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.

Long Lost Lesbian

Apparently I am distantly related to this woman:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Lister

http://scandalouswoman.blogspot.com/2011/05/secret-diaries-of-anne-lister.html

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.