Here’s my pitch….Bond escapes off the island and goes into quarantine. Q develops a special suit and technology to shrink himself down to be injected into Bond. And he battles the nanobots one by one like Inner Space! Bond is cured and returns Dou Dou to Mathilde and Madeleine
No…that’s not how the nanobots work…and you know that. It was explained clearly that the nanobots spread on contact with anyone until they come into contact with their intended target.
(Having posted reviews in #149 and #228, I went back to #149 today to make some edits based on my own second viewing: my take remains a mainly positive one. For all NTTD's skirting around the darker aspects of Bondian legacy, the film succeeds primarily as an exercise in style rather than for any claim to credibility as a psychological thriller. Arguably it's the exercise in style that Bond films are really all about.)
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
One thing I may have missed then was, Bond was also infected in Cuba with ones to kill Spectre and thus ESB then why did Madeleine need to touch or not in the prison ?
Yes, that's how they work -- if Bond comes in direct physical contact. With anyone.
He could have been quarantined until such time as a solution had been found, though -- and you know it. Given that bacteriological warfare has been practiced in some modern form since at least the 1940s, are we to believe a superpower like Great Britain does not have the means to quarantine someone? Especially given it was Great Britain that apparently unleashes this fiendish "plague" on the rest of the world in the first place? Did M and his scientists just expect to turn the nanobots loose and then forget about them?
So much unanswered about the nanobot maguffin. Can they exist outside the body? Do they continue when the host is dead? If they receive power from the bloodstream or biological processes, why can't such power be disrupted? If they're "programmed," why can't they be "unprogrammed?" How come an EMF pulse does nothing to them?
I think the biggest problem with the maguffin is it's unnecessary for the story they want to tell. Obviously, they retconned the Omega virus from OHMSS, but in that story, the virus was never used. It was a true maguffin, and only the threat of it was necessary for the story, which is rather brilliant. Even Blofeld concedes the authorities will find a way to defeat it given enough time. But here it just puts a sci-fi gloss on the story that only leads to more questions. Bond could have sacrificed himself for a million different reasons without having to rely on the nanobots.
But there's also other retconning going on. M essentially takes on the Blofeld role from OHMSS in authorizing an off-the-books project like this one in the first place. He apparently has no plan for how it will be deployed and no concern for safety protocol, not even if it is accidentally unleashed. This is the guy who lectured Judi Dench about democracy in Skyfall and was determined to defeat Nine Eyes in Spectre. What happened in three years to change him?
Thanks, @Shady Tree, and I enjoyed yours, too. I thought seeing it a second time, I'd be more convinced, but it actually went down from my original estimate. It's a strange presentation, like two different movies mashed together -- even Craig's acting is different depending on whether he's playing Bond in a spy movie versus playing Bond in a domestic melodrama. The stuff closest to a traditional Bond movie is frequently quite good. The rest is middling, at best, and the whole thing overall is clumsy and baroque in its plotting. I'm not even bothered by Bond dying at the end -- it's how they did it. I felt similarly when Captain Kirk had an 1849-style mining bridge dropped on him. That's the best they could come up with? Here, Bond doesn't sacrifice himself. He's beaten. Hardly the guy from the other four movies we came to know, not to mention the previous.
Ah, that's right! Thanks. So, in theory then, once unleashed, they continue indefinitely. How? (I'm not asking you directly, @kadd but just in general). If they survive even after a body is prepared and embalmed, what do they use for power? It would seem they don't even need a body as host, either, if the body need not be alive. So, then, anything the infected person touched with tissue residue could still propagate the nanobots -- a bloody strip of cloth, tissue left on a rock, or even, perhaps, ash from an explosion. Perhaps a sneeze. Or even urination could deposit them in the water supply. So, Bond's personal sacrifice might still not protect his loved ones from "infection." Workers cleaning up rubble after the bombing could in theory come in contact with the nanobot, carry it to others, and begin the spread.
In retrospect Blofeld should try to escape the island carrying a little bit of the virus because he wants to save some of it in case the missiles destroy all that are on the island. This way Bond's role in the finale becomes more important and not just personal revenge.
Watched a bit of Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn's Robin and Marion today, scored by the late John Barry - but of course, everyone from that cast has gone now, with Sir Sean's death nearly a year ago making him the last man standing, ironically.
Now that's a movie about a flawed icon that makes me want to cry at the end.
Should say, of course if No Time To Die had come out in October last year as had been planned at one point, the timing would have been highly poignant due to Sir Sean's passing.
Finally saw NTTD. In my view it’s a weird combination of the great, near-great, and the cringeworthy.
So, without further ado:
Pros:
1. Thematic development. The central themes in Craig’s Bind films have been deceit and betrayal. By the time we get to NTTD, Bond cannot trust anybody. So, when the bomb goes off, he immediately suspects Madeleine of betraying him and his paranoia destroys his chance of having a happy family life.
2. A second thematic development is the malfeasance of those at the top. We saw this in Skyfall where M’s duplicity was the cause of Silva’s rampage, and now MI6 has engineered a while new species of WMD.
3. A third thematic development is that NTTD Bond’s death brings to a natural close Craig’s "suffering Bond."
4. Action scenes are great. The chase scenes in the PTS and in Norway rival the parkour scene in CR and the chase in Goldfinger’s factory complex.
5. Fukunaga’s camera placement and camera angle are sublime. The camera is always in the perfect place to tell the story. This is a story told visually. The slinky coming down the stairs is a perfect visual correlative for the sinking feeling in Bond’s gut when he realizes he has a five-year-old child he’s never known
6. Heightened stakes. Giving Bond a child and a mother of his child ups the stakes and the suspense. I actually hoped they would get away in the forest chase whereas chase scenes usually leave me emotionally uninvested althoughI enjoy the action. It was different this time.
7. Always felt larger than life. One of the great things about the early Connery Bond films was that everything seemed larger than life. For the most part, that was true in NTTD.
8. Infectious nanobots are an above average McGuffin.
9. Craig’s acting. I haven’t seen a single critic pan Craig’s performance and justly so. The range of Bond’s emotions is almost Shakespearean and Craig never fails to deliver. There’s never a point where I didn’t believe in his performance.
10. The pacing. I never felt it drag except for a part of the third act (when they arrive on the island). The movie has more unexpected plot twists any other Bond film, and I was always waiting to see what would happen next.
11. The dialogue was sharp and conveyed information without too much exposition.
Cons
1. Lea Seydoux. Perhaps Ms. Seydoux is a good actress in other roles but I have been singularly unimpressed with her as M. Swann. There are two problems. First, she can’t convincingly display emotion. Second, he has no chemistry with Craig.
2. Madeline Swann. The “Bond girl” has to be a little crazy in order to contrast with the stoic, abraded, buttoned down, unemotional James Bond. Tracy tried to commit suicide and Vesper did commit suicide. Swann appears, despite her horrific experiences as a child, basically well-adjusted. Boringly well-adjusted.
3. The ending. I had nothing against James Bond dying so long as it was done well. And . . . this wasn’t done well. Perhaps it would have been better if they had cross cut between the approaching missiles and Bond, with several bullets in him, with Safin grabbing at his legs, dragging himself up the stairs to the control room, knowing that the future of humanity rests on the island complex being blown up. And then opening the blast doors the second the missiles arrive. The ending just didn’t seem well written. Fukunaga said they were writing the script up until the day filming started. Maybe Amazon will put the Bond franchise on a more professional footing.
4. Bond’s child. Two places everybody thought EON would never go. 1. Killing Bond. 2.Giving him a kid. And they did both.
5. Safin. Too much time trying to humanize him. He’s a sociopath from a long line of sociopaths. Should’ve just left it at that and could’ve cut maybe 10-15 minutes. He’s also so understated he’s boring. Bond villains have to be charismatic and a little over the top.
6. Safin’s plan. In CR, one of the few problems was that the film failed to explain what the terrorists planned to do with the money if they won the poker game (“Bond, you will have financed terrorism”). Maybe buy a nuclear weapon? Maybe buy a country? Anything. As it was, it was too vague. Same here. What did Safin figure to do with his weapon? Hold the world to ransom? Ethnic cleansing? Destroy humanity? Anything?
7. Unearned emotion. Some have written that the film seems persistently off. The problem is that the film is constantly trying for huge emotional scenes and sometimes falling short. And there are too many huge emotional scenes. Bond finally puts Vesper behind him. Bond and Madeline break up. Felix dies. Blofeld dies. Bond finds out he has a kid. Bond dies.
So, I’d give it a 7.5/10. Give the producers credit. They swung for the fences. But missed. More of a ground rule double than a home run.
But how? It was in the movie's parlance a disputed territory caught between, if I recall correctly, Japan and Russia (and I'd presume the Chinese and North Koreans would be very interested, too). I'm going to assume neither country would accept being told by the British they can't go there, especially if some sort of new and deadly technology created by the British might be recovered. Notwithstanding the whole diplomatic kerfluffle with the British attacking the island in the first place -- something else the film also never addresses seriously -- I don't think it's realistic, even in the Bond fantasy world, to assume people would just stay away, and the British would have zero authority to make them. It's funny how even though NTTD has a simple plot, it mires so much in overcomplicated set ups.
Something else I just thought of -- if these indestructible nanobots got in the water, all it would take is for a fish to get infected, then a human to consume the fish, and then out it goes into the world again.
"In CR, one of the few problems was that the film failed to explain what the terrorists planned to do with the money if they won the poker game (“Bond, you will have financed terrorism”)."
@Gala Brand Le Chiffre is a banker. He offers a service which consists in stashing the funds of the various terrorist groups he makes deals with. Little do their leaders know Le Chiffre is meanwhile using their money to make short selling. He speculates about the decrease of the shares he sells, planning attacks to disrupt the market. Destroying the brand new Skyfleet prototype will likely generate financial chaos and then Le Chiffre can earn a lot of money given the people he sold his shares to will have to buy it at the price that has been fixed before the attack while they are worthless now.
If Bond looses the government's money during the poker game, then Le Chiffre can refund his creditors and also plan other potential attacks in the future like the Miami one to speculate again and again...that's why Vesper's sentence is quite true.
@Gala Brand A perceptive appraisal. I love this: "This is a story told visually. The slinky coming down the stairs is a perfect visual correlative for the sinking feeling in Bond’s gut when he realizes he has a five-year-old child he’s never known."
I rate both Lea Seydoux and the character of Madeleine higher than you do (even though part of me wishes it had been Eva Green who'd straddled a couple of movies, playing a woman who becomes the mother of Bond's child, rather than a significant other, Vesper, who dies in her one and only movie: Ms Green was the consummate 'Bond girl' for Craig's Bond).
@SeanIsTheOnlyOne is, of course, right in his explanation of how the line about funding terrorism fits in with the plot/situation in CR.
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
Given Mr. White takes the briefcase after Vesper's death, we can easily guess Bond has it back while capturing the man after the last scene of the movie....
Excellent review Gala! You expressed many of my own thoughts about the film, though I'll eventually post them. Definitely a mixed bag of a movie. Ambitious, often impressive but also quite flawed.
LoeffelholzThe United States, With LovePosts: 8,998Quartermasters
I'm sad that you didn't enjoy it...but I enjoyed it enough for the both of us. 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
LoeffelholzThe United States, With LovePosts: 8,998Quartermasters
No jaw-dropping stunts?? If you say so. Personally, my jaw dropped a couple of times, and I thoroughly enjoyed being carried along by the rest of the action. I'm always bemused that ten different Bond fans can watch the same film and have ten disparate experiences. 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
Well, but Bond catches up with Mr. White much later -- enough that he has the opportunity to sport another suit and pick up a sniper's rifle. The way Mr. White comes back and seems to be tired after a long mission of his own suggests he's turned the money over to Quantum/SPECTRE. That Mr. White is at the opera in Quantum of Solace after escaping suggests he must have returned the money and be in good graces with the organization. All signs point to the money not being recovered by Bond.
I enjoyed parts of it, haha -- I think the first hour is pretty solid and almost wish they would have stopped there. It's not Bond dying that bothers me but just that the movie, to me, is pretty sloppy after that first hour on and doesn't build to the end so much as spring it on us. When I watched it the second time, I looked for themes and foreshadowing and couldn't find either, except for retreads of what we saw in the previous films.
It's also possible. But the fact White takes the briefcase in Venice and the ending scene also occurs in Italy can be seen as a way to make the audience understand there's some kind of continuity. Bond finds out White's identity in Venice after reading Vesper's note on her mobile, which could possibly mean the action takes place immediately after her death ("why should I need more time?").
What happened to the money is the kind of element the screenwriters must have taken into account. My theory is that if we don't learn anything about it in QoS, it likely means Bond recovered it from White, otherwise M or Bond would have mentioned it while interrogating the man after the PTS.
I'm doing an Occam's Razor approach, which is it was White's job was to recover the money and shut down LeChiffre and his apparatus. He accomplishes both, so then my assumption is he is to immediately turn the money over and not take it home with him and take a nap or get a sandwich first. We know from the old series how SPECTRE treats failure, and even in Craig's version -- where ironically Bond is often the one failing -- SPECTRE seems highly intolerant. So, when White comes back to his mansion and stands looking tired but into the distance to take in what money and power have gotten him, it seems his mission is completely over. That would suggest he's turned the money over to Blofeld. Since we don't see the metal case when Bond opens the trunk of the Aston Martin, it seems like this is a reasonable assumption.
We also know enough time has passed for Bond to speak to M about Vesper and to pick up a shiny new Aston Martin. That may be soon after the end of Casino Royale the film, but it seems to be a fair amount of time between when White takes the briefcase and when Bond catches up with White. I wouldn't take the fact that the money isn't mentioned again to mean Bond got it back. By Skyfall, for example, we see MI:6 enduring another failure, and the implication is M's tenure is marked by enough of them that it's time to put her out to pasture. This is after Bond goes rogue in Quantum of Solace, where by the way, we never find out what happens to Bolivia, either. Given that a dictator was trying to seize power, how do we know another one didn't just slide into his place?
The CIA banter suggests no one really cares so long as they get resources.
It's too bad that Ana de Armas wasn't originally cast as Madeline Swann. She showed more charisma in fifteen minutes than Lea Seydoux has shown in two movies.
Comments
Here’s my pitch….Bond escapes off the island and goes into quarantine. Q develops a special suit and technology to shrink himself down to be injected into Bond. And he battles the nanobots one by one like Inner Space! Bond is cured and returns Dou Dou to Mathilde and Madeleine
They could bring Donald Pleasence back digitally to try to sabotage the whole thing and maybe Richard Fleischer's son could direct.
But there'd be no Raquel Welch.....
No…that’s not how the nanobots work…and you know that. It was explained clearly that the nanobots spread on contact with anyone until they come into contact with their intended target.
Some persuasive critique, here, @Gassy Man
(Having posted reviews in #149 and #228, I went back to #149 today to make some edits based on my own second viewing: my take remains a mainly positive one. For all NTTD's skirting around the darker aspects of Bondian legacy, the film succeeds primarily as an exercise in style rather than for any claim to credibility as a psychological thriller. Arguably it's the exercise in style that Bond films are really all about.)
One thing I may have missed then was, Bond was also infected in Cuba with ones to kill Spectre and thus ESB then why did Madeleine need to touch or not in the prison ?
Yes, that's how they work -- if Bond comes in direct physical contact. With anyone.
He could have been quarantined until such time as a solution had been found, though -- and you know it. Given that bacteriological warfare has been practiced in some modern form since at least the 1940s, are we to believe a superpower like Great Britain does not have the means to quarantine someone? Especially given it was Great Britain that apparently unleashes this fiendish "plague" on the rest of the world in the first place? Did M and his scientists just expect to turn the nanobots loose and then forget about them?
So much unanswered about the nanobot maguffin. Can they exist outside the body? Do they continue when the host is dead? If they receive power from the bloodstream or biological processes, why can't such power be disrupted? If they're "programmed," why can't they be "unprogrammed?" How come an EMF pulse does nothing to them?
I think the biggest problem with the maguffin is it's unnecessary for the story they want to tell. Obviously, they retconned the Omega virus from OHMSS, but in that story, the virus was never used. It was a true maguffin, and only the threat of it was necessary for the story, which is rather brilliant. Even Blofeld concedes the authorities will find a way to defeat it given enough time. But here it just puts a sci-fi gloss on the story that only leads to more questions. Bond could have sacrificed himself for a million different reasons without having to rely on the nanobots.
But there's also other retconning going on. M essentially takes on the Blofeld role from OHMSS in authorizing an off-the-books project like this one in the first place. He apparently has no plan for how it will be deployed and no concern for safety protocol, not even if it is accidentally unleashed. This is the guy who lectured Judi Dench about democracy in Skyfall and was determined to defeat Nine Eyes in Spectre. What happened in three years to change him?
Thanks, @Shady Tree, and I enjoyed yours, too. I thought seeing it a second time, I'd be more convinced, but it actually went down from my original estimate. It's a strange presentation, like two different movies mashed together -- even Craig's acting is different depending on whether he's playing Bond in a spy movie versus playing Bond in a domestic melodrama. The stuff closest to a traditional Bond movie is frequently quite good. The rest is middling, at best, and the whole thing overall is clumsy and baroque in its plotting. I'm not even bothered by Bond dying at the end -- it's how they did it. I felt similarly when Captain Kirk had an 1849-style mining bridge dropped on him. That's the best they could come up with? Here, Bond doesn't sacrifice himself. He's beaten. Hardly the guy from the other four movies we came to know, not to mention the previous.
I can’t answer all the questions about the nanobots posed by Gassy Man, but one is explained in the movie. They can exist once the host is dead.
At the funeral of one of the Spectre agents after Cuba, his family members that touched his body in the open casket ended up dead.
Ah, that's right! Thanks. So, in theory then, once unleashed, they continue indefinitely. How? (I'm not asking you directly, @kadd but just in general). If they survive even after a body is prepared and embalmed, what do they use for power? It would seem they don't even need a body as host, either, if the body need not be alive. So, then, anything the infected person touched with tissue residue could still propagate the nanobots -- a bloody strip of cloth, tissue left on a rock, or even, perhaps, ash from an explosion. Perhaps a sneeze. Or even urination could deposit them in the water supply. So, Bond's personal sacrifice might still not protect his loved ones from "infection." Workers cleaning up rubble after the bombing could in theory come in contact with the nanobot, carry it to others, and begin the spread.
I like this version! 🍸🍸🍸
Thanks!
In retrospect Blofeld should try to escape the island carrying a little bit of the virus because he wants to save some of it in case the missiles destroy all that are on the island. This way Bond's role in the finale becomes more important and not just personal revenge.
Watched a bit of Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn's Robin and Marion today, scored by the late John Barry - but of course, everyone from that cast has gone now, with Sir Sean's death nearly a year ago making him the last man standing, ironically.
Now that's a movie about a flawed icon that makes me want to cry at the end.
Should say, of course if No Time To Die had come out in October last year as had been planned at one point, the timing would have been highly poignant due to Sir Sean's passing.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Finally saw NTTD. In my view it’s a weird combination of the great, near-great, and the cringeworthy.
So, without further ado:
Pros:
1. Thematic development. The central themes in Craig’s Bind films have been deceit and betrayal. By the time we get to NTTD, Bond cannot trust anybody. So, when the bomb goes off, he immediately suspects Madeleine of betraying him and his paranoia destroys his chance of having a happy family life.
2. A second thematic development is the malfeasance of those at the top. We saw this in Skyfall where M’s duplicity was the cause of Silva’s rampage, and now MI6 has engineered a while new species of WMD.
3. A third thematic development is that NTTD Bond’s death brings to a natural close Craig’s "suffering Bond."
4. Action scenes are great. The chase scenes in the PTS and in Norway rival the parkour scene in CR and the chase in Goldfinger’s factory complex.
5. Fukunaga’s camera placement and camera angle are sublime. The camera is always in the perfect place to tell the story. This is a story told visually. The slinky coming down the stairs is a perfect visual correlative for the sinking feeling in Bond’s gut when he realizes he has a five-year-old child he’s never known
6. Heightened stakes. Giving Bond a child and a mother of his child ups the stakes and the suspense. I actually hoped they would get away in the forest chase whereas chase scenes usually leave me emotionally uninvested althoughI enjoy the action. It was different this time.
7. Always felt larger than life. One of the great things about the early Connery Bond films was that everything seemed larger than life. For the most part, that was true in NTTD.
8. Infectious nanobots are an above average McGuffin.
9. Craig’s acting. I haven’t seen a single critic pan Craig’s performance and justly so. The range of Bond’s emotions is almost Shakespearean and Craig never fails to deliver. There’s never a point where I didn’t believe in his performance.
10. The pacing. I never felt it drag except for a part of the third act (when they arrive on the island). The movie has more unexpected plot twists any other Bond film, and I was always waiting to see what would happen next.
11. The dialogue was sharp and conveyed information without too much exposition.
Cons
1. Lea Seydoux. Perhaps Ms. Seydoux is a good actress in other roles but I have been singularly unimpressed with her as M. Swann. There are two problems. First, she can’t convincingly display emotion. Second, he has no chemistry with Craig.
2. Madeline Swann. The “Bond girl” has to be a little crazy in order to contrast with the stoic, abraded, buttoned down, unemotional James Bond. Tracy tried to commit suicide and Vesper did commit suicide. Swann appears, despite her horrific experiences as a child, basically well-adjusted. Boringly well-adjusted.
3. The ending. I had nothing against James Bond dying so long as it was done well. And . . . this wasn’t done well. Perhaps it would have been better if they had cross cut between the approaching missiles and Bond, with several bullets in him, with Safin grabbing at his legs, dragging himself up the stairs to the control room, knowing that the future of humanity rests on the island complex being blown up. And then opening the blast doors the second the missiles arrive. The ending just didn’t seem well written. Fukunaga said they were writing the script up until the day filming started. Maybe Amazon will put the Bond franchise on a more professional footing.
4. Bond’s child. Two places everybody thought EON would never go. 1. Killing Bond. 2.Giving him a kid. And they did both.
5. Safin. Too much time trying to humanize him. He’s a sociopath from a long line of sociopaths. Should’ve just left it at that and could’ve cut maybe 10-15 minutes. He’s also so understated he’s boring. Bond villains have to be charismatic and a little over the top.
6. Safin’s plan. In CR, one of the few problems was that the film failed to explain what the terrorists planned to do with the money if they won the poker game (“Bond, you will have financed terrorism”). Maybe buy a nuclear weapon? Maybe buy a country? Anything. As it was, it was too vague. Same here. What did Safin figure to do with his weapon? Hold the world to ransom? Ethnic cleansing? Destroy humanity? Anything?
7. Unearned emotion. Some have written that the film seems persistently off. The problem is that the film is constantly trying for huge emotional scenes and sometimes falling short. And there are too many huge emotional scenes. Bond finally puts Vesper behind him. Bond and Madeline break up. Felix dies. Blofeld dies. Bond finds out he has a kid. Bond dies.
So, I’d give it a 7.5/10. Give the producers credit. They swung for the fences. But missed. More of a ground rule double than a home run.
I'm guessing nobody would've been allowed on the island. Forever.
But how? It was in the movie's parlance a disputed territory caught between, if I recall correctly, Japan and Russia (and I'd presume the Chinese and North Koreans would be very interested, too). I'm going to assume neither country would accept being told by the British they can't go there, especially if some sort of new and deadly technology created by the British might be recovered. Notwithstanding the whole diplomatic kerfluffle with the British attacking the island in the first place -- something else the film also never addresses seriously -- I don't think it's realistic, even in the Bond fantasy world, to assume people would just stay away, and the British would have zero authority to make them. It's funny how even though NTTD has a simple plot, it mires so much in overcomplicated set ups.
Something else I just thought of -- if these indestructible nanobots got in the water, all it would take is for a fish to get infected, then a human to consume the fish, and then out it goes into the world again.
"In CR, one of the few problems was that the film failed to explain what the terrorists planned to do with the money if they won the poker game (“Bond, you will have financed terrorism”)."
@Gala Brand Le Chiffre is a banker. He offers a service which consists in stashing the funds of the various terrorist groups he makes deals with. Little do their leaders know Le Chiffre is meanwhile using their money to make short selling. He speculates about the decrease of the shares he sells, planning attacks to disrupt the market. Destroying the brand new Skyfleet prototype will likely generate financial chaos and then Le Chiffre can earn a lot of money given the people he sold his shares to will have to buy it at the price that has been fixed before the attack while they are worthless now.
If Bond looses the government's money during the poker game, then Le Chiffre can refund his creditors and also plan other potential attacks in the future like the Miami one to speculate again and again...that's why Vesper's sentence is quite true.
I never thought there was a plot hole here.
7. Unearned emotion. Some have written that the film seems persistently off.
Yay, @Gala Brand - that was me!
Excellent review btw.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
@Gala Brand A perceptive appraisal. I love this: "This is a story told visually. The slinky coming down the stairs is a perfect visual correlative for the sinking feeling in Bond’s gut when he realizes he has a five-year-old child he’s never known."
I rate both Lea Seydoux and the character of Madeleine higher than you do (even though part of me wishes it had been Eva Green who'd straddled a couple of movies, playing a woman who becomes the mother of Bond's child, rather than a significant other, Vesper, who dies in her one and only movie: Ms Green was the consummate 'Bond girl' for Craig's Bond).
@SeanIsTheOnlyOne is, of course, right in his explanation of how the line about funding terrorism fits in with the plot/situation in CR.
The thing is, Get Smart style, Bond does lose the money at the end. And I don’t recall anything in later movies that say he got it back.
Given Mr. White takes the briefcase after Vesper's death, we can easily guess Bond has it back while capturing the man after the last scene of the movie....
Excellent review Gala! You expressed many of my own thoughts about the film, though I'll eventually post them. Definitely a mixed bag of a movie. Ambitious, often impressive but also quite flawed.
I'm sad that you didn't enjoy it...but I enjoyed it enough for the both of us. Cheers! ☺️
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
No jaw-dropping stunts?? If you say so. Personally, my jaw dropped a couple of times, and I thoroughly enjoyed being carried along by the rest of the action. I'm always bemused that ten different Bond fans can watch the same film and have ten disparate experiences. Cheers! 😊
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
Eva Green the consummate Bond girl for Craig? Yes. Eva Green, the most glorious creature who ever lived? Also, yes.
Well, but Bond catches up with Mr. White much later -- enough that he has the opportunity to sport another suit and pick up a sniper's rifle. The way Mr. White comes back and seems to be tired after a long mission of his own suggests he's turned the money over to Quantum/SPECTRE. That Mr. White is at the opera in Quantum of Solace after escaping suggests he must have returned the money and be in good graces with the organization. All signs point to the money not being recovered by Bond.
I enjoyed parts of it, haha -- I think the first hour is pretty solid and almost wish they would have stopped there. It's not Bond dying that bothers me but just that the movie, to me, is pretty sloppy after that first hour on and doesn't build to the end so much as spring it on us. When I watched it the second time, I looked for themes and foreshadowing and couldn't find either, except for retreads of what we saw in the previous films.
It's also possible. But the fact White takes the briefcase in Venice and the ending scene also occurs in Italy can be seen as a way to make the audience understand there's some kind of continuity. Bond finds out White's identity in Venice after reading Vesper's note on her mobile, which could possibly mean the action takes place immediately after her death ("why should I need more time?").
What happened to the money is the kind of element the screenwriters must have taken into account. My theory is that if we don't learn anything about it in QoS, it likely means Bond recovered it from White, otherwise M or Bond would have mentioned it while interrogating the man after the PTS.
I'm doing an Occam's Razor approach, which is it was White's job was to recover the money and shut down LeChiffre and his apparatus. He accomplishes both, so then my assumption is he is to immediately turn the money over and not take it home with him and take a nap or get a sandwich first. We know from the old series how SPECTRE treats failure, and even in Craig's version -- where ironically Bond is often the one failing -- SPECTRE seems highly intolerant. So, when White comes back to his mansion and stands looking tired but into the distance to take in what money and power have gotten him, it seems his mission is completely over. That would suggest he's turned the money over to Blofeld. Since we don't see the metal case when Bond opens the trunk of the Aston Martin, it seems like this is a reasonable assumption.
We also know enough time has passed for Bond to speak to M about Vesper and to pick up a shiny new Aston Martin. That may be soon after the end of Casino Royale the film, but it seems to be a fair amount of time between when White takes the briefcase and when Bond catches up with White. I wouldn't take the fact that the money isn't mentioned again to mean Bond got it back. By Skyfall, for example, we see MI:6 enduring another failure, and the implication is M's tenure is marked by enough of them that it's time to put her out to pasture. This is after Bond goes rogue in Quantum of Solace, where by the way, we never find out what happens to Bolivia, either. Given that a dictator was trying to seize power, how do we know another one didn't just slide into his place?
The CIA banter suggests no one really cares so long as they get resources.
It's too bad that Ana de Armas wasn't originally cast as Madeline Swann. She showed more charisma in fifteen minutes than Lea Seydoux has shown in two movies.