Bond Films: Skyfall

Skyfall is (as of this writing) the most recent Bond film, and the third with Daniel Craig. It's the third since the series formally rebooted, starting Bond at more or less the beginning of his career, and with one of the earlier works, Casino Royale. This makes it more interesting that Skyfall deals with age, and obsolescence, with parallel stories involving Bond and M, played by Judi Dench. Skyfall is also familial, playing the villain as a dark parallel of Bond, the flip side of an all-business, manipulative M.

The basic plot of Skyfall is: after apparently during an operation in Istanbul, Bond comes back in to assist with the investigation of a series of hacks and attacks on MI6. Using bullet fragments from his earlier wounds, MI6 identifies his assailant, and Bond tales him to Shanghai, where he gains another clue leading him to Macau. He meets the girl, who takes him to Silva, the antagnoist. After some repartee, and the killing of the girl, Silva is captured and taken to MI6 for interrogation. However, his capture is part of his plan, and he escapes, and Bond must race to save M. They evacuate to Bond's ancestral home in Scotland, using the original Aston Martin first rolled out in Goldfinger, and after a very intense series of shootouts and explosions, Bond defeats his nemesis, only to see - well you'll have to see for yourself.

Skyfall is one of the better Bond films. It's easy to say that about a recent Bond film, since it's of-the-moment, but all the same, I think this will hold up well. It dives a little more into Bond's psyche and the history that shaped it. Javier Bardem, as Silva, brings a borderline queeny, pathological affect to what might otherwise be a run-of-the-mill villain. Skyfall also brings in more of the cyber-intelligence element to what is otherwise a throwback - Bond has little in the way of gadgets, save for a gun he never fires, and a radio the size of a piece of gum. Later, this theme of old-fashioned spywork is reinforced when Bond, armed only with a couple of shotguns and a knife, defends against a platoon of men with helicopter support.

Bond Films: Skyfall

Skyfall is the 23rd EON Bond film, and the 24th, and last I've watched in my little marathon. Released in the 50th year of Bond films, it is also certainly one of the best. Spoilers are active. There is no way to talk about this movie within referencing events within it.

The basic plot of Skyfall is: Hot on the trail of a stolen hard drive that contains the true identifies of MI6 agents hidden worldwide, Bond chases his quarry through Istanbul and atop a train, ending in a missed shot by a fellow agent that sends him falling into the river below. Eventually declared dead, Bond is pulled back in when a series of terrorist attacks zero in on M, and raise public skepticism about the efficacy of MI6. Bond comes in, and after being waved past some evaluations, he heads to Shanghai, and later Macau, following the trail of the man he fought until he 1) steals the villain's girl and 2) arrives at the secret lair. After some repartee, the villain kills the girl before being captured by Bond and taken in. There, his full story is revealed: a former agent abandoned by M, he survive a disfiguring attempt at suicide and is now a sort of master hacker. While captured, his computer materials are unlocked by Q, but in turn hack MI6's security systems and allow him to escape. After a merry chase through the Tube, he and his accomplices attempt to assassinate M at a Parliament hearing.  Bond thwarts them, and takes M in the old Aston-Martin to his family home in Scotland, where he lays in wait for the villain's assault. After a hella amount of fighting, Bond and a fatally wounded M defeat the villain.

Skyfall is epic, but not overly busy. Each sequence feels like the next logical step, and covers the half-moments between action. It's also remarkably simple - the only gadgetry Bond receives is a fancy gun keyed to his palmprint, and a tiny radio. This continues with the tone of the previous two films, returning Bond to his roos as a simple spy - albeit an incredibly capable one.

When Skyfall came out, there was much talk of it being about age, and getting old, and feeling irrelevant. The new Q is a young man, quite a turnaround from the previous Bond-Q relationship, and M as played by Judi Dench, is more than long in the tooth, being eased out by management. But Skyfall isn't about being old, or irrelevant. Bond only creaks because he's genuinely injured, not because he's getting on.

Skyfall is about abandonment. In the very beginning of the film, Bond is ordered to abandon a mortally wounded fellow agent. He himself is figuratively abandoned when another agent is ordered to take a shot at the risk (and result) of hitting Bond. The villain was also abandoned by M. See a pattern here? The villain abandons the girl, killing her, and on top of all this, Bond is an orphan who falls back to the abandoned family home in Scotland. M dies - the ultimate abandonment. Skyfall is not a simple techno-thriller: it touches repeatedly on loss, loyalty, and the wearying conflict between the two: how can we be loyal to something we know we may ultimately lose?

This is the key to all of the best Bond films: Bond actually experiences loss. The stakes are high, but while he may win for queen and country, he suffers a personal loss in the bargain. We see this in On her Majesty's Secret Service, in Goldeneye, Casino Royale, and now Skyfall.

Skyfall introduces some new changes. Moneypenny is finally introduced into the post-Brosnan "rebooted" series, and Ralph Fiennes steps in as the new M (Bond: he works for Voldemort). The new Q promises to be more smart aleck schoolboy than lecturing professor. And Bond hopefully for the better - can move forward from the losses of Vesper, and M, and achieve some measure of satisfaction besides vengeance in the next film.

Bond Films: Quantum of Solace

Quantum of Solace is a direct sequel to Casino Royale. This was a little difficult to follow when it came out, because by the time it was released nearly three years had passed since its predecessor. Because of that, and because of being hampered by a writer's strike in the interim, Quantum gets short shrift among the modern Bond films. However, watched in sequence with Casino Royale, it is a nice little chestnut, a satisfying coda to one of the better Bond films.

The basic plot of Quantum of Solace is: Having stalked Vesper Lynd's killer at the end of Casino Royale, Bond has brought Mr. White in for questioning. However, the interrogation is interrupted by a sleeper agent whom Bond chases. Following clues, Bond learns a little more about the mysterious Quantum organization, including an elaborate virtual meeting they will be holding at an outdoor opera. Bond takes photos and disrupts their meeting, ultimately resulting in a shootout wherein he kills another British agent (apparently one undercover). His documents revoked, Bond goes rogue, making his way to the South American country where Quantum has backed a military coup in exchange for land rights - ultimately, water rights, rather than the oil rights everyone has assumed. Bond meets up with the girl, who is the villain's ex-girlfriend, and daughter of the previous regime's leader. She and Bond crash a fundraiser; Bond's buddy from Casino Royale is killed, and he and the girl go to Quantum's secret facility in the middle of the desert. There, they assault and kill the villain and his pawns; Bond chases him into the desert, giving him the choice of death by dehydration or drinking antifreeze.

On its own, Quantum of Solace is a choppy pretty choppy film; there are purposefully rapid cuts to emphasize the action, effective at first but jarring over time. Even more jarring are some of the story jumps; I could barely follow the plot the first time I saw it. It's a kinetic film, like a bullet that shatters and leaves multiple fragments embedded as it penetrates its target. It's the action counterpart to Casino Royale's lover story.

However, watching the two films back to back, Quantum makes more sense than I remember it making, and really, the ideal way to treat the two is as Part 1 and Part 2 of one long movie, similar to what Quentin Tarantino did with his Kill Bill movies, or with what happens with some other franchises. Casino Royale ran long and Quantum of Solace runs short, but together, they tell a tale of a man who takes on a touch new job, falls in love with a woman who is then killed after she is forced to betray him, and then he avenges her death in a South American desert. The girl in this film is less a femme fatale than a fellow avenger, aiming for the coup leader's head as much as Bond seeks to kill his backer. Together, their story is an old standby: a tale of vengeance.

Bond has been in this territory before: in Licence to Kill, and Thunderball. Quantum is as topical as Licence to Kill (which stood against a backdrop of the America's War on Drugs) and, in aspiration at least, right up there with Thunderball in terms of the romantic pairing of vengeance. What is a little ridiculous is how often M is personally threatened when played by Judi Dench - once before in Die Another Day, now in this film, and - in an effective way at least - later in Skyfall. What Quantum gets right is how pointless revenge can be, and here the girl is the proxy for Bond gone too far - he manages to keep it about the mission, wherease for her, she has not purpose other than to grieve once she kills the villain.

Quantum of Solace deserves a better place in the cosmos of Bond films - but should always be preceded immediately by Casino Royale.

Bond Films: Casino Royale

Casino Royale is the first of the Daniel Craig Bond films, and the first in the EON line to start with Bond's first mission - it's been adapted before, but nothing most people today would have seen). It was formally described as a reboot, which addresses some problems with Bond continuity, keeping the character firmly in the present while acknowledging elements of his past in a more nuanced way that Bond coming across old props in The World Is Not Enough. Casino Royale came out 4 years after its predecessor, and was the first under new creative leadership. Is quality is a result of this deliberate attention to what works and what doesn't in the series.

The basic plot of Casino Royale is: after earning his 00 status taking down a mole in Prague, Bond is dispatched to capture a bomb maker in Africa. After shooting up an embassy and killing the target, Bomb is criticized but turns up clues to a financier named Le Chifre. Le Chifre is a banker to the criminal underworld, and turns a profit shorting successful stocks and orchestrating events that will turn tragedy into profit. Unfortunately for him, Bond prevents a bombing of a new airliner, and Le Chifre loss over $100,000,000 of his clients' money, and so he puts together a high-stakes poker game in Montenegro. Bond is paired up with Vesper Lynd (the girl) from the Chancellory of the Exchequer's office, and off they go to win a poker game. In the course of the game Le Chifre is assaulted by one of his more militant clients, whom Bond later kills, and Bond himself is betrayed and also poisoned. However, he wins, and in short order Vesper is kidnapped and used to lured him into a trap, after which he is tortured in a very novel way by Le Chifre - who ins short order is killed in front of Bond's own eyes by a shadowy man. Bond and Vesper recover together in a hospital, and decide to escape together, to give up their government jobs and sail the world. However, Vesper absconds with the money, leading to a shootout in a Ventian build as it collapses into the sea, wherein Vesper drowns. Bond later learns that she betrayed him at the casino and in the end because her lovel was being held by the mysterious bad guys who killed Le Chifre, and Bond hunts down a man identified by her for him in her cel phone, and kills him. Bond is cold and trusts no one. This is the beginning of James Bond, agent 007.

Casino Royale was quite impressive when it debuted, and stands well on its own and within the Bond canon. It sticks within the rules of the series but brings us new surprises, notably that Bond is not totally on top of his game; he slips and nearly falls, he makes noise during a quiet snatch, and he lowers his guard and falls in love. He hasn't earned the trust of his superiors yet, and he's a bruiser: he takes hits as hard as he dishes them. He relies less on gadgets, other than commonly available text messaging. Indeed, one of the challenges for the series is that technology that would have seemed outlandish when it started is in the hands of everyday, normal consumers today.

What really struck me when I first saw Casino Royale, and when I re-watched it for this blog, is that it takes a turn into being chick flick Bond. While this Bond knows what he wants, he's not a jerk about it, and certainly, the shots of Daniel Craig arising from the ocean wearing nothing but swim trunks is fair turnabout on Halle Berry and numerous other girls over the series' history. However, in the final act, when Bond is opening up to Vesper, and he says, "I have no armor left", and some more beautiful words, those baby blue Bond eyes staring at us, OMG, ladies, swoon. This is a Bond we girls want to be with, and not just as a buddy, or conquest. This is Bond the boyfriend-material.

The best Bonds have emotional stakes that are high and are personal. When I saw Casino Royale the first time, I haven't seen most of the early films, and this chick-friendly approach was novel to me. However, I now know that it reflects the best Bonds, where there is real chemistry and emotional risk for Bond - On Her Majesty's Secret Service, From Russian With Love, and, later, even Skyfall. Bond does his best when he has something to love, and it has to be personal. After all, the world is not enough.

Bond Films: Bond by Brosnan

Pierce Brosnan's history with the Bond franchise is an interesting one. Like Roger Moore, he was considered as a Bond replacement long before he actually got the role; he was originally considered to replace Moore, but at the time was obliged to play Remington Steele on TV, and so the producers went with Timothy Dalton (who had also been considered earlier . . .maybe that's the norm). As a kid Remington Steele was one of my favorite shows, so when Brosnan was tapped to play Bond, I knew ahead of time he'd be a good one.

Brosnan Bond is a pretty capable blend of the preceding Bonds. He's as down-to-Earth as the Connery era, fights a range of villains as diverse as Seventies Bond, and smooth and lethal as Eighties Bond. He's sharp, witty, and deadly. Brosnan Bond's plots and villains are generally good, with some weird detours, such as the genetically-modified trans-racial villain of Die Another Day.

Brosnan Bond saw the fall of the Soviet Union and started after the end of the Cold War; ironically, this Bond doesn't fight SPECTRE, the global conspiracy Ian Fleming created as an adversary simply because he didn't believe the Cold War would last. Instead, this Bond fights mostly variations of the Mad General, whether Russian or Chinese, and the mega-wealthy industrialist in Tomorrow Never Dies. While this seemed fresh at first, by 2002 Brosnan Bond was a little lost. Who exactly was he fighting? What was his raison d'etre?

Pierce Brosnan, like so many Bonds before him, aged out of the role. A tall glass of water at first, by the end of his run he was approaching 50 and getting into creepy Roger Moore territory, sleeping with woman potentially young enough to be his daughter. Furthermore, while he kept fit, the overabundance of special effects barely concealed a lack of engaging plot - generally a plot so ridiculously implausible that the audience had no emotional investment . we may like Bond for being able to go through the motions, but we need more than the motions to get us through.

I like Brosnan Bond. I don't like to rate the Bond actors against each other, because they each stand on their own, but I think he was one of the better ones - smart, sexy, lethal. Brosnan Bond was everything a Bond should be. Unfortunately, he was saddled with a question of that that is, and but the end of his run, we were all desperate for an answer.

Bond Films: Tomorrow Never Dies

I don't know how, but I seem to have overlooked writing about Tomorrow Never Lies. Rest assured, readers, I've been watching the Bond films in order of release. Somehow, this essay hadn't made it to public yet.

Tomorrow Never Dies is probably the Brosnan Bond I think of most often; perhaps its ubiquity on cable, or its straightforward plot. Jonathan Pryce plays a villainous mashup of Rupert Murdoch and Steve Jobs, using a stolen satellite kerjigger to orchestrate violations of Chinese sovereignty and lead o war between the West and China. Co-starring Michelle Yeoh as the sort-of girl, sort-of rival, Tomorrow Never Dies is in many ways a rehash of The Spy Who Loved Me - not a bad Bond to rehash, and with just enough gloss to make it interesting.

The basic plot of Tomorrow Never Dies is: the villain has gotten hold of some satellite thing that can give false information to ships hat rely on satellites for positioning. He sends a British warship into Chinese waters, attacks wih his stealth ship and drill-torpedo, and then steals a nuclear weapon. Bond is dispatched to investigate the villain, who owns a news conglomerate with surprisingly prescient headlines (the original title was, "Tomorrow Never Lies"). Bond learns of the orbital duplicity and seeks to recover the device used to fake out the satellites, and along the way meets the girl, who is a Chinese agent working towards the same ends. For most of the film, they compete to outwit the villain and count coup for the respective governments, until they later run into each other diving the lost British ship, where they are waylaid by the villain's henchmen, but of course escape. After that, they are able to determine where the villain's stealth ship must be, but before they can infiltrate it they are captured and must escape by fast-roping down the Petronas towers and then running an amazing stunt-escape on a motorcycle - all while handcuffed to each other. They do infiltrate the ship, all while China and the UK are on the brink of war, and destroy it after the usual endgame shenanigans.

Tomorrow Never Dies has one of the better Bond villains, a mega-wealthy industrialist along the lines of Auric Goldfinger or Hugo Drax. It also continues the Brosnan Bond's move into more modernized fight sequences, and genuinely exciting stunts. It executes well on the details. However, I couldn't help feeling underwhelmed by the plot, and while I admit this might be because this is the twenty-first or so Bond film I've watched, I think it's also a sign of the franchise's long-term creative slump. Bond works in a formula, but a little flash only goes so far.

Tomorrow Never Dies is a good Bond film. It makes more sense than the ones that follow, and does what it does well. It just doesn't do much that is new.

Bond Films: Die Another Day

I had low expectations going in to Die Another Day. It was the last Brosnan Bond; it was the last Bond before the major reboot of Casino Royale. I had vague memories of it being the one with the ice-skating invisible car. Having seen it, I felt moderately surprised. As Bond films go, it has its flaws, but it's not terrible. It's fair to middling, with some good, and some bad.

The basic plot of Die Another Day is: captured and imprisoned in North Korea, Bond is tortured for fourteen months before being traded with one of the guys he fought in the opening. The Americans were concerned Bond had broken and was giving up intel, but in fact, someone else inside MI6 has been. Bond's license is revoked and he is put off duty, but he manages to escape police custody and bullshit his way Cuba, where he learns of a clinic that genetically modifies people and their identities. Following clues, he is shortly re-instated with MI6, meets the girl (Halle Barry), and infiltrates a British diamond mogul's circle party in the arctic, where he reveals a new satellite that can reflect sunlight peacefully - or be used as a deadly orbital ray gun, as Bond learns later. During an attempt to spy on the villain, Bond and the girl are nearly captured, and Bond learns the villain is in fact the corrupt North Korean officer he fought in the opening - genetically modified to appear British, and actually selling his deadly ray gun to Korean and Chinese warlords. Bond and the girl infiltrate using these sort of glider-packs, and board a place that is serving as a mobile command post while the villain trains his death ray on a road leading to the demilitarized zone. After an intense fight in which the death ray destroys the plane, Bond and the girl escape on a helicopter, starting it in mid-air and setting out for a bucolic house before going back to civilization.

There is a lot of action in this film. Action, action, action. It's well done, although with a high level of CGI, making some of it a bit unbelievable. Apparently, everyone in a Bond film is immune to hypothermia, but that is nothing new. The genetic modification bit seems far-fetched, but is really just a modern gloss on Charles Gray playing Blofeld after he'd already been played by three other actors. There is a fairly epic car fight that is interesting if only because Bond usually hasn't been taking on similarly-ranked spy cars.

Where Die Another Day fails is in the romantic and sexual chemistry. Halle Barry's Jinx is a fairly competent agent, but she doesn't have much style as an agent, and her liaisons with Bond seem perfunctory. Michelle Yeoh had more style as an agent from another government, and more sparks with Bond as a competitor. Add in a false flag Bond and you get no one Bond can really rely on. There isn't really a Bond girl in this film - just a couple of fellow spies who Bond happens to sleep with. At this point in the franchise, Bond hasn't figured out how to work with women who are his equals, with notable exceptions from On Her Majesty's Secret Servie and The Spy Who Loved Me.

Die Another Day was the last of four films bookended by extensive hiatus - six years before GoldenEye, and four until Casino Royale. They're all of the nineties, and all feature the same Bond, and the same M, for that matter. The Brosnan Bond films are practically of a genre to themselves, which I'll write about later. None of them are bad, but Die Another Day flails a bit as Bond moves into the twenty-first century.

Bond Films: The World Is Not Enough

The World Is Not Enough is the motto of Bond's family, it can imply several ideas, along the lines of constant avarice, or the notion that nothing in this world is sufficient to dissuade us from our higher principles. In this case, it seems to imply that nothing can make up for the hurt caused to the film's villains, a former kidnap victim and and arms dealer fatally wounded by MI6.

The basic plot of The World Is Not Enough is: After re-acquiring ransom money for a friend of M's, Bond and all of MI6 are shocked when the money is used as a bomb to kill the friend and damage MI6. Bond chases the assassin, who refuses to name who she works for before dying in a fiery explosion. Bond is sent to keep an eye on the guy's daughter Elektra King, who had previously been kidnapped by an arms trafficker and used as bait by M. She has inherited her father's oil pipeline business and is building a like through Central Asia. Following an investigation, Bond realizes that the original kidnapper is planning to steal plutonium that is removed from Russian nuclear weapons. He meets the girl, who is a rather implausible nuclear scientist, and realizes that the former kidnapper intendes to use the plutonium to stage, basically, a dirty bomb that renders competing pipelines useless. With the help of a former Soviet friend, Bond delivers this information to M, but she is subsequently kidnapped by Elektra. Bond and the girl learn that an understaffed Soviet submarine is being used to stage the bomb, and are able to figure out where it must be. Bond infiltrates the place, is captured and tortured by Elektra, but then is rescued when his friends storm the place. He confronts Elektra and kills her when she refuses to order her former kidnapper to stop. Bond and the girl get aboard the submarine and fight their way to the engineering section, where a rod of pure plutonium is being fed to the ore by the vilain. They defeat him, swim to the surface, and, in a callback to past Bond adventures, are caught making love that night using satellite-based thermal imaging.

While the action works pretty well in this film, there is a lot that goes wrong. There are plot holes the size of ICBMs, and a fairly epic glossing over of basic physics and chemistry, moreso than is usual for a Bond film. he girl is pretty blah. Denise Richards might work as an actual damsel in distress, or perhaps one who can fight back, but she is hardly believable as a nuclear scientist, let alone one in charge of dismantling the arsenal of the former Soviet Union. This film also reverts back to the "silly Bond" moments of the Seventies, such as Bond driving a motorized gondola through Venetian streets. In this case, he has a crazy little jetboat that dives on command and gets its own version of the musical theme, and then drives up stair-streets and through restaurants. The Russian accents by otherwise-fine Scottish and English actors are atrocious. We don't expect to believe that Bond operates in the real world, but Bond's world must be believable, and this one isn't. It's a fun ride, but as Bond films go, it's clear that they'll need another reboot, which is a shame after doing so well with GoldenEye.

Bond Films: Goldeneye

Goldeneye is the first Bond film with Pierce Brosnan in the role, coming out six years since License to Kill. It's also the first Bond filme following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it references that fact and the chaos in Russia that followed considerably.

The basic plot of Goldeneye is: years after a mission gone awry in which a fellow 00 agent was killed, Bond is put on the trail of a stolen high-tech helicopter, stolen by General Oramov and his henchwoman, Onatopp. They escape and use the helicopter to attack a secret Soviet base that uses Goldeneye, an orbital EMP bomb. They steal the device and turn its attack on the base. Bond is then reassigned o track down one of the survivors (the girl), and learns that the real mastermind behind these attacks is Trevaleyan, now known as Janus - his supposedly dead former partner from the film's opening. General Oramov attempts to frame Bond for the theft of Goldeneye, but when he kills the Minister of Defense and frames Bond for that, kidnapping the girl. Bond fights his way out using a tank, and then fights Oramov on a fancy military train. All escape, and Bond follows Oramov's trail to a secret satellite tracking base in Cuba, using the help of the CIA (oddly, played by the same guy who played the villain in The Living Daylights). After infiltrating the base, getting captured, and sabotaging the program with the girls' help, Bond engages in a final fight against Janus high above the control dish, a fight Janus ultimately loses.

I was surprised at how little I had already seen of Goldeneye. I had always assumed I'd seen, and parts of it were familiar, but I don't believe I'd ever seen the film all the way through, start to finish. It's a pretty solid reboot of the series, with a new Bond, new M, new Moneypenny, and a completely new context for villainy. It's worth pointing out that Fleming himself never thought the Cold War would last as long as it did, which is why he created SPECTRE, a concept abandoned in the films over two decades earlier, and one not taken up again until the Daniel Craig films. Desmond Llewellyn serves as Q, and Sean Bean (future Ned Stark) makes for a great villain and an excellent physical match for Bond.

Goldeneye is one of the better Bonds. Pierce Brosnan makes for a great Bond, though he'll always be Remington Steele to me. The changes in new actors and in the plot's background bring it thoroughly into the  - for then - modern era. Even though I would categorize this in the "Renegade General" plot, it works well. There is some minor unbelievability in the theft of the helicopter, and some of the tank stunts (besides the physical - not long before, the Red Army rolled platoons of tanks out to stop a coup). But it's a good film overall, and a very good Bond film. We can thank the success of Goldeneye for the continued series of the franchise following a very wobbly decade and a half.

Bond Films: License to Kill

Licenses to Kill is the second and last Dalton Bond film. It's not bad, but I could not stop thinking of this as the Just Say No [to Drugs] Bond, the Nancy Reagan Bond if you will. With a young Cary Lowell and a young Benicio Del Toro, it's a bit of a treat, and the nod towards the rise of televangelism is a fun bit at the end.

Bond renounces his position in MI6, has his "Licence to Kill" revoked, and sets out on a one-man rampage against a Colombian drug lord - very topical in the late eighties. While dated in tone, it plays like a more serious version of Live And Let Die - the last time Bond took on drug lords, arms-for-drug-money transactions excepted.

The basic plot of License to Kill is: while attending the weekend of CIA sidekick Felix Leiter in Key West, Bond and Leiter are enlisted to capture drug lord Carlos Sanchez, which they do by attaching a helicopter via cable to his light plane before parachuting into the wedding. Sanchez later escapes and takes revenge by murdering Leiter's wife and dipping him into shark-infested waters, wherein he loses a leg, yet survives. Bond takes revenge on the inside man who arranged these events, and runs away from MI6 after being admonished at Hemingway House. Bond manages to recruit a pilot (the girl, Cary Lowell, future Law & Order alum and Mrs. Richard Gere), and manages to both sabotage a drug shipment and work his way into Carlos' inner circle as a mole. Bond learns of Sanchez's big power play and accompanies him to his manufacturing center, fronted in part by a televangelist played here by Wayne Newton. Bond's true purpose is discovered, and after dropping Benicio into an industrial shredder and chasing down the bad guys in tractor-trailer chase, Bond torches the gasoline-soaked villain with his wedding gift - an engraved lighter - and then gets his job back.

There is a lot of physical disbelief in the stuntwork here - hauling away a plane with a helicopter, popping a wheelie in a tractor-trailer - that is a bit above a good Bond film, but otherwise this is pretty watchable. Extremely topical at the time, it might have been the most relatable, and therefore believable, Bond film for the American market. License to Kill combines a lot of of classic Bond but doesn't quite hit classic status: underwater fighting  fabulous Caribbean scenery, and an emotional stake for Bond, regardless of how believable the wedding itself was. The film is violent, but no more for its time, and it scales well compared to past Bonds.

Timothy Dalton tends to get short shrift as a Bond and I don't understand why. He's handsome, capable, perhaps a bit more brooding than past Bonds, but he's no slouch; he's different, is all. The two films he was in are solid Bond films, and considerably better than some of those of his forebears. Let us not speak of The Man With The Golden Gun, or Diamonds Are Forever. When I saw this movie as a teenager, I was pretty stoked that someone younger and more active was taking over from Roger Moore, who was nearly my grandparents' age at the time.

Bond Films: The Living Daylights

The Living Daylights is the first of two Bond films starring Timothy Dalton. Dalton had actually been tapped to play Bond following Sean Connery, but took himself out of the running, stating that he was too young (early twenties) at the time. When Dalton replaced Roger Moor, I remember this being a Big Deal, and the Dalton Bond was pitched as a return to the "original" Bond, the "Fleming Bond", the "real Bond" - claims that are made pretty much every time a new actor comes in to play Bond. Dalton gets short shrift among most Bond fanatics, but I like him: he's handsome, more badass than Moore but more charming than Connery.

The basic plot of The Living Daylights is: Bond is assigned to help transport a defecting Russian general from an opera house in Hungary to a safe house in Austria. In so doing, he deliberately wounds, rather than kills, a female sniper (the girl) perched to assassinate the general outside the opera house. During a debriefing of the general in England, one of his henchman masquerades his way in and  is able to retrieve the General, though the British assume it's the Russians kidnapping him back. With intelligence pointing at a Russian general Bond knows personally, he is sent to kill the general, but takes a detour to pick p the girl, where he quickly learns the truth - the Russians don't have the general either. After a madcap chase through snowy mountains on a car, on skis, and eventually a cello case, Bond and the girl escape and make their way to a conference in Morocco, where the learn the general is in cahoots with an American arms dealer. Captured, they are put in a Russian jail in Afghanistan, where they escape and join forces with mujahideen forces to thwart the arms deal, capture the general, and eventually return to kill the American arms dealer.

Just writing out the plot makes my head spin. I think this is one of the better Bond stories, and it holds up pretty well plot-wise, with exotic locations and epic set-piece battles in addition to the standard madcap chases, gadgets, and romance. the love story here is like From Russia With Love turned sideways; Bond poses as the general's friend in order to bring the girl along and pump her for information, until she finally realizes the general never really cared about her.

This is also the first time we see a new Moneypenny, following the death of original Moneypenny Lois Maxwell, and thank God; it would have been just creepy to Moneypenny leering after a man young enough to be her son. The new Moneypenny is a bright young thing, apparently untainted by spycraft. The Living Daylights also features a theme song by the band A-ha, which is underrated. When it comes to Eighties pop Bond songs, I usually go straight to Duran Duran. The Living Daylights is not a bad song. I just didn't know it existed. Also: A-ha.

Bond Films: Seventies Bond

Bond was played by Sean Connery and Roger Moore in the 1970s; mostly by Moore, with Connery getting in a turn in the mostly forgettable Diamonds Are Forever. Gone was the smooth operator of Goldfinger and Thunderball; Seventies Bond was more of a player, a baller in the current vernacular, who happened to go on missions. Comedic elements that once served as baroque or ironic ornamentation now became gags, and the series grew increasingly silly.

It isn't entirely clear why this was the case. Perhaps the Broccolis were following the market. In the West, mores certainly turned towards more open attitudes about sex.We see more open-collar, more opportunities for Bond to ply his second trade.

We also see plots chasing headlines and au courant culture more. Blaxpoitation enshrouds Live And Let Die. The subject of detente first comes up as a plot point in The Spy Who Loved Me, The Space Shuttle, as well as the success of Star Wars, bring about Moonraker.

For that matter, Bond spends less time fighting Russians, or SPECTRE, and more time tracking down lone industrialists who fund insane schemes out of their own pockets. This would change in the Eighties, when the 'mad general' scheme become more common. I wonder why this shift to private equity villainy came about. Perhaps the old SPECTRE and SMERSH organizations seemed less believable, but then, are they any less believable than the equivalent of John Paulson seeking a real estate gain by drowning Silicon Valley, or establishing a stealth orbital colony?

The Girls reflect changing attitudes about women. From the incompetence of Tiffany Case in Diamonds Are Forever, we get Russian Agent Anya Amasova and CIA Agent Holly Goodhead in Moonraker, paving the way for generally competent Bond Girls in the Eighties.

The result of these changes is that Bond became less of an icon and more of a cipher. Bond stopped standing for the forces of law and the international order; he is simply a well-resourced agent-at-large. It isn't clear what the scope of his operations is, other than somehow, some other British agent was killed, and he has to investigate. Bond pursues jewel smugglers, drug smugglers, and super-rich industrialists who steal nuclear submarines and build secret bases in Earth orbit. Oddly enough, is villains are the ugly side of capitalism, his enemy the increasing irrelevance of the nation-state.

You might point out that this is nothing new. SPECTRE was basically a capitalist criminal conspiracy, and Goldfinger was also a super-rich capitalist. However, these villains tended to work with in the system, usurping gains for themselves at the expense of the East and West states. Bond's villains in the Seventies are destructive for the sake of being destructive -selling drugs, building space lasers, stealing submarines in order to start World War Three. In a way, this reflects the thinking of the time, as citizens of the superpowers and their associated states began to look at the Cold War as less of a historical necessity and more of a path to Mutually Assured Destruction. We were our own worst enemies.

So, that' Seventies Bond for you. A little lost, looking for solace in easy sex, traveling the world trying to find himself (and stolen jewelry, or nuclear weapons). While Roger Moore continue playing him into the Eighties, we'll see him take a different turn by then, with a strong statement at the start of For Your Eyes Only, and an increasingly thuggish - in spirit, if not flesh - Bond.

Bond Films: Never Say Never Again

Never Say Never Again is the only non-EON Bond film I am watching for this little marathon. When it was released, it just sort of blurred together with the other Bond films of that era as they floated through the premium cable channel of my childhood. In retrospect, it holds up pretty well, better than Octopussy and A View To A Kill, perhaps even with For Your Eyes Only. This is hardly a surprise since it's basically a remake of Thunderball, updating the backdrop from the mid-Sixties to the early Eighties, and substituting an older, semi-retired Bond, Connery at 52, hardly more ridiculous than Roger Moore at 55 (or so) at the time.

The basic plot of Never Say Never Again is: not quite the exact same plot of Thunderball. In this version, Bond is basically training 00s and partaking in training himself. With nary a mention of SPECTRE directly, he takes a break and goes to a health spa, where he spies upon Fatima Blush tending to the air force pilot who has been given retinal surgery to subvert security clearance for loading nuclear warheads on what is meant to be a training flight. Instead of crash-landing the plane, the missiles are dropped in the ocean and the officer is dispatched by Fatima. Bond, following clues, meets the pilot's sister (the girl, played by a young Kim Basinger) who is moll to Largo. There is a weird showdown scene where Bond kills Fatima after she demands he write a note stating she was the best sex he ever had. The girl is put on the auction block for slavers, Bond rescues her, and then gets launched in a sort of flying platform in order to dive to where the missiles are kept. In the resulting fight scene - much reduced from Thunderball's epic scuba combat scene - Bond is nearly killed by Largo before the girl, as in Thunderball, spears him.

I'll skim over the few details I know about how this movie came to exist - basically, legal wrangling about story rights to Thunderball - to simply state: this is solid Bond film, and like its predecessor basically gets all the elements in the right proportion. It's interesting in that Connery is once again Bond, albeit over ten years on from when he last played the part, and the secondary cast is played entirely by different actors than the EON films. The result is a sort of alternate-reality Bond, where you can see the formula played out with different ingredients. It isn't better or worse; it's different, and despite the animosity between the two factions at the time, a worthwhile addition to the Bond canon.

Bond Films: A View To A Kill

I never thought I would miss the eighties, but goddamn, A View To A Kill - the opening titles alone take me back to my childhood. It's like watching what MAC cosmetics wanted to grow up to be. The hair, the drapey clothes, the blacklight makeup. And yet, Roger Moore creaks into his late seventies, catching up with Moneypenny, making their relationship more of an old collegial one, instead of the creepy cougar vibe of Moore's earlier takes.

The basic plot of A View To A Kill is: after recovering a Russian copy of a Western computer chip that is shielded against electromagnetic pulses, Bond is dispatched to investigate Max Zorin, the owner of the firm that makes the chip. He learns that Zorin uses an embedded drug delivery system that can be initiated by the jockey to boost performance during the race, and also that Zorin's bodyguard, Mayday, will go to great lengths to stop the investigation - even base jumping off the Eiffel Tower. Bond's leads take him to San Francisco, where he meets a geologist (the girl) who is also the last major shareholder standing against Zorin's attempt to take over the company that manufactures the chip. Bond saves her from Zorin's assassins, and together they infiltrate his mining operation, where they learn he plans to detonate enough explosives over the San Andreas fault to flood Silicon Valley and take out the chip-fabricating competition. After dispatching Mayday to track down Bond, Zorin ruthlessly guns down all the miners before escaping in a blimp and kidnapping the girl. Bond gives chase, holding on for dear life to a mooring line on the blimp, with a final showdown atop the Golden Gate Bridge.

A View To A Kill runs cold to lukewarm among most reviewers. In a recent review of bond villain plots, Zorin's was rated impractical, but due mostly to the globalization of manufacturing that bloomed a decade later. Christopher Walken as the villain is actually pretty great, and he echoes the ruthlessness of Goldfinger, or Largo, from the Connery years. Roger Moore is more than a bit dated here, though remarkably fresh considering his age (57). Also, Grace Jones is unique in the annals of Bond henching - the sex appeal of Pussy Galore with the martial arts of Bambi and Thumper, and the exoticism of OddJob combined with the ruthlessness of Jaws.

I started A View To A Kill thinking it would be a terrible slog, but it's not bad. It's not great, but it's a cut above the silliness of Octopussy and the camp of Live and Let Die. It's not must-see, and not must-avoid, but it's a decent Bond flick.

Bond Films: Octopussy

I sort of remember when Octopussy came it. It seemed sort of racy - had the word pussy in the titles, after all. The plot is kind of all over the place, due in part to the movie's plot being a mix of short stories. Like the titular character, Octopussy over-promises and under-delivers. After For Your Eyes Only, one might expect a bad-ass bond unraveling a plot to start World War III and get laid. Instead, he fumbles along and disarms a bomb while dressed as a clown.

The basic plot of Octopussy is: a nationalist Russian general's loses a debate about showing strength to NATO, and effectively goes rogue. Meanwhile, Agent 009 is killed trying to cross the East German border with a Faberge egg - one that turns out to be a fake. In the course of investigating 009's death, Bond follows the trail to a group of international smugglers who have enlisted the help of Octopussy (the girl), a hottie whose father was a spy killed in . .. somewhere. She has a complex and compelling backstory that gets compressed into two minutes of dialogue. Anyway, Bond figures out that 1) the Faberges are fakes being sold to finance the smuggling of nuclear weapons via a circus performing at an American airbase in West Germany. There's some sleight-of-hand with train cars, Bond dresses as a clown to escape the authorities, and the bomb is disarmed. Bond and Octopussy subsequently lead a crack squad of women acrobats in red tights in an assault on the villain's lair.

Octopussy has a lot of good elements, but it's really two stories: Octopussy's, and Bond's quest. The mad general is pretty one-dimensional, but the real villain is Afghan Kamal Khan. The circus elements completely undermine the seriousness of the plot - as well the all-girl ninja smuggler circus acrobat camp run. It's a weird combination of weird Bond and goofy Bond. The theme song doesn't help - Rita Coolidge singing "All Time High".

Octopussy can be skipped. Move along, nothing to see here.

Bond Films: For Your Eyes Only

For Your Eyes Only is the first Bond film I remember seeing, ever. I was about eight, and probably saw it on cable. While the opening sequence was lost on me, not knowing the series' history, but the rest - fabulous pool parties, deep sea diving, sensuous love feasts - I totally got. I wanted to be a Bond girl. I wanted to live on a yacht in the Caribbean and drive in fast cars and get romanced. I remember Sheena Easton was a huge deal. Yet the one scene that stood out in memory was Bond finishing off the main henchman, trapped in a car hanging over a cliff, kicking him over as his eyes screamed for help through his glasses.

The basic plot of For Your Eyes Only is: a British intelligence trawler carrying a top secret missile control computer surreptitiously sinks in the Aegean Sea. A local underwater archaeologist is looking for it, but is assassinated by the bad guys just as his daughter (the girl) arrives to visit. Sent to investigate, Bond tracks the assassin and eventually hooks up with the girl. Meanwhile, the Russians watch the black market to see about buying the device.The bad guy eventually steals the device from Bond, attempting to drown him and the girl in the process, but they escape. Bond, the girl, and some retired Greek counterinsurgents sneak into the lofty lair of the bad guy, destroying the device before it can be given to the Russians.

For Your Eyes Only is the beginning of Eighties Bond, and Eighties decadence. It's not a bad Bond film, and the plot more or less makes sense. The main henchman plays a larger role than most and serves as Bond's primary nemesis, a and is a more serious, equally silent Jaws. This is a lethal Bond film, and while it has some ridiculous moments, it skips the camp of its predecessors and successors. It's not a great Bond film; Roger Moore by this point was near fifty, and better at conveying a wry cordiality in his mayhem than straight-up action, but he is determined. Of the Bond films from the late seventies and eighties, this is one of the most watchable ones.

Bond Films: Moonraker

Moonraker is the fourth Bond film with Roger Moore, and the eleventh in the series overall. It continues the trend of putting Bond in a flavor-of-the-year genre, in this case science fiction. It's a decent outing that continues to walk the line between silly and sublimely serious, as well as the shift to global industrialists rather than SPECTRE as villains.

The basic plot of Moonraker is: after a space shuttle is stolen off the back of a 747, Bond follows clues to the factory of aerospace industrialist Hugo Drax. There he meets the girl, a scientist who is actually a CIA spy, and he obtains clues that lead him to a glassmaker in Venice. There, he spies on scientists making a potent toxin on Drax's premises, but when he calls in the cavalry, everything is missing. Bond pursues a new set of clues to Brazil, where he finally learns the truth: Drax has a secret space station, and he is launching the seeds of a "master race" to hide there while he eliminates human life on Earth. Bond stows away on a shuttle with the girl, and together they foil Drax's plot, with the help of US space marines who conveniently has a shuttle to launch on.

Moonraker stretches the believability of Bond in new ways - it's one thing to have fantastic gadgets, such as handheld lasers, but here, the US military apparently has a platoon of marines who are trained and equipped to engage in EVA battles in space. Otherwise, it's a typical Bond romp - nice locales, a decent plots, and smug villains. The henchman Jaws, last seen swimming away at the end of The Spy Who Loved Me, is here again, and for a child of the seventies, what could be cooler than six space shuttles all launching at once. It's what the shuttle program was supposed to be: colonizing space en masse. The only downside is the unfortunate song, which, while sung by erstwhile Bond chanteuse Shirley Bassey, is a pretty run of the mill easy listening lounge song. For once the song is more forgettable than the movie.

Bond Films: The Spy Who Loved Me

The Spy Who Loved Me is Roger Moore's third outing as James Bond, and a return to form vis-a-vis the earlier Bond films. While it didn't completely amaze me - I doubt any 70s Bond will - within the earlier Moore canon it's very good. It takes the best of Bond and ups the ante in stunts, sex, and spectacle. Bond revisits the end of both Dr No and Thunderball, in that once again, naval forces recover him in a small vessel while canoodling with the girl.

The Plot of The Spy Who Loved Me is: After completing a mission in Austria wherein one Russian agent is killed,  Bond is put on the case of some missing submarines - a British sub, a Russian sub, and later, an American sub. Simultaneously, Russian agent XXX, a sexy young Barbara Bach, is set on the case. They follow clues to an encounter with Jaws, one of the villain's henchman, and later pose as scientists to board the villain's ginormous submersible lair-ship, Atlantis. A super-rich industrialist conspires to start World War Three by building a giant submarine-catching tanker, and then using the subs to fire ICBMs at Moscow and New York.After Bond and the girl are captured along with an American submarine, they reprogram the launch codes and fight their way out, eventually escaping in a posh escape pod stock with silk sheets and champagne.

I think I saw parts of this movie growing up, but never the entire thing. As a film, it works; as a Bond film, it's OK. An amazing stunt in the beginning puts it off to a good start, and then it kind of muddles through the early detective work, until Bond and the girl are assigned to work together. After that, the chemistry really picks up between the two of them - especially when XXX learns that Bond killed her lover in the opening sequence. The villain is truly Bond-worthy - wealthy, remorseless, and remote, with an awesome lair. The theme song, sung by Carly Simon, is pretty terrible, and unfortunately sticks in your head.

The Spy Who Loved Me is a workable entry in the series. It's not great, but it's not terrible. It introduces the Lotus-sub, and Jaws, and has a pretty epic ending. If you're diving into 70s Bond, it ought to be seen.

Bond Films: The Man With The Golden Gun

The Man With The Golden Gun is best left untouched; unseen, unacknowledged. While it has a couple of saving graces - notably a car chase that ends with a flying car, and Herve Villachez as an insane midget henchman, it's otherwise so low compared to its peers that it comes off more as a parody of the franchise. The Man With The Golden Gun is your enfeebled cousin at the family reunion, best left alone, and only interacted with to satisfy curiosity and to make she he's not bothering anyone.

The plot of The Man With The Golden Gun is: Bond is tipped off that Richard Scaramanga, the titular villain, is after him. Bond opts to find Scaramanga first, and in so doing learns that Scaramanga is actually after a fancy solar panel, and that his girlfriend (the girl) actually set up the idea of a hit in order to put Bond on his trail. Bond pursues Scaramanga to Hong Kong, where Scaramanga attempts to fram Bond for murder. Later in Thailand, Bond impersonates Scaramanga to his erstwhile employer, who is later killed by Scaramanga. After a car chase, Bond's fellow spy Goodnight stows aboard Scaramanga's carplane and is taken captive on his island lair in Chinese waters. Bond flies there, and after dinner kills Scaramanga in a game of assassin cat-and-mouse before destroying Scaramanga's solar "golden gun" death ray and rescuing Goodnight.

Bizarrely, Louisiana Sheriff Pepper shows up in this film and participates in another car chase at Bond's side. Herve Villachez presents a more menacing version of Tattoo, he concierge he would later play on Fantasy Island. Christopher Lee as the three-nippled villain is not bad, a wiry, elegant man who brought himself up by his bootstraps, with an interesting collapsible one-shot golden gun. yet, none of these elements come together. Thin Bond films tinkers absurdly along, introducing random plot elements and delivering poor jokes, and poorly on the good jokes. It's a relief when it's over, though I'll admit I was more mesmerized than horrified.

This Bond film is an oddity. See it if you must, but trust me that you mustn't.

Bond Films: Live And Let Die

Live And Let Die is the Bond Blaxpoitation film. I've never seen it all the way through, but I had seen enough to know that for inexplicable reasons, MI6 is working on a case of drug smugglers in the US. This is the Bond film where the bad guys refer to him as "the man" and "honky". The word "pimpmobile" is used without ironic affect.  It's also the Bond film with action sequences scored by Paul McCartney. Relax, baby, let's see what's goin' down.

The basic plot of Live And Let Die is: After three British agents are killed in three different locations, Bond is sent to investigate. In short order, he finds clues in Harlem that lead him to New Orleans, where he learns of a drug connection between a Harlem gangster and Caribbean dictator, later revealed to be the same person. Bond seduces the girl, played by Jane Seymour, as well as a black double agent. After escaping death by crocodile via high-speed bayou boat chase, Bond makes his way to the Caribbean island, where he rescues the girl from a voodoo ritual, destroys the villains poppy fields, and kills the villain by blowing him up with a compressed gas cartridge over a shark-filled pool. Also, he fights a man with a claw for a hand.

As Bond films goes, Live And Let Die isn't bad, it's just weird. It's weird to see an agent of the cold war fighting Blaxpoitation villains. On the one hand, this shouldn't be too much of a stretch because ultimately, SPECTRE was a an international criminal conspiracy, just like a drug operation  but on the other hand, Bond was born in the Cold War. His DNA contains strands of WW2-era British intelligence and Continental intrigue. Chasing down drug lords in the US is Shaft's thing, not Bond's.

This was Roger Moore's first outing, and he does nicely. He is a more droll and sophisticated Bond than Connery, and he is more truly British rather than Scottish. Moore is the Bond I grew up with, so I may be more forgiving of any faults others find in him as Bond, notably that he was older when he started as Bond than Connery was when he stopped playing Bond (Never Say Never Again notwithstanding).

The action sequences are novel and pretty amazing. An early attempt at dispatching Bond puts him in an out-of-control car on the FDR highway in New York City. The Bayou boat chase is pretty phenomenal, and is one of the earlier instances I'm aware of of the hick sheriff in hot pursuit, later perfected by Jackie Gleason in Smokey and the Bandit. Jane Seymour works well as a Bond girl, but her character is pretty useless, less inclined towards action that some of her predecessors.

Live And Let Die isn't bad Bond film, but it's no must-see either. It's OK, a little weird, aand moderately engaging. It's a may-see.