Skyfall Review

The consensus on Daniel Craig’s tenure as James Bond so far is that he started out impressively in Casino Royale but wavered in Quantum of Solace. Here, in a Bond specifically tailored for the 50th anniversary of the series, the dangling plot-threads of Casino and Quantum are left in the wind as a more experienced, more damaged hero deals with a villain from his boss’s past. Having rebooted the franchise by depicting Bond’s first days with a license to kill in Casino Royale, this picks him up later in his career – as if he’s lived through all the films from Dr No to Die Another Day since we last saw him.

The pre-credits sequence, which coincidentally chases through a Turkish bazaar seen this year in Taken 2 and Argo, establishes that Sam Mendes – brought in to raise the tone a bit – can handle a fist-fight on top of a train as well as anyone. The boldest hire for this go-round is cinematographer Roger Deakins, who delivers the most impressive visuals this series has had since the 1960s. No one will ever mistake Skyfall for an introspective picture, though Bond’s rarely-mentioned dead parents get trotted out in a Christopher Nolanesque way which aligns him with all other orphan heroes and superheroes of current cinema.

The challenge of delivering a series entry is to present the mandatory elements – the credits sequence, the girls, the cars, the locations, the stunts, the villains, the novelty pets, the gadgets – in fresh, surprising ways. Regular screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, augmented by John Logan, skate over their mcguffin with some computerspeak and politicking, then hit all the required notes – with sidebar-friendly anniversary nods to practically every previous Bond film, including the David Niven Casino Royale – while telling a story that doesn’t strictly adhere to the umpteenth-remake-of-Dr-No format that wore thin during the Roger Moore-Pierce Brosnan eras. Among other innovations, this is the first Bond really to make use of spectacular British locations, in and out of London, as a plot hatched in exotic places comes home to burn down the Establishment.

Craig takes a fall into a surreal, macabre credits sequence accompanied by that Adele song, then spends a reel or so as an unshaven, washed-up wreck who can’t shoot straight and shows signs of psychological trauma. It’s a character stretch Craig manages better than Brosnan’s bout with beardiness in Die Another Day, mostly because he gets his chops back – and his chops shaven, in a sexy sequence with fellow agent Eve (Naomie Harris) – with credible effort. It’s a reading of the role that comes from the later Ian Fleming novels, the ones that had their titles used on films which otherwise threw away the material, and much of Skyfall feels like the kind of post-John Buchan/Bulldog Drummond thrillers Fleming wrote rather than the fantastical, science fictionish films which grew out of them.

Harris’s peppy MI6 sniper and Berenice Marlohe’s slinky woman of mystery have a few good scenes, but the main Bond girl here is Judi Dench – whose M is harried by bureaucrats and politicians who want her to retire, but has to stay in office to cope with her own nightmare legacy. Javier Bardem’s villain makes a grand entrance, walking from the back of the frame to the foreground while delivering a parable about rats in a barrel, then gets deeper under the hero’s skin than any official shrink, prodding him into reflections about his drink and pill dependency and sexual identity which would have made Sean Connery blench. Silva is a Flemingesque creation – a loathesome foreigner with a hidden (and gruesome) deformity – but Bardem adds in a little Hannibal Lecter vibe (especially in a sequence set under London) and even becomes a horror movie slasher for a surprisingly gothic, down-and-dirty climax.

Ralph Fiennes plays it ambiguously as M’s political rival, but gets some good scenes late in the day, and there’s a sharp reinvention of the role of Q from Ben Whishaw, who is now the spooks’ computer whizz (with a nice line in jargon) as well as quartermaster. And Albert Finney brings warmth and gravitas to a key role in the home stretch.

I rate this 10/10 

Quantum Of Solace Review

 devastating betrayal sends James Bond from Australia to Italy and South America on a mission of vengeance that pits the suave super-spy against a powerful businessman with diabolical intentions. Betrayed by Vesper, 007 (Daniel Craig) suppresses the urge to make his latest mission personal as he teams with M (Judi Dench) to interrogate Mr. White (Jesper Christensen). It soon becomes apparent that the organization behind the blackmailing of Vesper is more powerful than Bond and M had previously anticipated, and after discovering forensic evidence that links an MI6 traitor to a bank in Haiti, Bond immediately sets out to gather more intelligence. Once in Haiti, a case of mistaken identity leads Bond into the company of the ravishing Camille (Olga Kurylenko), a dangerous beauty with her own vendetta. It's Camille who leads Bond to a ruthless businessman named Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), who is soon revealed to be the mastermind of a powerful but clandestine organization. Greene is conspiring to corner the market on one of the world's most precious natural resources, and in order to make that happen he has forged a deal with an exiled general named Medrano (Joaquin Cosio). By enlisting the aid of his many associates and using his vast resources to force contacts within the CIA and the British government into bending to his will, Greene plans to overthrow the current regime of a Latin American country and hand control over to General Medrano in exchange for a parcel of land that appears barren on the surface, but actually houses a natural resource that will make Greene the most powerful man on the planet. But Bond's mission to uncover the culprit who blackmailed Vesper and prevent Dominic Greene from exerting his will on the entire world won't be easy, because now everyone from the CIA to the terrorists and even M are out to get him. 


I rate this 7.5/10 

Casino Royale Review

Actor Daniel Craig assumes the role formerly occupied by such screen greats as Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Timothy Dalton to set out on the character's very first 007 mission. James Bond has earned his "00" status by masterfully executing a pair of death-defying professional assassinations. Now assigned the task of traveling to Madagascar to spy on notorious terrorist Mollaka (Sebastien Foucan) for his maiden voyage as a 007 agent, Bond boldly goes against MI6 policy to launch an independent investigation that finds him traversing the Bahamas in search of Mollaka's notoriously elusive terror cell. Subsequently led into the company of the mysterious Dimitrios (Simon Abkarian) and his exotic girlfriend, Solange (Caterina Murino), Bond soon realizes that he is closer than ever to locating well-guarded terrorist financier Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), the man who has personally bankrolled some of the most prevalent terrorist organizations on the planet. When Bond learns that Le Chiffre is planning to partake in an upcoming high-stakes poker game to be played at Montenegro's Le Casino Royale and use the winnings to establish his financial grip on the globe, M (Judi Dench) assigns beguiling agent Vesper (Eva Green) the task of watching over the fledgling agent as he plays against Le Chiffre in a covert attempt to destroy the nefarious gambler's well-established monetary stronghold in the underworld once and for all. Bond will need more than his legendary gambling skills in order to win this dangerous game, though, and after allying himself with local MI6 field agent Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini) and CIA operative Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright), the endlessly suave super-spy puts on his poker face for a high-stakes game of cards in which the stakes are not measured in dollars, but human lives. 

I rate this 9/10 

Die Another Day Review

Pierce Brosnan makes his fourth appearance as suave super-spy James Bond in this espionage thriller, the 20th film in the official Bond series. While on assignment in North Korea, Bond is captured by government agents, where he's imprisoned and tortured for over a year. When Bond finally wins his freedom, not everyone is certain 007 is still capable of doing the job, but after Zao (Rick Yune), the North Korean operative who snared Bond, is discovered to be in cahoots with unscrupulousentrepreneur Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens), Bond is back on the case, and he finds the two men have sinister plans which could decide the fate of the world. As Bond hops from England to Cuba to Korea to Iceland in pursuit of his quarry, he (as usual) makes the acquaintance of two beautiful and mysterious women, Jinx (Halle Berry) and Miranda Frost (Rosamund Pike). Judi Dench and John Cleese return in Die Another Day as, respectively, Bond's superior M and gadget-master Q; Madonna contributes the film's theme song and makes a cameo appearance as a fencing instructor. 

I rate this a 7/10 

The World Is Not Enough Review

ames Bond, the world's greatest secret agent, is sent once more into the breach in the name of Queen, Country, and a dry martini. In the 19th Bond adventure, 007 (Pierce Brosnan) must resolve a potentially deadly power struggle between two unstable nations, with control of the world's oil supply as the ultimate prize. Bond is assigned as bodyguard to Elektra King (Sophie Marceau), the daughter of a petroleum magnate who was brutally murdered, and is trying to foil the fiendish plot of Renard (Robert Carlyle), a villain who was shot in the head with an unusual result: he cannot feel physical pain, an apparent failing that proves to be a considerable asset. Denise Richards appears as Dr. Christmas Jones, an expert on nuclear weapons, alongside Desmond Llewelyn as Q, Judi Dench as M, Samantha Bond as Miss Moneypenny, and John Cleese as R. Alternative rock band Garbage performs the theme song. 

I rate this film 7.4/10 

Tomorrow Never Dies Review

Roger Spottiswoode (Air America) directed this film, the 18th chapter in the 35-year-old James Bond series (excluding Casino Royale and Never Say Never Again). James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) learns billionaire media mogul Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce) is manipulating world events via an exclusive flow of information through his satellite system reaching all corners of the planet. With a stealth battleship sinking a British naval vessel, Carver sees that the Chinese are blamed. Crashing Carver's party in Hamburg, Bond meets "journalist" Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh), later revealed as a Chinese agent. In a brief tryst, Bond renews his past relationship with Carver's wife Paris (Teri Hatcher). Carver dispatches Stamper (Gotz Otto) and other goons to cancel Bond, who eludes attackers with some of his new gadgets. In Southeast Asia, after Bond and Wai Lin scuba dive into the sunken British ship, they are captured by Stamper, handcuffed, and taken to Saigon where they make a motorcycle escape. To thwart Carver's plans for WWIII, the two agents head for Carver's stealth ship where a cruise missile is aimed at Beijing. Principal photography began April 1, 1997 in the new Eon Productions studio facility at Frogmore, northwest of London, and on the 007 stage at Pinewood Studios. Locations included the UK, Hamburg, Southeast Asia, Mexico, and off the Florida coast. The trademark Bond pre-title sequence was filmed in the French Pyrenees snowfields, centered around one of the few high-altitude operational airfields in Europe. 

As this was my first ever Bond film I rate this 8/10 

Goldeneye Review

Pierce Brosnan made his first appearance as James Bond in this action thriller, the 17th in the series (excluding the 1967 Casino Royale and the 1983 Never Say Never Again) featuring the suave British super-agent. As the story begins, Agent 007 and his partner, Agent 006 (Sean Bean), pull a daring raid on a chemical weapons plant in the Soviet Union; however, they are captured by Russian troops, and while Bond is able to escape, 006 is not so lucky. Several years later, the Soviet Union and the Cold War are a thing of the past, but Bond is still at work ferreting out evildoers everywhere. Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen), a beautiful but vicious villain working with the Russian Mafia, spearheads the theft of the controls to GoldenEye, a high-tech satellite weapons system, and with her gunmen, she kills most of the soldiers and guards at a top-secret military facility in the process. Bond joins forces with Natalya Simonova (Izabella Scorupco), one of the base's few survivors, to help track down Onatopp's minions and the controls to GoldenEye, which can destroy all electronic circuits in a given area in a matter of seconds; however, in time, Bond discovers the true identity of the criminal mastermind who is behind this bid for unholy power and world domination -- none other than Alec Trevelyan, the man Bond once knew as 006. In addition to Brosnan, GoldenEye also marked another significant cast change for the Bond series -- Judi Dench made her debut as M, Bond's superior. Minnie Driver also has a cameo as a nightclub singer. Sadly, this was the last film in the Bond series for special-effects supervisor Derek Meddings, who died in the midst of production; the film was dedicated to him. 
I rate this film 7.7/10 

Licence To Kill Review

Something lurks deep in Latin America. Something terrifying, a creature from beyond our world. And even more terrifying, he somehow made his way into the sixteenth James Bond film, Licence To Kill. His name is Don Stroud. Ever vigilant, he stands next to a scaly cold-blooded creature, the reptilian Robert Davi, although I understand there is also an iguana in the film. Another creature, lurking nearby, goes by the moniker Wayne Newton, a televangelist on the prowl for donations. Together, they run a South American drug cartel that, quite understandably, sells drugs. This complex plot would be incomplete without the grisly violence associated with menacing drug smugglers; but scripters Michael G. Wilson and Richard Maibaum, along with director John Glen, provide many violent action sequences in the film, and when you see them, you’ll say, “There are many violent action sequences in this film.”

Just listen to some of the violent scenes thrown into the story: Sanchez whips his mistress, Lupe Lamora, for her tryst with another man. Felix Leiter is lowered to a great white shark to have his leg bitten off. In a clever variation of this shark-feeding theme, DEA official Ed Killifer is thrown to the same great white shark, only to be eaten completely. The main Bond girl, Pam Bouvier, takes a powerful bullet in the back that knocks her onto a motorboat (but fortunately her Kevlar vest saves her). Milton Krest, on the other hand, suffers a gruesome death when his head inflates and explodes in a decompression chamber. In a subtle lyrical moment, the henchman Dario simply falls into a bag shredder. But the film returns to its sonorous violence when Bond burns Sanchez alive in their climatic showdown. The result is the series’ first feel-good movie of mayhem: a bleak mess, Licence To Kill overrides its own attempt to be a realistic thriller by offering muddled plot elements, illogical characterizations, and utter violence that mar the story.

The astute viewer will realize that Licence To Kill is the riveting sequel to the 1988 Masterpiece Theatre production of the Corey Haim-Corey Feldman classic, License To Drive—a film that accurately portrays the pain of failing to get a driver's license and, consequently, a life too grim to bear. In Licence To Kill, the two Coreys are mysteriously reincarnated as James Bond and Felix Leiter, and the film explores that stage of adulthood where one has the privilege of having a license to kill but loses it when dark passions override the human spirit. The premise is serviceable: when DEA agent Felix Leiter (formerly of the CIA) and his bride suffer doomed fates at the hands of drug lord Franz Sanchez, Leiter's good friend—our man Bond—snaps and goes on a rampage to seek revenge. It’s an effective plot device, and a good argument can be made that the revenge angle—which has graced literature since the days of Senecan revenge tragedy¹ —provides a sense of thematic unity: Bond’s revenge derives from the one that Sanchez undertakes early in the film.

It all begins when DEA official Ed Killifer concocts a scheme to spring Sanchez from federal custody. Of course, Killifer’s motivation is simply money (a $2 million bribe from the drug lord); yet considering the failure rate of prison escapes that involve intricate coordination with many men, access to customized service vans, contingency plans to outsmart federal agents, and, in this case, the strategic use of scuba divers and miniature submarines and other underwater vehicles, it seems much more sensible to just take that job at Uncle Sal’s TV repair shop. Killifer, on the other hand, is a complete idiot who hatches a plan so unrealistic that it has a 1-in-a-97 kajillion chance of success.

Fortunately, he is in the hyper-reality of a Bond film wherein such a plan could actually work. As Sanchez heads for his permanent residence in Quantico, Virgina, his armored van—hijacked by none other than Killifer and some hapless guards—smashes into the guardrail of the Seven Mile Bridge² in the Florida Keys and tumbles into the ocean where the drug lord and the DEA official are rescued by scuba divers manning sleek submersibles. Freed and eager to torment Leiter for arresting him at the beginning of the film, Sanchez returns in revenge mode, killing Leiter’s new bride and throwing the DEA agent to a great white shark.

These gruesome events point to the new mentality of the Bond makers: they inexplicably equate the stomach-churning violence with the realism of the Fleming books. During the early stages of production, John Glen was enthusiastic about “‘going back to the grass roots of Bond’” and to “‘make the new film more of a thriller than a romp.’” For producer and co-screenwriter Michael G. Wilson, Dalton’s portrayal of Bond is “‘closer to the Fleming style’” and, consequently, the film would “‘play a bit tougher’” (Hibbens 14).

There was just one complication: the approach of the filmmakers is actually far from the spirit of the Fleming books. What we have isn’t even an espionage story, is it? In fact, the filmmakers have provided very little reason at all for the Bond of this movie to be a British secret agent. They even discarded much of the sophistication of the character, presenting him in mundane clothes like the police detectives in many action films of the time, epecially Lethal Weapon. The character is rewritten to incorporate the élan of those monosyllabic heroes: he is closer in spirit to Rambo, a man of action who attacks frequently but without much thought. The filmmakers envisioned a brute, not Fleming’s debonair spy, and Dalton is forced to deliver what they want. The change was disconcerting to editor John Grover, who implied during post production that this new Bond, in tandem with the hard violence and the Scarface-type storyline of drug smugglers, wouldn’t work: “‘It will be very interesting to see,’” he tells journalist Sally Hibbens, “‘if this Bond will be like the previous ones or whether it will lose its English flavour’” (The Making of Licence To Kill 121).

In his second and final attempt at playing 007, the misused Dalton gads about in grimness, failing to create an engaging personality that could carry the entire film. Edgy and prone to violent outbursts, he comes across as someone in need of a straight jacket. It is a bizarre rendition of 007: he loses all sense of rationality in his personal vendetta against Sanchez and never stops to question his actions. Any harm to a friend is enough to trigger his impulse for vengeance: instead of escaping undetected from the Wavekrest (a marine research vessel), he calls attention to himself by shooting one of the thugs on board with a shark gun in retaliation for the murder of his ally, Sharkey (played by Frank McRae).

Through it all, he displays emotional instability. He can, for example, savor watching Pam Bouvier strip down to her underwear in front of him. Yet, in another moment, he can suddenly stick a gun to her face when he suspects the slightest sense of treachery from her. Exuding weariness, this Bond is a psychological wreck with a jagged thinning hairline, and his scowl throughout the film seems to reflect Dalton’s discomfort with the ridiculous pseudo-Eddie Munster hairstyle that the filmmakers thrust upon him in the casino scenes. The signal of Dalton’s end as 007 appears in the opening sequence, an unintentionally laughable moment when the secret agent is forced to make bird-like motions with his arms as DEA agents suspend him from a helicopter like a captured egret.

One can argue that Dalton captures the hard side of the literary character; however, what makes the character in the books so engaging is that Fleming explores the agony—the inner torment—that fuels the character’s hard side. Fleming’s Bond carries a sense of self-disgust in his knowledge that he is just as ruthless as his enemies. At the beginning of the novel Goldfinger, we find the agent “with two double bourbons inside him” as he sits in “the final departure lounge of Miami airport,” brooding over life and death. He feels remorse for killing a Mexican gangster in a recent mission but reminds himself to keep a professional, emotional detachment from the act of killing: 

As a secret agent who held the rare Double-O prefix—the license to kill in the Secret Service—it was his duty to be as cool about death as a surgeon. If it happened, it happened. Regret was unprofessional—worse, it was death-watch beetle in the soul. (3)

For Bond, the act of killing and, by extension, all violence in his profession must be regarded without second thoughts; but another part of him, haunted by the grim task of killing—of being a contributor to the violence in the world—attempts to justify his role as executioner:

What the hell was he doing, glooming about this Mexican, this capungo who had been sent to kill him? It had been kill or be killed. Anyway, people were killing other people all the time, all over the world. . . . How many people, for instance were involved in manufacturing H-bombs, from the miners who mined the uranium to the shareholders who owned the mining shares? Was there any person in the world who wasn’t somehow, perhaps only statistically, involved in killing his neighbor? (9)

These passages suggest that Fleming’s Bond, had he been in the world ofLicence To Kill, would not have embarked on such a personal vendetta against Sanchez. He would have remained professional and objective, detaching himself from the misfortune of Leiter and his bride. Then again, the film’s premise suggests that Leiter’s friendship is significant enough for Bond to be deeply affected by his friend’s grisly fate. Why the filmmakers didn’t combine this premise with the characterization of the literary Bond is a mystery. Above all, what the film needed was not ugly violence but this compelling characterization of the hero—an individual torn between professional indifference, self-disgust with his role as executioner, and the need for retribution for the sake of Leiter. Dalton, however, is presented with a script that doesn’t probe these aspects of the character. Nor does it explore in detail two major elements in Bond’s background that motivates his reason for revenge.

The first is the murder of Leiter’s bride on their wedding day, a haunting reminder of Bond’s own short-lived marriage when his bride, Tracy di Vincenzo, was murdered just moments after their wedding. The second is his strong friendship with Leiter, implied only in the script and, consequently, lacking the concrete backstory that depicts how significant the friendship is for Bond, a friendship that, when threatened, would compel Bond to swear revenge. The result is that the film almost never holds together in logic. In perhaps his last interview, the late Richard Maibaum admits this deep flaw in the script and suggests that it is almost impossible for audiences to connect with Bond’s motivation: “‘In Licence To Kill, you didn’t get the feeling that there had been this close life and death relationship between Bond and Leiter. Somehow it didn’t come over, but it was our intention that it should.... It would have been better if there had not been so many Leiters [that is, actors who played the role], and if the audience had started out the picture with a very strong recall of the great camaraderie between Bond and Leiter, hooking it up with a face and a personality’” (Gross 90).

This lack of a solid backstory for the friendship limits Dalton’s performance. What we end up seeing on screen is simply an enraged Bond, verging on a psychotic obsession with revenge. He is a fictional mess: he is willing to go to almost any lengths to pursue the revenge on Leiter’s behalf; but once Sanchez is dead, Bond is not perturbed that the unstable Lupe has taken over the drug lord’s wealth. He even suggests that she and the corrupt president of Isthmus City should hook up (“I think you and El Presidente,” he tells her, “will make a lovely couple”). Brutal and careless, this Bond has no concern whatsoever for matters beyond his personal intentions. He functions out of pure self-interest.

This aspect of the character is suggested early in the film, at the Hemingway House in Key West, when M confronts Bond to remind the agent that he was suppose to be on a plane to Istanbul for his next mission. Would a Double-O agent forsake his duty and profession for personal revenge? Apparently, this Bond would. Surprisingly, Dalton’s performance is weak in this scene, helped along by lousy dialogue. Frustrated because American authorities are not pursuing Sanchez, he complains to M, whining like a small child: “Sir, they’re not going to do anything!” Frankly, we expect more from Mr. Dalton. Moreover, Fleming’s Bond would never abandon a mission—instead, he thrives on what each new mission would bring, an outlook driven by the unease of becoming bored of life, by being strangled by the “blubbery arms of the soft life” (91), as he calls it in From Russia With Love.

By the end of the series, Bond still retains this outlook. In You Only Live Twice, when he is given, by M’s account, an impossible mission in Japan, the agent embraces the adventure and whatever danger it may hold: he realizes “there were things hidden behind this assignment, motives which he didn’t understand.” Yet the mission is alluring, motivating Bond to accept it willingly and to tell M, “‘I’d like to have a try’” (27). His outlook is also driven by his patriotism, a force that compels him to move beyond himself and into a dimension of self-overcoming, that enigmatic plane of consciousness where heroes offer their lives for something bigger than themselves. In this state of mind, Bond seizes to see himself; his focus is on England. Again, from the pages of You Only Live Twice, Bond reveals his loyalty to his country when he explains, rather passionately, to the leader of the Japanese Secret Service that “‘England may have been bled pretty thin by a couple of world wars.... But there’s nothing wrong with the British people—although there are only fifty million of them’” (66). In other words, had Fleming’s Bond gracedLicence To Kill, he would have boarded the plane to Istanbul, and we all could have gone home after the pre-credits sequence, blissfully humming old John Barry scores, our minds spared of the profound kitsch in the guise of Wayne Newton, Mr. Las Vegas himself in a white polyester suit.

The film's title gains significance when Dalton's Bond loses the licence to kill in his relentless pursuit of Sanchez. Suddenly a rogue agent and wanted by MI6 agents, he eventually makes it to Isthmus City to confront Sanchez. But just as he steps off the plane, he realizes he is stuck in another lackluster setting that continues the film’s trend of having uninteresting locations. Indeed, audiences who expect the series’ tradition of exotic locales will be disappointed in the bland settings of Key West, Bimini, and the scenes in Mexico that stand for Isthmus. Nevertheless, you’ve got to hand it to the filmmakers for making maximum use of Bond’s hotel. There are shots of the hotel bar, the hotel lobby, the hotel casino, and the hotel hallway leading back to Bond’s room, all of which are refreshing, vibrant travelogue depicting the cultural tapestry of the nation of Isthmus, a nation that has the ideal location of being somewhere in Latin America—a happy nation of 25 million people (20 million of whom reside in California), and its unit of currency, as every alert tourist knows, is the Lambada.

Bond arrives with two suitcases of money—money from Sanchez, which the British agent obtained after disrupting the drug lord’s smuggling operation—and passes himself off as a high-rolling mercenary. Oddly, in the sweltering tropical heat, he is clad in black as he arrives at the hotel. There’s gripping realism for you: this Bond draws attention to himself by dressing in black in the tropics rather than be covert like a good spy would do. Indeed, Fleming’s Bond would have arrived in style, perhaps dressed in an immaculate suit, especially since he is in the guise of a wealthy mercenary. Throughout the novels, there are moments when Bond is required to wear a disguise or assume a different identity. In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Bond impersonates the genealogist Sir Hilary Bray to meet archenemy Blofeld, who is claiming to share the royal bloodline with the de Bleuchamp family. Bond adopts the genealogist’s style of clothes, telling his secretary, Mary Goodnight, that he has “‘two new suits with cuffs and double vents at the back and four buttons down the front. Also a gold watch and chain with the Bray seal. Quite the little baronet’” (61). The next morning, as he departs for the mission, Bond arrives at the airport with a “bowler hat, rolled umbrella,” and a “neatly folded Times” (63). Spying is a force of illusion, Fleming reminds us; but he also questions, indirectly, where the “real” Bond can be found in all the different guises. Is there even a real Bond? Can a person grasp the enigma of the self?

Well, the chap in the books certainly longs for his real self. In Diamonds Are Forever, as he waits at the Tiara Hotel in Las Vegas, Bond despises his cover, which reduces him to a yes man as he follows orders from the Mob. He realizes he his “homesick for his real identity” (133), a thought that harks back to his realization at the end of Moonraker: alone in the park at dusk, he feels solitude all around him. The heroine Gala Brand, the prize at the end of the mission, is suddenly unattainable—she is engaged to marry, blast it—and Bond realizes he must “take his cold heart elsewhere” to play the role expected of him: the “tough man of the world,” a secret agent who was “only a silhouette” (232). In the illusion of spying, Bond’s life is erased into a silhouette by that of a cover, and he is given little opportunity to experience his real identity. Fleming’s Bond, then, is a man of solitude who holds doubts about his profession—doubts that continue to haunt him throughout the series, but which the filmmakers never touch upon in Licence To Kill.

Again, if the intention was to stick with the spirit of the Fleming books, then the filmmakers should have given Dalton’s Bond the credible attire to support his cover as a mercenary with an extravagant lifestyle. But the rationale of the filmmakers, in particular costume designer Jodie Tillen, is that “‘Bond is caught off guard.... He was going to a wedding and had just a couple of outfits in a suitcase, so we were restricted by reality’” (The Making of Licence To Kill 61). Unfortunately, they all forgot that at this point in the story Bond has Sanchez’s money and could have easily afforded to enhance his wardrobe. It’s probably not what the filmmakers wanted to leave me with, but it does somehow stick in one’s mind.

As the drug baron Sanchez, Robert Davi prepared for the role by adopting the accent of the Frito Bandito.³ At the beginning of the film—the traditional pre-credits sequence—it is obvious that Sanchez is evil because he’s rich, he orders his men to cut out the heart of the guy who’s been messing with his mistress Lupe, and he uses an entire can of black dye in his hair. There are lots of shooting in this opening sequence as DEA agents and evil drug guys fire guns at one another but, in the spirit of gritty realism, no one actually gets shot. It seems they were firing blanks at one another. Why Sanchez even bothers to leave his stronghold in the fictional Isthmus City just to retrieve his mistress and even risk arrest by the DEA is ridiculous. He’s a drug baron, for crying out loud, with legions of molls. And he’s got enough thugs who can “fix things for ya,” if need be, without his direct involvement.

“Your escapades are getting more creative,” Sanchez tells Lupe as he begins to whip her. A very odd line, for as we soon learn from Sanchez, he values loyalty above all. It’s a wonder he even takes her back, because it’s only a matter of time when the Latin beauty will snap and flee again. Anyway, cut to an exterior scene where the DEA agents and the drug guys are still shooting at each other. It leads to a slow motion close-up of Leiter and his men running toward Sanchez’s plane, but Alec Mills’ cinematography—which uses flat lighting and hazy filters—makes the scene unintentionally ridiculous. It looks like a Bridgestone tire commercial, only with gunfire.

Thematically, there is an instance of intelligence: the pre-credits sequence contains an idea that harks back to a recurrent theme in the Fleming novels. The civil servant, the dedicated agent who plays the role of the hero, is trapped in the bureaucratized government of which he is part. He is, in essence, a small component in a vast impersonal entity where he is estranged from himself—all his actions, it seems, belong in the line of duty and there may never be a divide between his professional calling and his personal life. In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Bond’s profession affects his marriage with tragic consequences: we are all familiar with the ending of the novel, of the ghastly moment when a thunder of gunfire shatters the marriage, of Bond glimpsing the face of the perpetrator ⁴ in a passing car, of the sorrowful aftermath in which Bond cradles the body of his bride in his arms.

In the pre-credits of Licence To Kill, Felix Leiter's wedding is interrupted when Franz Sanchez unexpectedly arrives in U.S. territory, and Bond and Leiter become involved in the attempt to arrest the drug lord. Once again, they are thrust into the line of duty. It overrides their personal lives, placing them outside of themselves. The sequence is a throwback to the Fleming notion of the heroic agent’s failure to live: unable to escape his profession, even in his personal life, the hero has difficulty cultivating his inner life and faces the threat of becoming less human. He is alienated from himself.

It’s a promising start, this effort to go back to what Fleming was writing in those dozen or so books. Not much, though, remains in terms of unused material—the film series has practically devoured the Fleming oeuvre; and for Licence To Kill, the Bond makers used leftover story elements from the books to spruce up the script. The drunkard Milton Krest (played by Anthony Zerbe) is from the short story “The Hildebrand Rarity,” although his penchant for whipping his wife, Liz Krest, is transferred to the Sanchez/Lupe scenario. The tail of a stingray, which Krest uses as a whip, is updated for the film—Sanchez uses some sort of sawed-off bullwhip, whether you care or not. Then there is Felix Leiter’s shark mauling, taken from the novel Live and Let Die. One can also argue that Bond’s infiltration of Sanchez’s empire, the rapid way in which he gains the villain’s trust and destroys the operation from within, are somewhat akin to the way in which Bond infiltrates Scaramanga’s operation in Fleming’s The Man with the Golden Gun.

To pad the story, the filmmakers introduce a subplot concerning Heller, Sanchez’s chief of security in Isthmus City. Played by the incomparable Don Stroud, Heller has informed the CIA that he will help return Stinger missiles—stolen by Sanchez—to the U.S. government. How Sanchez managed to steal the missiles is never explained; but things get complicated when Bond’s attempt to assassinate the drug kingpin fails and Heller changes his mind. Though he’s good in this marginal role, Don Stroud still allows himself to be blown off the screen by a tank. He’s had a long career of forced tough-guy stares and overdone antics, and when he’s not appearing in B movies like Carnosaur 2 or The Haunted Sea, or playing a long-haired Asian cyborg in Precious Find, Stroud continues to be adept at delivering sub-John Saxon performances. His role as Heller is to stand next to Sanchez for most of the film, try to look concerned, wear a camouflage uniform during a tank assault, and growl out lines like “You’re not going to believe who this guy is!” when he tries to share information about Bond with Sanchez. Today, Stroud has essentially retired from acting, which means his solid run as the two-bit villain in mindless action films has finally come to an end, although it does allow Rhys Ifans or Rutger Hauer to have a crack at the job now and then.

The rest of the script is jammed with a checklist of action scenes (skydiving, underwater battles, water skiing, flame throwing, bar fights, ninja attacks), and the drug smuggling motif is clearly inspired by Miami Vice, only without the cool setting of South Beach. But I can report that at least the actresses are quite easy on the eyes. Talisa Soto plays Lupe, a woman who wears a backless dress and seems to be addicted to lip-gloss. The other woman, Pam Bouvier, is played by Carey Lowell. I think she’s a CIA pilot but, in a dramatic twist, she wears a backless dress near the end of the film. The wardrobe change is a testament to the subtleties in Ms. Lowell’s portrayal of the character, though the role is not as challenging as her marriage to a slobbering creature, the gray-haired Richard Gere, who got an arrest warrant in India when he couldn’t restrain himself from smacking kisses on actress Shilpa Shetty at an AIDS awareness event.⁵

The plot thickens, I think, when Sanchez eventually begins to trust Bond because the British agent can withstand the interrogation of Hong Kong ninja-narcotics agents as well as survive Don Stroud’s cannon fire on the stronghold of those pesky ninjas. The implication is that the worst thing for Sanchez is knowing that Don Stroud can commandeer a tank. The only thing worse is knowing that Don Stroud and his beer gut could actually fit inside the cramped confines of an armored vehicle. Luckily, Sanchez now has Bond at his side and all fears are allayed. It’s the villain’s flaw, this business of giving high expectations on human trust. “Loyalty is more important to me than money,” he tells Krest early in the film. This is, of course, a seriously stupid idea, for the probability of finding trustworthy people in Sanchez’s line of work has about a zero percent chance of success. Sure, if pressed, he could boast that his men are highly loyal and quite content with their 401(k) retirement plans; but it wouldn’t surprise me if they suddenly turned on old Sanchez without a flinch if offered a better benefits package from a competing drug baron.

Soon Bond is on the inside, learning all about Sanchez’s intricate method of selling drugs through his partner, the televangelist Joe Butcher (played by Wayne Newton, great-grandson of Sir Isaac Newton). Please do not ask me who this televangelist is or where he came from. The character seems to be a holdover from an unfocused script review session that John Glen held in a pub with Maibaum and Wilson. All I know is that the televangelist has the power to persuade his followers to offer donations. He also espouses a gracious aphorism (“Bless your heart”) but never addresses the most pressing question in everyone’s minds—is he originally Methodist, Bolivian Evangelical Lutheran, or perhaps a former Hari Krishna? We never learn. It’s never even explained why a South American drug lord is in cahoots with a televangelist. Nor do we learn why Sanchez and his men—presumably devout Catholics—have decided to work with a preacher of an obscure religious sect in Isthmus, never once struggling with their conflicted spiritual state, nor asking themselves, “Hey, why are we listening to that guy from Las Vegas with the funny moustache?” Nevertheless, proud of his empire, Sanchez takes Bond and potential investors to the cocaine processing plant held within the walls of the Olimpatec Meditation Institute (OMI), a religious retreat in the outskirts of Isthmus City. ⁶

The OMI complex features cone-shaped structures that represent the rich cultural past of an ancient civilization. Indeed, during a major excavation in 1879 (and I swear this is true), archeologists were thrilled to learn that the early inhabitants—who built the complex by dragging and lifting gigantic stones—used these structures as glorious monuments to Quezacatotecxilonenchipotle, the God of Back Pain and Hernia. Unfortunately, the complex is a surreal setting, perhaps too fantastical, and clashes with the grim sets in the first half of the film (for example, the marine warehouse and the Barrelhead Bar). Even Richard Maibaum expressed dissatisfaction with the OMI setting:  “‘Personally, I didn’t feel that the meditation center came off clearly enough as to what exactly its function was, but once you get there, the action is so exciting, that you don’t care. . . . But this scene is so far out and fantastic, that it doesn’t really go along with the darker, realistic mood of the rest’” (Gross 90).

It all leads to a gripping finale with tanker trucks and explosions. In fact, there are lots of explosions in the finale, and when you see them, you’ll say, “There are lots of explosions in this finale.” John Glen manages to stage some exciting stunts with the Kenworth trucks⁷, but the climactic showdown between Bond and Sanchez is over too quickly—somehow we expect an intense fight scene such as the one with Bond and Grant in From Russia with Love. As it is, the rushed ending suggests that not a whole lot of thought went into this showdown between hero and villain because John Glen was too excited to film explosions in the desert.

An odd entry in the series, Licence To Kill starts out with vigor but then loses it, barely ending up ahead of your typical Steven Seagal action film. Dalton does what he can with the erratic script—he was a fine choice to play Bond, looking every bit like the dark romantic hero in the novels, despite the bizarre hairstyle—but the approach of the filmmakers hinders his potential. The violence overwhelms the story and jars us from the flow of the narrative, forcing us to be detached from the whole experience. It is the most gruesome unpleasant film in the series, and anyone wanting to see it should first be hardened by life. Nonetheless, despite its grimness, the film does offer a number of bright song and dance numbers in the scenes of the family-friendly Barrelhead Bar. (I can personally foresee the release of a special uncut edition of the Licence To Kill DVD featuring Wayne Newton and Don Stroud in the Barrelhead Bar singing a duet of My Way.)

Not surprisingly, at the base of this mountain of chaos was a troubled production. Marketing experts rejected the original title, Licence Revoked, when they realized the word “revoke” was unknown to a group of 8-year-olds that they polled during a game of street hockey in a Toronto suburb. The revised title, Licence To Kill, also raised linguistic complications for the same cadre of experts. Their market research led them to wonder whether to spell the first word “licence” or “license”? Further analysis revealed that moviegoers may come to a disturbing conclusion about the ambiguous spelling: is it possible that James Bond is perplexed by the spelling of the word and that part of the story of the new movie is his inability to decide between the different spellings of “licence” and “license”? The complications become more obscure: should the title’s first letter, the marketing experts wondered, be capitalized?

Problems emerged in other areas of the production. British censors ordered the filmmakers to trim some grisly scenes and considered branding the film with a rating that excluded anyone under 57 from seeing it. Eventually, a compromise was reached by adjusting the exclusion to anyone under 15. Studio executives then slashed the PR budget down to $752.34, discarded Eon’s striking “teaser” campaigns, and enforced a lackluster promotional campaign, created in-house, which was “so banal it barely registered with Bond fans.” (Sterling and Morecambe 269).

Even the development of the story was unsettling: the intent was to craft a drug smuggling tale about a warlord in the Golden Triangle, with the initial treatment from Maibaum and Wilson dictating exotic settings in the Far East and big production values—worrisome for the Bond makers who, at the time, were shelled inside an unstable MGM.⁸ To avoid what would have been expensive location filming in China, they sought the cheaper option in Mexico to fulfill their lack of ideas in a low budget production devoid of grandiose sets and a solid well-crafted screenplay. The result is an interesting tactic by Cubby Broccoli and his cohorts: “Let’s cover our slapdash efforts,” they seem to say,  “with a level of violence that is so out of sync with the series. Oh, and let’s make it all unoriginal—let’s capitalize on the trendyMiami Vice series by tossing in South American drug dealers, and we’ll film a guy getting chopped up in a bag shredder to emulate the gruesome chainsaw sequence in Brian De Palma’s Scarface.”

It is, we must admit, a straightforward plan in theory; but, as often happens in life, much harder to accomplish. Licence To Kill mistakenly entered the over-crowded territory of violent action films that carried stock elements of the time—namely, sinister South American villains clad in designer clothes, operating their drug cartels above the law, and usually based in Miami or some other tropical hideaway. In a sense, these films became a genre of their own and were readily available. They were so oft-produced that at least 7000 filmmakers on any given day were shooting a violent drug smuggling film somewhere in the world. Meanwhile, Miami Vice offered the genre on the small screen on a weekly basis. You could even watch an episode from the store windows of many local Radio Shacks. For the Bond makers, it was a serious misstep to reinvent 007 in this saturated market.

My investigation into this quirky production reveals that Glen’s directorial style also contributed to the chaos. It seems Glen was too preoccupied with action scenes to even think about trivial things such as characters and a compelling story. As Carey Lowell explains in an interview for Cinefantastique, Glen’s “‘interest is really in the action.... He’s not really interested at all in the character’s history and he doesn’t want to discuss much of it. The acting sort of took second place to the special effects and the action and momentum of the story’” (Altman 26-28). Fortunately, Dalton stepped in to fill the void that Glen created, pulling the directorial reigns on the acting front and hitting pay dirt with Lowell’s praises. “‘What John didn’t give me,’” the actress recalls, “‘Timothy did.... Luckily, Timothy was helpful because he’s very into character and ready to discuss it’” (56). Put another way, Glen landed a cushy job, relegated to filming explosions and exempted from reading the script and bringing the story and characters to life. It is a masterful technique, which he surely learned from Godard, by way of Keenan Ivory Wayans, in a film lecture called, “Cinéma Vérité and the Art of Non-Directorial Control: Use it for Hack Filmmaking.”

As for co-director Dalton, could his anger throughout the film be a reflection of his own discontent with Glen’s lack of involvement? I would not usually entertain such an idea but, in his autobiography For My Eyes Only, John Glen suggests that all was not well between actor and director: “Things ended in a bit of a sour atmosphere, unfortunately.... The whole thing was a bit of an ordeal and Tim and I had a bit of a slanging match across the pool. I don’t know whether to put it down to tiredness at the end of the schedule or the accumulated tension of what had had been an unusually arduous shoot” (205).⁹ The “slanging match,” such as it is, suggests that the two were polite enough to simply yell, not grapple each other wearing nothing but loincloths to prove who was manly. Yet the sentiment from both Dalton and Lowell points to one thing: the film ultimately suffers from the lack of a director with a passion for storytelling, and it’s evident on screen—as we’ve discussed, there are plot elements not fully explained, and not a whole lot makes sense, especially with the characters.

Strained nerves aside, something more austere loomed over the production, forcing Dalton to proclaim that the end of the series was near. “My feeling is this will be the last [Bond film],” he tells Richard Schenkman of Bondage magazine. “I don’t mean my last one, I mean the end of the whole lot. I don’t speak with any real authority, but it’s sort of a feeling I have” (23).  Well, regardless of Dalton’s questionable ability to portend the end of Bondian days, a descent into the maelstrom did occur: the 80s were coming to a close, ushering the demise of Miami Vice and pastel-shaded suits. In an unprecedented move, the U.N. Security Council rejected Huey Lewis’ theory that it was hip to be square and passed a resolution that declared it certainly wasn’t hip to be Huey Lewis. All the while, Licence To Kill flopped in the summer blockbuster season of 1989. The dismal box office result was enough for longtime producer Cubby Broccoli to question the viability of the Bond franchise and to consider selling his company, Danjaq. Bleak years followed: the franchise fell into a six-year hiatus, impelled by the protracted legal mess involving the Bond producers and the studio, MGM/Pathe. ¹⁰ Reports then surfaced that John Glen had the audacity to make Aces: Iron Eagle III but fans dismissed them as baseless rumors.¹¹

The DVD I reviewed had terrific picture quality, whether you care or not, and the two-channel audio is quite good, although it’s far more dramatically engaging to watch the explosion of Anthony Zerbe’s head in pristine, digital 5.1 surround sound. Among the extras, there is a small documentary on the making of Licence To Kill and an audio commentary by Glen and Michael G. Wilson. I didn’t listen to the entire thing (there was a closet door that I had to fix), but I listened long enough to hear insightful comments such as, “This stunt took two weeks to film,” or “We worked hard in the desert to film this scene,” followed by a long gap of silence before the next batch of comments were heard. Strangely, the gaps of silence were a symbolic reminder of the emptiness within the script. Of course, given my reaction, I may not be the audience that John Glen and company had in mind. I suspect the ideal viewer is drunk. And asleep. And a marine biologist with a soft spot for irate great white sharks. If you are, then, a boozy marine biologist with hypersomnia, and your life’s joy is a loveable pet Carcharodon carcharias, I can happily recommend Licence To Kill. Enjoy in good health.

I rate this 8.1/10 

The Living Daylights Review

Bond is asked to assist a Soviet named Koskov to defect to the United States.  That night, Kara, a female assassin tries to kill Koskov, but Bond recognizes that she was just a decoy.  You see, Koskov isn’t really defecting.  007 befriends Kara, posing as Koskov’s friend (to find out more about the situation), and the two head off the Afghanistan.  Bond later uncovers a plot that has Koskov is smuggling guns with a crazy arms dealer named Whitaker.  But this isn’t like any other mission, the secret agent starts to grow strong feelings for Kara, which could further jeopardize plans.

The Pre-title sequence is the perfect way to introduce newcomer, Timothy Dalton.  M briefs 3 double-0 agents about their current training exercise, using paint pellets instead of live ammunition.  Once the mission starts, we see one agent get tagged.  But when the second agent gets hit with paint, he turns around and shoots the guy with real bullets.  He’s a double agent!  It’s up to Bond to stop him.  The bad guy tries to escape in a jeep, but Bond jumps on top of it and a thrilling chase/fight ensues.  It ends with Bond setting fire to the jeep, driving it off a cliff, and then parachutes to safety while the bad guy blows up in mid-air.  Hell yeah!  007 lands on a yacht with a sexy lady on board.  He uses her phone to call into headquarters, and says that he’ll report in one hour.  Then when the lady offers him champagne, without skipping a beat, Bond changes his mind, “Better make that two”.  Then the solid opening titles start, with a pretty darn good Bond song by New Wave artist a-Ha.

Yes, I still really enjoyed this one.  While there isn’t a terrible amount of action, it makes up for it with one of the strongest storylines in the series, not to mention the only Bond movie that has strong romantic chemistry.  The defection scene generates some suspense as Kara tries to kill Koskov, but Bond shoots the gun out of her hand.  I love the way they get the soviet out of the country, through a pipeline.  Okay, so the husky (but still, somehow sexy to me) Russian distracting an old guard by burying his head in her busty cleavage is stuff from a Roger Moore movie, but it’s still pretty awesome.  There’s a great Q briefing scene, and love the car he gets.  It’s been awhile since we’ve scene some awesome gadgets, like missiles and lasers.  There’s a bit more sking, but I thought it was cool how Bond and Kara escape by riding on her Cello case.  I also loved the exploding milk bottles.  Awesome!

The middle portion builds on the relationship between Bond and Kara, which is surprisingly charming, romantic and compelling.  This isn’t what you would normally expect out of a Bond movie, but I think it’s one of the film’s strengths.  The final portion has Bond becoming allies with a sort of middle eastern mercenary (or whatever) and with his help they try to stop Koslov shipping a bunch of Opium to Whitaker.  This sequence is one of my favorite in the entire Bond franchise.  007 is flying a plane and Kara drives in the back before they take off.  Koslov’s best henchman also hitches a ride, and him and Bond fight on a cargo net full of Opium while dangling out of the back of the plane.  No CGI here.  This is all real stunts, and it looks fantastic.

When this came out, there was a lot of criticism on Dalton’s performance, and many filmgoers rejected his portrayal of 007.  I know why too.  Because Roger Moore was so silly and goofy, that they think that’s all Bond could and should be.  Honestly, Dalton is probably a lot closer to the Ian Fleming’s version of 007.  His serious, no-nonsense approach turned many fans off, and that’s too bad.  They just weren’t ready for a serious Bond yet.  I even think if Daniel Craig’s Bond came out after A VIEW TO A KILL, it would’ve been rejected too.  Watching this movie now though, it holds up extremely well.  The tone is more dangerous, but still has some mild humor sprinkled throughout, just not the amount Moore would bring.  To me, Dalton was one of the best Bond’s and it’s a pity he was only allowed to do 2.  Maryam d’Abo as Kara makes a terrific Bond girl.  For once, she’s not a bimbo or a weakling.  She’s very feminine, but when the situation demands it, she doesn’t turn into a helpless screaming child.  There’s a lot of passion in her performance.  Jeroen Krabbe makes a good villain, as does the over the top Joe Don Baker as Whitaker.  I should also mention Andreas Wisniewski as Necros, a henchman who bares some resemblance to Dolph Lundgren.  He’s not just a dumb meathead though, even though he says very little, he appears to be pretty intelligent.  We get introduced to a new Moneypenny too, and though she’s no Lois Maxwell, she does just fine.
Also, John Rhys-Davies plays an ally to Bond, and is reliable as usual.

This was director John Glen’s first outing and it’s his best.  Getting rid of Moore seemed to be a great excuse to go into a new direction stylistically.  The pacing is tighter and the stakes are higher.  The action sequences are top-notch!  The story is one of the best.  What a great idea to make this a sort of romance as well, showing Bond’s vulnerability.  Smart move, as it made the action all the more engaging.  John Barry delivers one of his best scores in the series.  Though it’s a bit modernized for the 80′s, it by no means sounds dated.  There’s a refreshing urgency to the music.  The Pretenders also do 2 songs featured in the movie, which are great!

Finally, a James Bond movie that Ian Fleming can be proud of.  Dalton is a lean, mean and bold Bond.  Full of action and a romantic sub-plot that elevate this above most other 007 adventures.  THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS is closer in tone to the Daniel Craig movies than any of the others.  If you don’t really remember this one, I ask you to give this one another shot.

I also like the bit when Necros has the milk bottle grenades and throws them round the Blayden Safe House.

I rate this 8.4/10

My A View To A Kill Review is below the Doctor No Review.

Octopussy Review

This isn't to say that the plot holds any great surprises- it's still a Bond movie. The titular Octopussy (heh heh, titular) is the head of an exclusively female cult that also has a line in jewellery theft. Her agent in the field is Kamal Khan, an exiled Afghan prince who is mucking about with dodgy Fabergé eggs. After 009 is killed in the line of duty, delivering one of these eggs to the British ambassador, James Bond is assigned to untangle the confusion. He doesn't do a great job, but he is beguiled by his unknown connection to Octopussy, and presumably, by the assumption that she has eight of something.

Like the action in For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy really runs Bond ragged, which I always prefer to the usually unflappable antics of our super-spy hero. The difficulty is that Roger Moore is still in the role of Grandpa Bond, so "run ragged" is pretty much his starting position too. For the second film in a row, the producers sought to recast Bond, but opted for the established star when Warner Bros. announced their rival Bond film for 1983, a remake of the execrable Thunderball. In fairness to the then-56-year-old Moore, the continued casting was probably the least of the evils committed by Never Say Never Again, which somehow managed to be not better, not worse, but equally as bad as Connery's first run at that film.

So, once again, this one seems to have all the nuts and bolts of a series reboot, with more of the jumping and running and punching that typifies Bond at its best. The now predictable outbursts of awful comic relief would seem, therefore, to have been added in at the last moment. If James Brolin had taken the role, as planned, I don't believe that Eon could have countenanced dressing him up as a clown, or a gorilla, or getting him to swing on vines to the wailing of Johnny Weismuller's Tarzan. Even the usual surfeit of quips seems like an afterthought, with a lame gag in which Moore tells a snake to "Hiss off" seeming to show that he couldn't stop doing comedy bits if his life depended on it.

These gags often soil the otherwise terrific action setpieces too. The Rajasthan chase scene is almost completely comical, but look at the scenes towards the end of the film. The train-hopping fight scene is adrenalised Bond at its best, and really puts the character, and Moore, through his paces, but when he's pitched off of it, he's embarrassingly foiled in his attempts to rejoin the chase, by a number of comedy locals. This from an action sequence that would have been good enough to end the film, but instead segues into a further thirty minutes of buffoonery.

The film's Indian flavour is a far cry from the travelogue segments of previous outings. If You Only Live Twice turned out as quite a risible and accidentally racist depiction of Japanese culture, Octopussy holds a consciously caricatured version of India, which even seems too obvious for this series. Khan and Gobinda are a particularly ineffectual, ethnically repurposed rehash of Goldfinger and Blofeld, despite the best efforts of Louis Jourdan and Kabir Bedi. Khan tells Gobinda to kill Bond, and Bond wriggles out of the big lug's grasp- lather, rinse, and repeat until Khan attempts to land on the wrong bit of a cliff and explodes on impact.

Swinging back to the relative plus sides, (without the Weismuller wail, thank you very much) Maud Adams is much better in her second run at the vaunted Bond girl role. Perhaps in conciliation for her role as a helpful punchbag in The Man With The Golden Gun, Octopussy is another of those characters whose strong femininity is undercut by a ridiculous double entendre of a name, but still manages to pack more of a wallop than her predecessors. With an army of similarly kick-ass women at her command, she fights the good fight at the film's conclusion, while Bond and Q fuck about in a big, patriotic hot-air balloon. See how the comedy ruins it? Besides which, bringing Q into the action actually serves to make Moore seem even more like Grandpa Bond- it's not a suave and able man with a curmudgeonly old bloke, as much as two old mates on a lark, each chowing down on Werther's Originals and laughing at nothing.

Octopussy actually surprised me, in the end, with some thumpingly enjoyable action sequences and a more energetic performance than we could reasonably have expected from Roger Moore at this point in his career as 007. Yes, the series was still long overdue a change of lead actor at this point, and the story is inscrutable bunkum, but I've heard defences of less enjoyable films from this series that trade on exactly the same points that I enjoyed about this one. If any Bond film could stand to lose half an hour, it's this one, but it bounces back from a number of bad mistakes in a way that shows a renewed energy in the stalwart production team. That said, I still don't hold high hopes for another of the unseen Moore outings- his swansong, A View To A Kill... 


I rate this film 8/10 

My A View To A Kill review is further down before Doctor No.

For Your Eyes Only Review

007 is sent to recover a secret encryption device from a sunken British naval Vessel.  Of course there are other parties after it as well, so Bond must hurry to retrieve it first.  He meets a Greek woman named Melina, who is out for revenge.  Her parents were killed, and it has something to do with Bond’s mission.  Together, they help each other out to find out just who the bad guy is.  You see, there are 2 shady characters, Kristatos and Columbo, both accusing each other for working with the Russians (remember, in the 80′s they were THE bad guys).  But yeah, the villain is Kristatos.

The pre-title sequence is on the silly side, but still kind of cool.  It has Bond visiting the grave of his wife (from ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE).  Then he boards a helicopter, only to have it taken over by Blofeld (though his name is never mentioned.  It’s him.  He has his cat and everything).  Blofeld is actually controlling the copter from a remote control nearby, while in his wheelchair.  In a rather nifty stunt, Bond climbs out of the copter’s back door, and makes his way to the front door where the controls are.  He gets control of the copter, chases Blofeld down, catches him with one of the skids, and drops him in a smokestack.  Silly, right?  But Bill Conti’s energertic, exciting and totally 80′s score makes the scene pretty awesome.  I still find myself cheering when Bond gets rid of Blofeld.  And then we’re treated with Sheena Easton singing the title track, a terrific ballad that I hope one day will be my wedding song.  Yup, I’m a big nerd!

After the high-tech, ultra tongue-in-cheek MOONRAKER, comes this stripped down thriller.  It’s pretty different for a Roger Moore bond film.  Sure, it still has its silliness, but also has a few darker elements going for it too.  Gone are the big gadgets and huge set pieces.  What we get instead are some decent car chases, fist fights, and practical stunts.  The result is a pretty satisfying Bond entry.

The movie opens with a British Ship being sunk.  It’s a pretty well done destruction sequence.  It’s followed by Melina’s parents being killed right in front of her (by an airplane with machine guns on it).  The look in her eyes as she looks at their bodies is beautifully devastating.  There’s no M this time (since Bernard Lee died during pre-production), so the Prime Minister gives him his mission.  Bond tracks down a lead, only for him to be killed by Melina.  The bad guys are after both of them, so they get into Melina’s car (after Bond’s Lotus is blown up by a self-destruct mechanism activated by the bad guys), which is a really tiny yellow car.  It’s a pretty fun car chase, as the little vehicle flips and tumbles through the segment.  The movie shifts to a Winter setting as Bond meets the villain, who is obsessed with a very young figure skater, which is kind of creepy.  There’s a good ski chase here too, possibly the best in the series thus far, as it ends on a bobsled track.  The fight in the Hockey rink is a bit too dumb, but hey, it is a Roger Moore-Bond movie I guess, so… oh well.

The second half has a memorable mini-sub vs. mini-sub battle, a fight with a man in a deep-sea diving suit (which ends with a pretty cool explosion), and a shootout aboard a ship.  All of these action sequences are solid.  My favorite scene in the whole movie though, is when Bond encounters a villain in his car that is about to fall off of a cliff.  What Bond does here is very un-Roger Moore-Like, but it’s something Daniel Craig would do.  It’s a bold move that I think pays off.  I also like the scene when Bond and Melina are tied together, and being dragged through shark-infested waters.  Then we get to the finale.  After watching this again, I realized why I can’t remember the ending.  It’s surprisingly low-key.  It’s not that it’s NOT memorable.  It’s just low-key.  There’s really no big explosions, or a fantastic end to the villain.  It does have an intense mountain climbing scene.  I also like that it’s more about Melina than Bond at the end.  She has more of a reason to kill the bad guy than Bond does.  I really liked this aspect.

He is beginning to get a little too old here, but Roger Moore still gives a fine performance as 007.  It’s not quite as jokey as MOONRAKER.  He still can deliver a dry, clever, and tasteless remark, but there’s some thing a little more gritty about him too.  His character also isn’t as much of a slut this time.  He even turns down that whore of a figure skater, which is very unlike Bond.  It’s different, but not in a bad way.  Carole Bouquet is exotic and beautiful, with her gorgeous eyes and long, jet black hair.  Her acting is fine, even though her voice appears to be dubbed.  She still has a strong presence.  Topol as Columbo is fun and has a lot of energy.  The same can’t be said of Julian Glover who plays the villain.  He just doesn’t come across as threatening.  I wouldn’t say he does a bad job, or is boring.  Just that the character is pretty generic.  nothing really stands out about him.  Bond villains are supposed to be memorable.  Kristatos is not.  Lynn-Holly Johnson (who also played a figure skater in ICE CASTLES) is kind of annoying here.  She’s definitely not sexy.  Everyone else is fine.  Also, look for Charles Dance as a henchman who barely gets to say one sentence.

John Glen (who edited a few of the Bond pictures) makes his directorial debut here.  He’s actually pretty good.  The action scenes are well shot, the pacing seems fine and he handles the actors good enough.  It definitely feels more grounded than Lewis Gilbert’s approach.  The movie has a gritty feel to it, and the screenplay is darker.  Not too dark, as there are a few opportunities for one-liners and innuendos.  John Barry was M.I.A again this time, so Bill Conti took over.  It definitely has a different feel.  If there is any score from the Bond series that shows its age, it’s this one.  It’s 80′s all the way.  Now, that can either be good or bad, however you choose to look at it.  I love cheesy 80′s scores, so I love it.  I definitely rock it on my ipod.  Though, because this film is more gritty, an old school score would have been more appropriate.  But it still has some thrilling musical cues.

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY isn’t without its problems.  It suffers from a generic villain and an annoying performance by Lynn-Holly Johnson.  But its strengths outweigh it’s faults.  I like the new (slightly) grounded approach, the darker elements and its well-executed action sequences.  Among Bond fans, it doesn’t seem to be talked about too often.  Again, it’s because it’s a bit more low-key than the others.  But that’s doesn’t mean it’s bad.  Quite the contrary, it’s a pretty good Bond entry.  I’m going to try to make a point to watch this one more often.

I rate this 7/10