Film Friday: SPECTRE (2015)

I have mixed feelings about this film. On the one hand, Daniel Craig’s Bond films continue by and large to be better than anything since Sean Connery’s films. On the other hand, there was a lot I disliked about this film and my first reaction is to rank it as the worst of the Craig films. In particular, this film was confused, pointlessly-complex, and committed many of the sins which the Craig years have been about undoing. It also represents a seriously wasted opportunity.

Spoiler Alert: There Are Important Spoilers Herein

Plot

The biggest weakness of this film is the plot. The plot is needlessly complex and the writers seemed to get lost in it. What’s more, important chunks of the complexity are nonsense.

The story begins with Bond in Mexico City where he sets out to kill a man. In the process, he learns of another man who has a ring with an octopus on it. Bond returns to Britain, where we learn that he did all of this against orders and without the knowledge of MI-6. We also learn that MI-6 is being absorbed by MI-5, and MI-5’s boss wants to eliminate the 00 program.

Bond is ordered to stay in London, but he’s running his own mission this time. It turns out that he has been given instructions by Judi-Dench M in a deathbed video to kill a man, attend his funeral and then figure it out from there. So Bond escapes to Italy and attends the funeral. This is where the writing problems begin to appear. Watch for a trend: Bond somehow finds out where the private funeral will be held. Despite the funeral being a who’s who of villains, Bond somehow gets into the funeral and meets the widow. Bond somehow knows they plan to kill her. He somehow figures out when she will return home and arrives just in time to kill the killers who have come to get her. She somehow knows where her dead husband’s associates will meet to discuss how to replace him. Bond goes there and somehow gets through the door and attends a massive SPECTRE meeting. He then gets exposed and he somehow escapes because only one guy bothers to chase him.

Now, don’t get me wrong. These scenes are beautifully shot and they’re interesting and tense. The supercar chase scene is a tad long, but it’s broken up by Bond being on the phone throughout. And if you like, you can imagine all kinds of explanations for each of the somehow’s above. But the fact remains that none of this is explained and it all seems a tad flimsy. And it gets worse from there as this is just the beginning.

From here, Bond will meet a man who is a hermit but who somehow knows everything about SPECTRE but only gives Bond a one word clue, which Bond will somehow use to find a secret daughter, whom he must rescue. She will use that clue to lead him to a hotel in Africa where Bond somehow finds a hidden room which tells him how to end the movie at a volcano lair (Bond still needs to resolve a brutally obvious subplot which is so packed with somehow’s that it makes you wonder if they did more than give this a cursory thought before including it in the film).

Again, let me say that Sam Mendes is a director with an amazing eye for imagery. This film is visually beautiful if not stunning. Everything about it is perfectly handled from a visual point of view. The effects are great. Mendes mixes in some wonderful touches, like old cars and cool little homages to the Connery years, and most of the scenes are moody and interesting. The problem remains, however, that the story surges from visual to visual without ever bothering to fill in the plot points to explain how Bond got to where he got.

Equally problematic, the main villain, Blofeld, is a bore, and the plot involving Blofeld proves to be a dead-end to the plot. It’s almost like the writer figured that just introducing the character was enough for the film and didn’t think of what else to do. At the same time, the subplot has a much better villain. He’s more developed and better acted. When he’s on screen, the film just feels tense (when Blofeld is on the screen, the film feels stopped). Unfortunately, the writers all but ignore the subplot and what it could add to this film. And then when they do focus on it, what they do is horribly obvious and rushed. The subplot is where this film really should have gone.

Bond

Daniel Craig returns as Bond and there is a lot of talk that this may be his last Bond film. While I’ve felt that he’s been an amazing Bond, I am honestly ready for him to leave. This movie, even more than the last, kept projecting the idea that Bond hated his job and wanted to quit... something Craig has paralleled about the role in interviews. So while Craig was again smooth, suave and cold-blooded, and he therefore fit the role perfectly, he also came across as tired and perhaps a little indifferent to the film throughout.

The Villain (Spoilers)

This film had multiple villains. On the one hand, you had the main villain, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, played by Christopher Waltz. With him, you had Dave Bautista as Mr. Hinx, a kind of cross between Donald Grant in From Russia With Love and Oddjob in Goldfinger. And then there’s C.

Hinx is an assassin who fights Bond a couple times. The only “character” moment comes when he applies for the job of assassin at the SPECTRE meeting. Otherwise, he’s just walking muscle.

Blofeld is the head of SPECTRE. And when I heard that Waltz would play him, I was excited. Unfortunately, he’s a waste. His character is intensely boring as he drones on and on about things that sound kind of like a life philosophy but really are just words strung together. Even worse, this film commits the cardinal sin of making Blofeld a sort-of relative of Bond’s. He even claims to have sent all the villains Bond has been facing in the Craig movies after him and of ordering the deaths of everyone who has died in Bond’s life. In other words, forget everything you thought you knew about the prior films or Bond’s character because this ill-defined impossible character has manipulated every moment to punish Bond because his own father loved Bond more than him. Ug.

First of all, the idea that one person could cause all the unrelated events in the prior films, each of which involved unique motivations and plenty of luck, is ludicrous... so Blofeld somehow got M to piss off Silva before Bond was even an agent just so Silva would one day go after Bond? Yeah, right. Secondly, the idea that the world is essentially divided between one superspy and his sort-of supervillain brother is comic book thinking, and it takes it too far away from reality. Third, how can someone so obsessed form an organization like SPECTRE? It’s nonsense.

The most interesting villain is Andrew Scott as Max Denbigh or “C”. He runs MI-5 and he’s entered into a deal with SPECTRE to build a surveillance empire on behalf of the British government all in the name of stopping terrorism. What makes him interesting is that it’s easy to see him as a real creature haunting governments everywhere. He thinks he’s the good guy because he’s obsessed with bringing order to our chaotic world and he genuinely thinks that causing a few deaths and doing a dirty deal is worth the benefits the world will get. He can’t even see the danger of working with someone like Blofeld. Unfortunately, his character gets badly neglected by the film in favor of Blofeld, so we don’t see him much and we learn even less about him. What’s more, what we do see points so obviously to him being a villain that there’s no mystery to this. This is a lost opportunity. This would have been a better film if SPECTRE had been a red herring and C was the main villain, or if C was not a villain and he was being framed by SPECTRE. Instead, he’s just there to give M and Moneypenny something to do in the film.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

I don’t want to make it sound like I hated this film. I didn’t. I thought it was a decent movie and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot more than most of the Bond films after the Connery years. It was beautiful and had the travelogue film these films need. The pacing was excellent and the story offered enough to hold your interest. The ‘cool’ moments were indeed cool. The humor was funny. The action was tense. Craig did his usual great job with the role. The Bond girls were pretty, especially Monica Bellucci. Andrew Scott was creepy and believable. It was excellent escapism and could be the best “mindless action film” in the series.

Where this film disappointed me was that the film never bothered to explain so much of what happens except by saying, “Hey, he’s Bond... just accept it.” I also felt that Blofeld was a waste and his relationship with Bond was a horrible idea to inject, and was done so just to add a punch which his character was lacking in the story. It also bothered me to a degree that what made the Craig films so different was the return to basics, i.e. there were no supercars chases, no impossible stunts, no buildings blowing up, no nuclear-sized explosions, no larger-than-life villains, and no volcano lairs, but this film brought all of that back into the series. It was a retreat to fantasy.

So what I would say about this film is that it proved to be a genuinely missed opportunity. If they had kept more focus on Bond the investigator, had eliminated Blofeld and focused on the subplot, and bothered to connect a few more dots, this could have been the best film ever. But they didn’t. Ultimately, I would rank this as the worst film of the Craig era as a Bond film, even as it probably gets the highest marks in the series as a mindless action film.

Thoughts?

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Bond-arama: No. 004 Casino Royale (2006)

Casino Royale is the first official “reboot” of the James Bond franchise, though unofficially there were several prior reboots. This time, they took the franchise is a much darker, smaller and more realistic direction. This is not the Bond of volcano lairs and stolen nuclear weapons, this is the Bond who fights modern terrorists. With a new Bond and a new style, they produced what is arguable one of the best Bond films ever. And if it weren’t for the historical advantage of the three films above it (and some problems near the end), this one could arguably rate at or near the top. As it is, it sits at No. 004 of 0023.

Plot Quality: Casino Royale has a unique plot. For one thing, this is really the story of the villain more than it is the story of Bond. For another, this is the “smallest” Bond film ever as most of it takes place in a casino. There are action scenes attached to it, but the driving force is the drama of the card game. There is nothing else like this in the series.

Casino Royale begins with Bond chasing down an explosives maker in Africa named Mollaka. Bond has just been promoted to double-O status and his job is to monitor and capture Mollaka, but he ends up killing him by nearly blowing up an embassy. M is furious and wants Bond brought in for a debriefing, but Bond ignores her and follows the clues he found to the Bahamas, where he finds Alex Dimitrios, an associate of a banker named Le Chiffre. Bond kills Dimitrios and follows his henchman Carlos to Miami International Airport, where he discovers that Carlos intends to explode a prototype jetliner. Bond stops Carlos by planting the bomb on Carlo’s body. Carlos then blows himself up by mistake.

With Bond having foiled Carlos, Le Chiffre finds himself in a world of trouble. He has taken his terrorist clients’ money and used it to short-sell the company who makes the jetliner. When the jet does not explode, the stock price does not fall and Le Chiffre loses his investment. He must now raise one hundred million dollars before his clients kill him for losing their money. To do this, he arranges a high stakes poker game in the Casino Royale in Montenegro.

MI-6 enters Bond into the tournament in the hopes of defeating Le Chiffre. If they can defeat him, then they can blackmail him into spying on his clients for them. Aiding Bond in this are a British Treasury agent, Vesper Lynd, whose role is to protect the $10 million Bond needs to buy his way into the tournament, and René Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini), a local MI-6 contact.

As the game unfolds, we see a rashness in Bond that proves to be his biggest weakness. Le Chiffre exploits this and soon Bond is wiped out. Vesper then refused to give him the rest of the money he needs to keep playing. At that point, we discover that another one of the players is Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright). He still has money but isn’t a very good player, so he agrees to sponsor Bond to keep him playing in exchange for Bond letting the CIA have Le Chiffre. Bond agrees and eventually beats Le Chiffre.

Soon thereafter, Le Chiffre abducts Vesper and Bond pursues him. But this is a trap and Bond is captured. Bond is then tortured for the codes to the Swiss bank account into which the money has been deposited. The torture, however, is interrupted when Le Chiffre’s superior, Mr. White, arrives and kills Le Chiffre.

Bond awakens in a hospital and has Mathis arrested for being a double agent. Then he admits to Vesper that he loves her and he plans to resign from MI-6 to be with her. They go to Venice, where Bond learns that Vesper never deposited the Treasury’s money. He chases her and is attacked by Mr. White and his henchmen. In the ensuing fight, the house they are in collapses into the water over which it is built and Vesper dies. The film ends with Bond shooting Mr. White in the leg and taking him in for interrogation.

This film does a lot really well. First, it’s beautifully shot and the sets and scenery are fantastic. One mistake they do make, however, is in going for extreme close-ups and shaky cam action pieces – they do some amazing stunts, but you never get to see them because the director shoots them as close-ups. The travelogue feel is definitely back. So is the sense of class or opulence we like in Bond as everyone is well-dressed and he only goes to luxurious places... no smelly tourists pushing $1 bets in these casinos.

The plot is fast and strong and intense too. It twists and turns throughout. The writing is good too and the dialog is strong. The film is also strewn with interesting moments where we see the Bond elements reassembled. We see him get the Aston Martin. He meets Felix for the first time. We see him make his first vodka martini. We hear his first use of “Bond, James Bond.” The relationships of the characters are interesting too. All told, this is an excellent film that is well put together on a great many levels. It could almost be the best in the series.

That said, there are some flaws. For example, the device of M being upset that Bond was promoted too soon grates, seeing as how Craig is already rather old looking. The big problem, however, is the ending. For one thing, the timing simply doesn’t work. The CIA failing to pick up Le Chiffre immediately and no one bothering to notice that Vesper hasn’t deposited the money with the government for what should be days don’t work. Mr. White coming in to save Bond at the critical moment isn’t very credible either. Indeed, the most likely realistic result of that scene is that White would have shot Bond and then tortured Le Chiffre. It is also hard to believe that aged, experience, cold-blooded Mr. Bond would chuck his job for Vesper.

Despite these flaws, this is a stellar film, but it would have been better with the last 15 minutes lopped off. They don’t fit the rest of the very tight script – they feel like someone felt forced to impose a “big ending” on a strong, personal film.

Bond Quality: This was Daniel Craig’s first outing as Bond and a lot of people thought he wouldn’t be up to the task. Craig wasn’t exactly internationally known and he doesn’t come across as suave. He’s short too, and people didn’t like that he was blond. A great many people seemed to want Clive Owen instead. Craig, however, proved them all wrong. From the very first frame of the film, he grabs the role and he never lets it go. And by the time the movie was over, people were calling him the best Bond since Connery.

What Craig brings to this role which the others didn’t is a sense of genuine menace and relentlessness. When Craig’s Bond targets you, there is no escape. He’s like the Terminator. Yet, at the same time, he’s so tightly wound that you think he’s always ready to explode even as he comes across as the most cold-blooded Bond ever. Connery had flashes of this cold-bloodedness, particularly in Dr. No, but Craig lives it in every scene. Apart from this, Craig does lack the charm Connery had, but the writers help hide that by matching him with equally cold women, which limits the sex in his films, and makes his male-female relationships almost combative.

The Bond Girl: The Bond girl here is Eva Green, who plays Vesper Lynd. Frankly, she’s the weak spot in this film. Yes, the story is largely about the love-hate relationship between these two, but there just isn’t enough passion between them to make it work. Still, Green is adequate and she’s not the focus of the film, apart from the last 15 minutes.

The real relationship(s) Bond has in this film are with men: Mathis and Leiter. Both are much closer relationships than the one he has with Vesper. In fact, it is the relationship between Bond and Mathis which drives the film and the relationship between Bond and Leiter that gives the film its second act. I would measure the quality of these relationships as being on a par with those in the Ocean’s franchise starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Wright and Bond and Giannini and Bond are simply compelling together. And they also bring a welcome heist feel to the film.

Villain Quality: Casino Royale has a fascinating villain. He is Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), a man whose primary villainy is that he launders money for terrorists. In other words, he makes it possible for them to use their ill-gotten funds to fund their activities. But there is more to Le Chiffre. Le Chiffre has been using his clients’ funds to gamble. Well, gamble is an odd word. What he’s done is take his clients’ money and use it to short the stock of the company that makes the Skyfleet airliner, a prototype plane being flown out of Miami. His plan is to have a henchman (Carlos) blow up the prototype, which will tank their stock and make him super wealthy when the stock price falls.

Things go wrong for Le Chiffre when Bond traces a terrorist to Carlos and follows Carlos to Miami. Once there, Bond saves the plane, preventing the stock price from falling and causing Le Chiffre’s bet to become worthless. Le Chiffre has lost his clients’ money and they will not be happy about this. In the hopes of saving his butt, Le Chiffre sets up a high-stakes poker game at the Casino Royale in Montenegro. The game has a $10 million buy in. MI-6 sees this as an opportunity to force Le Chiffre to work for them. They enter Bond in the tournament with the idea being that if Bond can win, then Le Chiffre won’t have the money he needs. To avoid being killed by his angry clients, Le Chiffre will then agree to spy for MI-6 if they agree to cover what he owes to his terrorist clients. That's "the scheme." No prior Bond film has had a scheme like this, where the villain's life is at stake.

This is all very cool and it’s different from any prior James Bond villain. What they’ve done here is take what would normally be the villain’s backstory, i.e. the background told to Bond by M as M briefs him about the mission, and they’ve made that the plot. This is an interesting choice which makes Le Chiffre perhaps the most interesting villain ever in a Bond film because you are actually watching his story rather than Bond’s story.

It also helps that Mikkelsen is fantastically creepy in the role, and he manages to walk the line between being seen as a genuine threat to Bond while being seen as terrified of the killers who want their money back from him. He is no ordinary banker. All of this makes him a fascinating and compelling villain, even if his “scheme” would normally be considered far too small to sustain a Bond film. What seems to help here in particular, is the sense that Le Chiffre is just a front for something much bigger.

All of this adds up to an excellent Bond film. Indeed, this could well be the best in the series, though I think at this point, we are largely in the “matter of personal taste” realm. And if it weren’t for the tradition with which the other films have been steeped and a bit of a strange left turn in the final fifteen minutes, this could easily be at or near the top. So in the future, I could see this entering the discussion of “best Bond,” but right now it still sits at No. 004 of 0023.

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Bond-arama: No. 0010 Skyfall (2012)

Skyfall is essentially a re-tread of Goldeneye which leans heavily on other popular films. It is alternately brilliant and mind-numbingly stupid. And while the public loves it right now, that will fade because this one doesn’t feel much like a Bond film. For now, it sits at No. 0010 of 0023.

Plot Quality: To understand Skyfall, we need to break it into three parts. The first part is an amazing Bond film. It begins with one of the best chase scenes ever in a Bond film as Bond chases a suspect who has stolen a hard drive containing the names of every western agent imbedded with terrorist organizations around the world. The chase opens with Bond trying to decide if he should save the life of a fellow agent or finish the mission; the mission wins. He jumps into a car driven by fellow agent Eve, who struggles to stop the bad guy. Bond casually reaches over, grabs the wheel, and yanks the car into the bad guy, causing the bad guy to crash. It’s a brilliant moment. The bad guy gets out and sprays everyone with bullets until he can get onto a motorcycle and escape. Bond grabs another motorcycle and they engage in a rooftop chase through Istanbul until they end up on top of a train, where Bond and the suspect engage in hand-to-hand combat. That’s when Eve shoots Bond by mistake. This is an amazing chase. I can’t talk highly enough about it.

With Bond apparently dead, M gets grilled about losing the list. As she returns to the office, the office explodes in a terrorist attack. Someone hacked into MI-6's computer to cause this. Bond returns and is sent after the man who stole the list. He will be in Shanghai. Before Bond goes, we meet the new Q, who is an arrogant 20-something computer nerd. In Shanghai, Bond follows the killer to a high-rise building where he performs an assassination. Bond watches him perform the assassination and then tries to capture the man to question him, but kills him instead. Bond follows the only lead he has left, which is the woman who helped stage the assassination. She leads Bond to the villain, Raoul Silva, a former British agent in Hong Kong. Silva is a deranged killer who kills the woman and seems to want to enlist Bond to join him, but Bond captures him instead. The cinematography in China is perhaps the best of any film I’ve ever seen, not just a Bond film.

Up to this point, the film has been an excellent Bond film with one small complaint. Throughout this portion of the film, there is a steady theme of “you’re too old.” Seeing as how this is Bond’s first mission after the Casino Royale/Quantum of Solace reboot, this feels really misplaced. Ultimately though, Bond ends up proving himself more necessary than ever and the film proves the doubters wrong, so this isn’t a huge sticking point.

Now we come to the second part of the film. This lasts about twenty minutes and it’s mind-numbingly stupid. Essentially, these twenty minutes are The Dark Knight without the capes. First, they copy Silence of the Lambs by putting Silva into a glass cage. Silva reveals that he was M’s best agent in Hong Kong but M surrendered him to the Chinese after he hacked their computers. They tortured him and he tried to kill himself with a cyanide capsule that didn’t kill him, but instead ate away the bones in his jaw (like Harvey Dent in Dark Knight). He is crazy and wants to get even with M. Silva is essentially Heath Ledger’s Joker without the face paint.

Then Silva escapes... and things get really stupid. He escapes because Q connected Silva’s computer to theirs and Silva’s hacking program opened the doors. Somehow, Silva manages to kill armed guards who would have had plenty of time to shoot him from across the room when the doors started opening. Then his henchmen appear with impossible precision at various rendezvous points to give him things he needs (like a cop uniform). Batman Bond chases him exactly where he needs to be at the precise time so Silva can explode the roof of the sewer above them and cause a subway train to crash down on Bond. Silva and his crew then go try to kill M as she testifies before a committee. Bond stops him, but Silva escapes.

This. Is. Nonsense. There is no way Silva could have known the things he needed to know to pull this off, no way he could have predicted the behavior that took place. How did he know MI-6 would move here after he blew up M’s office? How did he know M would be testifying today? How did he know Bond would follow him to this subway stop and through the precise door and down the tunnel at that precise speed and then shoot at him but only as a warning shot? How did he even know that MI-6 would plug his computer into theirs? The only reason we can accept them doing this is that Q is an arrogant nerd who thinks he can handle anything. But he’s new. Silva would have no way to know that he would be Q right now or that he wouldn’t have followed obvious safety protocols and decrypted Silva’s computer on a standalone station.

Thankfully, the third film begins pretty quickly. The third film is Harry Potter. With Silvamort proving invincible, young Bond decides to take M-bledore to the manor in which he lived before his family was killed up in rural Scotland. Here we will discuss Bond’s childhood, meet a loveable old caretaker, race through a secret maze inside a spooky old mansion, see the graves of Bond’s parents, and dispense knowledge to Bond about the meaning of friendship. Silvamort and his Deatheaters will attack with overwhelming force, but good will prevail and Silvamort will meet his end in a dank marsh after complaining to M-bledore, “You made me.” Arg. This was actually an entertaining bit of filmmaking and would have been an excellent addition to the Taken franchise, but it feels nothing like Bond.

So what you have here is a film that starts as a great Bond film, suddenly goes full-retard, and ends as a completely different movie.

Bond Quality: Craig is solid again as a cold-blooded, efficient killing machine Bond. There are cracks this time, however, and those make this his worst performance of his three films. For one thing, there is a strong vibe of Bond being too old or too tired to continue. Fortunately, this fades as the film progresses. But then we are shown careless Bond.

One of the things that made Craig so great in the first two films was how ruthlessly efficient he was. He never wasted a step, a bullet or a punch. Here, he burns through his bullets repeatedly and then actually throws away his gun... repeatedly. He almost never hits anything he aims at. The punches he throws seem ineffective. We also get stupid Bond. He never has a plan. He races to Scotland to set up a confrontation with Silva on turf that is familiar to Bond, but never stops to get any weapons. Instead, he just assumes there’s still a gun case he hasn’t seen in 20+ years, a gun case that won’t hold real firepower. These are the kinds of things Craig did not do in the first two films and that makes Bond seem far less than he has been. Still, even playing stupid-off-target Bond, Craig remains better than all but Connery in the role.

The Bond Girl: Was there a Bond girl in this one? Technically, it was probably Judy Dench as M... but we’ll look past that. The Bond girl here is either Naomie Harris as Eve or Bérénice Marlohe as Sévérine. But neither is in the film all that long. Eve shoots Bond by mistake early on in the film and has a non-plot-related surprise at the ending. Sévérine is Silva’s mistress and leads Bond to Silva. The total airtime for both is about 10 minutes. The scene where Bond meets Sévérine is pretty sexy and they have great chemistry, but she’s really just a prop.

Villain Quality: The villain is Javier Bardem as Raoul Silva, a former British agent gone rogue after M surrendered him to the Chinese in exchange for a number of other agents China held. A large number of people have said that Silva is one of the best villains ever in a Bond film. They’re smoking crack.

Silva is basically a copy of Heath Ledger’s Joker with the added suggestion of homosexuality. He copies the Joker both in terms of mentality and even plot by using explosions as distractions and letting himself get captured as part of his plan. This is a problem, however. The Joker worked because he was so random. He was dedicated to chaos without a specific target. That meant anything he did made sense and it made him so dangerous because he wasn’t predictable. Silva, on the other hand, is obsessed with hurting M. The difference is significant because it means that his actions need to make sense in that regard, and they don’t. Why wait all these years to get her? Why not get her in some far less Rube Goldberg way? “I shall wait until she has a list the release of which will embarrass her, then I’ll steal the list and let them capture me so I can escape, so I can go shoot her before Parliament.” Uh, why not cut out all the impossible steps and just go shoot her?

Silva also brings back things that Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace specifically removed from the series. Silva has an island lair. He has armies of killer henchmen. He has no subtlety whatsoever as a villain. He’s insane. He’s also unrealistically powerful. Unlike Green or Le Chiffre, Silva brags about how easy it is to destroy anything he wants. He is clownish Blofeld in a world that is supposed to be realistic. That makes him a poor villain.

Summing this up, the first part of the movie is probably the best Craig has done, and that’s high praise. The second part is crap and belongs down with Die Another Day. The third is a good film, but not a Bond film and doesn’t belong on the list. The public loves this film, having made it the most profitable by far, but I think that the favorable view of this film will slide as the “event feel” passes. Over time, I suspect this will slide below Quantum of Solace and possibly even Goldeneye. For now though, it sits at No. 0010 of 0023.

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Bond-arama: No. 0011 Quantum of Solace (2008)

Quantum of Solace is a much better film than people believe and, over time, I predict it will rise up the rankings. It will eventually be seen as a better movie than Casino Royale. Why? Because this film has a great Bond, great supporting characters, the most believable “larger-than-life” criminal organization in the series and a truly strong story. But for now, the film still suffers from misperception. That’s why it’s only No. 0011 of 0023.

Plot Quality: Quantum of Solace picks up where Casino Royale left off. Bond is being chased through Italian mountain roads. In his trunk is the man he shot at the end of Casino Royale. He is taking the man to an MI-6 safehouse where he will be interrogated. However, the man will escape with the help of M’s bodyguard. Bond kills the bodyguard and learns the man has a contact in Haiti.

Bond goes to Haiti where he discovers that internationally renown environmentalist Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) has hired a man to kill his girlfriend Camille (Olga Kurylenko) and that Greene is connected to the man Bond shot in Casino Royale. Bond saves Camille and trails Greene to Austria. In an excellent bit of spying, Bond discovers that Greene is running, or helping to run, an organization called Quantum. This is a collection of industrialists who use their multinational companies to control countries. Among this group is a bodyguard for an advisor to the British Prime Minister, which suggests the advisor is part of the group. Bond kills him, which causes M to cut off his passport and send people to get him.

Bond, meanwhile, gets Réne Mathis to help him follow Greene to Bolivia. When they arrive in Bolivia, Bond is detained so M can take him back to Britain. Bond, of course, evades detention and goes after Greene. He then discovers that Greene is trying to gain control over all the water in Bolivia by replacing the current government with a military coup who will give him the water rights. Mathis is killed and Bond is blamed. He is now hunted by the British, the Bolivians, and the CIA, who have cut a deal with Greene to turn a blind eye to his activities in exchange for what they believe are oil rights. With the help of Felix Leiter, however, Bond escapes and finds Greene at a desert resort, where he is meeting with coup leader General Medrano.

Having learned that Camille is an agent of Bolivian intelligence and has a personal grudge against Medrano for killing her parents and her sister, Bond and Camille attack the resort and kill the General and his security team. They capture Greene and Bond strands him in the desert to die. In a final scene, Bond catches the lover who betrayed Vesper Lynd, Yusef Kabira, in Russia, completing Casino Royale.

This film is beautifully shot. It has the travelogue feel too. Austria is opulent, the Bolivian desert is desolate, the Italian alps are amazing and even Haiti is compelling. Bond is fantastic as the relentless, cold-blooded killing machine; this film feels like Taken before Taken. Greene is a fantastic villain. Mathis is a compelling and likeable character, as are Camille, M, and Felix Leiter. The plot is very strong, being a focused revenge film combined with a film in which Bond must actually spy. The stunts are realistic. The action is brutal. Some have described this as the most violent Bond film ever, which is possible. The film is clever too. The dialog is sharp. The meeting in Vienna is highly original on an order we haven’t seen since 1970’s films like The Conversation or The French Connection. This is a great film.

So why isn’t it ranked higher? Perception. For one thing, the film was beset by problems. It was made in the middle of a writers’ strike and Craig and the director finished the script themselves. Unfortunately, both Craig and the director then attacked the film because of the problems they had. They are wrong, but it’s hard to shake that kind of reputation once you create it. Also, a lot of people don’t like the way this film continues Casino Royale, a first for Bond films. What I think really bothers people, however, is the lack of an over-the-top ending. A lot of people expect a big, stupid ending on each Bond film and this film doesn’t have that. There are no exploding space stations or blimps crashing into bridges. Instead, the film opts for an ending similar to Taken or Gladiator, with some explosions, but where the character’s drive for revenge is satisfied in a personal and visceral way.

I would also suggest that this is the first “cult” Bond film. In every Bond film before this, everything is perfectly explained. At each phase of the movie, the villain gloatingly brags about his plan as Bond explains the plot to the audience while ostensibly talking to the Bond girl. This film doesn’t do that. For example, we watch Greene grab water rights, but he never lays out the scheme or the implications, i.e. he’s dominating countries. You have to deduce that from the General signing an agreement he rejected only moments before and that Greene can control the CIA and MI-6 and apparently has people directing the British Prime Minister. Greene also never tells you what Quantum is or does. Again, you need to assemble this yourself from the importance of the men Bond identifies in Austria. Things like that will confuse some people, but delight others, and this is the first time a Bond film has done this in a script. I suspect that’s a big part of the problem: the film traffics in ambiguity.

Bond Quality: This is Craig’s second outing as Bond and he’s excellent. The Bond character generally requires a combination of suaveness, cold- bloodedness, and humor. Few Bonds had all three. Craig does lacks the humor, but he makes up for it with a plot that puts the focus entirely on his cold-bloodedness, something he excels at. Indeed, his Bond is a relentless killer who will do whatever he needs to do to complete his mission. This is something we haven’t seen since Connery.

Craig also brings back something else we haven’t seen since Connery: he’s a jerk to the women he runs across. As with Connery, Craig enjoys the women he encounters, but he doesn’t think twice about using them. To him, sex is a game; he doesn’t fall in love and he doesn’t act like he wants to be anyone’s husband. This was a problem with prior Bonds who all started falling for their Bond girls. Connery and Craig couldn’t give a damn about these women (with the exception of Vesper Lynd, which is the one big flaw in Casino Royale). What this gives Craig is what it gave Connery, it makes him “the bad boy.” There is a real appeal in that type of character, especially when you believe that deep down, there is a heart of gold. By comparison, Moore came across as pissy with the evil women and clingy with the good women, Dalton was the earnest white knight, Lazenby was struck by love at first sight, and Brosnan was the hurt lover. Only Connery and Craig managed the playboy aspects right.

The one flaw with Craig is that he’s never jovial, as Connery often was. But with this being a darker plot, you don’t miss that aspect... plus you see hints of it with his relationship with M, with Mathis, and with Leiter.

The Bond Girl: This one has an unusual Bond girl. Olga Kurylenko plays Camille, who is a Bolivian Intelligence agent with a vendetta against General Medrano. Kurylenko handles the role well and has strong chemistry with Craig. What makes her unusual is that she has no love scene with Bond, yet you don’t miss it. Indeed, this seems to make her a stronger companion for Bond than other Bond girls because they are bound together by their mission rather than Bond’s sex drive. All in all, she’s probably the best companion Bond has ever had. (Gemma Arterton is a Bond girl in this too, but she’s pointless.)

Villain Quality: The villain is fantastic. For the first time since the end of SPECTRE, there is an evil organization confronting Bond: Quantum. And unlike SPECTRE and their volcano lairs, Quantum is highly believable. In fact, most people already believe oligopolies of amoral multinationals like this are already out there doing exactly this. And they represent a true threat to the world too – they aren’t just drug dealers or crazed misanthropic billionaires with fantasy plans. Their methods are clever too, being wrapped up in the world of finance, and holding meetings in public places that can’t possibly be bugged. They represent a true challenge to Bond.

Even better, the specific villain given to us is one of the strongest Bond villains we’ve been given. Dominic Greene is a cold-blooded killer. He doesn’t rant and rave and dream up elaborate Rube Goldbergian ways to kill Bond. He is a ruthlessly efficient businessman who sees killing and extortion as part of his toolbox. In one of his best moments, we see him threaten General Medrano. He doesn’t whine or prance around or kill the General because he tweaked his ego. No. He calmly tells the General that should the General kill Greene or refuse to do exactly what Greene says, Quantum will kill the General in a most vicious way. There is no passion in this statement and no ego, it’s just a statement of fact. And in delivering this threat in that manner, Greene shows that he’s an immensely powerful and confident man who doesn’t have a single insecurity. He’s not Scaramanga looking for Bond’s approval, Red Grant who lets his ego trump his judgment, or cowardly Blofeld scurrying away as Bond chases him, or any of the insane villains. He is the world’s worst nightmare: a smart, powerful and super-competent man who has no morals and decides to take over the world without anyone noticing.

Greene’s scheme is excellent too. Unlike other Bond villains whose schemes often made no sense, Greene’s scheme is to gain the power to control countries by controlling their leaders and their vital resources. Here, he’s taking control of the water Bolivia needs to survive, and one can assume they are doing similar things in other countries. In effect, his ultimate goal is world domination through the control of puppet states. This is both possible and scary. Compare this to Elliot Carver’s nonsensical quest for ratings or a contract in China, Blofeld’s simple extortion, or Zorin’s plan to destroy Silicon Valley to somethingsomething profit. This is a real threat because it involves genuine power and it’s something you believe can happen.

Even better, unlike the villains of the past, Greene has the perfect cover: he’s a renown environmentalist! When was the last time you saw one of those as the bad guy? Further, this is the kind of character detail that makes his scheme seem so dangerous because no one will believe that a man who wants to help the world is really trying to dominate it through a succession of puppet regimes. What’s more, his plan is working. Look at how he plays the CIA and the British with promises of oil – they don’t even comprehend what he’s doing. Greene is perhaps the most real, and yet most powerful and most cold-blooded villain Bond has ever faced, and he’s the perfect match for Bond.

All in all, this is an excellent film that deserves its high rank and which I think will one day be higher ranked. Right now, it falls in the category of misunderstood, but as we’ve seen with cult films (of which this has many attributes), they have a way of becoming understood once they find their audience. With the Bond franchise (and public tastes) headed in the direction of smaller, darker, more visceral action films, I think this one will eventually find its audience. In the meantime though, the public perception that this was a let down from Casino Royale will keep this one at only No. 0011 of 0023.

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Film Friday: Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

When a film appears with a fantastic concept, a solid cast, and a great look. . . and then it bombs. . . you know something went very wrong along the way. That’s the case with Cowboys & Aliens. Only in this instance, everything went wrong. Put simply, no one associated with this project had any idea what to do with this concept.

** spoiler alert **

Directed by Jon Favreau, Cowboys & Aliens is the story of some people in the old West who battle aliens who are faster, stronger and can’t be killed by human weapons. . . except when they can. That’s all you need to know because everything else about this film fails. Let’s go through the list of failures:

● The Actors: The actors seemed lost in this. It’s like they didn’t realize they were in a Western. Daniel Craig plays the lead. He did an excellent job eliminating his English accent, he just didn’t know what to replace it with. So he ends up kind of mumbling English words that don’t really fit in any dialect and certainly don’t fit in the American West. Olivia Wilde, who plays the required female character, may not even have read the script for all she brought to her role. Harrison Ford wasn’t great either. He plays a bad guy with a heart of gold, only he was never able to find that line where we actually like him. The supporting actors never clicked either. It’s like no one explained to anyone who these people were before they began shooting.

● The Director: It’s often difficult to separate the writers and the director, but here it was easy. Few scenes made sense from a visual perspective, and it was almost impossible to care about what was happening on the screen.

The perfect example of this is the scene where the aliens first attack the town. The aliens have come to grab townsfolk, but there’s no reason to do this. Indeed, while we’re later told some vague garbage about the aliens studying the humans, there’s no evidence the aliens are doing that and there’s no reason they would need to. It would be like studying ants to learn their military weakness. Not to mention, the townsfolk are eventually found stored in some cave rather than being examined, which calls into question why they were taken at all. Moreover, when the aliens attack, they blow things up all over town for no reason whatsoever. They are more than capable of just flying overhead and grabbing people -- no one can stop them -- but they instead choose to blow up buildings for no apparent reason. In effect, the raid is pointless nonsense.

Further, while the aliens are blowing things up and taking people you don’t know, the camera follows the action almost randomly. Basically, you see people running back and forth until they get taken while the heroes shoot at the alien ships, and all of this is done in the dark by similarly-dressed characters that we don’t know. So throughout this scene, the audience has no idea what happened or who did what, nor does any of it matter. In effect, it’s ten minutes of pointless explosions with no substance. That’s on the director.

Even worse, this becomes the pattern for the film as things happen for no logical reason, as you are incapable of following which characters are doing what or why, and as nothing really interesting happens in any scene. “Stuff blows up” pretty much describes the whole film.

● The Writers: The writing is horrid. To explain this, let’s continue with the first raid by the aliens. I mentioned above that the raid was pointless, but that’s not entirely true. The raid was conducted for two obvious purposes: (1) so the hero, who was about to be killed by the townsfolk, could be saved and his importance to the rest of the story affirmed by those same townsfolk, and (2) so that the loved one of each main character could be taken by the aliens so they would all have a reason to begin the movie. That’s horrible writing when the only purpose to a major scene is to establish plot points. Not to mention that wipes out all the conflicts except one -- retrieve the loved ones. But that’s just the beginning of the problems with the writing.

The story begins with a mystery: who is Daniel Craig. Craig wakes up with an alien device on his arm and no memory. He makes his way to town, where everyone else seems to thinks he’s a criminal. The writer carries this mystery on for about an hour, way too long given that the mystery is neither the point to the film nor all that interesting. Indeed, once you learn that everyone wants him dead, solving the rest of the mystery becomes pretty pointless, but the story continues to act like it matters. Conversely, while the mystery is quickly solved, it simultaneously leaves too many details unsolved for too long. Consequently, the audience is repeatedly left in the dark for the first thirty minutes or so as characters talk knowingly about things we know nothing about and plot points happen which make little sense to us because we don’t understand the background.

The next problem is that after the aliens raid the town, about twenty minutes into the film, the rest of the film becomes a series of random and deeply clichéd scenes. It feels like the writer came up with a list of things which could happen in a western and just inserts those one after another. There’s also never a sense that the scenes really relate in any meaningful way.

The motives for the aliens are rather stupid too and show that the writer has no scientific background. The aliens apparently want gold because it’s valuable, even though the creation of gold would take less energy than bringing their spaceships to Earth in the first place. The aliens round up people to experiment on them to “test their weaknesses” even though we’re also told the aliens are so far advanced that they see humans as “insects.” And then we’re told the aliens plan to destroy the planet for no reason whatsoever except to jack up the significance of the attack on the aliens.

Finally, there is one huge problem which falls on the writers and the director equally: there isn’t a moment of this film which varies from expectations. That’s a cardinal sin in any film and especially in something as supposedly unique as this. To give you a sense of this problem, consider that there isn’t a single scene which doesn’t end the way you expect from the moment the scene first begins. You know who will save whom and how they will react. Moreover, you will have seen this moment coming from the moment the characters met because EVERYTHING in this film is telegraphed in the most ham-fisted way. When two characters dislike each other, you know right away they will save each other and become friends. A character who can’t shoot will of course make an impossible shot to save the day. When a character mentions a knife, not only can you be sure that it will save that character, but you will know at roughly what time in the film that will happen. And when that scene comes, you’ll know it because the director will point the camera at the knife to open the scene, then will show you where the events will take place, then the characters rush to that location so the alien chasing them can do something incredibly stupid and SURPRISE the knife saves the day!! Yeah, this film is like that. . . repeatedly.

Cowboys & Aliens began with a great concept, but no one involved with the film knew how to handle it. Indeed, there isn’t really a competent element of this film. The actors didn’t know how to treat their characters, the director couldn’t compose a single interesting scene, and the writers were just guessing about what a science-fiction Western would include. And that caused this excellent concept to be wasted.

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Film Friday: The Golden Compass (2007)

The left politicizes children’s stories. They’ve discovered that once kids learn ideas like personal responsibility, the value of families and cause and effect, it becomes rather difficult to brainwash them to believe leftist dogma. Thus, they attack centuries old fairy tales as sexist, racist and evil, and they churn out propaganda to replace them. The Golden Compass is propaganda. Indeed, Compass, the first book in Philip Pullman “His Dark Materials” trilogy, is anti-Catholic and anti-religion. “Ridiculous” screamed the left. But it's true. What's more, it's a bad film.

** beware of spoilers comrade **

The Plot

Compass is the story of Lyra Belacqua, a supposed orphan living in a universe where people’s souls (called “demons”) take the shape of animals and live outside the body. This world is dominated by an evil version of the Catholic Church called the Magisterium, which suppresses independent thought. Moreover, the Magisterium is kidnapping children to perform surgery on them to sever their connections to these demons, which makes the kids into zombies. Investigating the disappearances are a group of gypsies un-creatively called “Gyptians,” whose children are being stolen (flipping the age-old European complaint that gypsies steal children).

Lyra is the daughter of Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman), an evil rich woman who conspires with the Magisterium to steal the children. But Coulter apparently doesn’t know Lyra is her daughter. Lyra’s father, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig) also doesn't know Lyra is his daughter (or they're both lying). Asriel is an enemy of the Magisterium and intends to travel north to prove there is no God. When he leaves, Lyra is given a golden compass that lets her see vague answers to some questions. Then a series of CGI fight scenes ensue which involve the Gyptians, talking polar bears, a guy with a flying ship, and flying witches. The end.

This Is A Bad Film

As a film, this is a turd. The Magisterium is a cartoon villain. It wants to turn kids into zombies to protect its power, which really isn't in danger. And the plot is minimal: go north, save the kids. The film tells us Lyra is important to all of this, but never tells us why. She moves from scene to scene seemingly randomly, as the other characters usher her to the places she needs to be to make the plot work. She does nothing personally. And in the end, she saves the day by being led to the ending scene, where everyone else fights a big battle.

The actions of the individual characters also make little sense, except that their actions tie them to Lyra. The Gyptians are dirt poor, live on boats and travel the world, yet for some reason they drop their kids off at Lyra’s private school. When those kids go missing, they seek out Lyra for no particular reason except that she’s a main character. Coulter decides to coopt Lyra for no particular reason except that she’s a main character. Irresponsible, 12 year old Lyra is given this priceless golden compass which the scholars apparently never bothered to examine because she is the main character. The witches are attracted to her because she’s a main character. Etc. etc.

The story is also full of pointless story arcs that wait for the sequel. For example, Asriel announces his great crusade, gets caught immediately, and is then forgotten until the post-plot voice-over wrap up. Even if you're expecting a sequel, it's still bad filmmaking to treat your film like it's part of a series rather than treating it like a complete story. Indeed, this film feels like half a movie. Moreover, halfway through the story, the writer suddenly loses interest in the plot and just inserts a series of CGI fight scenes until the credits roll.

The acting stinks too. Dakota Richards plays Lyra like a reject from a Dickens play and comes across like English gutter trash. Daniel Craig bizarrely plays each scene angrily and with his hand jammed into his pants. Kidman acts like someone shoved an ice cube up her rear. Everybody else is a tired stereotype. Even the score mocks the film at times.

The Propaganda Factor

Even worse, Compass is propaganda. The author of the books is an atheist with a lot of hatred for religion and he apparently intends these books as a lure to draw children to angry atheism. Consequently, at its core, Compass is an anti-religious and anti-Catholic tirade.

For example, it’s obvious the Magisterium represents the Catholic Church. The word "Magisterium" actually means the teaching authority of the Catholic Church. Similarly, throughout the film, Catholic terminology is used for various characters and various practices, and they even decorate their buildings with Christian icons. So how is this ersatz Church represented in the film? The Magisterium is intentionally kidnapping and hurting children because they are afraid that people will learn the truth, that there is no God, and thus, the Magisterium will lose its power. To suggest that the Catholic Church believes there is no God, but only uses the myth of God to maintain its power is blatant slander. And hiding this suggestion by changing the name of the church is cowardly.

And make no mistake, the series clearly states there is no God in our universe. According to the books, there was an angel named “The Authority.” He was the first being in the universe and was made from a substance known as dust. Because he was first and an evil liar, he pretends to be the creator of the universe so that people will worship him. He is also specifically identified as the God of the Christian, Islamic and Jewish religions in our universe, whom he has tricked to follow him. He is eventually captured and dies when he tries to escape his prison.

The studio told the screenwriter to downplay the anti-religious themes, but he admits he left them in the film by hiding them behind “euphemisms.” Thus, there is no specific mention of the word “God” for example, though you’d have to be an idiot not to know that is being discussed. Even this, however, was too much for atheist groups who called this “censorship” and “castrating” the books, which they see as the anti-Narnia series.

Moreover, there was a very dishonest public relations campaign surrounding the film. The cast and crew repeatedly denied any attempt to push atheism and claimed this was a lie pushed by right-wing religious crazies -- even as the writer was trying to assure the atheist community that this film would remain true to the atheist mission of the books. And aiding them in their deception, they paraded around Nicole Kidman (a supposedly devout Catholic), who would do interviews in which she assured the audience she would never do any film that attacked the Catholic Church. Uh huh. The “useful idiot” is alive and well.

Conclusion

I have no problem with atheists, as I believe everyone is entitled to their beliefs and has a right to try to convince others of their beliefs. But I do have a problem with deception, and everything about this film is deceptive. Compass is propaganda. It has a specific political agenda that it pushes while pretending it isn’t pushing that agenda. And they are trying to convince parents to show this to their children under false pretenses. This is exactly why people don't trust Hollywood anymore.

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