses his voice. His observation that Einstein was considered crazy (“No one said he was crazy,” says Daliah Lavi’s version of 007; “They would if they saw him doing this.”) could almost speak for the whole production.
In fairness, there are some redeeming features. The movie looks good. It’s well photographed and costumed. Orson Welles makes a sterling short-lived villain and delivers his lines with panache. Sellers is good, so is Andress. The soundtrack is at times first-class. In fact by 2015 the movie has a nostalgic feel to it, that unmistakable 1960s razzle-dazzle. Where else could you have dream sequences, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, robots, deadly doubles, cowboys, parachuting injuns and psychedelic mazes all set to the music of Burt Bacharach except in a sixties spy spoof? Unfortunately that means it isn’t James Bond’s territory; it’s really Austin Powers’s.
After I get some beauty sleep (I will need a good few hours worth) I will be reading your reviews which appear to be excellent -{
I've said it before and I'll say it again...I like CR'67 -{
It's a mishmash of styles...but it's almost like you have to treat it as several different films all bolted together....
We need a puke smiley btw.
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Several REALLY BAD MOVIES bolted together
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Why ? Have you got those hideous trainers on again then ?
Exactly why i never did is hard to tell - i think I was too busy to bother.
Any way, like Loeffelholz who recently posted his belated review, I feel the time is probably about right to make amends. Watching Skyfall after almost 3 years was an eye opener.
My review will follow hence forth.......
14/10/15
When Skyfall was released in November 2012 it was met with almost universal acclaim by the critics and public alike. So good was the response to the fiftieth anniversary edition of James Bond that the production even garnered Academy Awards and nominations.
It’s fair to say the producers threw a lot of expertise at this film and got their just rewards: Sam Mendes directs with a broad panache, Roger Deakins photographs the action with rarely a wasted shot, Thomas Newman’s score is top notch, the set design is suitably understated and the acting honours shared fairly evenly amongst the cast, although Javier Bardem’s villain just about steals the gold medal. So it was always a category one affair before we even took our seats. A few years on it’s still an impressive film, but it doesn’t feel quite as special as it did when I sat in the tenth row of the Odeon Leicester Square.
Watching it now, it’s easier to recognize the three distinct phases of action which inhabit Skyfall. More so perhaps than any other Bond film, this makes it episodic and not on a miniature scale in the way The Man with the Golden Gun or Live and Let Die were merely stunts linked by a cohesive plot, but with a grand almost operatic style which doesn’t matter in the early parts, but becomes wearisome by the end, as if we’ve heard all the good arias and are waiting generously for the symphonic climax.
The movie starts at a relentless pace. Bond is in Istanbul trying to recover a stolen hard drive which contains the identities of every covert worldwide British agent. An assassin has beaten him to it and a spectacular if faintly ridiculous chase ensues. This sequence bares all the hallmarks of the worst excesses of the Brosnan era. It’s so long it’s virtually a film in its own right. At the end our hero is shot, a case of friendly fire. His death scene is so robust the audience knows he really ought to be dead, hence his Superman-like resurrection, indeed his three months in limbo living like some sort of new age hippie in a beach shack, passing his days and nights drinking and f*****g, seem the most torpid section of the movie.
It’s curious, given the film’s overarching themes of betrayal and loyalty, that Bond’s sabbatical is never specifically explained. He utters some nonsense about ‘perspectives’ but his motives really ought to be better explored, especially as they are questioned and referred to several times throughout the narrative. I sense an over- zealous editing decision may have chopped out more than necessary. In general this kind of cod-soul searching never sits well with OO7; it’s more the filmic preserve of Stallone and Seagal. Bond is usually better balanced than this.
Meanwhile MI6 comes under cyber-attack and so begins the second and best phase of action. Bond comes back to the fold and begins to share spiky conversations with M, Tanner, Moneypenny and Gareth Mallory, the Chairman of the Security and Intelligence Committee, played with some gravitas by Ralph Fiennes. London is suitably grey. Dispatched to Shanghai and Macau, Bond pursues his only lead on the stolen hard drive. This is OO7 at his most recognizable: he seduces a lady, hangs off elevators, fights in gorgeously lit skyscrapers and visits a wickedly opulent casino. It’s very memorable stuff and all passes too quickly. Most telling, we never see these cities by day. Even when Bond battles the assassin Patrice, he appears to be fighting a silhouette. Everything is shrouded in darkness, a nether world whose only brightness is artificial neon light. It is as if M’s warning about the enemy lurking in shadows is coming true.
We finally meet the villain, Raoul Silva, on an abandoned island. A real location, Hashima Island has everything a Bond set should need. It looks beautiful in its decay and provides a suitable nesting place for a grand confrontation. It’s sadly wasted. Instead we merely learn of Silva’s ability to perfect cyber-crime and his warped oedipal reasons for doing so. Luckily Javier Bardem convinces as the deranged ex-field agent, who may or may not be homosexual. He makes a fantastic entrance in a slow moving lift, a single take long shot which builds suspense and supplies the prerequisite menace. The dialogue exchanges between him and the ever effective Daniel Craig are excellent.
What spoils the show however is that we’re only ninety minutes in and, at the end of this scene, Bond’s mission has been completed. What else is there for OO7 to do? As it turns out, quite a lot. The third act of the movie resembles one long chase sequence with oodles of diverting violence and noisy explosions most of which don’t really need to occur. Skyfall becomes a revenge thriller and the characters cease to be interesting. The ground work carefully laid is torn up in favour of a blood and guts forty minutes which, while entertaining, stretches credulity and is ultimately unsatisfying.
There are a few neat touches. Ben Wishaw’s Q is a fallible techno genius, Bond disrupts a gun battle by shooting out fire extinguishers, the James Bond Theme comes in for a welcome reprise as the 1964 vintage Aston Martin is revealed and the producers throw in a discarded idea from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service to create a panic-ridden chase through the London underground. For all that the back end of the movie, like the front, feels rather brutal. Those mysterious ‘shadows’ crop up again and again, code for something and everything. They even infect computers; ‘Security through obscurity’ says Q as he fights off another hacking virus. At this point Bond becomes rather robotic. He’s even taking instructions over a head set. He does better when he abandons technology and deserts London for his boyhood home in the Scottish Highlands, the titular Skyfall.
The climatic action is basically a western scenario reinterpreted for the modern day. The trio of Bond, M and Silva conclude their business in a bloody finale, a stand-off that is excessively long and tremendously loud, the cacophony of explosions designed surely to only please the Xbox generation. It’s knowingly clever but equally daft. For instance, Albert Finney’s gamekeeper uses a flashlight when darkness – the shadows? – would be more appropriate. It’s also unclear how Silva obtains all his men and arms. Perhaps they simply melt out of those very same shadows.
As if to underline the overriding antagonism between the three main players, there’s no love interest for anyone to worry about. Bond shows most emotion at losing the beloved Aston Martin. Poor deluded Severine, played with muted tension by Berenice Marlohe, is dispatched early and Judi Dench’s aging ever-irascible M later. Bond shows more interest in Naomi Harris’s Moneypenny, but we always knew that was on the cards.
So the traditional ingredients have been spiced up a little too much here and there and not enough everywhere else. The producers deserve some plaudits for trying to reinvent and reinvigorate a fifty year old product. However while Skyfall is certainly entertaining, if a little long, it simply doesn’t grab me in the same way those short, sharp early movies do. Something’s missing and I think maybe it’s a sense of light heartedness. The exercise is a little too precise, too clever and too intellectual. For all the awe inducing spectacle and fast paced, slickly edited action, no one seems to be enjoying themselves. It’s a serious, leaden film whose revelations are slow to come and buried beneath a riot of pseudo-psychobabble and political intriguing.
Writers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan would probably respond by arguing that this is what modern day thrillers are all about, but James Bond was never about being modern, that’s why he’s lasted fifty years. His irreverent adventures have always been just that and for the most part it’s kept the franchise timeless. Skyfall, with its three part structure and lashings of savvy dialogue, is of its time and we’ll probably only tell how well it stands up if people still celebrate it in fifty years in the same manner they did in 2012.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
It's worth explaining how I rate these movies.
Basically, I watched the first one (way back when) and when writing the review I very carefully considered how enjoyable DR NO was compared to some of my all time favourite movies: Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, A Matter of Life and Death, Once Upon a Time in the West, Raging Bull, Singin in the Rain, The Ipcress File, Get Carter, Apocalypse Now, A Bridge Too Far, El Cid, Doctor Zhivago, etc, etc... you get the idea.
Questions I considered: How good technically is DR NO compared to these movies? How much more / less do I enjoy it? What makes it better or worse? Is the acting / writing / music up to standard? Am I bored ever?
My rating of SEVEN was how I rated DR NO against the very best of that output. So if Casablanca is a 10, DR NO for me ranks a 7. This doesn't mean DR NO is a seven compared to Casablanca - its probably a 6 - but I factor in the enjoyment value to how I appreciate and rate Bond films - so it gets an extra mark for being IMO great entertainment. Other less enjoyable examples (OP for instance) did not get an entertainment mark factored in.
So if DR NO is a 7, every other film is rated against it.
Therefore if FRWL is a 9 and I prefer GF as a cinematic & entertainment product, it must rank 10. If I prefer QOS less than DAF, then it must be a 5.
Regards SF. I didn't enjoy it as much as TND, TB or MR, which I gave a 7. It lost an entertainment mark.
I think its production values were very high and in many ways it is a brave film, hence the half mark (the only one I have given) which moves it above movies like TLD and DAF which gained entertainment marks but only got a 6.
Of course its all subjective, but quite fun.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
Not because I don't think they're good enough, I just think it's a different league.
"Better make that two."
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS