As we get down to the nitty gritty time, it's time for me to start cranking out the lists. And it's time to rank the Bond Girls.
Before we get to the counting, let's establish a couple of terminological details. Everybody seems to have their own definition of Bond Girl. And hey, in their lists, they can do what they like. But for me, Bibi Dahl is not a Bond Girl...she's a female character who turned up in a Bond movie. You start including characters like that, well, you're list is going to get mighty long.
So for my purposes, I'm going with the completely arbitrary and personal definition of Bond Girl: it's the woman Bond is hooked up with at the end of the movie, the one he's chosen.
Why? Well, as I noted above, it gets too unwieldy too easily if I start including every Chu Mi and every Log Cabin Girl. To me, Bond Girls aren't just the random dalliances and flirtations. If that was the case, this list would have to expand to 50+, and it would be impossible to make rational distinctions between characters who made only fleeting appearances.
Nope, I want the real characters, the ones who are on the posters, and high up in the credits. And, again admittedly arbitrarily, it's just one entry per movie. Sorry, Teri Hatcher and Akiko Wakabayashi. Sometimes the movies make choices about which girl Bond ends up with that I don't always agree with. But as the film itself declares some of the women sacrificial lambs and some ladies "the" woman--at least for the duration of that movie--that's what I'm after: the woman whom the filmmakers themselves say is THE Bond girl.
Yeah, it's arbitrary. But it's my list, so there you go.
Also, I completely and fully acknowledge that there's is absolutely no scientific approach to the rankings. Oh, sure, I try to factor is such things as sexiness, beauty, chemistry with the star, the arc of the character, her usefulness in a clinch, acting ability...But there's no formula as such I can defend. All of these things are incredibly susceptible to innate personal preferences, which I will valiantly attempt to justify with after-the-fact rationalizations, which will occasionally sound like they contradict each other. C'est la vie.
But basically it's just my personal preferences, which I freely admit. And let's be clear--these are all some pretty damn bodacious ladies, none of whom I would ever refuse a romantic dalliance with. So finishing relatively low on this list should not be taken as a measure of disdain or dislike. Hell, I love you all, ladies...it's just that the competition is pretty tough. I'll be glad to personally console any of you who are disappointed by your position on the list.
And let's take a moment to celebrate--all of these lovely women are still with us!! Think about that--46 years in, all of our Bonds and Bond Girls are still here. That's pretty amazing...and I'm hoping they'll still be here for one hell of a 50th anniversary bash.
So with no further ado, prepare the hate mail!!
22) Dr. Holly Goodhead (Lois "Voodoo" Chiles), Moonraker: Lovely lady, great astronaut, decent secret agent...terrible actress. Sorry. Just listen to her mannequin-like delivery of her lines--brings every scene she's in to a screeching halt.
21) Stacey Sutton (Tanya Roberts), A View To A Kill: absolutely gorgeous woman, but she's a screamer. She screams a lot. And a lot more. Terrifically unhelpful. And then screams again.
20) Dr. Christmas Jones (Denise Richards), The World Is Not Enough: Abrasive, argumentative, and annoying. Also suffers from Wai Lin syndrome, i.e., being the second woman in Bond's life that movie, and nowhere as near as interesting or appealing as the first.
Hmmm, the bottom 3 were all Americans...I didn't plan it that way, but there you go.
19) Mary Goodknight (Britt Ekland), The Man With The Golden Gun: Not as many as many claim she is. But still, she does turn on the death ray--WITH HER ASS!! Something like that is gonna drop you down the list...
18) Kissy Suzuki (Mie Hama), You Only Live Twice: The original case of Wai Lin syndrome. She doesn't have much to do or say, and her personality pales next to the departed Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi). Puzzling script choice...She does fill out that white bikini very nicely, though.
17) Domino Petachi (Kim Basinger), Never Say Never Again: Good dancer. No Claudine Auger.
16) Maud Adams (Octopussy), Octopussy. Nothing against Maud, but she was much better in TMWTGG. The writers give her very little to do, and she's much less interesting than her top aides or the villains. What a waste of the only title role for a woman!!
15) Tiffany Case (Jill St. John), Diamonds Are Forever: This ranking would have been much higher based on the first half of the movie. But after Bond discovers Blofeld in Vegas, she disappears from the movie for awhile, and when she comes back she's been transformed into a useless git. The hardened, tough as nails smuggler tries to help Bond when he's being attacked...by throwing a cake at the guy?!?
14) Major Anya Amosova (Barbara Bach), The Spy Who Loved Me: Overrated role, abysmally acted. And for 30 of the the last 35 minutes of the film, she's tied up off screen!!
13) Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress), Dr. No: The "emerging from the water scene" is revered, but she's not terribly useful, as she gets Bond caught, and then he has to keep rescuing/protecting her. Mighty purty, though.
12) Solitaire (Jane Seymour), Live And Let Die: Gorgeous lady, not the most useful in a fight, but then again she didn't ask for this lifestyle. One of the few things that make the movie bearable. (PRO-TIP: the tarot dack filled with Lovers cards gambit doesn't work in real life.)
11) Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell), Licence To Kill: A good blueprint, but execution is somewhat lacking (especially since she has to compete against the dazzling Talisa Soto). Lowell just doesn't convince. And crying at the end? I call foul!!
10) Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman), Goldfinger: Good character, but Blackman has absolutely ZERO screen chemistry with Connery, and her off screen conversion is not remotely believable (and was roundly mocked by one of the villains in Thunderball!) Underdeveloped at best.
9) Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh), Tomorrow Never Dies: Of all of the "new type of Bond Girls" who were "Bond's equal," she was the closest in the butt-kicking department, but the script kind of forgot to add personality. And obviously, she suffers from Wai Lin syndrome, because Paris Carver was a much more interesting character.
8) Giacinta "Jinx" Johnson (Halle Berry), Die Another Day: A virtual tie with Wai Lin on my ballot...Wai Lin is better in a fight, but Jinx is sexier and has sizzling chemistry with Brosnan.
7) Melina Havelock (Caroline Bouquet), For Your Eyes Only. There's something about a stunning woman with a crossbow.
6) Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi), From Russia With Love: She just may be the most purely beautiful Bond Girl period. And she gets to kill Kleb, which is a plus.
5) Kara Milovy (Maryam d'Abo), The Living Daylights: Absolutely the sweetest of the Bond romances. Absolutely charming, d'Abo's performance absolutely nails it.
4) Dominique "Domino" Durval (Claudine Auger), Thunderball: Stunning woman, great role, wonderful swim suits.
3) Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), Casino Royale (2006): I'll concede that my wallowing in CR06 this week might have contributed to ranking her this high...time my mellow my appraisal. But the package is there--sharp-tongued yet vulnerable, willing to give her life for her man (well, men..). The accent still bugs me, though.
2) Natalya Fyodorovna Simonava (Izabella Scorupco), Goldeneye: This high a ranking may surprise you, but I seriously believe she is the most under-rated Bond Girl by a mile. We spend more time with her than any other Bond Girl, she's gorgeous, she's smart, she saves Bond as often as he saves her, and her computer skills save the day. What's not to like? Is it the hard to pronounce name? Did Famke Jannsen's Xenia overshadow her that much? I don't understand why she's not lots higher on these lists...
1) Contessa Teresa di Vincenzo (Diana Rigg), On Her majesty's Secret Service: She will always be The Woman.
Well, I've fiddled with the list about 5 times since I "finished" it, so I'd better stop now. Have at it.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
The Poker of Casino Royale--Meadowlark Lemon?!?
It's no surprise that they decided to go with Texas Hold 'Em instead of baccarat in Casino Royale (2006). It didn't hurt that poker was booming in popularity. But poker is also a more accessible game for the general public than baccarat, and a game requiring more skill and strategy. So when re-introducing James Bond to a 21st century audience, Texas Hold' Em was an appropriate way to go.
But how good was the film's portrayal of poker? Well, after I spent far too long analyzing Kronsteen's chess game in From Russia With Love, you know I can't resist droning on for far too long about the poker scenes in CR06.
So how are they? Well, let's just say that, in a world a car can flip 7 times and the driver survive, and where parkour chases through construction sites are apparently an everyday occurrence, the poker we see played in CR isn't out of place.
Which is to say "heightened reality," exaggerated, melodramatic. As expected in a movie, They want to hype things up, make them more exciting. So you see people playing hands in ways that generally wouldn't be played that way, and you see showdowns that probably wouldn't happen. Two words best describe it--Harlem Globetrotters.
A couple of things to note. First of all, we never see the beginnings of hands..we never see any bets before the flop, and very few on third or fourth street. This makes it really tough to analyze how the hands are being played. Poker is a game of imperfect information, and one of the primary sources of information is looking at your opponents' betting patterns--how often they bet before the flop, what types of hands they're likely to stay in with, are they playing conservatively or aggressively. Frankly, this kind of observation is usually far more important than any physical tells, no matter what the movie tells us, and so we're not given a critical component needed to analyze the hands.
The other factor to consider is that, in Texas Hold 'Em, the average winning hand is in the one-pair to two-pair range. Such smaller hands aren't sexy, but they're what win hand after hand, and ultimately tournaments. Of course, players do get higher hands--but those hands are very often not played to completion, as the board or the betting pattern scares people away. Compare that with CR, where of all the poker hands where we see the cards, the lowest winning hand is three of a kind (three aces, no less). That, my friends, is heightened reality.
The first hand we see played is LeChiffre against the "dear general." We can't see most of the cards...all we can make out is the King turned up on the river. The Asian woman folds after that card is turned up, but before anyone has bet...that's wrong! You never fold until somebody bets, because it's possible everyone will check and you'll get a free look at the river!!
Meanwhile, LeChiffre goes all in, telling the general he has two pair while the general has a 17.4% chance of making his straight. The percentage is right...of course, LeChiffre might have been bluffing at having two pair, too, just psyching the guy out. But going all in? This is the first of several times that CR displays a fundamental misunderstanding of what "all in" means. Every single time it happens, both parties put 100% of their chips into the pot. But that would never happen unless those two players had exactly the same number of chips!! One player never has to risk more chips than the other. So if Player A had 10,000 and Player B had 7,000...even if Player A called all in, he wouldn't commit more than 7,000 to the pot. So if the player who was ahead loses, he would still have some chips left. Yet even though he seems to have a lot more than chip than the general, LeChiffre pushes his whole stack into the middle. Dramatic, perhaps, but inaccurate. Yet every single time he hit an all in situation in this movie, both parties push in all their chips. That ain't how it works.
The next hand we see is Dimtrios vs. Bond, when Bond beats his trip kings with trip aces. And again, we're supposed to believe that Dimitrios' $5,000 plus his car just happens to precisely equal what Bond has in his stack. Plus, Bond splashes the pot, which is incredibly rude.
Then we come to the big tournament. The first hand we see is the one where Bond discovers LeChiffre's tell, the physical gesture he makes when he's bluffing (to get picky, you wouldn't be able to figure that out just from one instance...maybe it was just a random gesture. You'd have to see him bluff multiple times because you could say for certain that was his tell). Now, after the hand, Bond explains to us that LeChiffre didn't have the best hand until "the last card. The odds against were 23-1, and he'd know that. When he did his first raise he had nothing. Winning was blind luck."
Man, there are so many things wrong with that statement. First of all, when LeChiffre first raised he had a a pair of deuces in the pocket...not the greatest hand, surely, but not nothing...it was a semi-bluff, at best. After the river, LeChiffre had two pair, deuces and nines, most certainly not nothing (except in this movie, where winning with anything less than 3 aces is apparently considered unmanly). And when Bond says the odds against were 23-1, he's just plain wrong. The odds against turning two pair into a full house on the river are only 10.5-1, not 23-1 (the writers obviously were mixed it up with the odds of turning a single pair into 3 of a kind on the river, which are 22-1). We don't know what hand Bond hand, because he mucked after LeChiffre turned over his full house (Three 9s? A flush?). But based on Bond's claim to have discovered LeChiffre's tell, and his explanation of what went on in the hand, I can't say I'm too confident in his understanding of hold 'em.
The next hand we see is the one where LeChiffre busts Bond. Once again, we see the all-in confusion, with both Bond and LeChiffre putting the entirety of their stacks into the pot. And Bond splashes the pot again, that rude little bugger. And a KKKAA full house being beaten by four Jacks? Heightened reality, my friends, just like jumping from crane to crane. Sure, it could happen...
The next hand we see (but only the end of) is actually a real poker hand, as LeChiffre's two pair aces and sevens with a queen quicker beats Leiter's same two pair with a jack kicker. I guess Felix isn't important enough to require an nearly impossible hand to beat him....
Than comes the final hand, the hands that is so over the top that it is to poker as the Harlem Globetrotters are to basketball. Again, they don't show us any betting aside from after the final card is turned up, but let's work backwards an reconstruct what we do know.
Four players left...Bond and LeChiffre have a hefty chip lead over the other two. The blinds are at at least one million dollars. Since Bond bets first, he must have been the small blind, so Fukutu was the big blind blind.
What they're deal (with chances of winning in parentheses after):
Dude 8h 8c (30.9%)
LeChiffre Ac 6h (21.3%)
Bond 7s 5s (12.6%)
Fukutu Ks Qs (35.2%)
Now, 7s 5s isn't the best hand, but it isn't as terrible as it seems, and can be quite dangerous with the right flop. Also remember, Bond doesn't know what the others have, so a 7s 5s against 3 random hands is roughly 23-26% to win. And since he was already partially committed to the pot as the small blind, calling the $500,000 while getting 7-1 pot odds wasn't a bad play. Problem: there was more betting, that put the pot up to $24 million, and we don't know if that betting was here (which probably would mean Bond was insane for calling a huge raise here...unless he raised?!?), or after the flop (everyone checked on the turn).
The flop: Ah 8s 6s
Presumably, at this point there's a spurt of betting, because during the turn, Mathes tells Vesper that there is $24 million in the pot already, which means each player has put in another $5 million worth. This is especially significant, because it means Fukutu and Dude have already put in at least half their stacks (they've committed $6 million this hand, and their all-ins are 6 and 5 million, respectively). At this point, one has to wonder why they aren't all in already. By waiting until 5th street to go all in, they allow anyone playing a draw to make their hand, instead of forcing them to make a decision earlier. Fukutu has 4 spades, but he can't be sure his will be the top flush, as the Ace of spaces is unaccounted for yet. So if he's already committed half his stack now, why not just go all in to encourage the others to fold? It's an in-between, wait and see strategy that is guaranteed to lose in the long run, as it does here. If you don't get your flush, you've wasted your six million. If you do and still get beaten by a higher hand, as happens here, same result. Dude has trip 8's, but with straight and flush possibilities on the board, he has an even stronger reason for trying to discourage the other players from taking more cards.
LeChiffe has two pair, including top pair, so it's reasonable for him to say in (even though, unbeknownst to him, he has the lowest odds of winning at this point). And Bond? He's in pretty decent shape...he has four to a flush, and an open-ended straight draw, not to mention the 2 shots at a straight flush. A couple of warning signs, though...even if he draws the flush, there's a pretty good possibility that his high spade of 7 wouldn't make it the highest flush, so it could still be a loser. Ditto with the straight...it's fully possible you could get the straight and lose to a higher straight, or a flush. But he's a chip leader, he has a 50% chance of winning against 3 random hands (and a 28% chance against these actual hands) and the implied odds of later rounds of betting make putting $5 million into the pot justified for an aggressive player.
The turn: 4s.
That's it, game over. Bond has his straight flush, no one else can have one based on that board, it's game over. Everyone else is drawing dead. All 007 needs to do now is suck as much money out of everybody as possible. He wisely leads with a check...but the others? Fukutu has made his flush. It's very likely it's the highest flush, so why check? Why let everyone see a free card, which might beat you? Since the board hasn't been paired yet, no one can have a full house--yet. Here's where you go all in, to protect yourself from getting beaten by a later card. But he passively checks, allowing Dude and LeChiffre to make their boats (yeah, he still would have lost to Bond...but the odds were against it, and when you have a possible nut flush and are low on chips, you have to protect it!!). Dude and LeChiffre wisely check--they have to consider that someone might have a straight or flush based on that board, and if they're going to give you a free card when you've already got trips or two pair, don't argue.
The river: As
Fukutu has the nut flush, but now the board is paired, so there's a chance of a full house. He should have gone all in two rounds ago, and definitely last round. Dude has a boat 8's full of aces, and he already has committed over half his chips, he has no choice but to call. LeChiffre's decision is interesting. He has the big boat, aces full of sixes...but it is conceivable that someone has a higher full house (if someone held A8). And you can tell he never really considers the unlikely chance that Bond held 5s 7s for the straight flush.
His decision to raise is interesting, though...since $6 million covered the bets of the other two, he was essentially wagering a $6 million side pot with James. Which is odd. In higher poker circles, you don't keep raising after the small stack has gone all in. Why give him a chance to increase his pile when he's on the verge of dropping out? Because everyone called Fukutu, for example, if he had happened to win he would have pulled down $47 million in chips and become the new chip leader, instead of being out. Realistically, in a situation like this, there's usually "implicit collusion" to just call, so as to eliminate another player.
And given Bonds' re-raise to all-in, warning bells should have gone off for LeChiffre. Remember, LeChiffre didn't know Bond had the straight flush, but he should have suspected the possibility that Bond might have that or a higher full house. Did he really think that Bond would go all-in at that point with just a straight or a flush?
So once again we have an all in situation where everybody throws all their chips in the middle, although either Bond of LeChiffre would have had some left after matching the others' stack. Once again Bond splashes the pot, the rude bastard--but LeChiffre does a little bit too.
And after we have the unbelievable spectacle of the final four players all going all in on one hand (it would never happen), it turns out that they reveal an ace high flush, a full house, a higher full house, and a straight flush. And it just happens that these hands are revealed in ascending order. Folks, it's possible to play Hold 'Em for decades and never see a straight flush. But to see four hands this high, all in one deal, conveniently in dramatic order...well, that's like getting hit with lightning while winning the lotto 5 times in a row. I'm certain the writers had to spend days coming up with a scenario where this could happen and not have everyone folding after the turn. Sheesh.
It's so overly melodramatic that, frankly,, it kills some of the tension from the game, which was very well-directed. And after Bond's lecture to Vesper that it's not the best hand that wins, that it's not a game of luck, and that you have to play your opponent, and not the hand--well, we never see Bond play a hand lower than trip Aces, and he wins the tournament by being dealt a straight flush. So Bond never got to show off these supposed poker skills, because he was always dealt these freakin' incredible hands that my grandmother could have won with!!
Worst of all...Bond tips the dealer with one of the chips at the end---it's worthless!! It's a tournament chip, which has no value outside of the tournament!! The money's not held by the casino, it's held by the Swiss bank!! James. you basically flipped off the dealer by giving him a worthless trinket!!
So, I like my Harlem Globetrotters analogy...yes, it's recognizable as basketball, and yes, it's as entertaining as heck...but don't try that stuff in the NBA, because it ain't gonna work, and someone's gonna get hurt. Same here...fun to watch, thrilling...but I wouldn't reserve James a seat at the World Series of Poker anytime soon....
Odds provided by the Poker Stove desktop application and this Wikipedia page.
But how good was the film's portrayal of poker? Well, after I spent far too long analyzing Kronsteen's chess game in From Russia With Love, you know I can't resist droning on for far too long about the poker scenes in CR06.
So how are they? Well, let's just say that, in a world a car can flip 7 times and the driver survive, and where parkour chases through construction sites are apparently an everyday occurrence, the poker we see played in CR isn't out of place.
Which is to say "heightened reality," exaggerated, melodramatic. As expected in a movie, They want to hype things up, make them more exciting. So you see people playing hands in ways that generally wouldn't be played that way, and you see showdowns that probably wouldn't happen. Two words best describe it--Harlem Globetrotters.
A couple of things to note. First of all, we never see the beginnings of hands..we never see any bets before the flop, and very few on third or fourth street. This makes it really tough to analyze how the hands are being played. Poker is a game of imperfect information, and one of the primary sources of information is looking at your opponents' betting patterns--how often they bet before the flop, what types of hands they're likely to stay in with, are they playing conservatively or aggressively. Frankly, this kind of observation is usually far more important than any physical tells, no matter what the movie tells us, and so we're not given a critical component needed to analyze the hands.
The other factor to consider is that, in Texas Hold 'Em, the average winning hand is in the one-pair to two-pair range. Such smaller hands aren't sexy, but they're what win hand after hand, and ultimately tournaments. Of course, players do get higher hands--but those hands are very often not played to completion, as the board or the betting pattern scares people away. Compare that with CR, where of all the poker hands where we see the cards, the lowest winning hand is three of a kind (three aces, no less). That, my friends, is heightened reality.
The first hand we see played is LeChiffre against the "dear general." We can't see most of the cards...all we can make out is the King turned up on the river. The Asian woman folds after that card is turned up, but before anyone has bet...that's wrong! You never fold until somebody bets, because it's possible everyone will check and you'll get a free look at the river!!
Meanwhile, LeChiffre goes all in, telling the general he has two pair while the general has a 17.4% chance of making his straight. The percentage is right...of course, LeChiffre might have been bluffing at having two pair, too, just psyching the guy out. But going all in? This is the first of several times that CR displays a fundamental misunderstanding of what "all in" means. Every single time it happens, both parties put 100% of their chips into the pot. But that would never happen unless those two players had exactly the same number of chips!! One player never has to risk more chips than the other. So if Player A had 10,000 and Player B had 7,000...even if Player A called all in, he wouldn't commit more than 7,000 to the pot. So if the player who was ahead loses, he would still have some chips left. Yet even though he seems to have a lot more than chip than the general, LeChiffre pushes his whole stack into the middle. Dramatic, perhaps, but inaccurate. Yet every single time he hit an all in situation in this movie, both parties push in all their chips. That ain't how it works.
The next hand we see is Dimtrios vs. Bond, when Bond beats his trip kings with trip aces. And again, we're supposed to believe that Dimitrios' $5,000 plus his car just happens to precisely equal what Bond has in his stack. Plus, Bond splashes the pot, which is incredibly rude.
Then we come to the big tournament. The first hand we see is the one where Bond discovers LeChiffre's tell, the physical gesture he makes when he's bluffing (to get picky, you wouldn't be able to figure that out just from one instance...maybe it was just a random gesture. You'd have to see him bluff multiple times because you could say for certain that was his tell). Now, after the hand, Bond explains to us that LeChiffre didn't have the best hand until "the last card. The odds against were 23-1, and he'd know that. When he did his first raise he had nothing. Winning was blind luck."
Man, there are so many things wrong with that statement. First of all, when LeChiffre first raised he had a a pair of deuces in the pocket...not the greatest hand, surely, but not nothing...it was a semi-bluff, at best. After the river, LeChiffre had two pair, deuces and nines, most certainly not nothing (except in this movie, where winning with anything less than 3 aces is apparently considered unmanly). And when Bond says the odds against were 23-1, he's just plain wrong. The odds against turning two pair into a full house on the river are only 10.5-1, not 23-1 (the writers obviously were mixed it up with the odds of turning a single pair into 3 of a kind on the river, which are 22-1). We don't know what hand Bond hand, because he mucked after LeChiffre turned over his full house (Three 9s? A flush?). But based on Bond's claim to have discovered LeChiffre's tell, and his explanation of what went on in the hand, I can't say I'm too confident in his understanding of hold 'em.
The next hand we see is the one where LeChiffre busts Bond. Once again, we see the all-in confusion, with both Bond and LeChiffre putting the entirety of their stacks into the pot. And Bond splashes the pot again, that rude little bugger. And a KKKAA full house being beaten by four Jacks? Heightened reality, my friends, just like jumping from crane to crane. Sure, it could happen...
The next hand we see (but only the end of) is actually a real poker hand, as LeChiffre's two pair aces and sevens with a queen quicker beats Leiter's same two pair with a jack kicker. I guess Felix isn't important enough to require an nearly impossible hand to beat him....
Than comes the final hand, the hands that is so over the top that it is to poker as the Harlem Globetrotters are to basketball. Again, they don't show us any betting aside from after the final card is turned up, but let's work backwards an reconstruct what we do know.
Four players left...Bond and LeChiffre have a hefty chip lead over the other two. The blinds are at at least one million dollars. Since Bond bets first, he must have been the small blind, so Fukutu was the big blind blind.
What they're deal (with chances of winning in parentheses after):
Dude 8h 8c (30.9%)
LeChiffre Ac 6h (21.3%)
Bond 7s 5s (12.6%)
Fukutu Ks Qs (35.2%)
Now, 7s 5s isn't the best hand, but it isn't as terrible as it seems, and can be quite dangerous with the right flop. Also remember, Bond doesn't know what the others have, so a 7s 5s against 3 random hands is roughly 23-26% to win. And since he was already partially committed to the pot as the small blind, calling the $500,000 while getting 7-1 pot odds wasn't a bad play. Problem: there was more betting, that put the pot up to $24 million, and we don't know if that betting was here (which probably would mean Bond was insane for calling a huge raise here...unless he raised?!?), or after the flop (everyone checked on the turn).
The flop: Ah 8s 6s
Presumably, at this point there's a spurt of betting, because during the turn, Mathes tells Vesper that there is $24 million in the pot already, which means each player has put in another $5 million worth. This is especially significant, because it means Fukutu and Dude have already put in at least half their stacks (they've committed $6 million this hand, and their all-ins are 6 and 5 million, respectively). At this point, one has to wonder why they aren't all in already. By waiting until 5th street to go all in, they allow anyone playing a draw to make their hand, instead of forcing them to make a decision earlier. Fukutu has 4 spades, but he can't be sure his will be the top flush, as the Ace of spaces is unaccounted for yet. So if he's already committed half his stack now, why not just go all in to encourage the others to fold? It's an in-between, wait and see strategy that is guaranteed to lose in the long run, as it does here. If you don't get your flush, you've wasted your six million. If you do and still get beaten by a higher hand, as happens here, same result. Dude has trip 8's, but with straight and flush possibilities on the board, he has an even stronger reason for trying to discourage the other players from taking more cards.
LeChiffe has two pair, including top pair, so it's reasonable for him to say in (even though, unbeknownst to him, he has the lowest odds of winning at this point). And Bond? He's in pretty decent shape...he has four to a flush, and an open-ended straight draw, not to mention the 2 shots at a straight flush. A couple of warning signs, though...even if he draws the flush, there's a pretty good possibility that his high spade of 7 wouldn't make it the highest flush, so it could still be a loser. Ditto with the straight...it's fully possible you could get the straight and lose to a higher straight, or a flush. But he's a chip leader, he has a 50% chance of winning against 3 random hands (and a 28% chance against these actual hands) and the implied odds of later rounds of betting make putting $5 million into the pot justified for an aggressive player.
The turn: 4s.
That's it, game over. Bond has his straight flush, no one else can have one based on that board, it's game over. Everyone else is drawing dead. All 007 needs to do now is suck as much money out of everybody as possible. He wisely leads with a check...but the others? Fukutu has made his flush. It's very likely it's the highest flush, so why check? Why let everyone see a free card, which might beat you? Since the board hasn't been paired yet, no one can have a full house--yet. Here's where you go all in, to protect yourself from getting beaten by a later card. But he passively checks, allowing Dude and LeChiffre to make their boats (yeah, he still would have lost to Bond...but the odds were against it, and when you have a possible nut flush and are low on chips, you have to protect it!!). Dude and LeChiffre wisely check--they have to consider that someone might have a straight or flush based on that board, and if they're going to give you a free card when you've already got trips or two pair, don't argue.
The river: As
Fukutu has the nut flush, but now the board is paired, so there's a chance of a full house. He should have gone all in two rounds ago, and definitely last round. Dude has a boat 8's full of aces, and he already has committed over half his chips, he has no choice but to call. LeChiffre's decision is interesting. He has the big boat, aces full of sixes...but it is conceivable that someone has a higher full house (if someone held A8). And you can tell he never really considers the unlikely chance that Bond held 5s 7s for the straight flush.
His decision to raise is interesting, though...since $6 million covered the bets of the other two, he was essentially wagering a $6 million side pot with James. Which is odd. In higher poker circles, you don't keep raising after the small stack has gone all in. Why give him a chance to increase his pile when he's on the verge of dropping out? Because everyone called Fukutu, for example, if he had happened to win he would have pulled down $47 million in chips and become the new chip leader, instead of being out. Realistically, in a situation like this, there's usually "implicit collusion" to just call, so as to eliminate another player.
And given Bonds' re-raise to all-in, warning bells should have gone off for LeChiffre. Remember, LeChiffre didn't know Bond had the straight flush, but he should have suspected the possibility that Bond might have that or a higher full house. Did he really think that Bond would go all-in at that point with just a straight or a flush?
So once again we have an all in situation where everybody throws all their chips in the middle, although either Bond of LeChiffre would have had some left after matching the others' stack. Once again Bond splashes the pot, the rude bastard--but LeChiffre does a little bit too.
And after we have the unbelievable spectacle of the final four players all going all in on one hand (it would never happen), it turns out that they reveal an ace high flush, a full house, a higher full house, and a straight flush. And it just happens that these hands are revealed in ascending order. Folks, it's possible to play Hold 'Em for decades and never see a straight flush. But to see four hands this high, all in one deal, conveniently in dramatic order...well, that's like getting hit with lightning while winning the lotto 5 times in a row. I'm certain the writers had to spend days coming up with a scenario where this could happen and not have everyone folding after the turn. Sheesh.
It's so overly melodramatic that, frankly,, it kills some of the tension from the game, which was very well-directed. And after Bond's lecture to Vesper that it's not the best hand that wins, that it's not a game of luck, and that you have to play your opponent, and not the hand--well, we never see Bond play a hand lower than trip Aces, and he wins the tournament by being dealt a straight flush. So Bond never got to show off these supposed poker skills, because he was always dealt these freakin' incredible hands that my grandmother could have won with!!
Worst of all...Bond tips the dealer with one of the chips at the end---it's worthless!! It's a tournament chip, which has no value outside of the tournament!! The money's not held by the casino, it's held by the Swiss bank!! James. you basically flipped off the dealer by giving him a worthless trinket!!
So, I like my Harlem Globetrotters analogy...yes, it's recognizable as basketball, and yes, it's as entertaining as heck...but don't try that stuff in the NBA, because it ain't gonna work, and someone's gonna get hurt. Same here...fun to watch, thrilling...but I wouldn't reserve James a seat at the World Series of Poker anytime soon....
Odds provided by the Poker Stove desktop application and this Wikipedia page.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Americans--Less Relevant, But Still Sucky
Time for the third installment of our look at how the Bond franchise portrays Americans.
So far, through the Connery and Moore eras, we've basically been a bunch of slack-jawed yokels. Not only have we been completely unable to protect ourselves from various espionage threats, but we've been dependent on the British to bail us out. Not to mention, American is crime-ridden, occupied by a bunch of racist rednecks, and we can't drive worth a damn.
So let's take a glance at how the Dalton/Brosnan dynasties dealt with the good old U.S. of A., shall we? Ratings, as always, are on the Cletus scale:
The Living Daylights: Not a lot of American involvement here, with the exception of the villain, "General" Brad Whitaker. He's a greedy braggart, an oaf with pretensions. I suppose, if you wanted to. you could read General Pushkin's denunciation of him as a preening wannabe who's over his head as a stab at Americans in general. Probably not, though.
When Whitaker and Koskov want Pushkin assassinated, they don't go to the Americans, but rather MI-6. Does this mean they feel A) The British are better at this type of thing, or B) The British are more gullible?
Oh, Felix and the Leiterettes show up, but they don't have any impact whatsoever.
Score: Just one Cletus.
Licence To Kill: Ouch. Not only are Americans completely unable to tame the drug problem; they can't even trust any of their own people. Sanchez's standing $2 million dollar bribe converts Killifer easily enough. And all of Sanchez's top cronies are Americans: Heller, Truman-Lodge, Krest, Professor Joe. So apparently, offer enough cash and you can get Americans to do most anything for you.
Even worse, of course, is the American refusal to try to go after Sanchez again, or to seek any retaliation for the maiming of Felix Leiter and the killing of his bride. You might rationalize that they were laying low until Pam could get the Stinger missiles from Heller, but it still looks pretty awful that no one from America could infiltrate Sanchez's organization while a rogue British agent (who admits that he's a rogue British agent!) just walks right in.
Oh, and those Stinger missiles--Sanchez got those from the contras, who probably got them from the U.S. Which means ultimately that America is providing Sanchez with the missiles to shoot down our own planes.
Drug lords walk away from custody in broad daylight!! DEA agents murdered with impunity!! U.S.-made weapons falling into terrorist hands!! America really does suck! Five Cletus'!
Goldeneye: Not too much American involvement here, as Jack Wade is annoying but not particularly incompetent.
However, having the Russkies able to build such a huge complex in Cuba completely undetected earns a definite demerit for America, especially after hearing Wade boast that it could never happen.
Two Cletus'.
Tomorrow Never Dies: Nothing to see here, right? Just a war between Britain and China caused by a British media mogul, right?
Well, two important America-related items to note. First, the U.S. somehow lost the all-important GPS encoder to begin with...we're never given explanation how it was "lost," but seeing the damage it can cause, that's a pretty dang huge security breach. Plus, someone can transmit bootleg signals over the GPS frequencies, and the U.S. can't detect it while Britain can?!?
Secondly, when they discover that Bond's drop zone is going to be in Vietnamese waters, Wade, Dr. Greenwalt and the marines practically poop their pants like frightened babies at the prospect of a diplomatic incident with Vietnam. Note to British screenwriters: no, we don't go around cowering in terror over the prospect of a dustup there, especially CIA and military people.
4 Cletus'.
The World Is Not Enough has no American involvement whatsoever, except for Dr. Christmas Jones, and I'm more likely to blame Charlie Sheen for that than I am America in general. So let's skip ahead to
Die Another Day: Again, the American involvement is mainly peripheral. Jinx is pretty clearly the best American Bond girl ever (I'll let you decide if that's a left-handed compliment or not). And while the other American we meet, Damian Falco, is an arrogant, overconfident jerkwad, the British actually come off worse: they can't even do their own background checks on their agents, and the Queen will knight any old billionaire who mysteriously appeared out of nowhere a year ago and sells conflict diamonds.
Two Cletus'--it probably should be one, but I'll give it one extra because Damina Falco irks me so much.
Casino Royale (2006): What have we here? A movie that has the Americans pursuing their goal on their own at first, independently of the British? An America not too arrogant to realize that Bond is the best man to beat LeChiffre, even when England has cut him off? Willing to make a deal with Bond, and not try to just muscle their way in? Willing to play to their strengths ($$)?
I know it's just a couple of scenes with Felix Leiter, but CR06 might have the best, most realistic treatment of Americans of any of the Bond movies. Which should tell you something right there...
CR gets the coveted ZERO Cletus'!!!
One trend I've noticed is that, over the past couple of decades, is that American involvement has become much more peripheral in Bond movies....and their treatment of us somewhat better (relatively). In the early days, Eon films loved to tell us how inferior and bumbling Americans were. But later on, especially over the last 3rd of the series, the emphasis has been less on how much better MI-6 is at everything than the CIA (has Felix leiter even once had a gadget?!? Jinx?!?), and more on Bond versus his own bureaucracy...with American becoming less and less relevant. Is that progress?? I report, you decide...
So far, through the Connery and Moore eras, we've basically been a bunch of slack-jawed yokels. Not only have we been completely unable to protect ourselves from various espionage threats, but we've been dependent on the British to bail us out. Not to mention, American is crime-ridden, occupied by a bunch of racist rednecks, and we can't drive worth a damn.
So let's take a glance at how the Dalton/Brosnan dynasties dealt with the good old U.S. of A., shall we? Ratings, as always, are on the Cletus scale:
The Living Daylights: Not a lot of American involvement here, with the exception of the villain, "General" Brad Whitaker. He's a greedy braggart, an oaf with pretensions. I suppose, if you wanted to. you could read General Pushkin's denunciation of him as a preening wannabe who's over his head as a stab at Americans in general. Probably not, though.
When Whitaker and Koskov want Pushkin assassinated, they don't go to the Americans, but rather MI-6. Does this mean they feel A) The British are better at this type of thing, or B) The British are more gullible?
Oh, Felix and the Leiterettes show up, but they don't have any impact whatsoever.Score: Just one Cletus.
Licence To Kill: Ouch. Not only are Americans completely unable to tame the drug problem; they can't even trust any of their own people. Sanchez's standing $2 million dollar bribe converts Killifer easily enough. And all of Sanchez's top cronies are Americans: Heller, Truman-Lodge, Krest, Professor Joe. So apparently, offer enough cash and you can get Americans to do most anything for you.
Even worse, of course, is the American refusal to try to go after Sanchez again, or to seek any retaliation for the maiming of Felix Leiter and the killing of his bride. You might rationalize that they were laying low until Pam could get the Stinger missiles from Heller, but it still looks pretty awful that no one from America could infiltrate Sanchez's organization while a rogue British agent (who admits that he's a rogue British agent!) just walks right in.
Oh, and those Stinger missiles--Sanchez got those from the contras, who probably got them from the U.S. Which means ultimately that America is providing Sanchez with the missiles to shoot down our own planes.
Drug lords walk away from custody in broad daylight!! DEA agents murdered with impunity!! U.S.-made weapons falling into terrorist hands!! America really does suck! Five Cletus'!Goldeneye: Not too much American involvement here, as Jack Wade is annoying but not particularly incompetent.
However, having the Russkies able to build such a huge complex in Cuba completely undetected earns a definite demerit for America, especially after hearing Wade boast that it could never happen.
Two Cletus'.Tomorrow Never Dies: Nothing to see here, right? Just a war between Britain and China caused by a British media mogul, right?
Well, two important America-related items to note. First, the U.S. somehow lost the all-important GPS encoder to begin with...we're never given explanation how it was "lost," but seeing the damage it can cause, that's a pretty dang huge security breach. Plus, someone can transmit bootleg signals over the GPS frequencies, and the U.S. can't detect it while Britain can?!?
Secondly, when they discover that Bond's drop zone is going to be in Vietnamese waters, Wade, Dr. Greenwalt and the marines practically poop their pants like frightened babies at the prospect of a diplomatic incident with Vietnam. Note to British screenwriters: no, we don't go around cowering in terror over the prospect of a dustup there, especially CIA and military people.
4 Cletus'.The World Is Not Enough has no American involvement whatsoever, except for Dr. Christmas Jones, and I'm more likely to blame Charlie Sheen for that than I am America in general. So let's skip ahead to
Die Another Day: Again, the American involvement is mainly peripheral. Jinx is pretty clearly the best American Bond girl ever (I'll let you decide if that's a left-handed compliment or not). And while the other American we meet, Damian Falco, is an arrogant, overconfident jerkwad, the British actually come off worse: they can't even do their own background checks on their agents, and the Queen will knight any old billionaire who mysteriously appeared out of nowhere a year ago and sells conflict diamonds.
Two Cletus'--it probably should be one, but I'll give it one extra because Damina Falco irks me so much.Casino Royale (2006): What have we here? A movie that has the Americans pursuing their goal on their own at first, independently of the British? An America not too arrogant to realize that Bond is the best man to beat LeChiffre, even when England has cut him off? Willing to make a deal with Bond, and not try to just muscle their way in? Willing to play to their strengths ($$)?
I know it's just a couple of scenes with Felix Leiter, but CR06 might have the best, most realistic treatment of Americans of any of the Bond movies. Which should tell you something right there...
CR gets the coveted ZERO Cletus'!!!
One trend I've noticed is that, over the past couple of decades, is that American involvement has become much more peripheral in Bond movies....and their treatment of us somewhat better (relatively). In the early days, Eon films loved to tell us how inferior and bumbling Americans were. But later on, especially over the last 3rd of the series, the emphasis has been less on how much better MI-6 is at everything than the CIA (has Felix leiter even once had a gadget?!? Jinx?!?), and more on Bond versus his own bureaucracy...with American becoming less and less relevant. Is that progress?? I report, you decide...
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Wither Gadgets?
Quantum Of Solace will mark the second straight movie without Q.
What does that tell us about the future of gadgets in the franchise?
Well, for me, it confirms that we are living in the future, right now.
Seriously. Think about it. The level of gadgetry available to us, right now, even on the consumer level, would make Q's head explode in 1964. He was so impressed with the tracking device in Goldfinger? Hell, today every phone, every car has embedded GPS...we even inject tracking microchips into our children and pets!! Our cell phones outstrip anything Star Trek's communicators could do. We can instantaneously communicate with anyone, anywhere in the world, and remotely control every electronic device in our home from continents away. We can carry gigabytes of data on our flipping keychains (doubtless soon to be terabytes).
My point is, it's much harder to impress us with technology these days. Bond does use gadgets in Casino Royale (2006)--but it's all gadgets we viewers could already have, albeit a little more robust. Using GPS on his phone to track down coordinates? We can do that ourselves!! Tracking down who sent a particular text message? Even if humble consumers can't necessarily do that, it's no problem for the telecommunications companies or the government. Granted, Bond's equipment is doubtless more sophisticated than ours, but it's nothing that requires a suspension of disbelief. The audience accepts it, but isn't impressed by it.
And so, to impress us with a Q scene these days, you have to do what Die Another Day did, and go completely sci-fi. Hey, an invisible car!! Hey, a solar-satellite-controlling exoskeleton!! Hey, "gene therapy" that completely transforms you physically into another person!! But being so technologically sophisticated these days, the audience snickers at the ridiculousness.
It's as if we've reached a tipping point--the real world is advanced enough now that when a Bond movie shows us some tech, we're either going to say, "Already have that!" or "Dude, that's so not possible!"
What does that mean for the future of Q and gadgets?
Well, it's not the end, despite what I've just written. It's just going to require harder work and more creativity on the part of the writers. It is possible to come up with things that are cool, but not impossible, yet not available at Radio Shack. CR06 gave us one such example: the little sensor injected into Bond's arm, that when hooked to a cell phone can not only transmit his vitals to MI-6 HQ, but also give us a complete chemical analysis of what drugs are in his bloodstream!! There's a gadget for you!! But it succeeds for two reasons. First, it doesn't call too much attention to itself--we're not slowing the movie down and shouting, "Look how cool we are!! Gadget!!" Secondly, with this one, unlike DAD, they've managed to find the cusp of what's possible and what's believable, between 5 minutes into the future and science-fiction. It's advanced, but not too far advanced.
It's no secret that I'm a fan of most of the "gadgetless" Bond movies...but that doesn't mean I'm against gadgets or Q. Hell, I love Q. But it's the 21st century, and an approach to spy tech that worked in 1967 might not work cinematically in 2008. Unsubtle scenes of Q saying "here's a gadget that does X, 007," followed much later in the movie by one (and only) one scene where that exact gadget comes in handy might be a relic of the pre-24 era. (A friend of mine calls that Q's Law Of Conservation Of Gadgets: If Q gives Bond a gadget in the first act, it will be used in act 3 once and only once)
So when we get to The Hildebrandt Rarity, I'm rooting for Q to return (and Moneypenny, of course). The series does need him. But just as Casino Royale (2006) reworked the rules for what Bond is and how he does it, Bond 23 will need to become more creative and innovative in how it uses Q branch.
What does that tell us about the future of gadgets in the franchise?
Well, for me, it confirms that we are living in the future, right now.
Seriously. Think about it. The level of gadgetry available to us, right now, even on the consumer level, would make Q's head explode in 1964. He was so impressed with the tracking device in Goldfinger? Hell, today every phone, every car has embedded GPS...we even inject tracking microchips into our children and pets!! Our cell phones outstrip anything Star Trek's communicators could do. We can instantaneously communicate with anyone, anywhere in the world, and remotely control every electronic device in our home from continents away. We can carry gigabytes of data on our flipping keychains (doubtless soon to be terabytes).
My point is, it's much harder to impress us with technology these days. Bond does use gadgets in Casino Royale (2006)--but it's all gadgets we viewers could already have, albeit a little more robust. Using GPS on his phone to track down coordinates? We can do that ourselves!! Tracking down who sent a particular text message? Even if humble consumers can't necessarily do that, it's no problem for the telecommunications companies or the government. Granted, Bond's equipment is doubtless more sophisticated than ours, but it's nothing that requires a suspension of disbelief. The audience accepts it, but isn't impressed by it.And so, to impress us with a Q scene these days, you have to do what Die Another Day did, and go completely sci-fi. Hey, an invisible car!! Hey, a solar-satellite-controlling exoskeleton!! Hey, "gene therapy" that completely transforms you physically into another person!! But being so technologically sophisticated these days, the audience snickers at the ridiculousness.
It's as if we've reached a tipping point--the real world is advanced enough now that when a Bond movie shows us some tech, we're either going to say, "Already have that!" or "Dude, that's so not possible!"
What does that mean for the future of Q and gadgets?
Well, it's not the end, despite what I've just written. It's just going to require harder work and more creativity on the part of the writers. It is possible to come up with things that are cool, but not impossible, yet not available at Radio Shack. CR06 gave us one such example: the little sensor injected into Bond's arm, that when hooked to a cell phone can not only transmit his vitals to MI-6 HQ, but also give us a complete chemical analysis of what drugs are in his bloodstream!! There's a gadget for you!! But it succeeds for two reasons. First, it doesn't call too much attention to itself--we're not slowing the movie down and shouting, "Look how cool we are!! Gadget!!" Secondly, with this one, unlike DAD, they've managed to find the cusp of what's possible and what's believable, between 5 minutes into the future and science-fiction. It's advanced, but not too far advanced.It's no secret that I'm a fan of most of the "gadgetless" Bond movies...but that doesn't mean I'm against gadgets or Q. Hell, I love Q. But it's the 21st century, and an approach to spy tech that worked in 1967 might not work cinematically in 2008. Unsubtle scenes of Q saying "here's a gadget that does X, 007," followed much later in the movie by one (and only) one scene where that exact gadget comes in handy might be a relic of the pre-24 era. (A friend of mine calls that Q's Law Of Conservation Of Gadgets: If Q gives Bond a gadget in the first act, it will be used in act 3 once and only once)
So when we get to The Hildebrandt Rarity, I'm rooting for Q to return (and Moneypenny, of course). The series does need him. But just as Casino Royale (2006) reworked the rules for what Bond is and how he does it, Bond 23 will need to become more creative and innovative in how it uses Q branch.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Casino Royale (2006)
Just because you've done something, doesn't mean you've got to keep doing it.--Vesper Lynd.
And that is Casino Royale (2006) in a nutshell.
Remember back, to the long and unsettling 4 year gap between Die Another Day and CR06. After all of the interminable haggling over pierce Brosnan's future, after all of the insane and incessant casting rumors, after all of the vituperation producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli and writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade were getting in the wake of the critical and fan disdain for some of the excesses of DAD...we really had no idea what to expect, did we?
Sure, Daniel Craig was a respectable choice (despite some dunderheaded loud early opposition...why can't Bond be blond?). Sure, Oscar winner Paul Haggis came on board to work in some unspecified capacity on the script. And sure, they were finally adapting Casino Royale, Ian Fleming's first--and many say best--Bond novel.
But Casino Royale had already been adapted twice before, with none too impressive results. And the "comedy" CR67 had so much high caliber talent involved that it couldn't fail...yeah, right. And the way the filmmakers had flushed away the potential they themselves had set up in the first half of DAD left us seriously in doubt whether they were capable of pulling off a proper hardcore Fleming story.
Silly us, and our short memories. We've been through this before, haven't we? After You Only Live Twice showed a drop at the box office and was less well received by critics, Eon responded with a back-to-basics, amazingly faithful adaptation of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. After Moonraker made a gazillion bucks but received a panning from many critics and fans, Eon followed up by giving us For Your Eyes Only, a hardcore gadget-free spy film weaved together from a couple of Fleming short stories.
So we shouldn't have been too surprised, given the backlash against DAD's CGI and ridiculously oversized sci-fi trappings, that Eon once again went straight back to a highly faithful Fleming adaptation, back to basics.
But there were 3 real surprises.
First of all, this time the public bought in. Historically, the gadgetless, straight spy Bonds haven't done well at the box office. Despite seeming to give people what they were asking for, OHMMS and FYEO had significantly lower grosses than their picked-upon predecessors. But CR06 actually surpassed DAD's box office. Not by a ton, but CR06 still passed it, which was an impressive first for a "retrenching" film.
Secondly, we got a reboot. If you read comic books, well, you're used to this sort of thing. And it's not as if there was any kind of particularly tight continuity between the Bond films to begin with. But for Eon to essentially say, "We're starting over," well, that was pretty damn shocking. Yes, Casino Royale was the first Bond novel, but we weren't expecting "Bond Year One."
And finally, the biggest surprise was how amazingly freaking good the movie turned out to be.
Let me hasten to emphasize, the film is still new to me...it's still the Bond film I've seen the least. Maybe after 5 more years to digest it, and catching portions of it every other week on cable, and comparing it to the movies that follow so we can properly understand what it spawned, perhaps then the newness and shock will have worn off, and my opinion might have mellowed. So maybe you should take my opinions with a grain of salt here, just as you would an adolescent in the bloom of first infatuation who can see no wrong in his new love.
But you know what? It wasn't just me. It scored a 94% on RottenTomatoes, the highest score of any movie for 2006. And the public agreed, going in droves. Who could have figured--a hardcore "straight" Bond film, with a relative unknown in the lead, in the longest Bond movie ever, became the highest grossing Bond ever. Wha happened??
Part of it, I think, was the "Bourne-ification" of the movie marketplace. Not that Bond was "copying" Bourne, as some opined--Bond was doing serious spy back before Jason Bourne was even a twinkle in Robert Ludlum's eye. But the Bourne movies, as well as the TV show 24, seem to have uncovered (or created) an appetite for the more serious action movie. And CR06 was in the right place at the right time to catch that wave.
Another factor is that, at some level, mainstream movie goers and critics were just as disgruntled at DAD as many of the fans were. Scan some of the reviews for CR06, and you'll see sighs of relief that the "silliness" is gone, that the "outlandish" is played down, that the reliance on gadgets and puns was over. (Of course, that just means we're due for the tire swing backlash, as reviews of QoS from the very same critics will no doubt decry the lack of gadgets and whimsy...but I digress)
And, of course, we can't forget 9/11. In a world where we're all frightened that scruffy terrorists with box cutters can destroy our cities, the escapism of evil billionaires with death satellites was exactly the wrong way to go. Maybe we wanted our heroes to make us feel safer by fighting the very threats we're scared of right now, rather than distracting us with fantasy threats. To that extent, perhaps DAD was caught in a bad place, and guessed incorrectly about which way to go.
But maybe I'm over thinking the wheel... maybe it's just that CR06 was such a freakin' great movie.
It starts with a very faithful adaptation of Fleming's novel. And how long has it been since we've been able to say that?!? Oh, they added a lot of things--CR was a fairly spare novel. But everything they added seemed very much in the Fleming spirit. And they modernized things a bit--LeChiffre was no longer a SMERSH paymaster, but a terrorist banker; they're playing Texas Hold 'Em, not baccarat. But the entirety of Fleming's novel is there, right down to Bond being smashed in the gonads by a carpet beater. Ouch.
The film begins with James Bond, before he's even a Double-O. And already they're playing against our expectations: we DON'T open with the gun barrel!! We're puzzled, we're bothered, what's happening?!? Black and white?!? Have they abandoned everything in this reboot?Nope. It a pleasingly clever bit, we simultaneously get the "origin" of Bond's promotion to Double-O and the "origin" of the gun barrel!!! And not only does it work, it works fantastically...not only do we see the birth of Bond the sneaky assassin in the scene with Dryden, but we get to see Bond the hard-assed sonuvabitch in the bathroom fight with Dryden's contact. It's the most brutal fight in the series since the train car fight in From Russia With Love, and the inter cutting between the sedate conversation with Dryden and the bathroom fight is a cunning way to to introduce us to the "new" Bond.
As we go into the opening credits sequence, let's applaud Daniel Kleinman's originality. Aside from his sequence for Tomorrow Never Dies, which I thought was trite and uninspired, his work for the series has been exciting and original, avoiding repeating himself while making the credit sequence relevant to the film's themes (something Maurice Binder didn't always manage to do, especially towards the end). The playing card motif is based on the cover art to the British first edition of Fleming's novel, and follows the movie's mandate of being original.
As for Chris Cornell's song, "You Know My Name," well, I wanted to not like it. I've never been a big fan of his; I wasn't pleased with interviews wherein he practically boasted about not using the phrase "Casino Royale" in the song, joining Rita Coolidge's "All- Time High" on the chicken list; and his not allowing the song to appear on the soundtrack album is one of the biggest egotistical dick moves in the history of the world (Cornell's explanation: "It was a decision of mine not to have it on the film soundtrack. I wanted it to be mine.")
But damned if it isn't a good song for this movie, that grows on me more each time I hear it. Lyrically, it does a good job of setting up the movie's themes. Musically, it's hard-driving and exciting...and it's used very well throughout David Arnold's score (personally, I think it's his best yet...just listen to how he oh so subtly weaves in bars of Monty Norman's theme as the film goes along, until it's finally 'unveiled" at the end). Yes, it's different...but different is the name of the game for this movie. So, despite my misgivings, I really like the song. But, and let me re-emphasize here: not letting it on the soundtrack album=giant dickweed.
The movie's pretty recent for all of us, so I won't give a detailed synopsis, but there are a few things I want to focus on. The first is the casual globe-trotting. In the past, especially later on, Bond movies made a big deal out of there locations, practically jumping up and down screaming "look where we are!" Refreshingly, CR06 plays it a lot more casually. In the first ten minutes, we're in Prague (and deleted footage from the teaser establishes that Bond's bathroom fight was in Pakistan), Uganda, and Madagascar, and the movie just tosses it off without broad establishing shots or enthusiastic shots of local tourist attractions. It takes the globe-trotting more for granted, which in a way makes it all the more realistic and believable for the audience. It gives Bond's world a more "lived-in" feeling, that it's not a big deal for him to be jetting to several different continents and casinos in the space of a few days. And it emphasizes that it's the action, not the sight-seeing, that's the most important part. It's a preferable approach, I think, to the past couple of Brosnan films, where they practically were doing cartwheels to advertise that they were in places uglier than a 1970's Doctor Who quarry.
The next thing to talk about is what they give us in the teaser and the first huge set piece: real live stunts. After all of the hullabaloo and outcry about the over-reliance on CGI and the lack of human stunts in DAD, the producers did an amazing thing: they listened. Gloriosky, how they listened! Start to finish, top to bottom, CR06 is crammed to the gills with stunt work. Not just everyday, humdrum stuntwork. No, they rose to the challenge and gave us some of the best, most-exciting, wonderfully-filmed stunts in the series history. They turned it up to 11, and it pays off tremendously. Just take a look at a few of these:
No computer para-glacier surfing, just good old fashioned real people doing ridiculously dangerous things on film to amuse and awe us. Thank you, Eon. All is forgiven.Just as important is how they approach "Bond Year 1." It truly was a movie of watching James Bond mature into his role as 007. He's truly a terminator from the beginning...despite all Mollaka's parkour skills, Bond is able to keep up with him, albeit in a less graceful way. He's relentless in his pursuit of the Miami bomber. But he's not living up to his duties yet, is he? His assignment to bring in the Mollaka is botched (not his fault), but he overreacts by killing the man and causing an international incident. Blowing up Carlos with his own device was amusing, but he could have just easily thrown the bomb away and captured the man alive, gaining valuable intel. After he goes bust at the poker game, he's ready to kill LeChiffre until Leiter stops him. It turns out that M was right...he couldn't see the big picture.
Not that Bond was entirely just a blunt instrument. He showed a lot of wit in his ability to keep up with Mollaka. When the Skyfleet bombing is thwarted, LeChiffre declares that someone must have talked, when it fact it was entirely good old-fashioned detective work by Bond that led him there (Bond? Following leads and clues? When was the last time that happened?). He's innovative and quick, able to improvise on the fly--the salt shaker ipecac he improvised after being poisoned, shooting out the air balloons in the Venice building, figuring out what "ELLIPSIS" meant, tracking down M's home and breaking in...
But as smart and resourceful as he was, lethal violence was his usually his first reaction (although note the care he uses to not kill any of the guards in the Nambutu embassy). But by the end, instead of killing Mr. White, he merely captures him. And that's when we get the "Bond...James Bond" and the Monty Norman music. Because, up until that moment, he hadn't truly been 007, but a blunt instrument with a licence to kill.
We also see Bond learning how to be 007 in other ways, as well. As clever and as dangerous as he is, he doesn't know to dress himself for the high society he'll be moving in--Vesper has to teach him that. He doesn't know how he takes his martinis. He's the dangerous man, not from money, who has to mingle with the elite to do his job, but he's not comfortable doing so yet. The attitude that Sean Connery brought to Bond--that the tuxedo was just a costume he wore, but was still the predator underneath it--is where Craig's Bond will be in a few years...but he's not quite there yet.
All of which would be meaningless if Daniel Craig weren't up to the task. And he knocks the ball out of the park. Here's how I can best sum up my reaction to his performance: regular readers know I've always felt the OHMSS would be the perfect movie if we could go in and digitally replace George Lazenby with Sean Connery. Well, I now think it would be even better (for that movie, at least) if we used Craig instead of Connery. That's not a knock at Sir Sean...but he was never called upon to give the kind of emotional context to one his Bond performances as Craig was here. And so in my head I can see Craig, the hard-bitten love 'em and leave 'em spy whose heart was turned to stone by Vesper's betrayal, have that heart thawed by Tracy, only to lose her. (of course, had it been Craig, we can assume that the intro to Diamonds Are Forever would have been a lot more intense, and Tracy's murder not completely forgotten afterward...different times)And although he's not burdened by the quips and puns of his predecessors, Craig also turns in a subtly humorous performance (with the help of the writers and director, obviously), a wry style of understatement and facial expression that conveys lots of quiet whimsy. Just watch the sly smile he gives when Carlos explodes--the smallest of facial expressions, yet it drew a huge laugh from the audience. And yet the broadest of the jokes--"Everyone's going to know you died scratching my balls" while in agonizing pain--is equally well done.
I know I shouldn't get overly enthusiastic--it's only one film, so far--but Craig completely erased everyone's doubts and owned the role from his first scene, digging deeply and not being afraid to give us a Bond who's not perfect yet, but is still struggling to come to grips with his new life. Plus, I'm told the ladies like the way he fills out a pair of swim trunks...
Much of the credit obviously goes to the script. I wasn't particularly complimentary to Purvis and Wade for their work on TWINE and DAD. But I don't want to fall into the trap of giving all of the credit to Paul Haggis, despite his credentials, as he's said publicly that his main contribution was rewriting the climax. Whoever is responsible, the dialogue sparkles and shines, especially between Vesper and James, without relying on terrible puns to push things along. And in contrast to the way that TWINE and DAD half-heartedly attempted to changes things up, but ultimately lacked the courage of their convictions and bailed out, CR06 never wavers in its commitment to give us a serious Bond Year One. The additions to the book are mostly character building moments for Bond and LeChiffre, and some thrilling action pieces, all well handled with none of the absurd tonal shifts of the previous two movies. A wonderfully solid writing job.
And let me go on the record right now: Martin Campbell can direct a Bond movie any goddamned time he wants to. With CR06 and Goldeneye to his credit, Campbell rivals Terrance Young as a Bond director in my book. Maybe he's only really good with an actor's first Bond movie, as he keeps declining offers to come back. But he's taken what on paper are two very different Bond movies and gotten right to the heart of them. But there are similarities: in GE he was given a movie about Bond at middle age, examining what the hell all the martinis and women meant to a man who should be jaded from having his life constantly on the line. In CR06, he gets a baby Bond, learning how to be a Double-O in the first place. In both cases, he has a firm vision of what he wants the movie to be, and guides us along confidently.
And the action scenes--oh, lordy, how wonderful. Despite the rapid action and quick cutting, you're never at a loss for what's going on, never confused as to how we got from point A to point B. Visceral, tough, thrilling--this movie quickens your pulse even when you know what's going to happen.
Which isn't to slight him in non-action scenes. Any scene with Vesper sparkles, and their shower scene is one of the most touching things in the entire series. In a movie with such highly-charged action scenes, there's a real danger that things will flag in between, but Campbell never lets our attention waver, making the poker scenes just as intense as the parkour, the conversations as riveting as the sinking buildings. Please, Martin Campbell--come back to us and give us Bond movies!!
Eva Green makes for a compelling Vesper Lynd. (Although I will say that her accent continues to bug me to this day--at times her English is so stiff, and accent so distractingly stilted, you almost wish that they had just found a way to make her character French...only at times, though). To make the part compelling, you have to believe that Vesper is intelligent, vulnerable beneath her haughty facade, and capable of both betraying Bond and killing herself because she loves him. Green pulls it off ably, creating a deep portrait of the woman Bond will come to love. Note that she doesn't even appear until one hour into the movie--yet the audience knows more about her, and feels a deeper connection to her, than any recent Bond woman. Green takes the strong script and executes her role amazingly well. Her repartee with Bond, the subtle signs of her guilt that only become apparent upon repeat viewings, and the depth of her feeling for James, come through beautifully. It's obvious why she's had such an impact on Bond's life, and why she is a top-tier Bond girl.
A special Felix Leiter shout out to Jeffrey Wright. Yes, it's once again a small role. But it's a refreshingly realistic Leiter--he's keenly aware of Bond's strength (cards) versus his own (money), and is willing to do the smart thing and stake Bond when the British government won't. For once, Leiter isn't there just as a sidekick or support staff for 007, but an agent with his own agenda that just happens to coincide with Bond's. Well played, "brother from Langley." Stay away from sharks, buddy.
Judi Dench's return as M can cause some consternation if you worry too much about whether or not this is a full reboot or just a Year One. After all, in Goldeneye we saw her introduction, and she replaced a previous M, and Bond had never worked for her before, so how could she have been Bond's first boss?? But just as with the "how come Bond and Blofeld don't recognize each other in OHMSS?" problem, I choose to ignore it. No solution makes good sense, so why not just relax and enjoy Dench's mastery of the role? She's on the top of her game here, balancing her anger at Bond with her trying to mold him into the agent she needs, giving him a long leash because she knows he's going to keep digging. Plus, we get our first shots of her home, her sleeping husband, and the first inklings of her real name (which apparently she's not terribly fond of...Mildred? Mulva?). I don't care what meta-fiction might have to be involved, but for heaven's sake keep Dench as M, no matter who is Bond or when the movie is set.The movie is not 100% perfect...but many of those imperfections stem from following the structure of the book. Some have complained of the early death of LeChiffre and the "meandering" of the movie's last half hour. But that is exactly how the book does it! In the novel, Bond and Vesper cavort around Europe, but their relationship gradually breaks down over her guilt at having been the traitor (and her fear that SMERSH will catch up to her and kill James, too), and she kills herself with sleeping pills and leaves a tearful suicide note. Perhaps, in trying to mirror the novel so closely, they might have made a cinematic mistake. For those who weren't familiar with the novel, that 20 minutes of bumming around Europe being in love can feel anti-climactic and wandering, up until the phone call from M asking where the money is gives us a jolt of adrenaline. It's a segment that gives us a lot of appreciated character moments, yet feels very unlike a James Bond movie the way it unfolds, without the narrative drive the audience has come to expect, both from prior Bond movies and CR itself up to that point. I don't have any kind of answer here--I don't mind it, but I can understand why some people regard the longueur as a time to take a bathroom break. Could they have done it differently? Should they have? Were they too focused on being faithful to the novel?
This same fidelity to the novel also hurts Mads Mikkelson's presence as the villain. I'm not criticizing his performance at all--he's more than menacing enough, thinking his arrogant intelligence is enough to solve all his problems as things go to hell around him. Yet like in the book, LeChiffre doesn't actually have a lot to do. He doesn't really have any henchmen, and so other than his silent girlfriend, unless he's with Bond, he doesn't have anybody to bounce off of. The physical traits they give him--the asthma, the "weeping blood"--are just gimmicks glued onto the character to make him seem more Fleminesque, in lieu of spending time giving him more personality or background. We end up knowing far less about LeChiffre than we do Vesper. Take away the poker games and the torture scene, and there's really not much there. Throw in the fact that he dies 3/4 of the way through the film (and not even at Bonds' hands!), and we seem to have another situation where perhaps fidelity to the novel doesn't work as well as it might cinematically. Perhaps the writers should have deviated from the book a bit more in order to make LeChiffre a better character...Those are minor quibbles, though. Eon completely stunned the world by, seemingly out of nowhere, producing one of the best James Bond movies ever. After a post-DAD break filled with controversy and unrest, after a nearly complete re-imagining of the series, Casino Royale (2006) has by sheer audaciousness and pluck muscled its way to near the top of the Bond pantheon. Did any of us expect that to happen?
Just because you've done something, doesn't mean you've got to keep doing it. Just because the first 20 Bond films followed a pattern, doesn't mean Eon had to keep following that pattern. That would have been the safe thing...but to the credit of everyone involved, they not only went back to Bond's roots, but they replowed and replanted the whole damned field. It's too early to know what the result will be--is this a one time aberration, or a new trend? A triumphant debut, or what we'll come to regard in 10 years as a false step? But for now (and at least for another week), I can confidently declare that Casino Royale (2006) is one hell of a movie. I guess the third time really was a charm.
I'm at the end of my journey through the Bonds. But we're not done yet. There will be posts aplenty over the next week, as I try to pass the time until midnight Thursday with lists, discussions of odd topics I hadn't gotten to yet, and more Cletus! And of course, QoS will undoubtedly give me a lot to write about, too. And then we can begin the countdown to The Hildebrandt Rarity (hey, don't laugh...who ever thought Eon would actually use Quantum of Solace as a title?!?).
SNELL'S RANDOM NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS:
**We'll have a long talk this weekend about the poker in CR06. There are several questionable things there...
**Interestingly enough, Eon finally got the rights to Casino Royale thanks to a studio trade--MGM gave Sony the rights to do Spider-Man movies, and Sony in return gave MGM the CR rights. Of course, by the time they got around to making CR, Sony had purchased MGM, so it was something of a moot point...
**One aspect of early Bond's spy abilities is that he is COMPLETELY TERRIBLE at surreptitiously following someone. In the deleted scene from the trailer, Dryden's contact sees Bond following him, which results in the bathroom fight. Bond gets made in Madagascar, but that's his partners fault...we'll give him a pass. But Dimitrios catches Bond tailing him in Miami; Carlos the bomber sees Bond trailing him at the airport; the Ugandans nail him at the hotel; and Gettler catches Bond spying on Vesper in Venice. All of these serve to make Bond's life much harder. Really, you'd think that before promoting him to Double-O, M would make sure that he had passed Surveillance 101 (or that the writers wouldn't keep using the same plot device over and over to advance the action...)
**Listen to Dryden talk all about Double-O's, and advice Bond that the second kill is easier. Does he know from experience? Was Dryden a former Double-O, now a corrupt station chief?
**Should LeChiffre really be making his investment call in the open?? Where not only the Ugandans, but Mr. White might overhear? Geez, he's not even trying to conceal the phone call...
**Aah, fictional countries again. Nambutu...the question is, why did Mollaka flee to that embassy? Was he a Nambutuan? Or was he working with their government in some of his terrorist activities?**How, exactly, does the press leap to the assumption that Bond was a British agent? He never says a word the entire time to anybody in the embassy, or does anything that might betray his identity...why not assume he's American, or Russian? Did the Madagascar authorities somehow manage to track this info down? Did somebody in MI-6 leak it?
**Speaking of which, whatever happened to Bond's oafish partner on this mission, Carter? He's never mentioned again after blowing things. Was he captured, and then dropped the dime on Bond?**Well, at least we now know why Bond never fathered any bastards during all those liaisons over the years--crushed gonads!!
**I asked this same question in TWINE...why is Vesper making a physical withdrawal from the bank, as opposed to a wire transfer, such as the one that put the money into her account to begin with? Just to give us a briefcase MacGuffin, I guess...**If that's someone from the Treasury asking M to call Bond about why the money hasn't been transferred yet, why aren't they also calling Vesper, since she actually worked for the Treasury?? Then again, maybe they did and she just never returned the calls...
**So Skyfleet is going to do the big public unveiling of their new jetliner in the middle of the night??
**Vesper may be at the treasury, but she seems a little iffy on certain mathematical concepts: "So you're telling me it's a matter of probability and odds...I was worried there was some chance involved." Uh, Vesper dear...that's sort of the definition of chance...
**Why all the muckity muck about planting the tracker/bug in LeChiffre's inhaler, when all it ever did was to show Bond what floor LeChiffre was staying on? Really, you need a gadget for that??
**I can't finish without mentioning Solange...mmmm, pretty lady.
**Did M know about Bond's deal to give LeChiffre to the Americans? Obviously, it never came about, but would she have approved of such freelancing? Would she have applauded it as a necessary improvisation under the circumstances?? Or would she have ripped into Bond for giving away an asset to the Americans??**So, just for the record...we know MI-6 and the CIA had infiltrated the game. Who else was the? Japanese intelligence? The Mossad?
**Bond Score: 2. Solange and Vesper. Cumulative Bond Score...hmm, does this count anymore? If it's really a reboot, maybe not...but since so far they're not remaking any of the older movies, I say they still count for Bond Score purposes...so Cumulative Bond Score: 57.
And, as always
Tune in next week for "5 minutes later..." Damn it, the anticipation is killing me!!
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