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James Bond

Casino Royale – 4.75 stars

April 25, 2012
00s, 4 stars, James Bond
2 Comments

Clive Owen seemed such a natural choice to replace Pierce Brosnan as James Bond.  His breakout performance in the small budget Croupier even had him sporting a tuxedo in a casino.  But Owen passed, the role went to Daniel Craig, and “Bond was back!”

Except, Bond wasn’t back.  Daniel Craig and the creators of his movies turned their collective backs on a bunch of Bond movie staples.  Gone were the ridiculous gadgets, women named “Pussy” and “Goodhead”, painful puns and villains with designs to dominate and/or destroy the world.  Admittedly, Mike Myers’s Dr. Evil killed the last trope, which is a shame, because I’m less interested in villains with mere monetary designs.  But the advent of Craig signaled the death of a Bond audiences had come to know and tire of.

Instead, Craig brought us a hard, lean and rough Bond, a killer, but a smart, quick killer.  It was noteworthy that the first chase scene in Casino Royale is not by car, plane or boat, but on-foot, a dizzying, physical sequence where Bond chases down one man.  The suave and debonair is gone, as is evidenced by a drink order:

Like George Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, however, Craig is introduced as a Bond who falls in love.  We see another side, briefly, and then thankfully (I prefer Bond unencumbered), we see what he will be going forward (we didn’t get that option with Lazenby, who apparently thought he had a brighter future than Bond had to offer).

Paul Haggis wrote Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jima, and he won the Oscar for Best Screenplay for Crash.  He also wrote Casino Royale, which is interesting, well-paced and modern as opposed to cute and campy.

Also gone are the bevy of beauties, with the Bond girl being, generally, the least dumb.  Instead, we get a quick-witted Eva Green, who is a match for Bond intellectually and thankful that she lacks his innate brutality.

Best, Casino Royale brought back the gorgeous locales.  Prague, Nassau, Montenegro and Venice are featured.

The World is Not Enough – 1 star

April 3, 2012
1 star, James Bond
7 Comments

The World Is Not Enough is the worst James Bond film ever made, worse than even late bad-fashion, Roger Moore duds A View To a Kill or Octopussy .  As camp and aged as Moore became at the end, Pierce Brosnan proved to be something worse – tedious.  He’s got two moves: a smirk and grim displeasure.

Still, Bond films are rarely deep character studies, so how hard can one be on Brosnan?  At least we get beautiful sights, jaw-dropping stunts, good gadgets, a certain clever patter, Bond’s ingenuity, gorgeous women and intriguing villains with grand designs.

The World Is Not Enough has none of these things.  It is set almost exclusively in the drab former Soviet Union (see exciting Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan!); the stunts are pedestrian (another ski chase, a ho hum boat chase, more travel in an oil pipeline); the gadgets are routine (Bond can make his car come to him like a dog); the repartee’ is awful; and, worst of all, Bond is no longer ingenious – most things just drop into his lucky lap.

Unforgivably, the women are forgettable.  Sophie Marceau is grim and Denise Richards is so ridiculously Charlie’s Angels, she holds no interest – where the hell are Jill St. John and Barbara Carrera when we need them?

Now, that’s a Bond girl.

The villains have no design, other than financial mixed with some revenge (almost as bad as in Goldeneye, when the whole movie centered around Jonathan Pryce getting tv rights in China).  Worse, the picture is accompanied by a relentlessly cheezy Bond theme-meets-drum machine.

Finally, Bond is again emotionally involved with a woman (that’s two out of four for Brosnan), adding to the tiresome nature of the whole thing.  Bond’s attachment to a woman is rarely a good sign, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service notwithstanding.

Brosnan played the part one more time after The World Is Not Enough, demonstrating even more urgently that the Bond series needed a new face.  I had urged Jeremy Northam or Clive Owen, but the franchise knew better when it tapped Daniel Craig.