DAF = Terrible?
DieAnotherDay
Glasgow, ScotlandPosts: 460MI6 Agent
It's a strange one, I actually can thoroughly enjoy DAF from start to finish and kind of push out the campy rubbish from my view but the other day I watched the re-watched the film in more depth and analysis and found that it is a terrible film....entertaining still. There are several things that ruin the film for me:
Connery - he is phoning it in something chronic. Has aged unbelievable since he took on the role 9 years earlier and also looks overweight from time to time
There is no danger - Not for one moment do you think anyone is actually fighting for survival here, even when Bond and Miss Case are on the rig at the "climax", with campy as hell lines plaguing the scenes > "hi, Ernst". "can I tag along Ernst?" ....and the batho sub ....oh boy!!
The action is lacklustre
There seems to be very little care taken over the film in general as there are mistakes and plot holes all over the place
Blofeld is pathetic compared to his previous identities.
Am I being harsh because I actually see very little hate for this film on here??
Connery - he is phoning it in something chronic. Has aged unbelievable since he took on the role 9 years earlier and also looks overweight from time to time
There is no danger - Not for one moment do you think anyone is actually fighting for survival here, even when Bond and Miss Case are on the rig at the "climax", with campy as hell lines plaguing the scenes > "hi, Ernst". "can I tag along Ernst?" ....and the batho sub ....oh boy!!
The action is lacklustre
There seems to be very little care taken over the film in general as there are mistakes and plot holes all over the place
Blofeld is pathetic compared to his previous identities.
Am I being harsh because I actually see very little hate for this film on here??
....and the best he ever managed was a sermon on the mount.
Comments
Yeah, I think Guy Hamilton was trying to get the exact same tone as GF due to the success of that film but he got it all wrong and sank deeper into the "camp" territory first set up by YOLT
First off, nice username. I loved good old Shady and his acute grouchy comments
The ostensible menace presented by Blofeld's plot is not where the film's interests lie: it's in the game of witty one-upmanship played between Connery's Bond, now an old pro, and the assortment of colourful caricatures who challenge him (including Blofeld). In other words, it's an early 70s comedy of manners, with all the elements of the Bond genre at its disposal as playthings - in the same way that LTK (my other favourite Bond film) is an 80s crime/revenge drama with a legacy of Bond stock to draw from. (I'm not sure what AVTAK is, to be honest, other than a somewhat tired and confused Bond film. I enjoy watching it, but, to me, the rather smug 'English heritage'/Merchant Ivory inflection around all the St. John Smythe / Tibbet scenes feels decidedly more middle-aged than Connery's Bond in DAF.) DAF is the sort of movie I'd like to watch in a double-bill with, let's say, 'Plaza Suite' (1971) rather than with any serious crime or action movie of the same vintage.
I guess it was just an image of the times but I just can't help but think it feels like an exhausted spoof at certain points whenever I watch it. Completely entertaining non the less so what the hell.....I'll give it the benefit of the doubt
I like DAF,good villains (Wint and Kid), witty dialogue "well he certainly left with his tails between his legs!" and good set pieces, the lift fight between Bond and Franks being one of them.
I have two gripes with this film however;
The special effects are terrible compared with earlier entries in the series,The explosions look like they have come from a kid's chemistry set.
I felt that Blofeld's demise was poor. If only they filmed the idea in the original screenplay where frogmen would blow the rig up with explosives, Blofeld would escape in his bathosub with Bond in pursuit on a weather balloon. the chase would end in a salt mine leading to Blofeld falling to his death in a salt crusher.
" I don't listen to hip hop!"
talking
" I don't listen to hip hop!"
The star of the show isn't Ken Adam, as it had been with YOLT and would be with TSWLM, but John Barry. He's faultless throughout, catching exactly the right tone (more so than Guy Hamilton, with whom he had disputes).
I'd have liked to have seen a bit more Fleming material- granted, the novel wasn't one of his best but more could have been used. The first half and the coda are reasonably faithful. On release, the film was seen as "making up for" the perceived mistakes of OHMSS and bringing Bond into the 70s with a bang, being a huge financial success.
I still like it for nostalgic reasons.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
I agree. Barry brilliantly complements DAF's location work with one of his most evocative soundtracks, imbuing Amsterdam with a sense of sedate prettiness and Vegas with razzamatazz. His score is often playful - in keeping with Mankwiecz's witty screenplay - and it conveys in its action cues a distinctively Bondian sense of "precariousness glorified" (to quote Pauline Kael's contemporary review of the film).
" I don't listen to hip hop!"
Stirring, yes: but the onset of full-blown arrangements of the '007' theme (in FRWL, TB, YOLT, DAF and MR) always seems to me to mark the points at which suspense gives way to pure spectacle, with the complete melody 'resolving' any suspenseful undercurrents which may have preceded.
That's very true- would you therefore say the best use of it is in the Junkanoo scene in TB where the melody doesn't resolve? (My personal favourite variation is later in the same movie, during the underwater battle)
I do like that suspenseful version - and yes, it's used again during part of the underwater battle to accompany individual acts of violence.
The full melodic version of the '007' theme connotes a sense of comic-strip 'Bond triumphant', with an arrangement in MR which is almost stately in its celebration of Bond's invulnerability.
I'm hard pushed to think of any sequence in more recent Bond movies where the '007' theme would have fitted. Possibly in some of the more 'comic strip' sequences in DAD.
DAF is great fun, but it's a family film for Xmas Day. I have a theory that some Bond fans associate the films with their family as youth, others associate the films with getting away from their family, hence the dissonance in views. That latter go less for laughs and camp, they find it cringey, like your Dad gatecrashing the teenage disco.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I always figured this is why so many people love MR, they loved it as kids and it stuck with them.
The first 45 minutes to an hour work well, mostly because of Wint and Kidd stealing the show. They are underrated Bond henchmen IMO. Their dialogue is witty and they have great screen chemistry.
I think the reason I dislike it in general though is that it follows one of my favorites in OHMSS. Having Blofeld back and Connery just smile at him as if he mildly amused him just killed any momentum they could have built on the gripping story of the previous film. Ah well, still a Bond film which makes it better than 99% of the other movies out there.
"You must give me the name of your oculist."
1.SF 2.CR 3.OHMSS 4.DN 5.YOLT
Have you not seen Moonraker ?
Do people really laugh at MR or DAF? I never found them funny, just goofy.
" I don't listen to hip hop!"
From that point on, it's like the movie was finished by different writers. It starts to unravel with what I consider the absolute worst way in the history of the series a villain has ever tried to kill Bond. (They actually leave his sleeping body at a construction site! That was the plan??) Tiffany Case, who was actually a fairly enjoyable and intelligent Bond girl, suddenly has a serious drop in IQ once she's on the oil rig. And then Bond's idea of sneaking onto the oil rig is to just show up and allow himself to be captured. (But it's all good, because they're not going to kill or torture him. Instead, they're stupid enough to lock him in a room with a hole in the floor!)
The second half is much more campy than the first half, complete with a guy counting down while the oil rig explodes around him since it's apparently his job to do that at all costs. But I do think the haters should at least acknowledge there are moments to be enjoyed up to the film's midway point.
It's not even in my top ten Bond films,Yet I seem to watch it quite a lot.
Only NSNA and CR'67 rank lower in my list, hell - I'd even prefer the Dalton movies over DAF! -{
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
DAF is easily one of the worse Bond films ever made, but I'm still inexplicably entertained by it...