Die Another Day

1:02:55.

It's not often that you can pinpoint the exact moment that a movie decides to go completely insane, to take a plunge off the deep end. But in Die Another Day, it's right there on the counter on my DVD player.

1:02:55.

Up until that point, I was with DAD. I thought it was actually rocking fairly hard. Oh, sure there were some trouble signs of what was on the horizon. And in retrospect, that first half wasn't quite as good as my mind was building it up to be. But they were taking Bond to places, physical and metaphorical, that he had never been before. And the movie's heart seemed in the right place.

Until 1:02:55.

That's when the movie takes an abrupt left turn, seemingly jettisoning everything that the first half of the movie had been about, to go off in a crazy super-hero sci-fi direction that makes Moonraker look like the Bourne Ultimatum. When the filmmakers seem to say, "Well, we gave you 3 1/2 Brosnan movies rooted in some level of realism, now it's time to go freaking nuts!"

Let me just say, as much as I had overestimated the first half of the movie in my memory, I had been too harsh on the second half. Whatever its flaws, Die Another Day is no A View To A Kill. The movie never fails to be watchable and entertaining, even if the back of your mind is screaming, "This is sooo not James Bond!!" The actors are giving their all, the action is pretty good (when real), the pace never flags, the sets are great...the problem is not coasting, or that the makers just didn't care. No, the main problem with the second half of DAD, and thus the whole film, is a series of (what I feel to be) wrong-headed decisions that blow up on them, and also help to expose the rest of the weaknesses of the film.

The movie begins with what is probably the weakest of the Brosnan teasers. The initial image, of Bond and comrades surfing onto a beach in North Korea, is terrifically unimpressive. None of the surfers does anything remotely exciting or different--at least VTAK tried to make us believe that Bond's snowboarding was something different and innovative and exciting. They don't even bother to give us as fake close-up to try and fool us into thinking that Pierce is actually doing the surfing. Matters aren't helped by the decision to slap a blue filter on the camera, pump in a lot of fog, and make things look as dank and dismal as possible.

And then the story--Bond posing as an illegal diamond merchant in order to assassinate some North Korean colonel who's selling weapons--isn't that interesting, as it really gives 007 nothing to do except stand around until he's betrayed. And the hovercraft chase is equally dismal. Given the identical looking craft manned by identically dressed troops and constant cutting and shifting of perspective, it's difficult to tell who is who and where from shot to shot....and let's face it: watching a hovercraft race isn't too thrilling, anyway. And with the reliance on flame throwers and grenades and heavy artillery, it felt as if we were just retreading the Tomorrow Never Dies teaser. (Alternate suggestion: I had hoped, upon seeing Moon's collection of bitchin' cars, that Bond would hop into one of them to chase the colonel, having to drive a Lotus through the minefields while chasing the hovercraft...now that would have been a teaser!!).

Ah, but the end of the teaser, that where things get interesting. Bond succeeds (we think) in his mission, but he's captured...and not just "hold a gun on him while we tell him our plan" captured, but for the first time ever, well and truly caught, no gadgets left, no way out. He's taken off to be tortured...and stunningly enough, that's where the opening credits start!!

And a pretty innovative set of credits they are, as they consist mainly as a montage directly reflecting the action of Bond being tortured, together with the motifs of fire and ice that will dominate the movie. As the audience is wowed by this unprecedented turn of events, they get to see the most unique credit sequence in franchise history, all accompanied by the great Madonna song.

OK, OK, I know that I'm apparently the only one in the western world who likes Madonna's theme song, and I'm definitely the only one who ranks it as highly as I do. So sue me. To those who say "But it doesn't sound anything like a Bond theme," well, neither did McCartney & Wings' Live and Let Die, at the time. I applaud the innovation, and it earns extra bonus points for having the best music video EVER to accompany a Bond theme (and a far better 20th Bond movie tribute than some of the ham-fisted homages we're given by the movie proper...oops, I'm getting ahead of myself).

And, just when the audience is still thinking, "Is this a trick? Is Bond really captured? How does he escape?" they hit us with the startling caption: FOURTEEN MONTHS LATER.

Whoa. Bond has never been held captive for more than 14 minutes before, let alone 14 months!! We see a beaten and unkempt Bond!! He doesn't escape, he's given back--in a prisoner exchange, for his enemy!! He's drugged, and kept prisoner by MI-6, because his own government no longer trusts him!! M declares that he should have killed himself!!!

This was all heady stuff, and completely new ground for the franchise. It looked as if we were going to get a from-the-ground-up reexamination of what makes Bond Bond, a look at how 007 deals with defeat, a character study on how he can rebuild himself after 14 months of captivity and torture.

Nah. Not gonna happen. Sorry, but instead we're going to get a 21st-century version of Roger Moore era bombast. Fooled you!!

We'd already had a couple of trouble signs. Let me say first, I don't have too many problems with Brosnan's not too great looking beard and way-too-buff-to-have-been-tortured-and-starved-for-over-a-year physique. You've gotta suspend some disbelief, and I certainly didn't expect Pierce to drop 50 pounds and make himself emaciated for the sake of a couple of scenes (although, did they really need him to have his shirt off/open so much, essentially showing off the problem?).

No, the problem is in Bond's little escape. Bond escaping and going rogue is great...he's been rogue before, but it could be something worth doing again. But his escape? Seriously, did we need to invent a super power for Bond? I can buy some mind/body control techniques to make torture more bearable (although, aside from a line in the theme song, we never actually see Bond doing that in Korea...). But to lower your heartbeat enough to fake a cardiac event? And then the ability to instantly snap out of whatever deep trance that required, as your pulse goes from 14 to 70 in less than one second?!? (And notice that Bond's vitals weren't being monitored when M came to visit...the next scene, he's conveniently hooked up to monitors again!) The whole sequence was silly, especially when you consider that there were countless other ways Bond could have escaped without resorting to "Bond's super-ability of the film," which had never been seen before and would never be seen again. It's certainly not terrible, it doesn't really hurt the picture. But that's the first sign of where the film is going--over-the-top sci-fi instead of good old-fashioned spy craft, a gradual leaving behind of the realistic for the nuttiness of the Roger Moore era.

Next we go to Hong Kong, because apparently 14 months of poisoning, beating, and malnourishment leaves a Double-O strong enough to swim however far it was from the British ship to the docks and then walk however far it was to the hotel. But basically we're just marking time until Bond gets a lead (and an assist from Chinese intelligence) to find Zao. If you're a glass half full kind of guy, you can look at the fact that he doesn't immediately bed Peaceful Fountains of Desire as a sign that Bond hasn't fully recovered yet. If you're a glass half empty type of gal, you may be dismayed by the fact that, apparently, all Bond needed was a shave and a haircut to return to full functionality.

Off to Cuba (which means that fully 1/2 of Brosnan's films took place in Cuba, which one might think of as odd for a British agent...). The film is still in fine shape here, I think. Bond's meeting with the sleeper agent is very well handled, and his introduction to Jinx is exciting. I must say, it's pretty thrilling to see a female who's as enthusiastic for a roll in the hay as Bond is, who's just as good at the double entendres and lustful glances. Bond's first opportunity to wallow in pleasure after captivity is well handled.

The scenes at the clinic go pretty well, too. Jinx proves herself to be a capable agent (although you have to wonder, what exactly is her mission? The doctor was a pig, but if her mission was to find Zao, killing him seems a touch counter-productive, especially since the bomb she leaves goes off before she even could have made it to Zao's room). We get a good fight with Zao, and an exciting escape.

But, glass half empty time again. During the Zao fight, director Lee Tamahori begins to show off some of some of the more annoying qualities that will plague us later in the film, with so-cool-5-years-ago Matrix camera moves and speed ramping, gauzy close-ups, and unnecessary slow motion to show us Bond grabbing Zao's diamond "necklace"...what, you couldn't think of some other way to share that information with us?? The scene with Jinx diving off the fort is a particularly bad bit of CGI. And of course the whole conceit of the "genetic therapy" clinic that magically transforms people into completely different people is another example of the movie stepping too far into the realm of sci-fi as opposed to spy/action.

Bond returns to England, and has his "first" meeting with Gustav Graves, and quite a meeting it is, too. Taking the old set piece of Bond having a competition with the main villain to a new level, this is unquestionably the best scene in the movie. Filmed without any of the visual trickery Tamahori would depend later in DAD, the fight is both fun and brutal. Well choreographed, well directed, well acted, well stunted, and energizing. True, at this point we don't know that Graves is really Moon, so there's no real reason given for Graves' obvious antipathy towards Bond, which leeches the tiniest bit away from the fight scene. But it's still great, grand fun. Funniest thing in a Bond movie in quite awhile: the Blades employees in a parade, hauling away all of the items damaged in the duel.

(Query: Why do people get so upset about Madonna's little cameo? It's short, she only has a couple of lines that she delivers well enough, and then she's gone. Some commentators act as if her 1 1/2 minutes of screen time somehow ruin the whole movie. Trust me--she ain't that bad, and even if she were, she's still 10 or 20 spots down the list of things that hurt this movie.)

And then Bond gets his little key in the mail, and has his meeting with M. It's a good scene for the two of them, and fits well into the series' characterization of Dench's M as someone who'll drop her distaste for someone in a heartbeat if he's useful to her. It's a cagily written scene, which could be taken to be saying that M will be willing to use Bond, but keeping him "rogue" so he won't be fettered by the political intrigues (what, again? Why do British politics always seem to protect billionaire madmen?!) that keep her from going after Graves.

Oops, glass half empty intruding again. In a couple of minutes, despite wanting Bond "on the outside," he's back on official duty. And absolutely no reason--none whatsoever--is given for M to be investigating Graves. She had no knowledge of the conflict diamonds, she dismisses the satellite show as "another publicity stunt." Why would she bother with such a politically sensitive mission if there was no reason to undertake it? Or is she just routinely sending agents to infiltrate the staffs of billionaires?? The writers apparently didn't think that one through, a sign of slipshod construction that will continue throughout...

Which brings us to 1:02:55. While not perfectly executed, up to this point we've had a movie that poked at some of the darker corners of the Bond mythos, as our hero is expected to have killed himself, is tortured for over a year, is burned by MI-6, and has to go rogue. We've got North Korean officers and corrupt billionaires dealing with conflict diamonds, and all the history and misery that entails.

It would have been nice for the movie to deal with ANY of that. It's not as if I want to see Bond made dysfunctional with PTSD, but the second half of the movie pretends that nothing ever happened--he's 100% fit, healthier even than in TWINE, when at least he had a shoulder injury that flared up when convenient for the plot. All that's left is Bond's anger at his betrayal. And it's not as if I want to see DAD turned into Blood Diamonds, but they're the ones who bring up the issue of conflict diamonds, and then throw it away without any discussion whatsoever. It's as if the writers found a cool word to use without knowing what it actually meant...

At 1:02:55, the movie flushes all of that down the toilet, and dumps any pretensions it had of being a serious Bond movie.

Suddenly, we see Bond taking part in a bloody VR simulation. That's right, someone in MI-6 has betrayed him, he's been given a mission to go after Graves, and the very first thing the movie gives us is Bond playing a completely irrelevant video game. And aside from causing the audience to scratch it's collective head and go "WTF?" the sole purpose of this scene is to set up Moneypenny's obnoxious little scene at the end. Oh, dear.

Then we get Q, and aside from cramming as many old gadgets into his lab as possible, he's there to give Bond...the invisible car.

Good grief.

We've traveled so far into the nutter zone, it's as if we've jumped into a completely different movie all of a sudden. A generally straight spy adventure yarn has transformed into Spy Kids 3-D.

Let me tally the sins. First of all, the rule of Bond has always been "five minutes into the future." Technology for our hero that is advanced over what you can at Radio Shack, but nothing completely unbelievable (we'll leave technical feasibility discussions to others). But building upon small sins in the first half of the movie, look where DAD has led us: Ridiculously futuristic and non-existant medical scanning equipment on board the British warship; technobabble "gene therapy" that completely transforms everything about one's appearance, voice, height, voice, everything...not to mention turning them into insomniac supermen; a "virtual reality" simulator that appears to be just as good as Star Trek's holodecks; invisible cars, for gods sake; satellite-controlling, 100,000-volt dispensing exoskeletons that turn our villain into an Iron Man wannabe (I'll give them the killer satellite...that's a Bond staple). DAD not only crosses over the line, but erases it and keeps going, willing to do anything to be "entertaining" and "futuristic," regardless of how it fits in with Bond. It becomes a superhero movie, with a sense of unreality that actively fights against the audience's suspension of disbelief.

Secondly, there's always been an unspoken contract between the Bond films and the audience: the stunts are "real." Sure, it's not Roger Moore jumping off of Asgard...but somebody, a real human being, is actually performing the jump. Yes, we know that Timothy Dalton isn't really hanging off a plane's tail in mid-air--it's photographic trickery, but in a couple of shots he is actually there (albeit at ground level). It's the "realness" of the stunts that has always helped make Bond the best action franchise there has ever been.

But the way the computer graphics are used in DAD is a betrayal of that. It turns Bond into a cartoon, a computer-generated image of Brosnan riding a computer-generated parachute/surfboard in front of a computer-generated tidal wave from a glacier that never existed. No human contact or input necessary.

And the worst part is, it looked incredibly craptacular. We're not talking George Lucas level special effects here. We're talking "photo-shopped Pierce's head onto the body of someone surfing and uploaded it onto YouTube" quality. If you are going to turn to CGI stunts, why in the name of England would you do so in a way that actually makes your movie look worse?!? Take the scene of Jinx jumping off the fortress walls in Cuba. Instead of doing it the old fashioned way--showing Halle on the wall, cut to a cleverly camouflaged stunt-person actually doing the jump, cut to a shot of Halle in the water--we get a terrible, terrible "shot" of her body not even moving a muscle as she "jumps," no shot of anyone making an actual dive, or an actual splash. Picture, if you will, the bungee jump from Goldeneye having been done this way. Abominable.

Look, I'm not against CGI per se. And I'm not against it in Bond, if used reasonably and well. Properly utilized, it's no more offensive than, say, all of the "fake driving while in front of a rear screen projection" scenes for the good old days. But the way DAD uses it, it takes away one of the franchise's greatest strengths, and turns it into a weakness. It makes the movie look worse, it takes the audience out of the "reality" of the "stunts", and the quality of the CGI is just laughably, criminally bad. There's a reason why the duel at Blades was so much more compelling than anything done with CGI. I hope producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson were properly ashamed at abandoning one of the foundations of the franchise.

The shift in tone between the two halves of the movie is fairly remarkable. It's almost as if two different sets of hands worked on each half (and for all I know, maybe Neal Purvis and Robert Wade did each take a half!). Perhaps part of it was just me, reading things I wanted to see into the first half, and thus caused my own disappointment when they weren't followed through on. Is it just me? One half-assed theory: at the halfway point, M drops an oblique 9/11 reference. I can't tell you exactly when the script was written, but I can't escape the feeling that at one point either the writers or producers suddenly said, "Geez, we can't do a grim and gritty picture so soon after 9/11--we'd better lighten it up!!" Whatever the cause, this goes in the books as the most schizophrenic Bond movie ever.

Another problem in the movie is that the Colonel Moon/Gustav Graves conceit just doesn't work very well. I know that the premise is that it's supposed to be a completely unrecognizable transition. But it's just too unrecognizable for the audience to buy into...we never really accept that Graves is Moon. There's no commonality between the performances of Will Yun Lee and Toby Stephens--no phrase repeated, no Dr. Evil pinkie-to-the-mouth, no stance, nothing. From a story-telling perspective, I think in this circumstance you have to cheat a little bit, and give the audience something to latch onto that will let them buy that these two completely distinct men are one and the same. And this severe disconnect between Moon & Graves just encourages the writers to ignore previously revealed traits for silliness: in the teaser, Moon seems proficient with martial arts, while Graves relies on solar powered exoskeletons and barroom brawling to fight Bond!!

Finally, just as with The Living Daylights and Afghanistan, DAD is at best incoherent, and at worst ignorant, on geopolitical issues. I had wondered earlier why bother to make up fictional nations for Licence To Kill and The Living Daylights...this is why. Let's see if I've got this straight. We're told that the "hard-liners" didn't control North Korea until Bond's mission gave them the "proof" that they couldn't trust the West. General Moon, the "good" North Korean who doesn't approve of torture and opposes the hard-liners and whom Bond thought was powerful enough to stop a war just with his word, is deposed when the hard-liners "stage a coup" (and apparently give control of their country to any madman with a solar weapon). And through it all, not a mention of Kim Jong Il, the single-party state, or any actual facets of North Korea's government, let alone the fact that North Korea is hardly what anyone would describe as "moderate." If you're going to make all your background up, why even bother to make North Korea the villain in the first place, instead of a fictional country? It's not as if all of their attempts to avoid reality prevented the movie from offending Koreans from both sides. Just like with conflict diamonds, Purvis and Wade latched onto the concept of Korea without ever bothering to actually use it, or look anytrhing up.

And then there's the Demilitarized Zone, the DMZ. For a de-militarized zone, it sure seems awfully militarized, filled with military bases. Of course, there are no bases for either side in the DMZ..."Apart from Panmunjom, the Joint Security Area and two model villages, the DMZ is devoid of humans and their machinery, other than a large number of land mines." Maybe the captions were meant to be taken as "NEAR the De-Militarized Zone" or "Just outside the DMZ." Or maybe in the Bond universe "de-militarized" means "both sides have lots of stuff there but promise cross their hearts not to fight."

All of that being said, DAD doesn't completely fail, no matter how much it may disappoint. It does keeping moving briskly, albeit in a cartoon-like manner. For the most part the action is well-staged, albeit sometimes in a surreal CGI manner. And bless its heart, it never stops trying to impress us with how clever it thinks it is, how fun it is. And to an extent, it is fun. It is still the weakest of the Brosnan films...but it's not terrible, despite all the flaws I was whining about above.

Moon/Graves makes for a good villain, and is actually pretty fun. Will Yun Lee gets too little screen time for us to make much of an evaluation of him, although I do have to question why Moon is so corrupted and materialistic, yet still wants to have his non-corrupt and non-materialistic government destroy South Korea.

But Toby Stephens shines as Graves. Graves was based very much on the Moonraker novel's Hugo Drax...the enemy of England who has plastic surgery to adopt a British identity, become wealthy, and build a "good" space vehicle that is secretly a plan to destroy his most hated foe. Granted, the script lets him down at several points, as his motivations and plans are blurry at times, and the writers make him rely on a Transformer suit at the end. But he is thoroughly unlikeable, as his haughty arrogance gives us a good villain to hate. He has a good physicality, going toe to toe with Bond in the duel at Blades and holding his own. He has fun playing up the eccentric billionaire playboy cover--although the fact that he's such an asshole seems a bit at odds with his philanthropic give-away-half-my-fortune-and-build-a-satellite-to-save-the-world portion of the story. Stephens creates a better megalomaniac than the film's script deserves.

Rosamund Pike makes Miranda Frost a nasty, sexy bitch (and I mean that in a good way). Again, I think the script is a bit lax on her motivations--really, Moon helps her win a Gold medal instead of Silver, and she's ready to betray her country and murder millions? Really?!?--but Pike muscles her way through it, portraying Miranda as a women who is playing Bond for a fool very well. It doesn't hurt that's she one gorgeous woman...and that outfit at the end...grrrr.....!!

Zao could have been great. They play him as an evil Bond--he's got a better car than Bond, he can outdrive and outfight Bond--but the problem is, we've already had an evil Bond during the Brosnan era, and Zao is no Alec Trevelyan. Zao is given no personality at all, and buried beneath ridiculous make-up for most of the movie, Rick Yune isn't able to give us anything to make Zao as memorable as he should be. Again, the script isn't doing him any favors, but unlike Stephens and Pike, Yune doesn't seem able to rise above it. And is it just me, or do half his lines sound dubbed??

Lee Tamahori has some annoying quirks. He's not good at chase scenes--the ice chase between Bond and Zao is almost as confusingly filmed as the hovercraft chase from the teaser--and he waaaaayyy overuses the Matrix stop-n-goes. Most annoyingly, he does this pretty inconsistently: sometimes he uses it to introduce a scene, sometimes to exit one, and sometime just when Zao walks across a room. There's no rhyme or reason to the technique, he just keeps doing it because he thinks it's cool.

Otherwise, though, it's a fairly solid directorial outing. The duel at Blades, the duel between Jinx and Frost, the final fight between Bond and Graves--all well directed and pretty exciting, occasional slow-motion indulgences aside. Tamahori definitely makes a better flowing film than Michael Apted did, and seems to have a stronger vision of what a Bond film should be than Roger Spottiswoode.

Sadly, M and MI-6 comes off as chowderheads again. Seriously, how easy is it to penetrate this organization?? In Goldeneye Bond mentioned pysch tests--well, how in the world did Miranda Frost pass one of those? Willingness to cheat and murder your way to a gold medal wouldn't show up? Your willingness to betray field agents wouldn't turn up?? Furthermore, M says she was in the cryptography department for the past 3 years...how did she get access to Bond's files?? Can any old clerk at MI-6 just pull up and transmit classified data to her Korean boyfriend?!?

Oh, it gets worse...M castigates the American Damian Falco (great name, jerkwad character) for not telling MI-6 that Miranda was on the fencing team with Moon at Harvard...what, MI-6 can't run their own freakin' background checks?!? You don't even check who her classmates and boyfriends were? Oy. And after Bond is released by the Koreans, and M knows that there's a mole, does she do ANYTHING to investigate it? Can't M look up to see if anyone's been accessing Bond's files? Maybe double-check and see if her agent who is closest to Graves is clean? M say that Frost volunteered for the assignment--what, there was a flier up in the cafeteria? "Wanted--cryptographer to pose as publicist for billionaire??" And the fact that she volunteered wasn't a call for further background checks?!?! Oh, poor M...the past 2 movies have made you look so stupid...

We've discussed how every few movies they make the Bond Girl somehow "competent", and suddenly we’re deluged with articles declaring that the new Bond Girl is “007’s equal” and that this is somehow new for the series, and what it means for feminism, yadda yadda. Well, it's this decade's turn. Jinx Johnson joins Anya and Wai Lin as someone the media declared as a "new type of Bond girl." Snore.

But Jinx actually is pretty competent. True, Bond does have to rescue her--TWICE--in Iceland. But she acquits herself well in Cuba, and kicks Frost's ass pretty well. And I love the fact that, as mentioned above, they do make her more of an equal to Bond in terms of being a seeker of sensual delights. I can't say that I'm 100% sold on Halle Berry's performance. She doesn't seem able to consistently give off the toughness she wants to project without coming off as stilted and shrill on some of her line readings. But her scenes alone with Bond? Pretty damn good.

There was, of course, all of the talk about Jinx being given her own movie series. I'm not sure how much of that was merely hype, especially as we were hearing that before the movie even debuted. For whatever reason, the plans fell apart, and I can't say that I'm too disappointed. I never saw a lot of evidence onscreen that Halle/Jinx would be able to carry her own series as anything other than a female version of Bond, and that would merely dilute Eon's resources between two franchises. Plus, the dropping of the project meant we were spared seeing Michael "Please, Quentin, cast me in something again" Madsen ambling across the movie screen every two years, lazily barking arrogant orders as Damian Falco.

This was, of course, Brosnan's last outing as 007. It's too bad, because I certainly think that he had at least one more Bond film in him. He has no emotional through line to follow in this film--the script bails on the beat-up rogue story at the halfway point--but Pierce manages to carry some of that hurt and anger through into the rest of the movie with his performance. Even though the second half of the film provides almost no character moments for him (and the CGI robs him of some chances to actually perform), Brosnan never gives into coasting, pushing Bond past what the script gives him.

I think that perhaps the most impressive thing about the Brosnan era was his ability to keep up the intensity of his Bond despite scripts that weren't always conducive to that. Whatever complaints you here about the movies during his tenure, there rarely seems to be any criticism aimed at his portrayal of 007--which is a revelation in and of itself, because there were certainly plenty of critics of Dalton and Moore. While you regularly heard debates as to whether Lazenby or Moore or Dalton "was" Bond, you never heard that said about Brosnan. He will never receive the respect or acclaim of Sean Connery...but the fact that he never received the disapprobation occasionally directed at the others is very telling, I think. I don't like to rank the Bond actors--there's too much difference in tenure length, movie quality, and other things that were beyond their control, making such a ranking too much apples and oranges. But I will say that I think that Pierce Brosnan is due a lot more respect than we give him sometimes...

A lot of people forget that the general public and the media were quite disdainful about the prospects for the Bond franchise before Pierce came aboard, ready to dismiss it as dated and irrelevant. But from his very first scene, Brosnan won (almost) everyone over, giving us a Bond for the 90's, one whose character went places that the other 007 were never asked to. Sadly, his movies follow a continuous downward line in quality, and that obscures, I think, the impact his era had. The worst Brosnan film, DAD is still better than most of the Roger Moore era...yet the quality of Goldeneye (and to some extent TND) left us spoiled and hyper-critical. Sometimes we're missing the forest for the trees, ignoring the fact that the Brosnan run is the reason we're getting a new Bond film in 2 weeks. In it's own way and time, Goldeneye was every bit as vital to the future success and health of the franchise as The Spy Who Loved Me was in its day. As the box office numbers climbed for every Brosnan film, we were guaranteed that James Bond would indeed return.

And so, except for Judi Dench's M, we bid farewell to everybody (onscreen, at least), as the reboot of Casino Royale was coming. I really do wish that Pierce had been given at least one more shot--he'd earned it, and there's nothing inherent in the Casino Royale story that requires it to be the "first" Bond story. But time marches on, change is constant, and big things were in store for us. Get ready, folks, as next week we get re-introduced to a fellow named Ian Fleming...

SNELL'S RANDOM NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS:

**Let's start out, surprisingly, with my defending the movie against one of the sillier criticisms leveled against it. When Bond is escaping in the car from Icarus' beam, it's said to be stupid because "he's outracing a light beam, and that's impossible."

Not true. Let's try a thought experiment. Hold onto a flashlight or a laser pointer. When there's an annoying housefly buzzing around the room, try to keep the beam centered on the fly. You can't, and probably can't ever catch up the the insect. Does that mean the fly can "outrun a beam of light?" Of course not...but it does mean that it can move faster than the thing controlling the light beam. Just as the fly can move faster than the hand holding the laser pointer can react, Grave's car can move faster than the targeting mechanism on Icarus which controls the beam can keep up with.

It's still a crappy bit of CGI, and a pretty silly scene (where, exactly, was Bond planning to go when he hopped into the speed mobile??). But in this one aspect, they don't deserve the sneers.

**That being said, Icarus' beam can completely destroy a military missile and explode the living hell out of everything it touches...but a jumbo jet can fly right through it and keep on going for another 10 minutes or so??

**And, not to call the U.S. idiots or anything...but you fire ONE missile at Icarus? One?? OK, so it's shot down. How about shooting more missiles--that would at least distract it from blowing up the DMZ, right? Or how about firing missiles from different directions--could Icarus take them all out?? How about trying anything more than just one lousy missile and giving up?!? I smell a Cletus coming on...

**So...Graves is sucked into the the jet engine, the Icarus control mechanism is destroyed...isn't it just as likely that it would now stay locked in the "on" position as it would be just turned off by this??

**Samantha Bond...on behalf of everybody in the entire world, I have to apologize for THAT scene being your final scene. You and your character deserved far, far better than a ridiculous masturbation joke. Shame on you, Purvis and Wade...

**As this was the 20th Eon Bond movie, and the 40th anniversary of the franchise, and the 50th anniversary of Bond's first publication, much ado was made over all of the "references" to other Bond films placed throughout DAD. Forgive me for being underwhelmed. First of all, I don't like to have my movies being "Find-A-Word" puzzles, where I'm busy hunting and pecking for "tributes" instead of focusing on the picture itself.

Secondly, some of those "references" I've seen listed are so spurious as to be figments of people's imaginations, I think ("The exterior of Graves' command center is a tropical forest, also akin to Moonraker." Really??? "The laser causes row upon row of explosions across a vegetated area, in this case detonating thousands of land mines, and is reminiscent of the extermination of Kananga's poppy fields." You're kidding, right?). These are after the fact associations that aren't weren't really purposeful tributes. The "game" of finding the references has caused people to over-focus the commonalities that naturally come up in any 20-movie series about a secret agent ("hey, this one has a scene set in snow, so...")

Finally, if the creative team did spend so much time on these "references," well, shame on them. Sure, Halle coming out of the water was fine, the ornithology book was cute, Q's lab was quick and painless. But did they really decide to directly copy Diamonds Are Forever's plot as a "tribute" to that movie? Did they really have Graves chop off part of a glacier to reference OHMMS? A few hat-tips to the past are cute...but if you start borrowing plot points instead of coming up with good, original ideas, that's not "homage", that's just lazy at best, and plagiaristic at worst.

**That said, I should mention one that nobody ever seems to bring up--the scene where M talks to a captive Bond from behind a plexiglas shield is very reminiscent of a scene from the novel TMWTGG, when a brainwashed Bond tries to kill M, who is protected by an "invisible" glass shield...

**Look at this:

How can you hide by crouching behind an invisible car?? Remember, Q explains that cameras on one side project the image onto the other side...so everybody on the other side would see Bond crouching there...sheesh...they're not even paying attention to their own premise again...

**Speaking of which, that camouflage unit is pretty wussy, isn't it? A few hits from Zao's guns, and it's out? And it takes forever to reboot. Plus, Zao's car already has countermeasures to detect it, despite its being "the ultimate in British engineering"!! So, all in all, not one of Q's best inventions.

**So let's talk about Graves. It's been 14 months since Moon was "killed." You'd think that the whole process of "genetic therapy" and whatnot would have to take at least a couple of months...so let's say he's had about a year to establish himself by the time Bond is released. He's already a billionaire? Was one colonel based in the Korean DMZ really trading so many weapons that he had that huge a stash of diamonds? Especially since he supposedly gave half of his fortune to charity...was he using just the diamonds Bond gave him? How many other arms deals were there? Did Moon really sell billions worth of weapons?!?

**A year also seems a ridiculously short time for him to become so prominent. Granted, he might have had some of these plans in place before his "death." But it does seem difficult to believe that he could construct such an impenetrable back-story and become such an amazingly high-profile figure in merely a year.

**And forgive me, any British readers, but will the Queen knight just anybody?!? Seriously, I don't know the politics of the process, but someone who has come out of nowhere, only been in the public eye for a year, and isn't even English?? And he's getting a knighthood?!? I guess Her Majesty's background checks are just as thorough as MI-6's...

**OK, so Graves supposedly found a huge diamond strike in Iceland, gajillions of dollars, and hasn't been shy about spreading his wealth. But we are to believe that not one single person in the entire world EXCEPT an aging sleeper agent in Cuba has ever bothered to actually look at even one of these diamonds, and recognize it as coming from Sierra Leone. Nobody. DAD may gloss over the concept of conflict diamonds, but given all of the scrutiny diamonds receive these days, that is completely unbelievable, isn't it.

**It's wrong of me, but every time I read about this story, I have to think that Graves was involved...maybe this is how he actually amassed his fortune...and it would explain Britain slapping a "terrorist" label on Iceland...

**Olympic fencers use steroids? I guess it's possible...but wouldn't it be odd for a fencer to overdose on steroids after she'd already won the gold? Again, possible, I suppose...but the story smells odd enough that you'd have expected some red flags to have been raised before she was hired by MI-6. Nope...

**So Frost supposedly empties Bond's gun right? But look after she hands it to him...

They do a real quick edit here, but Bond is clearly about to check his clip! Did Pierce just do it out of habit, requiring a quick edit to save the conceit? Or did they just come up with the "empty gun" bit later, and go back and cover their tracks?

**Bond Score: 2. Jinx and Frost (sounds like a cartoon...). Cumulative Bond Score: 55.

And as always

Join as next week as we conclude our long, long trek, and see James Bond try to defeat LeChiffre at baccarat...what?!? Poker?!? Texas Hold 'Em?!?!?!

Ranking The Bond Teasers

One of the most iconic parts of the James Bond series in the pre-credit sequence, also known as the teaser. Stumbled upon almost by accident, the teaser is now a locked in ritual, a (hopefully) fine and taut mini-movie that puts the audience into the Bond frame of mind before the credits and theme song kick in.

Sometimes it ties in directly to the movie's plot...sometimes it's completely unrelated. Hell, sometimes Bond is not even in it!!

So ingrained is the form in our Bond souls that we panic when we think they've tinkered with the format (TWINE) or don't start out with the gun barrel (CR 2006). The idea of Bond without a teaser is well nigh unthinkable by now.

(Hey, Sony/MGM, here's a brilliant idea. You've managed to takes heaps of our money by getting to re buy constantly upgraded VHS & DVD & Blu-Ray versions of the Bond movies...money which we've willingly and joyfully parted with. Well, here's another way to empty our pockets: how about a DVD compiling all the teasers? C'mon, you know we'd all buy it...)

So when sitting down to rank the teasers, I was a little bit surprised to see how few GREAT ones there were. In my mind, there is a huge gap between the top 4 or 5 and the rest. The problem in making a mini-movie, I guess, is that you have just as many things that can go wrong as you do in a regular movie, but in a much smaller space. And as a result, finding the right balance of action and gadgets and humor and romance and panache is more difficult than one might think. (And of course, they're being judged against other Bond teasers, so it's stiff competition)

So, with no further ado, my rankings of the Bond teasers. As always, it's a personal list, and your mileage may vary. Dr. No and Never Say Never Again had no teasers, so aren't included. Casino Royale (1967)...well, the less said of the, the better.

20) Live And Let Die. No Bond in Roger Moore's first teaser? Even worse, no story--just a much of seemingly unconnected white people being murdered by nefarious black people. Just terrible.

19) The Man With The Golden Gun. Again, no Bond (get a feeling that the Roger Moore era is going to hell for teasers?). I suppose it's a good intro for Scaramanga, but it's over-impressed with it's own cheap fun house gags and "action," going on far too long for something with no stunts and no 007.

18) You Only Live Twice. After some amazingly loooooooooong shenanigans in space, we catch up to Bond, only to see him "die" almost immediately.

17) Diamonds Are Forever. A mostly unseen Bond punching out people in close-ups, Bond strangling a woman with her own bikini top, and Bond drowning a fake Blofeld in mud. Uninspired at best.

16) A View To A Kill. Aside from the Beach Boys' song, not performed by the Beach Boys, a lot of snow stunts that had been done better in previous movies. Almost completely unmemorable.

15) For Your Eyes Only. Nice to see the shout-out for Tracy. Otherwise? The helicopter stuff wasn't particularly exciting, and by now you all know what I thought of Wheelchair Man.

14) Die Another Day. The surfing was, shall we say, unconvincing. The hovercraft chase was poorly filmed and edited, hard to follow. And the whole thing just looked soooo dreary...

13) Licence To Kill. Meh.

12) Octopussy. Not a lot to say here. Not much to recommend it, not a lot to condemn it. Demerit for being so silly at the end (what, you take this plane on a mission without a full tank of gas?).

11) The World Is Not Enough. I'd give it some points for innovation, but it wasn't really trying to be innovative. Some good stunts, but the plot they weave through it is baffling at best, and it's way overlong, turning what should be an appetizer into a main course.

10) Moonraker. Wonderful, wonderful skydiving stuntwork. Knocked way, way down in the rankings by having Jaws flap like a bird and survive by falling on a circus tent, which completely subverts any sense of danger the stunts might have had.

9) On Her Majesty's Secret Service. A good intro for Lazenby, but fairly unambitious.

8) Thunderball. Sean is suave and wonderful, good fight with S.P.E.C.T.R.E. #6. Sets up the theme of the movie nicely (Bond rocks, S.P.E.C.T.R.E. sucks). Not great, but understands the panache a teaser should have.

7) Tomorrow Never Dies. Exciting, fun, lots of great action, some great lines, good stuff for M. But is it too "Rambo" for Bond?

6) From Russia With Love. The first teaser, and even if it's not the real Bond, we don't know that. Good suspense, and sets up the main action of the film nicely. A teeny bit of extra credit for being the first.

The top 5 are all brilliant, and on a different day this order could be completely rearranged.

5) The Living Daylights. Fun with M, a logical set-up with an MI-6 training mission, climbing and driving and fighting and explosions. A brilliant introduction for Dalton.

4) Casino Royale (2006). Perhaps still early to judge it...but the noir take on Bond earning his Double-O, the brutal bathroom fight...and unlike TWINE, a deliberate attempt to shake up the teaser, in service of the movie's "Bond's early adventures" idea.

3) Goldeneye. A well-nigh perfect mini-movie, that more perfectly than any other teaser sets up what is to come from the rest of the movie--his relationship with Alec, and what a Double-O means. (But, like all the other Brosnan teasers, where's the romance??)

2) The Spy Who Loved Me. The Asgard Jump. The Union Jack parachute. Oh, James...not perfect, but its flaws are easily forgivable.

1) Goldfinger. The one that set the mold. The perfect blend, the silliness, the action, the fight, the woman, the death quip...if you were to have to put one sequence in a time capsule to explain what Bond was to our simian masters in the future, this would be it.

Never Say Ragnarok Again?

Now this is funny...

The World Is Not Enough

If you study Shakespeare at all, you know that some of his works are categorized as "problem plays." The definition is vague at best, and seems to vary from commentator to commentator, but the common thread is that these "problem plays" do not fit conveniently into the tidy categories of tragedy or comedy. They seem to straddle both; they cover themes and events that seem too dark and morally ambiguous for Shakespeare's comedies; but they also have awkwardly and artificially happy endings, too much so for tragedy.

Which brings us to The World Is Not Enough, or Oil's Well That Ends Well.

TWINE has long been one of the most frustrating Bonds for me. I want to like it a lot more than I actually do. But for me, it's a "problem Bond."

In a number of ways, it tries to break the mold, to go in directions that no Bond has ever gone before. And I want to reward that type of originality in how I rank the films.

But, measure for measure, with nearly every original thing the film tries, it shoots itself in the foot in some with ham-fisted execution...and thereby hangs a tale.

Let's start with the teaser. I don't think any of us got what we expected, did we? After 007's tense (and somewhat confusing) confrontation with a Swiss banker, we get an adequate fight scene, and Bond makes an exciting getaway in front of the Guggenheim in Bilbao...and everyone in the audience was ready for the theme song to kick in...

But wait...no theme song? We're back in England? Everyone's just standing around talking? What the hell is going on here?? What's happened to our teaser??

I think all of us were probably surprised by what was happening. And in that surprise, the movie, I think, got us paying a little more attention at that point than we were used to. It seemed like a shake-up of the old Bond formula. And even though we knew for a fact that Garbage was doing a theme song, while watching we began to wonder...have they dispensed with the teasers? Was Bond adopting the trend of giving the "opening" credits at the end of the film?

And then, for the first time, Bond demonstrably fails in the teaser...he brings in the bomb, he can't save King, he can't capture the Cigar Girl (note to the writers...it would have hurt you to think up a name for her? Ah, but what's in a name, anyway?), he ends up wounded and hanging on for dear life.

Was this a deliberate move to change the rules of Bond?

In a word, no. Rather than a bold experiment in changing the rules, we were viewing a somewhat panicked response to a non-problem. It turns out that originally, the teaser did end after Bond's escape in Spain. But test audiences were apparently underwhelmed by that--they expected something more...I guess, after the Goldeneye and Tomorrow Never Dies teasers, they expected more stuff to blow up (for the record, I thought it would have been fine to cut away there...not the best teaser ever, but adequate to the task). So, instead of re-filming it, or adding anything new, director Michael Apted decided to bring the MI-6/murder of Sir Robert/Boat chase sequence forward, weaving it into the pre-credits along with the initial Bilbao scene.

The result: a "teaser" that is nearly 15 minutes long. And to keep it from running even longer, Apted had to cut away several minutes of the boat chase (yes...it was even longer originally), as well as several bits of exposition that might have been nice for the audience to know. So, instead of the teaser being a mini-movie that helps set up the main plot, it becomes a bit of a bloated yet truncated epic, that actually removed information that the audience needed to appreciate the plot. The teaser became a bit of storytelling Jenga...how many bricks of information can we pull away and still have the story standing intact, albeit wobbly? In the end, the bright quick things come to confusion, and it's nearly impossible to follow what is going on during a first viewing.

Now normally, I'm the guy who mocks mainstream movie critics when they whine that a given film's plot is "too confusing" or the story is "incomprehensible." 9 times out of 10, the problem is that said critic isn't paying attention, or is more likely just displaying a plentiful lack of wit and can't get beyond the "looks pretty" or "good acting" ideas in writing his review.

But today I'll open myself up to that same attack, because I'll admit that, for the first couple of viewings, parts of TWINE were virtually impenetrable to me. I was confused, dammit. Never had a Bond film gone to such lengths to not actually explain itself on a fundamental level, to create a world to hide its virtues in. Let's try to reconstruct what happened, based on what's actually told to us in the teaser, and what's not. (note: I've put things into chronological order, for "clarity").

Terrorists are attacking Sir Robert King's pipeline (happens offscreen...we get one line of dialogue). He buys a stolen report from someone that purportedly identifies those terrorists (Whom does he think he was buying the report from? Unknown. Stolen from whom? Unclear. Who stole it? Never stated.). It turns out that an unnamed MI-6 agent was murdered to get the report (this agent is never mentioned again, clearly a MacGuffin to justify MI-6 getting involved. Is the MI-6 agent the one who stole it originally? Who murdered him? Never dealt with). After he purchased it, Sir Robert found out that the report was really a fake, actually being a report of the Russian Atomic Department on the possible effect of Y2K on their reactors (the report is only identified in a deleted scene...the movie proper only identifies it as a fake. Why would an MI-6 agent be in possession of such a report in the first place? Did he steal it in the first place? Never discussed, even though he died for it. Why wouldn't Sir Robert or his representative actually glance at the report before paying 3 million pounds for it?) When he discovers the report involves nuclear issues, he turns it over to M (from a deleted bit...never mentioned in the movie proper). M or King (or both--the movie never attempts to tell us) somehow arranges a Swiss bank based in Spain to obtain a refund (Why the Swiss bank? Were they the brokers of the original deal? Unknown? Despite Bond's cutting remarks, does this Swiss bank really routinely serve as a go-between for crooks and billionaires? Do murderers who sell stolen reports routinely give refunds? I know this was part of Elektra's plan, but why in the world did M expect these unidentified bastards would have a customer service department? Does Sir Robert seriously believe that thieves and con men give bloody refunds?). Bond is sent to pick up the dough (in cash? Why wouldn't they just wire the funds to one of Sir Robert's accounts?) but he's really there to question the bankers about who killed the poor MI-6 red shirt. Violence ensues, Bond escapes, Bond and M give us (partial) exposition, things blow up, more violence ensues.

Nitpicks aside, look at how much information that they don't give us, or only give us fragments of, or in what order. No wonder people were lost. Not only is it a ridiculously convoluted way to murder someone (trick a man into buying a report, give him a fake one, when he demands a refund give him exploding money!!), but the movie acts as if they don't need to let the audience in on all the facts. The writers are saying "We know what's going on, and that's what's important!"

So, instead of an innovative re-working of the teaser concept, it actually turns out to have been a slapdash attempt to jazz things up that is marred by terrible storytelling. Which is pretty much the theme of the whole movie--interesting ideas, bizarre and confusing execution.

The story was by Neil Purvis and Robert Wade, with the screenplay by those two plus Bruce Feirstein. Which means, we have a group of writers who have very few writing credits outside their Bond films (and Johnny English!!), and I think some of that inexperience and greeness of judgment shows up in the construction of this movie. As they try to make the movie flow less like a "normal" Bond movie, it seems clear that they're not quite sure how some other type of movie SHOULD flow, and so rather than moving along, the plot just congeals, often stagnating.

Example: after the lengthy teaser, and the opening credits, we spend what feels like forever lolling around MI-6 Scotland. Nothing wrong with that, per se, but things seem to drag along mercilessly: exposition/meeting with M and the other Double-O's, Bond and Dr. Molly Warmflash (sigh), Bond and Q, Bond googling things (now that's riveting film!!), Bond breaking up a meeting to confront M, followed by yet another expostional briefing. Nothing wrong with any of that, but all strung together, it begins to play more like an informational filmstrip on how to run a modern office than an actual James Bond movie. After 15 action-packed minutes to start the movie, we're bogged down in non-action for a good while. Where's the balance, the pacing? The leisure has answered leisure, and the poor pace seems to feed upon itself.

And (partially) as a result of our newly meandering pace, we don't actually meet Elektra King until 30 minutes into the movie; we don't meet Renard until 49 minutes in; and we don't meet Dr. Christmas Jones (sigh) until an hour has gone by. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as other Bonds have taken their sweet time introducing characters to us. But the sheer leisureliness of TWINE is rather surprising, after the way the previous Brosnan kept things percolating at a pretty good pace.

Another way this movie seems to be pushing back against the restrictions of the 007 format is by making M very much a part of the action. Far, far more than any other Bond movie, one of the "support characters" has stepped into the limelight, to become an actual supporting character. And hell, when you've got Judi Dench, it's a no-brainer...give her more to do, since she's so good.

Unfortunately, this is another innovation they are less than 100% successful with, because in order to get M involved, they seemingly drop her IQ by 50 points or so. We've become used to the no-nonsense, don't over-react, in control M from Dench's first two movies. And there's nothing wrong with her showing some guilt over past actions, or making mistakes. But really, do they have to make her such a damn foolish fond old woman to make that point?

She risks a top agent's life to essentially go run a banking errand for an old school chum...she's so guilty over the outcome of the Elektra King kidnapping that she locks the files so that no one can see them, even though the perpetrator is still at large...even though Renard should be an obvious suspect for the bombing, M apparently never thinks of it until Bond googles Elektra and confronts her...in Tomorrow Never Dies she can't even drive across the street in London without a two car/four motorcycle police escort--but she flies into the site of a terrorist attack in Kazakhstan with only 3 bodyguards (who really, really suck at their jobs)...and despite her declaration that Bond is "the best," she completely ignores Bond's warning about Elektra.

Again, none of these problems, in and of themselves, are crippling defects. But cumulatively, they diminish our view of M, which I believe was the opposite of the movie's intention. They made her "more human," but at the expense of making her someone we'd be less likely to trust with Britain's security. (None of this is at all meant to criticize Dame Judi, who does a marvelous job of running through the gamut of emotions the script puts her through). So once again we have a great idea--get M more involved--that is executed poorly.

While we're discussing support cast, Doctor Molly Warmflash?!? That makes Xenia Onatopp look like the height of literary erudition and subtlety. Sheesh...if you're going to insist on doing a suggestive name, couldn't you actually make it a good one?

More seriously, every single day I am thankful that they decided to give Q a farewell scene here, and did it so perfectly. Desmond Llewelyn passed away barely a month after TWINE's release, an immense loss to everyone. Obviously, they didn't know that he would be in an auto accident at the time of filming, but given that the man was 85 years old, preparing the transition was a wise precaution, and fortuitous in that it gave us a chance to properly say goodbye to a much beloved character. Well done, people. And a hale and hearty farewell, Desmond. You're missed by everyone, and we shall speak you well in death.

Given that, let me defend John Cleese. I thought his casting was inspired. Yes, he's presented as a bit of a bumbler in his first scene, but frankly, that's so he won't eclipse Desmond's goodbye. In his last scene this film, and in Die Another Day, he's not only more competent, but he brings something new and different to the role. During our final scene, Old Q would have been blithely ignorant of what was happening with Bond and Christmas, making some innocent double-entendre while staring down at his equipment. New Q is worldlier, snarkier, wittier, more willing to joust with 007 on his own level. I like it.

Another area where the movie tries to innovate is by fooling us as to the identity of the villain. After spending the first half of the movie trying to make us believe that Renard is the villain and Elektra King the Bond girl, they pull the rug out from under us by revealing that Renard is merely her henchman, and she's the barking mad billionaire. And in this case, it mostly works. Of course, part of that is because the movie is so murky in its storytelling...but still, they manage to not overtly tip their hand. And this is the first movie in which Bond sleeps with the main villain (careful...that thought might bring disturbing images to mind).

Of course, this approach does have a couple of drawbacks. First of all, it kind of neuters Renard. We start with the "world's most dangerous terrorist," the anarchist, the man who survived an assassination attempt by 009 (I ask you again--is Bond the only competent Double-O? Almost every time we hear of the others, especially in the later films, it's because of their failures...), the man with the unbeatable advantage of being unable to feel pain. By the end, though, he's reduced to a man twisted by love into following Elektra, into implementing her plans. The great anarchist, who taunts Bond ,"What do you believe in--the preservation of capital,"--he's now the lap dog of the woman whose plan is solely about capitalism and the accumulation of economic power. And the movie doesn't have the wit to comment on the irony of that transition.

He's still a pretty good character, and Robert Carlyle does a wonderful job at showing us Renard's emotional pain increasing as his physical sensations vanish. Renard's quiet menace with others, and his slavish devotion to Elektra, both are played with equal grace. He's determined to prove a villain, yet shows us how he's been changed (not for the better, sadly) by love.

But the key physical aspect, his immunity to pain and fatigue, seems to be a wasted opportunity. Part of the problem is how inconsistently it is portrayed. There are simply too many times during Bond's fights with Renard where we they show Renard wincing in reaction after a blow, when he's supposedly no longer burdened with the weight of pain. And frankly, other than his constantly bemoaning his fate, we never see ANY impact of his condition. Despite Dr. Warmflash's (sigh) briefing, we don't see him doing anything particularly superhuman, or showing any particular feats of endurance beyond that of a normal man. Frankly, he doesn't do anything that seems beyond Stamper, or Necros, or Jaws, or any number of previous henchman. A decent idea...but never well developed, and it has no real impact on the plot. As I said, a wasted opportunity.

Ah, but our villain...Elektra the mad, Elektra the gorgeous, Elektra...Here's on of the few spots in TWINE where intent is equaled by execution. Sophie Marceau is just so damned sensual, so damned electric, that she owns the screen. You can't tear your eyes away from her as she goes from poor-little-kidnapped-rich-girl to insane genocidal maniac...and makes you believe both. Her love scenes with Bond require a cold shower after viewing. Her taunting of Bond in her final scenes is delightfully mad. Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go, as she compels our attention throughout. It's a riveting performance, and she easily would have been the best Bond girl of the Brosnan era...

...except, of course, she's the villain. She has her fathered murdered--a little more than kin, but less than kind--and she's ready to nuke Istanbul just so her pipeline will become more valuable than the competition. Her motivation does come across as the tiniest bit thin. We never get any real sense of why she feels that her father "stole the empire from my mother," with no elaboration given whatsoever. And yes, at M's advice, Sir Robert didn't pay the ransom, but since she never seemed to care for him anyway, it just seems as if she's using that as an excuse for her "sharper than a serpent's tooth" routine. And her "it's for my people" justification would have been much more convincing if she didn't let lots of her people die in Renard's attacks.

Of course, any critiques of her methods can be answered simply with "she's raving nutters, so of course it doesn't make sense." But I do have to complain about the stupidity of her basic plan. Her own pipeline won't be ready for months...we see that the two ends are nowhere near meeting, the detour around the ancient church will cost "weeks" more, and the destruction of a portion of the pipeline by "terrorists" with a "dud" bomb that was supposed to spew plutonium all over would certainly cost even more time. So why in the world blow up Istanbul now, since you're nowhere near ready to take advantage of the destruction? It would be like Stromberg launching his nuclear war before Atlantis was completed--completely daft. Plus, the intervening months will give the "competing pipelines" a damn good head start in finding new routes, and the oil hungry West to find new sources other than her precious oil. And despite her cries of "for my people," I somehow suspect the people of Azerbaijan would suffer much more than they would benefit much from the irradiation the Black Sea. (Of course, "Renard was dying more quickly than expected" could be one possible reason for the precipitous action, but that excuse doesn't make the plan any more likely to work by jumping the guns, does it?)

One drawback to making Elektra King so vivid, though, is that it even further shrinks the status of Denise Richards as--ahem--Dr. Christmas Jones. It's a lesser version of the Teri Hatcher/Michelle Yeoh problem from Tomorrow Never Dies...they spend so much time building up the emotional investment in the first relationship that the final relationship seems trivial by comparison. Whatever else we can say about her, it's not Denise Richards' fault that the script gives Elektra a detailed background, builds her character, and makes her sympathetic (and then hated!), while doing absolutely nothing of the kind for Christmas. The script doesn't choose to share a single fact about Dr. Jones with us, except that she's a nuclear scientist (snort). She's not really a character, she's an afterthought, after the writers realized they needed an actual Bond girl once Elektra was revealed as the Big Bad. There's nothing there: Cate Blanchett couldn't have done anything with the role. At least it gives us a memorable closing line...

That being said, Richards is fairly awful, a shallow thing, not of this element. She appears capable of portraying only 3 emotions: cranky, really cranky, and LOUD. The woman is flat out ultra-hot, but she's as much an actress as I am a major league second baseman. There is no chemistry at all between her and Bond, mainly because she's too busy "acting" confrontational and aloof to actually interact with Brosnan. Very lovely to look at, but then again, if I want to do that I can just pull out her Playboy spread. Lower tier Bond girl.

I've got some special ire for our director, Michael Apted. Whatever his strengths as a director are in other genres, he simply cannot direct action sequences to save his life. With the possible exception of the boat chase, every action set piece in the movie comes across as flat and lifeless, with no real sense of danger or tension. There's no "flow," and events are much too hard to follow.

Like Guy Hamilton, Apted's idea of a Bond chase scene is to have the bad guys take themselves out , without any special actions by Bond. Three of the four "para-hawks" take themselves out, running into trees or dropping grenades on their own people.

But more fundamentally, his "storytelling" ability during the action pieces is terrible. One scene follows another without reason...one cut leads to another in a confusing way that makes it nearly impossible to tell where the actors are in relation to another. During the interminably long and boring battle at Zukovsky's caver plant, watch for the shots of Valentine and Christmas: note how each time we see them or their reaction shots, they're in a place/position completely incompatible with the previous time we saw them. Watch the helicopter, which has been pursuing Bond relentlessly, hover in place for 30 seconds without firing while Bond gets a missile lock. Watch Bond mysteriously navigate between levels inside the plant, apparently teleporting at points. Watch for Zukovsky's mysteriously appearing and disappearing bodyguard. Watch the second helicopter, which has been pursuing and firing relentless, hover in place for 30 seconds without firing so Bond can light the gas stream with a flare.

Sadly, the submarine finale is just as bad. The problem is this: we're not familiar with the geography of the sub when it's level, so when everything is sideways, we have no idea where everything is in relationship to each other. And Apted does a horrible job of helping us out. We can't follow what's happening, because he doesn't seem to know how to show us. When Bond ends up mysteriously locked behind a (floor?) grate, we have no idea how this happens. When the hose pops loose from the "high pressure purging system," we have no idea why the hose popped loose, what it's for, where Bond is going with it, what he's attaching it too...the director never shows us, and seems to think that the audience is comprised of either nuclear technicians or people who've already read the script, because he never bothers to show us. As indecipherable as events in the teaser are, that was largely down to the script. This time, it's just as confusing, but it's the director's doing. Terrible storytelling.

Apted is fine--better than fine, actually--in many of the dramatic scenes. But when it comes to the action, he simply wasn't up to the task. Confusion now has made his masterpiece, and TWINE has lost the name of action.

As for Pierce, the script doesn't do him any favors. Perhaps it's because his shoulder was hurting, or he wanted revenge, or he was besotted with Elektra, but Bond is wildly inconsistent throughout the movie. Even though he has absolutely no idea of what's going on yet, he recklessly kills Davidov in cold blood...but just a few scenes later, he holds a twenty minute conversation with Renard rather than pulling the trigger, which seems inconsistent with his drive end the threat to Elektra. Within a couple of scenes he goes from trigger-happy to overly cautious. When he's certain that Elektra's involved, he confronts her...yet he ends up yammering like an idiot when she says "am not," and does nothing at all to investigate further. When she tells him that M is coming, why doesn't he call M en route and warn her of his suspicions?

But those aren't Brosnan's problem's, they're the script's. Pierce does a good job of selling what they've given him. His relationship with Elektra sizzles, and his anger and grief when he discovers she's the villain is palpable. When he kills Davidoff and Elektra in cold blood, you really can believe that he has a licence to kill, and a willingness to use it. Although his hair never seemed quite right, his acting was fairly spot on.

And as with a problem play, we have the awkward and artificially happy ending, which is not necessarily new for a Bond movie, but seems especially this time around. There are so many emotional and practical loose ends to tie up (MI-6 is in shambles, there's still the matter of an exploded nuclear reactor at the bottom of the Black Sea, Bond getting over Elektra pretty damn quickly, etc) that this ending feels especially tacked on and non-sensical. M flew all the way back to Scotland without waiting until Bond was found? The heat-detecting satellite doesn't show any other human bodies in a several block radius? What, were Bond and Christmas squatting in an abandoned warehouse district? The MI-6 crew figure Bond's general location by finding the car--wait a minute, the car was destroyed!! After somehow restraining themselves all movie, the Christmas jokes start to flow hot and heavy. Ha ha, after all this tragedy and grief, a forced and unbelievable ending...hell, this really is a Shakespeare problem play.

As I said, I want to like this movie better. Elektra makes for a pretty good villain, M is more involved, I really like Pierce's performance, and at least it seems as if they're trying to mix up the formula a little bit. But even vaulting ambition can o'erleap itself, when the execution falls short. And most damning of all, TWINE is a grim, humorless affair. There's simply not much FUN in this movie. Some people like to accuse License To Kill of being too dark and humorless, but that film is a regular Laugh-In compared to TWINE.

It's difficult for me to put my finger on, let alone describe...but the movie never really soars, never really crosses over into the one-foot-over-the-fantasy-line zone. There's never that transcendent moment when you look at the screen and say, "this can only be a Bond movie!" The set-pieces, the gadgets, the quips...the writing and direction never seem to shift out of third gear, never become the memorable scenes that come to mind when you think Bond. And so all we're left with is the dour emotional landscape, reflected in the dour location landscapes, and a film that tries so hard to be more than Bond that it forgets to actually be Bond.

And in the end, whereas Shakespeare could get away with a problem play, Feirstein, Purvis, Wade and Apted are no Shakespeares. And as for TWINE itself, oft expectations fail, and most oft there where it promises. A lot of potential, but not a top-tier Bond movie.

Next week, we find out what happens if you take every Bond movie ever made, throw it in a blender, and film what comes out. It's not going to be pretty...

SNELL'S RANDOM NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS

**Sadly, the decision to move the boat chase to the teaser cost us hearing THE BEST BOND LINE EVER. Seriously. From the DVD's deleted scenes, we have an expanded version of M and Bond's discussion of what was going on.

M (referring to King): He's a man of great integrity.
Bond: Who buys stolen reports for 3 million pounds?
M: Well, contrary to what you may believe, 007, the world is not populated by madmen who can hollow out volcanoes, fill them with big breasted women, and threaten the world with nuclear annihilation.
Bond: It only takes one.

Why in the name of God isn't that line in the movie?? (It is in the novelization, I'm told...)

**In Q's lab, a bagpipe machine gun:

It's never a good sign when you're "borrowing" from Casino Royale (1967)...

**I mention this above, but what ugly, ugly scenery. It's nice to see so much of London, but the rest of the film is set in areas so devoid of beauty of interest that this just might be the ugliest Bond movie ever.

**Oh, what a lost opportunity...we're in Istanbul, and not only do they not show us any of the sights of that city, but they fail to do something that seems so obvious--bring in one of Kerim Bey's sons!! Good heavens, why is Bond relying only on Russian intelligence and not Station T?!?


**Speaking of Valentine...I love Robbie Coltrane, I liked the character in Goldeneye. But here, Zukovsky is merely part of the plot convenience theater. Just by coincidence, he's no longer operating in St. Petersburg, where Bond eliminated his competition--he's moved to within a stone's throw of where Bond's mission is!! If Valentine and Elektra don't do that completely ridiculous and unnecessary fake card game for the million dollars, Bond never finds out what's going on. If he doesn't tell Bond about the submarine, the bad guys win. If he doesn't miraculously survive the bombing and show up to free Bond with his dying breath, the bad guys win. He gone from being a character to being a plot device, because the writers couldn't figure out how to get from A to B without him (several times). It's not a good sign when your supporting character has to point out to the hero where to go at every plot crux.

**Speaking of plot convenience theater, there is absolutely no reason for Bond to stop, while under heavy gunfire and trying to stop a the bomb from being stolen, to rifle the pockets of the dead goon for the "locater card." What, people won't believe him when he says he say Renard removed it? There's even less reason for him to pull it out and show M, and less still for him to actually hand it to her. Of course, this is all painfully convoluted set-up so they have a way to locate M. But Bond is captured and taken to her. So all the rigmarole is just so Zukovsky can find them and show up to save the day. So an incredibly contrived plot device to set up another incredibly contrived plot device. I told you this movie was ambitious.

**Not only is the movie inconsistent when portraying Renard's affliction, sometimes they seem to confuse "cannot feel pain" with "invulnerable." The hot rock burns Davidov's hand, requiring bandage. Even if Renard didn't feel the pain, his hand would still burn and blister quite badly, as he held the rock for longer. But nope, his hands are fine later in the movie...

**Hey, look, a Blofeld kill!! It's been awhile!

Too bad Davidov buys it 2 minutes later...

**After Diamonds Are Forever, you'd think Bond wouldn't forget about radiation badges, thus blowing his cover...

**So, after the Swiss bank took out it's fees and costs, the recovered money exactly equaled the amount of ransom demanded for Elektra? Uh, how did they know how much the bank would take out? And even if that amount was prearranged with the bank, how did they know what the exchange rate would be on the exact day Bond happens to look it up (several days after he recovered the money)? Bond checks down to the cents...are we to believe neither the pound nor the dollar moved at all in that time??

**I will confess that I've come to the conclusion that I underrated the theme song by Garbage when I did my rankings. Maybe it's experiencing how well it works with the rest of David Arnold's fine score, or maybe I'm just in a different mood this week. Still a couple of demerits: I think Shirley Manson's vocals get a little bit buried in the lush arrangements. And it tries so hard to sound like a Bond theme, that it sounds less like a Garbage song than a Shirley Manson solo song. Whatever your opinion of their songs, McCartney & Wings, Duran Duran and a-Ha still manage to sound like themselves during their theme songs...and why have a band do it if they're going to lose their identity?

Still, I can't get the damned song out of my head this week. I'm man enough to admit that I didn't give it enough credit. I would provisionally move it up, perhaps as high as #11.

**M's grief and dedication to the king family seems awfully deep. Did M and King do more than "read law" together at Oxford?? Just asking...

**Of particular interest, this movie gives us the first meeting of Double-O's since Thunderball!!

Unlike Thunderball, we can actually see their faces...and for the first time, a female Double-O!!! Sadly, I can't find character names or credits for any of them.

**When Robinson declares at the briefing that the murderer could be "anyone, anywhere" in King's organization...uhh, no...not unless "anyone" had access to Sir Robert's personal jewelry. I would think that kind of access would restrict the list a bit, no?

**I arbitrarily declare the inflatable vest the worst gadget ever. It looks just terrible and unconvincing both times it's deployed. Awful.

**Why the dumb show at the casino between Valentine and Elektra? Seriously, all she ends up doing is signing a letter of credit saying she owed him a million bucks...which she already owed him. Since she's now the head of a billion dollar empire, why not just slip him the money in cash, secretly?? And since Bond had the dealer burn a few cards, how did they guarantee Elektra would lose? Would they just keep playing double or nothing until she did? Or did the dealer cheat so well that James Bond couldn't tell?

**uhhh...Christmas Jones...Why, exactly, does Elektra declare "take her to Renard?" They never really met, and we've established that Renard can't really enjoy the pleasures of the flesh...? Why does he need her on the sub??

**I lack the proper physics background, but doesn't it seem unlikely that Bond and Christmas would survive the pipeline explosion? I would think the fireball would suck all the oxygen out of the pipes, and they'd suffocate...not to mention the heat and flame.

**While I'm confessing my lack of knowledge, do nuclear subs really have their own "extruders" to make their own plutonium rods? I would have thought they had pre-made rods. Does that mean they carry around boxes or uranium/plutonium, just laying around? When they're out of uranium, do they just surface and head to Protons 'R' Us or something?

**Reason # 745 not to like Christmas Jones: "I have to get (the plutonium) back, or someone's gonna have my ass." Nice empathy for the possible death of millions there, Christmas...worry about your job first, others last. (Before anyone tries to defend it as a "joke"--well, if it was, it was the worst-delivered joke of all time)

**So the Russian Atomic Energy Department has their own para-hawks? Really?? Makes you wonder what the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission has in their garage...

**The bomb Renard has at the bottom of the elevator shaft makes no sense. He never has a chance to set it, as Bond is right on his tail. And at least two groups of people have been up and down since Renard arrived in the shaft. So why in the hell does the rising elevator pull the pin this time, but none of the other times?

**Bond Score: 3. Dr. Warmflash (sigh), Elektra, and Christmas in Turkey. Cumulative Bond score: 53.

And, as always

Tune in next week, as James Bond scores with an Oscar winner, and almost starts a new Korean War in real life...

Ranking The Villains--Steel Cage Match Edition

Just in the interest of pure silliness:

Click on the image for a larger version, or just click here to see it in person. (Plug: it's a free site, you can make you own custom brackets for virtually anything...have fun.)

No, this did not entail any deep thought, and yes, I will do a more serious ranking in a bit. But some of the match-ups do make you think...