Sir Roger And Me

If you grew up in the 70s, there was one question, one choice, that divided people--entire families, even. Your answer could determine how cool or lame you were, how "with it" or "status quo" you were. More than "boxers or briefs," more than "Pepsi or Coke"--hell, more fervently and religiously debated than today's "Apple or Android"--the question that roiled the playground and cafeteria was the simple "Connery or Moore?" ("Lazenby" never entered these discussions, of course.)

Simpler times, those.

But such a question did a fairly huge injustice to Roger Moore. A simple comparison, perhaps--but in those pre-VHS days, when one's exposure to old Bond films was limited to whatever Bond film you had caught ABC re-running on a Friday or Sunday night broadcast, so people committed themselves with metaphysical certitude to aesthetic judgements that relatively little evidence could be cited for.

The majority declaration that "Connery was better" (and he was, for whatever my humble opinion is worth), had the effect of therefore relegating Roger to last place (again, Lazenby was never on the ballot). And that, friends, was unfair. Because second-best Bond wasn't chopped liver.

And we may have been too young to realize this, but let's not forget--neither Sean nor Roger wrote their movies, nor directed them, nor cast them, etc. So an awful lot of what we were basing our judgements on were things that, honestly, had nothing to do with the actors.

And sure, the producers et al. may have been playing to what they perceived as Moore's strengths. And yes, they may have been catering to the direction Roger wanted to go--but they didn't have to. So a lot of what is thought of when you think of the Moore era is really ultimately the responsibility of other diverse hands.

Was Connery closer to Fleming's idea of Bond? Certainly, if we go by what's on the page. Then again, Fleming thought David Niven would have been the perfect Bond--so what the hell do we know?

And sometimes, we get too hung up on the concept of fidelity to the source material. For example, Harrison Ford was pretty much nothing like Tom Clancy's version of Jack Ryan (young Alec Baldwin embodied the character from the novels the best). But that doesn't mean that the Ford Clancy movies are bad, or that Ford himself was. It's a big world, and there is room for lots of different interpretations and portrayals of characters, no matter how strongly we may aver that there is only one correct way to play them.

Yes, to my eyes, Moore's Bond was too urbane, too suave, too gentlemanly most of the time for my preference--he was always much more The Saint than my picture of 007.

But on the other hand, he could certainly play the cold-blooded killer when asked--killing Sandor in TSWLM, kicking Locque's car off the cliff in FYEO. Roger may not have particularly liked those moments, but if called upon, he certainly could have been a much more Flemingian Bond.



But he wasn't usually called upon. Again, responsibility for that goes to the producers and writers. And it's hard to blame them, as Moore's movies made lots and lots and lots of money once they seemingly committed to the softer side of Bond. And who can argue? It's what the audiences wanted!

As I've written elsewhere, the Bond franchise was looking like it was in a bit of trouble, after box office disappointments of the more down-to-earth LALD and TMWTGG. But when The Spy Who Loved Me became a mega-blockbuster, it cemented the franchise's direction for the next decade--over-the-top world-threatening villains, breakneck globe-trotting--and a certain lightness (if not silliness) that Moore was only too happy to go along with.

So, yes, Moore wasn't my preferred Bond--but he was still a James Bond, and a good one. And we should celebrate that. Just as different actors bring different qualities to different incarnations of, say, Doctor Who, each Bond has brought something distinctive to the role. We can have preferred actors, favorite interpretations--but "best" and "worst"? Please--that's missing the point. In a very real sense, Roger Moore is the reason that we still have James Bond movies today.

On my scales, at least, he was in two of the very best Bonds--FYEO is clearly a Top 5 Bond, and while TSWLM is a bit overrated, it's still pretty damned good. Roger also was in (again my opinion) 3 of the worst Bonds--TMWTGG, Moonraker (unarguably the worst) and VTAK (if you have problems with LALD's racial politics, I can see you placing it pretty far down the list, as well). So, it's a mixed result--but really, how much of that can be laid at Roger's feet? The producers disastrously decided to ape Star Wars, the producers chose not to replace Roger when he was perhaps a bit too long in the tooth for the role any more, the producers chose to push the light-hearted direction over the line into occasional silliness. Perhaps a little bit too much blame for the decisions of those far above him has attached to Roger Moore.

But despite the arguments, despite the slights, Roger Moore was always--always--the consummate gentleman. And unlike some other Bond actors, he continued to embrace and celebrate the role, even when he was long done with it. He was an amazing ambassador for the 007 brand.

So, while my opinion is hardly needed in the avalanche of praise being heaped upon Roger right now, let's not forget that he was a good Bond, and an extraordinarily successful shepherd for the franchise we love so much. And even though he might not have been my preferred Bond, I would rather watch any of his 007 movies than the last 3 or so Bourne movies (except Moonraker. Gosh it's pretty awful).

SPECTRE (SPOILERS)

All right, you know the drill.

I'm about to dive deeply and discuss SPECTRE. And there are going to be spoilers.

So, if you haven't seen it yet, go away. Come back after you've seen the film. It's OK--this post will still be here...I promise!

Review, and spoilers, will start after the four SPECTRE posters. See ya there!

The biggest problem SPECTRE has is this:

The ring.

Oh, it's a fine ring. But both on a literal and metaphorical level, the producers decide to treat it like it is The One Ring, something to bind all of the Daniel Craig-era 007 movies together, to bring them all together under what is revealed to be one long story.

And it doesn't work, on either level. It's a gimmick without any thought behind it, without any real attempt made to develop it. And the result is a frustrating, lackluster James Bond film, which in the end has no idea what it wants to do with the villains or their "plot."

Let's start with that SPECTRE ring itself. Bond sees some goons practically kneel when Marco Sciarra shows it to them. So 007 makes sure to grab it during his fight with Sciarra. And it's quite useful at gaining Bond admittance to the meeting in Rome.

But then the writers realize that they haven't done the most basic groundwork in proving that all 4 Craig movies have had the same hidden master villain. And they decide to take a pretty nonsensical shortcut. Bond has Q analyze the ring, and lo and behold, the miracles of quack science somehow "prove" that SPECTRE was behind LeChiffre and QUANTUM and Silva and...

I'll be able to say more once I get the movie in home video format, and can do so freeze frames and screen captures. But having seen the film several times, and watching especially closely the last couple of times for this: Q's magic laptap scanner finds partial fingerprints and DNA on the ring. There's no indication that it finds anything else, such as embedded files. The movie doesn't show us anything else at all. And from that. somehow, Q is able to intuit not only the existence of SPECTRE, but it's structure and leadership!

This is storytelling malarkey at its finest, but let me emphasize a couple of points to elaborate just how stupid this is:
*Obviously Sciarra had just worn the ring, and White had recently handled it. But how in the world would Green's and LeChiffre's and Silva's and Oberhauser's fingerprints or DNA been on the ring? Was there just one ring, and the members of SPECTRE passed it around? This. Makes. No. Sense.
*Franz Oberhauser allegedly died in an avalanche as a 17 year old, and his body was never found (according to the article Moneypenny was reading). How, and why, would MI-6 have had his DNA on file? Yet Q's computer screen quite clearly tells us that there was a  "DNA MATCH" for Oberhauser. This. Makes. No. Sense.
*Even if you come up with some silly excuse--every SPECTRE member has their biometric data encoded on each ring, just because--how could Q have possibly used that information to come up with his nice branching organizational chart laying out SPECTRE's entire structure? How could he have possibly known from the ring that Oberhauser was the leader of the whole organization? Was there also a microchip in the ring laying out SPECTRE's corporate leadership chart, because secret organizations like to get caught? THIS. MAKES. NO. SENSE.

I know I'm going off an awful lot on a very small detail, but it's a point that's emblematic of the movie's problems--the filmmakers keep making incredible assertions, and then don't bother putting the tiniest bit of thought into explaining (or understanding!) these plot devices. They just wave their hands about, hoping the audience is too easily hypnotized to notice the lack of craft in the script.

Just as the ring makes no sense on a literal level, the implications on the story level--there is one organization, one person even--who is behind everything in the first three movies is pretty indefensible. Neal Purvis and Robert Wade co-wrote all 4 Craig 007 movies, so they should know that this bootstrapping was going to be hard to accomplish. Casino Royale made it clear that LeChiffre did not work for QUANTUM--they just introduced terrorists to the "banker." There was no indication whatsoever that Silva worked for anyone beside himself. His revenge against M was entirely personal--and now we're supposed to believe that it was actually at Blofeld's behest--to get back at Bond?!?

So the script doesn't even try. We just get unverifiable statements that SPECTRE was "behind everything all along" and the Blofeld was "the author of all your pain." No attempts at explanation. Let's just retcon those three movies, and not even try to make it make sense. it's an attempt to layer on "continuity" between the movies without having to bother to actually do any of the required work. Plus, it makes MI-6 look stupider than hell.

[If you wish to argue that Blofeld was merely making this up, as a way to get under Bond's skin, I'll applaud your creativity. But I'll also say that if the movie somehow doesn't reveal that at the end, it makes no sense from a story perspective. And it contradicts Q's physical evidence that "proves" it].

The oddest part is, there's no reason to do this. It's not as if these "revelations" somehow improve those past movies, or somehow make this one better. No, this is a symptom of "Big Bad Syndrome." TV series are hot, they have season-long arcs with master villains and strong continuity. Let's try to do that for our movies! The problem is, something that works for 22 episodes of hour-long TV, with gradual revelations, doesn't work in 4 movies over a decade, especially when there were no earlier hints. "Surprise!! This is what really happened in that movie you maybe watched 9 years ago" misunderstands your audience and your medium, I think.

As for Blofeld himself? It's a shame, really, as Christopher Waltz would be a great villain. But the film just chooses to plop out a bad guy, reveal 3/4 of the way through that his name is really Blofeld, and expect the audience to eat it up. The problem is, having our villain be both Bond's foster brother AND Blofeld rather works at cross-purposes. The former revelation is to make sure that Bond's conflict is "personal." The latter is to make the audience go "ooooh, I remember that guy from 44 years ago...he was a badass."

Look, I'm fairly agnostic over the prospect of bringing back Blofeld. And while I'm not sold on the Austin Powers approach of making him related to Bond, I could support that if done well. But you have to commit to the concept. You have to make us care that he's Blofeld, and care that they're foster brothers. If you're going to do it, DO IT. And three or four lines lines inserted into a script are nowhere near enough to get it done.

The trouble is, the script-writers forgot the whole "make it personal" angle for Franz Oberhauser. Compare, for a far better example of surprise villain revealed to be personal, Goldeneye. There, 006 and 007 argue the entire movie, about their beliefs and past friendships and means and methods and...the entire film is about their relationship and what their job has done to them. SPECTRE? Bond realizes that the villain is his presumed-dead foster brother (although for some reason doesn't actually tell anyone about their relationship), but doesn't say a single word to Blofeld about it the entire movie. Not a "how could you have killed him" or "He loved you" or "he saved my life why couldn't you share" or anything at all. Blofeld's grievance against Bond is short to the point of parody ("My father was fond of him") and is so underwritten and underdeveloped that you have to wonder why anyone even bothered. And so none of the limited dialogue between Bond and Blofeld has even half of the zest or frisson of that between, for example, Bond and Silva.It's an idea that neither the writers nor the actors actually seem interested in.

As to the unveiling of Oberhauser as Blofeld...well, meh. Did naming him Blofeld do anything to make the movie better? It's a bland and consequence-less reveal, feeling more like a "we have the rights to Blofeld and we damn well are using them right now!" than any kind move that actually improved the film. Honestly, if you're not going to commit 100% to "Here's Blofeld," well, you might as well have not even used him. The film would have been stronger, and you could have taken the wasted time and spent it developing the Bond/Oberhauser relationship.

So Waltz is left to perform a shell of a character, someone who is more of a random collection of traits than a character. He worships a meteor? Why not! He does obscure torture for no reason? Sure!! [It should be noted how terrible Blofeld is at the torture part. He says the first probe will effects Bond's sight, hearing and balance. It does no such thing. The second probe is supposed to remove his ability to recognize faces. Again, it does no such thing. So it's just sadism for sadism's sake, unlike, say, LeChiffre's torture of Bond. Why dress it up as quasi-anatomical research if you're not going to follow through?] It's a shame, as Waltz could have been an admirable Bond villain had someone bothered to write one for him.

As to Blofeld and SPECTRE's plan? Well, basically, no one cares. Sure, the massive invasion of privacy is bad. But that invasion is already going on in the film, and nothing in this movie will stop it--the Nine Eyes program would just combine everyone's surveillance into one pool. As near as I can tell, no new surveillance was authorized. Bond certainly doesn't seem to give a rip. And while M does drop a basic Orwell reference, it's hard to take his "you dared to spy on MI-6 agent?!?" as anything more than hypocrisy (or careless writing) when Mallory himself had just injected spy software into Bond. The movie doesn't really care about privacy, or we would have gotten more than a Kindergartners' Guide To Edward Snowden. It doesn't address the dangers, the rights violations, or anything at all about a surveillance society. It's just a dumbed-down McGuffin that no one in the movie actually cares about.

We should also note the lack of convincing crisis they have created here, as the movie doesn't even bother to show us what the countdown timer was down to when Q cracked the code and shut down the project. And who cared about the midnight deadline, anyway? Did it matter if Q still shut it down later, say at 12:05? What irrevocably happened at 12:00? The movie neither knows nor cares.

Which brings us to "C", a.k.a Max Denbigh. Did you notice that he never once refers to Blofeld or SPECTRE, never talks to him, never contacts him? It's as if C comes from a different draft of the script, before Blofeld was forcibly injected into the story. And so we never find out--is Denbigh a duped true believer, who doesn't realize the evil uses that SPECTRE will put the data to? Does he just not care about human slavery and African pharmaceuticals--they're just prices he's willing to pay to ensure British security? Or is he evil, too, and just has lots of clever talk to justify himself? Again, a character so underwritten--and so disconnected from anything that Bond is doing--that he has no impact on the viewer.

Bond meets C only once, in the very beginning, never sees or speaks to him again, and has zero to do with his death. Denbigh barely rises to henchman status. His death is poorly earned--he just loses his balance?!?--and seemingly changes nothing (he was, after all, acting with the authority of the Home Secretary, and presumably the Prime Minister--why wouldn't Project Nine Eyes continue, after the elimination of SPECTRE's taps into the feed?) Perhaps the most interesting characteristic he had is the way his 2-day beard just keeps getting thicker and less groomed as the movie goes on. Seriously, you're a top government minister and you don't shave? Even before addressing a conclave of the world's top governments?!?!

As for SPECTRE itself? Well, once again, this has the distinct feel of  "we finally got the rights back, and we're using them!" Is there any reason this wouldn't have worked just as well if the group were QUANTUM, instead? As a group SPECTRE is mentioned only twice in the film, and never by anyone affiliated with the group. Hell, we're never told what it stands for (if anything). They don't do anything noticeably different that we saw QUANTUM doing in QoS. So again I ask--why bring back something so weighted with history and expectations, and then do absolutely nothing interesting with them?

And in the end, nothing 007 does would seem too have any impact on SPECTRE's operations. They were able to make the "board" resign which freed up their sexual slavery operations without Operation 9 Eyes being in effect. There's no indication that they couldn't get the WHO in line for their African Rx plans. Surely, Denbigh wasn't their sole operative, right? They had to have people in other intelligence services, right? So other than replacing Blofeld, it doesn't seem as if they're going to be substantially slowed in what they do. [Not to mention, given the level of access to information Blofeld had--he watched live feeds in MI-6 HQ, for heaven's sake!!--it's not hard to imagine him blackmailing himself out of captivity soon]. The whole "evil plan" revolves around making SPECTRE a little more efficient. Yes, that fails, but they're still as much a threat at the end of the movie as they were at the beginning.

Well, that all sounded unrelentingly negative, more so than I planned. Sorry about that. But I do feel that the film failed quite badly on the villain/plot side. So let's shift focus, and talk about some good things!

Let's start with Leya Seydoux as Doctor Madeleine Swann. She's beautiful and competent. I like her backstory--the daughter of a villain, put through some horrible experiences as a youth, determined to reject that life--and the way it informs her elationship with Bond. I love the fact that, despite her "I don't like guns," she was not so insistent that she couldn't pick up a gun and save James from Hinx when needed. I do wish that she could have been given more to do in the finale than being trussed up like a turkey. But her influence on James was evident in the way he unloaded his gun rather than kill Blofeld. It is certainly believable that 007 would leave the service--at least temporarily--to be with her.

That being said, I'm not a big fan of the way she decides to "break up" with him just as he's headed off to risk his life in a final confrontation. Seriously--now is when you choose to lay that on him, when he's about to go risk his life? You can't say, "when you're done we need to talk?" Of course, the screenwriters needed some excuse to separate her from the MI-6ers so she could be kidnapped...Still, it was a terribly abrupt transition from "I'm going with you...I love you" to "I can't do this anymore."

Dave Bautista was fine as Hinx; I just wish the script gave him some actual dialogue besides a dying profanity. Being silent doesn't automatically make you menacing; and you'd think that the failure to articulate any reasoning for killing a superior might result in your not getting the promotion you want. Hinx is clever--he finds the tape of White's suicide, he knows to follow Bond to Swann, he somehow manages to follow them to Tangiers and get on the same train as them. But leaving him with with only one pointless word of dialogue misses an opportunity, and diminishes him from potentially one of the best recent henchmen to just another strong silent ox.

The MI-6 crew is in fine form. Ralph Fiennes, as M, continues to prove adept at both being a hardass but still managing to quietly be on Bond's side. He doesn't approve of Bond's maverick actions, but he's smart enough to know when 007 is on to something, and he's be ready to use his information.

Naomie Harris is great as Moneypenny, even if the script reduces her to "dispenser of information." That's what happens when you choose not to be a field agent, Eve. Still, you'd think they could have done a tiny bit more with her in the finale, rather than just have her stand around and look at a corpse. Given her earlier discussion with Bond on "having a life," a real opportunity to have her counsel 007 on his relationship with Swann was a missed, I think.

Ben Winshaw continues to build his own Q, and he's great. He and 007 have an understanding, and he's more willing than willing to cross a line set by M for him, even if he doesn't always know why. Again, I'd love for the movies to find a way from him to do more than sit in front of a screen and type dramatically, but that seems to be a never-ending curse of 21st century filmmaking. But at least he was able to get out of the office this time around, and actually face a (tiny) bit of danger.

Monica Bellucci was great as Lucia--she gave a real performance of convincing fear--but talk about your underwritten roles. She was there only to tell Bond where and when the meeting was? Really? It was, perhaps, a little bit of a cheat for 007 to just leave and say "Felix will get you out of here." I mean, we're told again and again how powerful these guys are, how they hear and know everything, how she's only secured 5 more minutes to live...and James just leaves her there, unconcerned that American intelligence might not be just as corrupted as British? While I'm glad she wasn't just a sacrificial lamb, I wish she had been given more to do, and I fear for her safety.

Daniel Craig gives as fine a performance as the script allows. I wish he'd been allowed to talk to Blofeld more, and discuss their past and their dead "father" and whatever Blofeld's motivations were besides "batshit crazy." Some reaction to the film's big revelations felt missing to me. but Craig didn't write the script.

Otherwise, Craig's Bond is the one we've grown used to--terse, intense, stubborn, charming when need be, and relentless. His scenes with Lea Seydoux are great, and make a worthy addition to the list of Bond romances.

Craig is showing no signs of slowing down--or does he? He seems to have a lot less physical stunt work than in prior movies. After the teaser, there's the car chase (not much physically required of Bond), the plane/car chase (again, he's just driving), the train fight (fair enough, pretty brutal), and the escape from Blofeld's compound, in which he just walks forward, shooting, while the SPECTRE agents just miss him. Indeed, in that scene (and the beginning of the plane/car chase), he's more like a Terminator than a secret agent--he defeats dozens of opponents far too easily, which undercuts the film's thematic attempt to make him more human. He never feels like he's in real danger at any point. Just a coincidence, or are they trying to take it easy on the physical exertions for Craig?

The teaser was top-notch, exciting and fresh. The looong tracking shot, especially with so many extras, was wonderful, a great start for the movie. And it's about time James Bond made it to Mexico. Australia is a little bit jealous, though...I understand why the teaser ended on a close-up of the SPECTRE ring, but what about Estrella, waiting for him back at the hotel? He should have ended up back there, with some quip about why he was late...

Ah, Sam Smith's "title" song. Can we please end the trend of not using the movie's name in the "theme" song? And can we also eliminate the recent trend of artists not allowing the songs on the soundtrack album? Someone needs to remind these artists that they are not bigger than Bond, and if you want to have a guaranteed top ten single, the price is allowing it on the damn album and using the damn movie title. Seriously, how hard could it be to work the word "spectre" into your repetitive lyrics?

As to the song itself? Well, Sam Smith and Jimmy Napes allegedly wrote it under half an hour. it certainly shows in the lyrics. Bah. And I'm not particularly a fan of Smith's vocal stylings. Still, musically, the song isn't half bad, and I'll be damned if the tune doesn't stick in my head for quite awhile after each listening. With tighter (and less repetitive) lyrics, a singer who wasn't so consumed with over-emoting each note, and using the actual title in the song, this could have been a top-notch Bond theme.

So what do we have? A flawed Bond film, probably the least of the Craig films upon reflection. There are some good things here--a number of them. But turgid pacing (more below), and a complete failure to make the villains and their master plan interesting or credible drag the movie down. And what worked in Skyfall doesn't work in SPECTRE, as the script isn't at all interested in explaining anything above the obligatory hand waves, instead seemingly focused on rounding up the usual Bond suspects at the expense any attempt at depth or originality. Which is sad, because the elements are there, and after the teaser, my hopes were quite high. And the ham-fisted attempts to force in Blofeld and brotherhood without bothering in any way to develop those ideas got in the way of the better elements of the film.

Perhaps the most damning thing I can say about the movie? The damned Heineken commercial has more energy and elan and creativity than anything that happens post-teaser in SPECTRE.

SPECTRE is not a bad movie, by any means. But it is a disappointing one, as outside of the teaser, there seems little energy or innovation, and the film seems more concerned with reestablishing ownership of some intellectual properties than telling an actual story with them. For the first time in the Craig era, a Bond movie felt more like a contractual obligation, than an actual film with something to say.

SNELL'S RANDOM THOUGHTS AND QUESTIONS:

**Why 150 minutes? Seriously, this movie is waaay too long.

I know, it's only a few minutes longer than Skyfall.

But this movie is pokey. The pace is sooo slow at times. At points Sam Mendes seems more interested in slow pans over foreign vistas than in moving the story along.Where Skyfall crackled, SPECTRE seems to drag often.

Where to cut? Easy. Drop the meteor scene--seriously, what the hell was up with that? Drop the scene where Moneypenny gets the phone...we can't even tell what phone she's using the one time Bond calls, and since C was able to record the whole thing, the point of giving her a burner phone is moot, anyway. How about not showing us all 6 doors and 4 flights of steps to the safe house? There--I've just saved 7 or 8 minutes, without any hard work...

**So, what is the point with the opening caption? Did Mendes & company feel the need to bludgeon us over the head with the movie's theme? Did they have no confidence that we could figure this out ourselves?

**C's villainy couldn't have been any more telegraphed if he had beaten orphans and evicted windows in front of M and 007. Especially when Tanner mentions that recent terrorist attacks have "played into his hands," and his mantra and initiative are mentioned practically verbatim at the SPECTRE meeting.

**As great as the teaser was, they seem to have used up all their budget for extras there.

There's no one else about skiing, or driving, during the plane chase scene (we had just seen a cable car full of snow-boarders!) No one else in the dining car of the train, or the kitchen? Rome's roads are mighty empty, even if it is after midnight.

And most egregiously...we're 5 minutes from activation of the biggest security initiative in British history...and there's not one single employee in the CNS building? Not one? No analyst, no tech, no janitor, no security guard?!?!?!

**The Judi Dench cameo was unexpected.

But if you're going to leave a "from-beyond-the-grave" assignment for someone, could it hurt to dole out a little more information? Why kill Sciarra? What are you expecting 007 to find? How much did you know?

Seriously, if you want your best agent to accomplish something, perhaps be a little less cryptic.

**Speaking of cryptic, why does everyone refer to to White as "The Pale King?" Why the pseudonym? Why not just Mr. White? Of course, if they just called him Mr. White to begin with, the movie is much shorter...

**Not to mention, if Bond gives Q the ring to examine right at the beginning, well, that eliminates a lot of running around, right? Q can still magically pull all of the information of the ring, MI-6 can know that everything is magically connected, and M can stop being such a dick to Bond, right?

So why does Bond wait days to ask Q to research the ring?

**If SPECTRE has already poisoned White with thallium, why is it so urgent that they send someone to assassinate him now? Isn't that already mission accomplished??

**Poor 009.

Is this the first explicit reference we've had to another Double-0 during the Craig era?

**Say what you will about length or pacing issues, Sam Mendes knows how to make a static scene look as sharp as hell. The funeral, Tangiers, the crater---it all looks lovely.

**OK, why, exactly, was the hit ordered on Lucia? We're never given a reason, really, except it was sort of implied that while he was alive they could depend on her silence. That's kind of a harsh standard, isn't it? Every time a SPECTRE member dies, their spouse--and children--are killed?

**The bit where Blofeld first sits down, whispers for his aide, and the aide pulls the microphone a whole one inch closer to him? That was hilarious. Seriously. A tiny bit more camp like that might have helped...

**So, why did Blofeld insist there be a public challenge to the guy who volunteered to replace Sciarra? Did he have something against the guy? Did he have some reason to want to promote Hinx? Did he just want to put on a public display of brutality to impress Bond, whom he knew was watching? Or is he just a freakin' sadist?

Classic Blofeld had no problem publicly killing underlings, but it was always to punish failure and stealing...

**While the DB10's gadgets (and lack thereof) were cool and amusing, it was a fairly boring car chase (which can sadly be said of most of the stunts/action sequences). If nothing else, the Fast & Furious movies have raised the bar a bit for what's exciting in car chases, and the one were given here is mostly unengaging and perfunctory. There's little sense of danger...

**Does it seem credible that Oberhauser's MI-6 file wouldn't mention the fact that one of their Double-0 agents lived with him as a youth? Especially since it was a matter of public record (Bond had the legal form in his Skyfall effects)!!

Then again, Maybe C somehow managed to expunge that bit of data...

**Mmmm, prolytic digestive enzyme shake...

**The plane/car chase was pretty good, but the storytelling initially was very unclear. Since Mendes never shows us Bond taking off to grab a plane--or indeed heading off in a different direction at all--when the plane first appears the viewer has no idea at all that 007 is flying that plane. Some different editing and/or use of the Bond theme was called for here, I think...

**So, Mr. White dry-walled off an entire room of the L'Americain hotel? With no obvious secret door, how the hell did he get in and out? Did he just tear it down, and reblock it up when he left? Did the hotel know he was doing this? Or did he pay them to do this?

**I've already discussed the lack of observers during the train fight. But what about employees--conductors? Security people? This fight, unlike the train fight in FRWL, ranged throughout the whole train, and did thousands of dollars worth of damage...and no one follows up? Investigates? Throws them off the train? (Maybe they were thrown off the train, which is why they got off with no plan??)

**Seriously, the plan was once you got to that point in the Moroccan desert was to just sit around and hope someone came by to pick you up? Really, you had nothing else? Had could you know that Blofeld would send a 1948 Rolls Royce Wraith for you? How long were they prepared to wait? What if no one came to pick them up--Bond and Madeleine just wait there, and Blofeld's plan succeeds!!

**Man, that part with the  meteor continues to baffle me...what the hell?

**Blofeld's cadre of "info-ninjas" was pretty cool.

**If you're just going to torture Bond to death, why the big deal about "teaching him a lesson"? Needless time-filler, perhaps, even though Bond insisting that Madeleine look at him rather than at her father's death was a key part in that couple's development.

**Yes, it did win the Guinness World Record for the biggest stunt explosion (or whatever). But still, I feel that Bond's escape was far too easy, and the complex went up far too easily. Reminiscent of that hotel at the end of QoS--one bullet blows up the whole damned complex?!?

I don't mind Blofeld's escaping there, though...as Bond's helicopter takes off, you can see a couple of black SUV's driving away from the fireball.

**Still, that was in many ways an emotional climax of the film, and to go back to London to take out C doesn't feel well-justified. As we've discussed, C was nothing to Bond, there was no real meaningful countdown, and honestly, the stakes aren't all that high. So having Blofeld survive, and show up to kidnap Swann and Bond, feels a bit tacked on and "oh, come on now," Obviously, it's necessary to give some weight to the finale, because honestly, the others are able to deal with Denbigh without breaking a sweat (or they should have been. Poor show, M).

**The Center for National Security, the big be-all and end-all for the British intelligence services...doesn't have bulletproof windows?

**That Bond just happens to come to a stop right outside where Madeleine is being held is poor writing, since he has no clue whatsoever where she might be. That he hears her thumping and screaming, when she's revealed to be bound and gagged so tightly that there's no way she could have made those noises, feels like something added post-production to explain how he found her.

**Bond making impossible shots to take down Blofeld's copter is somewhat lacking in tension and excitement. We should have somehow had a more direct chase/confrontation, with Bond a little more challenged.

**As I mentioned above, I like how the finale echoes Madeleine's "I don't like guns," and also calls back M's "licence not to kill." Well done.

And it's good to see a villain survive to face justice once in awhile. And if nothing else, Blofeld has a history of that.

**And again, I have to question what happens in the wake of this story.

Denbigh clearly wasn't going completely rogue. He merged the services, built a huge freaking building, set-up joint intelligence operations with 8 other countries, and shut down the Double-0 section...all with the blessing of the Home Secretary. This wasn't some secret operation--only SPECTRE's involvement was unknown (or did the Home Secretary know of that?).

So, does the HomeSec (and/or the PM) just order them to start up Nine Eyes again, because it was idea they approved of, just removing any SPECTRE malware or whatever? They were down with the idea before. With Denbigh dead and Blofeld no doubt held at a black site somewhere, no one can spill the beans (unless M goes rogue...).

Meanwhile, couldn't the other 8 nations just go on without Britain? Was there some physical reason that the moment England went online was key? If the other countries were down with it, why wouldn't they just proceed with 8 nations' intelligence linked up, which SPECTRE do doubt already had a way to tap into?

And if word got out that the British Director of Intelligence was complicit in arranging terrorist attacks in their countries to sway their opinions...well, that's an act of war, isn't it? So can England back out without admitting that they were duped into attacking South Africa, Mexico, Germany, et al?

**BOND SCORE: 2, Lucia and Madeleine. And poor Estrella is still waiting in that hotel room...

And finally, as always...

JAMES BOND WILL RETURN IN--THE HILDEBRANDT RARITY!! (no, I'm not giving up on that...)

All Right, Now We Can Get Serious...

Let's get this party started:


223 days...

I Still Say It Should Have Been Called The Hildebrandt Rarity...

336 days...

Alternate Bond Themes--Ace Of Base's The Goldeneye

There are bad decisions, and then there are BAD decisions.

In the mid-1990s, the Swedish group Ace Of Base was ridiculously hot.

So they were chosen to do the theme for Goldeneye, the film to restart the Bond franchise after a long dormancy.

Here's the demo version played over Goldeneye's opening credits...be kind, it is just a demo version, after all...


So what happened?

According to legend, in one of life's nasty little irony's, the band's American label, Arista Records, decided that Goldeneye was going to be a big box office bomb, and that having Ace Of Base associated with the film would damage their career. So they pulled the plug on the project.

Oops.

Of course, Goldeneye was a huge smash, and Ace Of Base never quite regained the heights of popularity their debut had, especially in the U.S.

Year later they reused the song, retitling it "The Juvenile," and replacing the words "the Goldeneye" with "The Juvenile." No, that doesn't make a ton of sense to me, either. Here's the "new" tune:


It's not a bad tune, and I've never been a big fan of the Bono & Edge written/Tina Turner performed version that was used, which always struck me as less than the sum of its parts. So you have to wonder what would have happened had Arista not been so terribly, terribly wrong...

Alternate Bond Themes--Blondie's For Your Eyes Only

Look, I know musical tastes are a personal thing. There's no right or wrong. One man's treasure is another man's trash. Etc.

But there are a lot of people who say that this song is better than Sheena Easton's song for For Your Eyes Only, and they are objectively wrong.



Blondie submitted this song for FYEO, and was told that sorry, Bill Conti (who was doing the score) had already co-written the theme song they were going to use. Blondie was offered to chance to sing that song, but the band said no.

They then put their song on Blondie's final album, The Hunter.

And I'm sorry, in no possible way is this anywhere near as good as the Conti/Leeson/Easton song.

Yeah, maybe I'm a soft touch for Ms. Easton...I do have it ranked as the #4 Bond theme of all time. And I'll concede that a song you hear when you're 17 sung by a gorgeous Scots lass just might have a wee bit of hormonal nostalgia in the rating.

But I'm sorry, as a movie theme, a 007 theme, Easton's version is superior musically, lyrically, and in performance.

Hey, I love Blondie. But for a theme song? Their song is mixed poorly--Debbie Harry's vocals are buried so deep in the wall of sound that they become too remote and unemotional, especially in the chorus. Yes, I know that was Blondie's style, but it was the wrong style for a movie theme--you shouldn't have to strain to hear the film's title buried under an oversampled chorus. (In fairness, some of that might have been gussied up for the movie had their song been chosen)

Easton's hit was, by contrast, lush and romantic, the slower pace more apropos of the many underwater sequences in the film, and as a contrast to the movies non-stop action. And Sheena belts the living hell out of the tune.

Blondie's version is a fair Bondie song--but seriously, would anyone even put it in their top 20 Blondie songs?--but not a great theme song.

If, however, you want a kick-ass Blondie-sung Bond song, you might try this:

Alternate Bond Themes--Lorraine Chandler's You Only Live Twice

I've never been thrilled with the theme to You Only Live Twice.

It's not a bad song, not at all, and does a nice job of creating an Asian feel for a movie that's set entirely there.

But, in my uneducated opinion, John Barry's arrangement feels a little too syrupy, and Nancy Sinatra never seems comfortable, neither with the unusual rhythm of the song nor the slightly lower key.

Meanwhile, 20+ years later, RCA was cleaning out their vaults, and found this little ditty lying around, unreleased and forgotten:




Lorraine who, you're asking?

Fair question, as she's never been a household name. A Detroit singer, songwriter and producer, Lorraine Chandler had a fairly unknown singing career, but penned and/or produced a number minor hits for Motown artists as well as her own label, Pied Piper Records. 

She wrote this version of You Only Live Twice for the film, it was rejected, and buried in a basement somewhere until uncovered by RCA. They issued it as a vinyl single, and it became a hit in England's "Northern Soul" scene of the late 80s and early 90s, which in turn lead to a number of her songs being re-issued on CD. So, it didn't make her famous in the 60s, but it paid off in the 90s!!

As to the song, I can't say it's better than the Sinatra version. I don't know if the soul approach works for this particular movie, and the use of elements from the 007 theme feels a bit tacked on, maybe a bit too eager too sound Barry-ish, a little too on the nose. And the production is a little too "wall of noise," I feel, with Chandler's vocals getting a bit buried, as well as the backing vocals during the chorus.

I do like the lyrics, though..."One drink from the cup of love/And you might find/The love that you taste/Could be bitter wine/But take a second chance/You'll find love again/And because life is love/You'll be born again/You'll be born again/With a second chance/You will find love again/A new romance/(You only live twice) You only live twice..." Quite nice.

So, no major revelation here. But the discovery of a pretty good song that brought the artist some modicum of fame decades later is a nice story...

Meanwhile, here's a Nancy Sinatra song I like much better. WARNING: If you let your children watch this video, puberty might kick in early. Oh, 1960s, how I love you...

Alternate Bond Themes--The Best Quantum Of Solace You've Never Heard!!

Not all the great alternate Bond themes are by otherwise famous performers--at least, not famous to Americans.

Which is an odd way to go about introducing you to The Best Goddamned Bond Theme That You've Never Heard Before.

Now, I don't hate the Jack White and Alicia Keys joint they used for Quantum Of Solace, but it does have some fair significant defects as a Bond theme. Like many a White song, it's 95% rhythm and 5% melody, an approach that doesn't work as well for a 007 theme as it does on a White Stripes album. Keys is so much a better singer than White that it proves distracting in a duet. Not using the film's title in the song earns major demerits. And, lyrically, it seems entirely too self aware, less about the movie or plot or themes than it about White eclaiming "I'm writing a song about writing a James Bond song"...hell, Keys' last lines in the song are "Shoot 'em up/Bang bang" and "Bang bang bang bang." Seriously now...

Yeah, these guys were hip and popular. But the best choice for the movie? Not. A. Chance.

Written and arranged by Christian Wolf, lyrics and vocals by Eva Almer, allow me to present Forever (I Am All Yours)--one of the rejected themes to QoS:



Holy crap, THAT is a Bond theme!!

And look, it actually uses the title of the freakin' movie!! Was that so difficult?!?!?!

Now, it's not perfect...the use of dialogue clips from Casino Royale is kind of lame, and not terribly clear, and frankly sounds like it's there just hide a clumsy key change. The chorus is a bit repetitive lyrically; and perhaps it is tied a bit too closely thematically to Casino Royale instead of QoS.

But it's big and brassy and over the top and in your face and clearly better--at least as a James Bond theme--than Another Way To Die.

Eva Almer is a Swedish performer, and you can find the MP3 of this tune on Amazon or iTunes...but nothing else (at least in America). Christian Wolf is harder to track down info on, because there is no shortage of people named Chris Wolf or Christian Wolf (not to mention another composer named Christian Wolff, and a German philosopher and Baron on the same name...).

But that just goes to show that you don't have to be well known on the American pop charts to write a great Bond theme. To get Eon to use it, though, you probably do...

Alternate Bond Themes--Alice Cooper's The Man With The Golden Gun?!?

Let's continue our examination of "could have been" Bond themes with...Alice Cooper?

Live And Let Die had broken open a huge barrier--for the first time a Bond song wasn't by a crooner or what many would call an "adult contemporary" star--it featured a real live rock star!! A Beatle, even!!

So Alice Cooper (!?!), no doubt along with many other ambitious rockers, submitted his stabs at the brass ring for the next 007 movie.

Ah, but you see, John Barry was back in charge of the music this time around, and, well, he obviously wasn't too big a fan of that kind of music--at least not for Bond films. It would be another 5 movies until Duran Duran broke through with another rock theme.

And of course, Barry chose...Lulu?

While this is what could have been...



Alice Cooper has claimed that his song was accepted and set to be used until it was dumped at the last minute for Lulu's. Other sources say Cooper's unsolicited track was never in the running. Since Barry composed Lulu's tune, the latter seems more likely.

It's a catchy little number, and clearly Barry would have brassed it up a bit. Perhaps, though, it's maybe a little too much of a ride-McCartney's-coattails number...Cooper is clearly pushing the edge of his range, and the inclusion of a sudden tempo change midway through sound a lot like he's trying to imitate Live and Let Die.

Alice Cooper later released the track on his Muscle Of Love album.

Regardless, it's far better than the Lulu tune, which is widely regarded amongst the worst of Bond themes. Barry himself declared it "the one I hate the most." It sounds like someone trying do an ersatz Shirley Bassey--extra-brassy, but without the panache.

Which isn't to pick on Lulu...there's only so much she could have done with a song that poor. No, let's remember her from happier days:

Alternate Bond Themes--Johhny Cash & Thunderball!!

Well, the evening Daily 3 lottery number in Michigan on Friday was 007, which is pretty clearly a sign that I need to get off my butt and start putting something here to fill up the next 817 days until The Hildebrandt Rarity.

So how about some alternate Bond theme songs?

Let's be clear--I'm not talking about cover versions of already existing Bond themes. No, we're going to be discussing completely different, original Bond themes that didn't get used for various reasons.

Obviously, getting a Bond theme can be quite a feather in the cap for an artist, and many took the time to compose, record and submit (often unsolicited) attempts at the title song for the next 007 movie.

First up, one of those combinations that you swear wouldn't work, but kind of worms itself into your brain: Johnny Cash and Thunderball. I know...what the #$$?

But after Goldfinger, a lot of folks realized there was a lot of prestige--and money--to be gained from following in Shirley Bassey's footsteps. And Johnny Cash and his team were right in line. And rejected.

Obviously, I cannot suggest that the Cash attempt is better than Tom Jones' classic over-the-top brilliance, either as a song or as an appropriate theme for the era's Bond films.

Remember, though, that had Cash's version been accepted, John Barry would have substantially re-arranged it--at the very least--so it could well have ended sounding more like a 60s Bond theme. Certainly he would have reworked the staccato "Western" sound of the song.

Plus, the song has merits of his own. Johnny Cash singing about a nuclear blackmail scheme? Wild. "Money-hungry minds need a threat to launch a scheme"??? BEST. LINE. EVER.

And, honestly, it's a pretty catchy song.

So enjoy:


And for sure, Johnny Cash's theme would never have had this reaction from the ladies:

Bond 24

The deals are done, the paperwork is signed...

Bond 24 (a.k.a. The Hildebrandt Rarity--prove me wrong!) is set for release fall 2015--10/23 in the UK (boo!) and 11/6 in the U.S.

Mendes to direct. Logan to write, Craig to star, and all of us to watch.

847 days...

What's Missing Here...?

Courtesy of Empire magazine, a handy map of all of 007's travels on missions (the movies, not books) (click to embiggen):

That's the composite map...they have 29 more maps (!), broken down by individual movie or the composite for each of the Bond actors.

But a quick glance at the above map points out one glaring, amazing fact: James Bond has never been to Australia. Or Canada.

WTF?

C'mon, Eon--Her majesty still rules there!! These are places where Bond's licence to kill couldn't be questioned!! And they provide some fascinating film possibilities. Who doesn't want to see James Bond and kangaroos together? A special Q-enhanced boomerang? 007 teaming up with a Mountie?!?

So, for The Hildebrandt Rarity, guys, we'd better see Bond in at least one of these poor, neglected Commonwealth realms.

P.S. Mexico wants a word, as well...

Why Does Stuff Like This Never Happen To Me?

If you haven't seen this insane Coke Zero promo to give away free Skyfall tickets, you're in for a treat:


And just as fun are the fails (which surely would have included me...):


I know, Kalamazoo is hardly an ideal target for that type of guerilla marketing. But man, that would have been so cool to experience...

Skyfall (Spoilers)

Please note: this review is chock full of spoilers. Seriously, we're going deep here, so if you haven't seen the movie yet, well, what the hell are you waiting for? We'll still be here, so get your tush into the theater, and then come back to read this painfully overlong review.

Spoiler-filled review commences after the next 4 pictures of exciting merchandise tie-ins!

Seriously, we're going to ruin the movie for you...

Dudes, don't keep going if you're not serious...

It's almost too late...there's still time to go watch Johnny English or something...

Skyfall.

Or, Meet The New Bond, Same As The Old Bond.

After the disappointment that greeted Quantum Of Solace (which, in fairness, I liked a bit better than most), the declaration of Bond fans was indeed that they wouldn't get fooled again. (Yes, I am jockeying for The Who to do the next Bond theme. Because I want to hear Roger Daltrey belting out The Hildebrandt Rarity. Because I said so). And clearly Eon heard the grumbling, and made use of the extra time from MGM's bankruptcy to get all their ducks in a row, and produce what turned out to be a top-tier Bond movie.

How top-tier? I'm going to go out on a hypothetical limb, and suggest that if Skyfall had just 5 or 6 more lines of dialogue in specific places, and about 1 1/2 more scenes that were needed, I'd be championing this as potentially one of the top 5 Bonds ever.

Alas, that is not the case, and in just a couple of tiny ways the film falls just the teensiest bit shy of that exalted status. Which is not to say that it's not very, very good, because it is very, very good. But when we're at this level, small defects can make a large difference, and in the case of Skyfall, a couple of script problems cause the film to stumble a bit when it should soar.

This is to be (allegedly) the last Bond film involving Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who've been with the series since The World Is Not Enough. And yes, John Logan also wrote this, and it is of course a fool's errand to try, from my position of ignorance, to parse who is responsible for what.

But, to a large degree, Skyfall reads like a remake of Purvis and Wade's Brosnan scripts. We get liberal doses of The World Is Not Enough: a villain bent on revenge against M blows up MI-6 HQ; the retreat to Scotland; Bond has a shoulder injury that he has to deal with the entire movie. Add in a helping of ideas from Die Another Day: Bond fails in the teaser; Silva's capture by the Chinese sounds an awful lot like Bond's captivity with the North Koreans, except, of course, Bond threw away his cyanide capsule; the new MI-6 HQ in the Underground.

Let me be clear--almost all of these elements are handled better, and often much better, than they were in TWINE and DAD. Yet the faint whiff of deja vu dings it a couple of points, in my estimation, for the lack of originality. Really, someone at Eon should have said before filming began, "wait, didn't we just do some of this a few years ago?"

Still, these elements are fashioned into a pretty strong movie, an overall excellent script that captures a tone and sets up motifs and moods as well as any modern Bond script--except...well, we'll come back to issue as we go along.

Let's start with the teaser. I despair of ever having the gun barrel sequence at the beginning of the film again, as producer Michael Wilson seems too stubborn to admit that they did something silly in QoS for no good reason, so they're just going to keep doing it. Otherwise, we have a solid, action-packed chase through Istanbul and its outskirts. Cars, motorcycles, trains, bridges, construction equipment...the first, and most obvious thing we should take from the teaser is that those who worried that director Sam Mendes couldn't handle action really had nothing to worry about. Sure, he's mainly known from relationship dramas, and self-satisfied attacks on American suburbia--but if you ever saw Jarhead or Road To Perdition, you had to have suspected he had the chops for what Bond demanded. As an added bonus, Mendes was an actual Bond fan, and was excited to do it, and it shows.

Ah, but the teaser also gets us back to the script problems. Consider this--the MacGuffin is a stolen list of all of NATO's agents embedded in terrorist organizations. If it falls into the wrong hands, it could fatally damage anti-terror operations, result in the death of agents, embarrass Britain in front of her allies, bring down M...but I have to ask this very pertinent question: Why the hell was this all-important file doing in the field, where it could be stolen??

Not to do a comparison with other franchises, but in the first Mission Impossible movie, a very similar file was kept only in the bowels of CIA headquarters, inaccessible, and Ethan Hunt's teams had to jump through ridiculous hoops to steal it. But MI-6's file is on a lap-top in a Turkish hotel, where one lone assassin just has to shoot a guy and walk off with it? Does that make any sense whatsoever?

I'm pretty good at bending over backwards to come up with explanations for things that don't seem to make sense in films, but in all honesty, I can't think of a single valid reason for such a sensitive file, encrypted or not, to be out there. And since this is the inciting incident of the whole plot, and since one of the points of the movie is to judge whether or not M cocked it up, we really need some scintilla of an explanation what the hell was going on here. But the script chooses not to share that with us. Clearly it wasn't Ronson gone rogue (or was it?). Was it a plan to draw someone out? Why use the real file, then? Is that data on all MI-6 filed computers? Did Ronson just grab the wrong computer? Why are 007 and Eve there--as back-up? On a mission to get the laptop back when M finds out the data is on it? How does Patrice know about it, and how to find it? We need some explanation, just a sentence or two, anything that even makes half-sense...but the writers didn't bother.

The teaser also points out another "problem" that some have had with the film...a bit of the "Temple Of Doom Syndrome." The second Indiana Jone' movie's opening sequence was so full-throttle, so over-the-top, that all of the other action sequences in the film just didn't measure up--especially when the next one didn't come for 45 minutes. Well, that's is kind of the case here. After the teaser, we don't get another action sequence for 45 minutes. And of all those action sequences, none are as good as what we get in the teaser. And, CGI komodo dragon aside, few of them seem to have the flare, the panache, that we expect from the Bond team--there's nothing that makes one sit-up and say, "I've never seen anything like that before--this could only be a 007 movie!"

Well, I can see the point, and even agree a bit, although in the end I don't think it's a huge detriment to the film. Yes, the pacing is perhaps a bit slack early on--but all the stuff we get is fairly interesting and well done Yes, after the teaser many of the action set pieces don't seem insanely over the top. But I think that's perfectly appropriate for this movie. With the exception of the enquiry scene (where the people dressed as police shooting at actual police does make things hard to follow), all of those action scenes are quite well done. This is, in many ways, a dour film, a film of beginnings and endings, and too much over-the-topness would, I think, hurt the film, and take us out of the mood and themes they were going for. James Bond going through crazy improbable stunts at the end would have, I think, harmed the impact of M's death scene. And as I've written before, there is room for all types of Bond films, and I'm on record as loving the hardcore, realistic Bonds. I wouldn't want every Bond film to be like this...but this one does just fine.

The theme song, by Adele, is quite good. I have to admit, on my first viewing, it didn't do anything for me, and I was ready to dismiss it as another forgettable effort by a "hot" artist. But on subsequent hearing, it's really earwormed it's way into my brain. The chorus is slinky and seductive, in a Diamonds Are Forever kind of way (a theme song which I like more than most), the melody constantly coming to mind during the day whenever I let my thoughts wander. The lyrics are nothing to write home about, and I think the production buries Adele's vocals too much early on. She really needed to Shirley Bassey-up and belt this sucker out, and plow through the heavy arrangement. But by the time the chorale back-up kicks in, we're in high gear, and the song soars.

Let's take a look at our villain, Silva. Javier Bardem's portrayal is rich, masterful, enthralling, daring, exciting. Your attention is riveted to the screen whenever he's on it. His unpredictable cadences, his delight in the sound effects that pepper his conversation. It's one HELL of a performance, one that in lesser hands would seem camp instead of sinister, trite instead of tortured. Even his death scene, which could have been turned into Pee-Wee Herman's in Buffy The Vampire Slayer (the movie), combines shock, relief, anger and distress into a wonderful crescendo. Bravo, sir--bravo!!

Many have complained about how overly elaborate Silva's plan was, and well, duh. This is a Bond movie, after all. And even though his mission was "just," revenge, he also wanted to damage MI-6 and publicly humiliate and ruin M (and maybe corrupt her latest "top agent"). That certainly required more than sneaking up and putting a bullet in her head. And let's note, every time he has M in his sights, he hesitates. This was as much about making a grand gesture, and killing himself, as it was about killing his "mommy."

Of course, "it was all part of his plan to be caught" and "he is insane, after all," can be used to lazily paper over a whole raft of plot flaws, and his computer guru skills and apparent omniscience have been amped up to a ridiculous degree. Take for example, his escape from MI-6, and the subway chase. I'm sorry, but I find it unbelievable that, AFTER he was captured and away from his equipment, that he could know the exact timing of M's testimony at the enquiry, and the exact moment Q would plug his computer into the mainframe (and it had to be split second timing, as Silva's goons were meeting him (in stride!!) to give him the police uniform. And he knew that Bond would catch up to him at the exact moment a train would come along the hole he made. Preposterous, of course, but hardly a serious flaw, let alone a fatal one.

Yet, our script does leave us wanting with Silva in a couple of ways. In too many ways, it paints him in an outline only (which is covered up very well by Bardem's performance), and I would have liked a little more filled in. M says he "went beyond his brief" and "hacked the Chinese." That could mean a lot of things--over-zealousness? Greed? Treason? Hacked what, exactly? That info could go a long way to explaining his character (and M's--was she justified in turning him over?). How did he get away from the Chinese? Escape? Released? They thought him dead after the cyanide, and he only recovered after they dumped the "body"? What has he been doing for 15 years? Why wait so long for revenge? With the list of activities he had going on, it's hard to believe he had never previously come to MI-6's attention. Had he? Did M have any inkling who "Silva" was, that her former top agent was still alive?

 All this could have been easily done with a few sentences hear and there, and made Silva an even more fully-realized villain (and, again, have helped develop M's story, as well). They good news is, they had me wanting more. The bad news is, they didn't give it to me.

I also would have liked to see better back and forth between Silva and Bond. When Silva shows up, he's walks in with a four-minute monologue, and Bond responds with sentence fragments and smirks. Whenever they're together, the dialogue is 90% Silva, 10% Bond. Which can be seen as basically consistent with their characters, but I wanted to see more conversation, with Bond trying to rebut his arguments or question his sanity, or point out the irony that he was doing to the embedded agents what M had done to him, or a tiny bit about the philosophy of being a secret agent. Call him out on the hypocrisy of always dismissing the "running around" Bond does, while he himself relies on hired assassins and armies of thugs! We know that Daniel Craig is capable of witty extended conversations as Bond, but the last two movies seem content to portray him as a nearly-monosyllabic guy who does all his talking with his fists and guns--he had no real conversations with Greene in QoS, either. Unleash Daniel Craig, guys--let him go tongue-to-tongue as well as toe-to-toe with the villains (OK, that didn't come out right).

Another part of the problem is that Silva has absolutely no one on his side of the game to play off against. These are truly the dark days of Bond villain henchmen. We haven't had a memorable, let alone effective, henchperson since TWINE. But Skyfall falls even shorter of that ridiculously low  standard. Patrice, the only one with a name, doesn't get a single line of dialogue. None of the other hirelings have an name (they're literally named in the credits as "Silva's henchman" and "Silva's mercenary"!!), none have an identifiable look, an identifiable characteristic--there's only one single line of dialogue in English, and that's "the boat is leaving now." Silva even silences Severine before she says a single word. Not only does this reliance on undifferentiated video game-type cannon fodder hurt our understanding of what's going on in the enquiry scene, and rob us of some of cathartic pleasure in the siege scene; but it also effectively leaves Silva as a solo act, with no one to play against. Eon, please, please, please--bring back henchmen!!

Speaking of Severine, well, a bit of lost opportunity there. I thought the character fascinating, and Berenice Marlohe's performance quite strong. I was stunned when, mere moments later, she turned out to be a mere mid-movie sacrificial lamb...and one who was dismissed so quickly and passively, without even a line of dialogue. A tragic waste of a good character, I think...but then, if she survived, she might well have gotten in the way of the Bond/M/Silva triangle.

Then again, this section of the movie felt like there was a bit left on the cutting room floor...or, perhaps, again the writers didn't think things through. Bond convinces Severine to take him to meet Silva, he sneaks on the boat, then suddenly they've arrived and are under gunpoint...? Bond had no plan, except "let the nameless thugs walk us in and separate us?" Really? Again, this section feels like a part of the plot outline that never got finished before it was filmed.

But, as noted above, this is really M's story. And make no mistake about it--M is the Bond Girl in this movie. With Severine dead, and Eve not a factor, she's the woman Bond must ally with, protect, and defeat the villain for. She's the one with Bond at the end.

After multiple movies examining Bond's having to deal with the consequences of his career choice, it's fitting that we get one wear we deal with what it must be like to be the hard one ordering the Double-Os around. And just as her spies can burn out, so too can M have to overcome the weight of her actions. Eventually, making the impossible calls of who lives and dies, even if justified, comes back to haunt you, if not outright destroy you. And Judi Dench makes M the steadfast, anything for my country, bury my heartache and guilt to appear strong for my people bitch believable and sympathetic.

And it's important to note that, despite being hard, despite the cock-ups and ordering the bloody shot and leaving him for dead, she never really loses Bond's loyalty. Even when they're trading insults, you understand the underlying respect. When Bond calls her a bitch, the others don't realize that it's a compliment. And when Silva points out that she lied to get him back on duty, Bond doesn't see that as "betrayal"--he sees that as a favor. Their rock solid relationship keeps this movie on track.

And applause to the writers for giving her the grace note of earning her death scene. Her actions do get a lot of people killed--losing the drive (pending some explanation for why it was out there), refusing to leave the enquiry, not fessing up about Silva earlier...but she realizes this, and agrees to the ridiculous plan for a Western style showdown because she knows it has to stop, and because she realizes that maybe the time has come to pay the price for her sins.

Ralph Fiennes does nicely as Mallory, at first a (perceived) antagonist and then the new M. His background--held hostage by the IRA for months--makes a nice compare/contrast with Silva, because he didn't turn to the dark side. I like the fact that he doesn't change during the movie, but our perception of him does, as he goes from being seen as a bureaucratic obstacle to a valued and useful ally. He's right in his admonishments of M, but he doesn't want to lead a lynch mob, or throw the MI-6 baby out with the bathwater. His receiving a shoulder wound gives him a link to Bond, setting him up as a respected comrade as well as a boss, an M who might be a little more empathetic with Bond while still being the required hard ass. I really look forward to seeing more of his M as we move forward.

Ben Wishaw as Q is wonderful. It's fascinating how making Q younger than Bond influences the whole dynamic of their banter, their relationship. Their entire first scene together is a treasure, testing boundaries and priorities and establishing mutual respect. (and makes you wonder why Bond couldn't have this kind of dialogue with Silva...) It is worth noting that Silva actually lives the "more damage with my laptop" life that Q boasts about, bringing down companies and nations. And Silva outmaneuvers Q throughout the film. bettering him in every way on his computers. This Q obviously has a ways to go before his actual accomplishments match his boasting, which can make for a good character.

That being said, one of the banes of modern movies and TV is watching people watch computer displays while randomly tapping keys and narrating what's they're watching. Many directors and writers seem convinced that this is tense and riveting filmmaking. PRO-TIP: It's not. Mendes pulls this off better than most, but really, it can be a dreadful and boring (and lazy, and cheaper, and...) way to make your action film seem "modern" and relevant. Having Q look at a screen and say "Bond, you should be in the tube," followed by Bond replying "I'm in the tube" is not a successful long-term strategy for the characters or the franchise. I do hope they find a way to give Q more to do than that kind of "monitor duty," perhaps some actual field work so he can prove his brilliance...

Naomie Harris is delightful as Moneypenny, until the very last scene kind of cuts her character off at the knees. She's sexy as hell, and she and Craig have a dynamite chemistry together.

[I've read more than one review that says that she and Bond remained "chaste," but I'm not buying it. Their faces almost touching, "old dog, new tricks," fade out, come back fully clothed with intriguing entendres?  Sorry, there's no way they didn't consummate the relationship. Case closed]

But once again, the writers have left something vital out. There's absolutely no set-up, no explanation for why she opts out of field work. She's more than competent in the field, even despite "the bloody shot." She saves Bond's life in Macau, she handles herself well in the enquiry battle. There is absolutely zero indication that she is having second thoughts about being in the field--no doubts about the lifestyle, no odd looks at dead bodies, nothing. Her announcement at the end comes out of nowhere. Which is a shame, because there could have been some good character work involved in coming to that decision. Instead, it was as if the writers had a brief, "Eve must be Moneypenny at the end," and forgot to do any of the groundwork for that.

Also, they should have set up the Moneypenny revelation better. Tiny thing, but he should have been calling her Eve throughout (along with naughty "Adam" jokes that would entail, of course, and "Adam's apple" during the shaving scene, and...). And you could still unveil her last name in the end. Instead, the "we've never been formally introduced" would have us believe that, during two entire field operations, Bond didn't know here name? What did he do, just refer to her as "Hey, you" all the time?

And what about Groundskeeper Willie Kincade? There has been some speculation/wishful thinking that the role might have been written with Sean Connery in mind, in hopes of enticing him back for the 50th anniversary. It's probably just as well that that never happened (if it were ever really the plan)--Albert Finney does quite well, thank you, and such a cameo would have distractingly taken the audience out of the story at a time when suspense should be building. However, I will confess that the thought of Sean Connery telling Daniel Craig's Bond, "I was ready before you were born" definitely sends a little chill up my spine.

That being said, let's hope his stories and the family estate puts an end to all of the "James Bond isn't his real name, it's just a title given to whoever is 007 at the time" theories (some of which, I must confess, I've dallied with myself, in moments of weakness).

Attention must be paid, as well, to the cinematography of Roger Deakins, who has produced one of the most gorgeous-looking Bond films ever. Even in some of the grimmer settings (what, did the sun not shine at all in England or Scotland during filming?!?). Even the bleak final chase scene, lit by the amber glow from the burning mansion, is a thing of beauty. Macau, the fight in the Shanghai tower, the bizarre abandoned island--all of it looked far better than it had any right to. Director Mendes earns extra credit for making sure his someone as highly qualified as Deakins came on board to help realize his visions.

Which leaves us with Daniel Craig. Unlike certain critics who can't seem to remember what they've written about his past performances as Bond, I'm been on board his bandwagon since the beginning, and nothing about his performance here changes that. Craig gives us a Bond we can believe has decided to drop out, albeit for only a while, but comes back when he's truly needed both by his country and his surrogate parent figure.

It's interesting that, despite the burnout, he feels compelled to put himself into dangerous situations, such as the scorpion drinking game. I couldn't help notice that his hand didn't shake a bit there, as it did during his firing range practice. The difference, I would hazard, might be that James could still summon up his old nerve--but not for practice, only when his life was on the line.

So at the end, we've gone full circle...meet the new Bond, same as the old Bond. We've gone through a "reboot" and three movies only to end up back at the beginning, in virtually the same office with the same byplay with Moneypenny and with M handing him missions. But this didn't feel like retreading at all...no, we were earning our way back to the old status quo, showing how everyone got there this time, instead of just turning up in media res as in Dr. No. And this time we're looking the consequences of this type of career straight in the eyes.

It's all done with with high style, and high art, with proper reverence for the past. And if not for a couple of bone-jarringly upsetting script omissions, which fail to lay groundwork and fail to explain things we need to know, well, who knows how high it might have ranked? A few lines of dialogue, an extra scene or two showing us what was really going on with Severine, why Moneypenny chose as she did, and you have one of the true greats.

But it is really, really good...probably top 8, maybe higher. And if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to go see it again...

SNELL'S NOTES AND RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

**Oh, the missed opportunity!! A Bond film set largely in England, and 2012...and no set piece set at the Summer Olympics? Bond could chase Patrice through the decathlon--discus and javelins thrown! Pole vaults! Breaking up a peloton to steal bikes! Jumping off the high dive whilst shooting! Oh, the lost possibilities...

**That really cool scene where Bond adjusts his cuffs when entering the train? Craig ad-libbed that.

**Wolf Blitzer!!

**If Bond doesn't dig out the bullet fragments and have MI-6 analyze them, then they can't identify Patrice, and have no trail to Silva, who wants to be caught. So, what if Bond had actually been dead? Or had his shoulder patched up by a doctor on his little tropical paradise? Surely Silva couldn't have planned on this...were there other bread crumbs he would have laid?

**Our second meeting with Patrice doesn't make a lot of sense to me, despite being fun and beautifully filmed.

First, the payment chip was already in his case? They paid the assassin before the hit? Yes, I know, they wanted Bond to follow the clues, but would Patrice know that? With all Silva's yammering that Bond wasn't fit, how could he count on Bond defeating Patrice and finding the chip?

**And while we're at it, look at the set-up. They hire Patrice to shoot someone from across the street. Then Severine and her goons immediately remove the body. Well, if the intent was to make it look like someone else killed him, why move the body? And if you don't care, why not just whack him yourself, and save the 4 million Euro fee? (Yes, I know, they wanted to lure Bond...but still doesn't explain why they'd move the body. As I said, the "he wanted to be caught" excuse tries to paper over a lot of flaws)...

**"Don't touch your ear" was a nice callback to Casino Royale, doubly nice because that is how Bond made Severine's goons..

**One of Severine's body guards was played by an actor named...Tank Dong. Wow.

**I was going to question the komodo dragon scene, but I researched it, and they have been known to attack humans in the wild, and adults can get as large as 300 pounds.So, OK, then.

**As to all the reviewers blathering about "the first gay Bond villain," A) grow up; B) you haven't watched previous Bond films very carefully, have you?; C) more like bi, given that Severine was his "lover"; D) certainly Silva was overplaying that aspect during the initial meeting to get under Bond's skin; and E) grow up.

**That being said...so, James, where is the "you're scratching my balls" taunt while Silva's feeling you up, eh?

**Yes, 007 could have stalled a little bit longer during the William Tell scene, and thus perhaps have saved Severine...but as far as I can tell, he could have had no idea exactly when (or if) the cavalry would arrive, so he had no reason to think that would be an effective strategy.

**Silva's monologue about the rats was bravura--how long did he spend practicing it, you wonder?--but it was also set up earlier in the film, when Tanner tells Bond that their new underground HQ is full of rats...

**Silva's island is an actual place, not a set. It was formerly a Mitsubishi-owned coal mining facility and community and occasional forced labor camp that was abandoned in 1974. It's a fascinating story...

**M's testimony at the enquiry was essentially the English version of Jack Nicholson's "You want me on that wall! You NEED me on that wall!" speech from A Few Good Men...

**That said, the enquiry was not especially well written. Unless the point was to have M and the mean MP completely ignore each others' argument to attack other straw men. MI-6 too old-fashioned and technology savvy? That's not what we saw, and in fact that dependence on technology is (part) of what caused all the problems. And M's impassioned "you need MI-6" goes on deaf ears, because no one was talking about mothballing it...instead they were critiquing her handling of the specific case and the agency in general. And as I mentioned above, since we never get critical information about what the Turkey mission was, or exactly what happened in Hong Kong in 1997, we really can't judge who might be right...

 **It's great to see The Car back...but does this mean the Craig Bond experienced Goldfinger?!? Oh, my aching head...

**I do find it difficult to believe that Jame Bond wouldn't have a couple of bolt holes/safe house somewhere with a few weapons stored for emergencies like this. He obviously had a bit of cash stashed away somewhere, because he sure wasn't broke during his "death."

**Some have suggested that the Siege At Skyfall went on too long. I thoroughly disagree...but I will concede that some of the "preparation" and gazing at Scottish vistas could have been trimmed a bit (especially since more important things were getting ignored earlier in the movie...)

**Some have also questioned the way Silva deployed the first wave of mercenaries during the battle, just walking up there like lambs to the slaughter. Well, I have to point out, when did Silva ever show the faintest shred of caring about his underlings? They were his sacrificial lambs, the ones sent in to test Skyfall's defenses, and flush Bond and M out, and waste their resources. They were the canaries in the coal mine, as it were, just as Patrice and Severine were. 

 **Some thematic echoing: immediately after the scene in which M writes Bond's obituary, the camera pans down over a statue looking down on London as her car drives by (help me out, Brit friends--who's the statue?).

And at the end, when Bond is on the roof, the camera pans down over him, same stance...

**More nice thematic follow throughs: Recall Bond and Q's initial meeting, as they discuss the painting of the obsolete war ship being towed away.

Cut to the final scene. We see two paintings in M's office. Behind his desk is the old, now abandoned MI-6 HQ, and on the right wall is a painting of the old warships, in full glory. Not so obsolete after all, eh?

**Bond Score: 3. His lover while dead, Moneypenny (don't argue with me), and Severine. Cumulative Bond Score: 61.

And, as always,

JAMES BOND WILL RETURN

...and hopefully they'll call it the Hildebrandt Rarity...

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