Casino Royale - Dir. Martin Campbell (The Bond Project #21 - JM)

Casino Royale (2006)

Dir: Martin Campbell

Re-Rebirth of Bond
by
Jay Maronde

                 

                For the 21^st Bond the Producers at Eon Productions wanted to start the slate clean. Through various deals with Sony the rights to the original Ian Fleming James Bond novel had finally been acquired, and they would make the “first Bond” for the first time as a restart to the Franchise. Martin Campbell, who had directed GoldenEye several years earlier, was re-hired, and an extensive search was conducted to find a new Bond. Soon thereafter, a very controversial choice was made with Daniel Craig to star in the role.

                Let me start right here with Daniel Craig: he is easily the best of the Bonds, hands DOWN. Daniel Craig put a tremendous amount of effort into the Bond role, reading every single Fleming novel and gaining 20 pounds of muscle in anticipation. And it shows—as this new Bond is tougher, colder and more real—much like you would imagine a British assassin to be like. The pre-credits sequence, which is the first James Bond scene ever filmed in black and white, explains the circumstances by which Bond acquires his 00 status and his license to kill, in a manner that introduces this new Bond very clearly as a cold, dark, murderous character. Shortly after this opening scene, the newly “made” agent is sent on a mission to question a bomb-maker. When the spot is blown, Bond chases him down in a fantastic parkour (extreme running) scene in which Bond destroys an entire construction site and runs directly through a wall like the unstoppable force that he is. When the bomb-maker escapes into an embassy, Bond follows him directly in and assaults the entire place to drag his prisoner back out. It’s worth noting that this scene is indicative of how this new Bond not only does not give a fuck but will single handedly disable an entire enemy force (without actually murdering any of them). Clearly this causes some hell back at MI6 where a very upset M. (with Dame Judi Dench anachronistically reprising her classic role better than ever before) tells Bond to get lost. So Bond goes to the Bahamas, and finds his way back into trouble, but only after first seducing a henchman’s wife, and acquiring  a classic Aston Martin db5. Bond goes to Miami, and in another way too cold scene, murders the henchman right as a camera crew is passing while the two are at the Bodies Exposition (it is worth noting that this is the first time there has ever been an actual corpse seen in any James Bond film, ever, even though they are part of the exhibit). 

                Bond stops the henchman’s plans, which the upsets the film’s main villain, Le Chiffre’s, master plan. Le Chiffre is a fantastic villain, one of the ultimates in the entire James Bond Canon. He is an evil banker (which, considering recent feelings against Wall Street types, is probably evil enough to make him super evil already) but he also weeps blood, which by the way is a real, yet super freaky condition. Anyways, this super evil villain has been gambling his clients’ money in the stock market while attempting to radically affect the market through acts of terrorism. Now that Bond has foiled his plans his only chance of getting the money back is through a high stakes poker game at Casino Royale.  This is Bond’s next assignment: defeat Le Chiffre in the poker game and thereby force him to defect from his life of crime and tell MI6 about all the bad dudes who are his clients (Bond is obviously the best poker player in the service and is the only choice for this job). While riding the train to the poker match, Bond meets his contact from HM treasury, the gorgeous Vesper Lynd (who is portrayed wonderfully by the stunningly beautiful Eva Green in what is literally a performance of a lifetime) who first denies Bond’s advances, but later falls hard and fast for him in a romance that has been described as the only woman Bond ever loved.  Also worth noting is that the martini that Bond concocts at Casino Royale and names “The Vesper” is really the “official James Bond martini” as espoused in the Ian Fleming novels, and if you’ve never had one I would urge you strongly to try one as while they are very strong they are fantastic. Bond beats Le Chiffre in the poker match—but that’s only about 2/3 of the way through the film. The rest of the film is about the love between Bond and Lynd. The fact that this film is really three Bonds in one (Bond gets his 00; Bond wins at Casino Royale; Bond & Vesper) is a big part of the reason that this is, by far, the longest Bond film, and also a great deal of the reason why this film is so wonderful to watch. The viewer is drawn into the James Bond universe as never before.

                While in the James Bond Universe there are certain things that the viewer expects. One of these major things is Q branch. But while Bond has some very impressive equipment, there is no Q branch briefing, and much like Dr. No, Bond relies much more on brute force and tricks of the trade rather than gizmos. One thing that Q branch does deliver is a brand-new, super-nice, racing-edition Aston Martin DBS. This car, while not featured that prominently, is the newest, slickest Bond car yet. The car and the franchise also set a Guinness World Record (again) later on in the film when Bond flips it and rolls the car 7 times. This scene was really filmed, and a stunt man was really in the vehicle (driving at over 70 mph) when the car was flipped, completely destroying the $200,000+ asset. Another Bond fixture that returns in Casino Royale is our old friend Felix Leiter, played wonderfully this time by Jeffrey Wright. Wright’s Leiter is spot-on and his acting and on-screen rapport with Bond is beyond reproach.

                With Casino Royale the Eon Productions team didn’t just manage to restart the James Bond movie series—they managed to make a masterpiece. The actors, the action, the stunts, the plots, the cars—every single aspect of this film has been taken to the next level and beyond. Daniel Craig, while initially causing a media row over being the first Blonde Bond, is utterly heartstoppingly fantastic: he’s so hard, so cold, so real it’s beyond description. The only advice I can give is to pay close attention to Daniel Craig if you really want to see a great feat of acting. Further, this movie wonderfully sets up the rest of the franchise and really begins to illustrate the reasons why Bond is so Bond. Casino Royale is simply a “must-see.”

Quantum of Solace - Dir. Marc Forster (The Bond Project #22 - JK)

Quantum of Solace (2008) 

Dir. Marc Forster

                

Inscrutable Bond

by 

Jack Knorps

                Quantum of Solace epitomizes the reason why I have not been keeping up on the Bond films that have come out during my lifetime (eschewing the Dalton Bonds as I was six at the time of the last one, there have been six, and I would say I have seen 3 (GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies each counting for ½ as I watched them as “background noise”)): it is too difficult to follow.

                Of course, this is a sequel to Casino Royale, and picks up where that film left off, and begins with a fantastic chase sequence, again, which may or may not be similar to the one in Licence to Kill and/or The Dark Knight Rises.  Regardless, the stunt work is not a problem for the film (nor do I think it has ever been an area where the Franchise has suffered).  

                I do want to pause for a moment to question why the Bond films must not be Rated R.  Clearly, the subject-matter is R-rated.  There is an extraordinary amount of violence in the films, as well as sexual tomfoolery.  But, Bond does not curse.  The lack of the F-word keeps them PG-13.  So kids can see it, and here’s a prediction: Skyfall will kill during its opening weekend.

                But do kids really understand what is going on in this movie, or do they just like big explosions and cool stunts?  That’s my problem.  Even if you take out the “adult” subject matter, the Bond films are meant to be seen and understood by adults that can appreciate the political commentary they offer, as their plots always revolve around foreign affairs.  Given that Bond is an English agent, it is even more difficult for Americans to understand the purposes of his missions.

                While watching this film, I reflected upon watching films with my older sister.  My older sister often asks a multitude of questions during films with only slightly complicated plots.  If she were to agree to watch Quantum of Solace, I do not think she would make it through 30 minutes.  And she would miss 77 minutes and probably be no worse in her Bond knowledge.

                It is significant that Casino Royale runs an epic 144 minutes and this film clocks in at a “suitable” 107.  Maybe I just like long movies, but for some reason Quantum of Solace feels like it is missing something.  My guess is that this is attributable to the unique quality of the Craig Bonds: Skyfall is apparently the last film of a trilogy.  Perhaps the closure that always seems to be lurking in Quantum of Solace, holding over from Casino Royale, will finally be delivered in Bond #23.

                The villain in this film, Dominic Greene, seeks to acquire a desert in Bolivia from a Bolivian Dictator.  The Dictator tells him that he is wasting his time—many people have tried to find oil there in the past to no avail.  Greene does not seem to care.  He offers his services—which, if I recall correctly, involve paying off government officials so that the Dictator may continue his reign—in exchange for ownership of this desert land.  The agreement is made, and Greene is happy-go-lucky.  He is also, apparently, a philanthropist, who is a strong advocate of environmental protection and sustainable energy.  This may or may not have to do with “Quantum.”  Later he claims that the world’s most valuable resource is held in this desert.  Perhaps that resource is Quantum.  I cannot tell.  Later, in a scene that law students may appreciate, he coerces the dictator into signing a contract with his company, which owns 60% of the clean water supply of Bolivia.

                Now, Greene is played by an extremely capable actor.  At first, I recognized him as a French actor, but I could not place him.  Looking him up on IMDB, I found that he is probably most familiar to American audiences due to his stellar performance in, incredibly, another film reviewed on Flying Houses.  The actor is Mathieu Amalric, and if The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is any indication of his talents, then I can only conclude that he was not given a very good role by the screenwriters.  True, he is an interesting villain, because generally we do not think of environmental advocates as villains.  (Perhaps this is some kind of political statement too, but that would go too far).  The problem is that he is not believable as a violent person.  He makes threats, but he does not carry them out.  I don’t even remember if he dies in the movie or not. 

                On that note, Paul Haggis wrote the screenplay along with Neal Purvis and Robert Wade.  Now I will not comment on the latter two, but I am sure they are capable.  And I will not blame Haggis totally, because Casino Royale is really quite an excellent film, but Haggis is most famous for writing and directing a certain Oscar winning film that jacked its vague title from a David Cronenberg vehicle.  Many people decried Crash for capitalizing on “hidden racist sentiment” that may or may not still be a factor in present-day Los Angeles, but Haggis won again next year with his screenplay for Million Dollar Baby, a film that was much more appreciated—particularly for its “twist.”

                Furthermore, Marc Forster directed this film.  Now, Marc Forster has a pretty good track record.  I never saw Finding Neverland but it was apparently quite good, I found Monster’s Ball to be quite compelling, and while Stay was basically a “non-starter,” now that Ryan Gosling is an A-lister, more people might have seen this film by now, and they should because it’s quite interesting.  This is to say nothing of The Kite Runner or Stranger Than Fiction (only the latter of which I’ve seen, and which is light entertainment, but not offensive).  I just have to admit that Forster does not seem to be the best director for this film.  Nor was it the best script. 

                Craig himself is good, and still icy—if not icier.  The Bond Girl, played by Olga Kurylenko, is quite beautiful, and vows revenge against the Bolivian Dictator for crimes he committed against her family in her childhood.  She is more than adequate in her role, and one of the better parts of the movie—but unfortunately if you compare her performance to Eva Green’s in Casino Royale, you will see how much better that film was than this one.  Judi Dench is also good as M, though I was quite confused when she apparently got shot and then showed up in the next scene looking very healthy without any kind of explanation—perhaps there was a pithy line thrown out that I missed. 

                I believe I have said all I can about Quantum of Solace.  It’s not a terrible movie, but it’s not a terribly exciting movie either.  It is rather confounding, but I suppose if we are to view these Craig Bonds as a Trilogy that it is necessary to view so you will not be lost when you see Skyfall.  Perhaps the best thing about Quantum of Solace is its theme song sung by Jack White, which is consistent with Bond playing to the trends of the times.  If I have to attach a “rating” to my two reviews here, I would give Casino Royale 3 ½ stars, and Quantum of Solace  2 ½ stars (I would only give it 2, but the ½ comes from the theme song as well as the potential for intrigue for Skyfall—that is, the hope that they have saved their best for the last).

Casino Royale - Dir. Martin Campbell (The Bond Project #21 - JK)

Casino Royale (2006)

Dir: Martin Campbell

Icy Bond
by
Jack Knorps

                I should begin this review by noting that my knowledge of the James Bond Canon is very slight.  It is only due to THE BOND PROJECT, suggested and carried out by Jay Maronde, that I have been able to learn about the history of the Franchise.  I had seen portions of GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies in my early high school years, but had never seen one of the films in its entirety until Casino Royale.  Thus I am able to judge this film completely on its own terms.  And  I would say it is a very good one. 

The film opens in Prague, jumps to Uganda, then Madagascar, then London, then Paradise Island in the Bahamas, then Miami, then Montenegro, and finally to Venice.  There may be other Bond films with more “globe-trotting,” but this one also makes wonderful use of an extraordinary array of beautiful shooting locations—particularly the scenes in Venice, and the final scene of the film (perhaps a “hidden” location).

                The film opens up with a relatively quiet pre-credits sequence involving an assassination carried out by Bond which only hints at the plot of the film.  The scene in Uganda fleshes that plot out, where we see a strange man, dapper, with a glass eye, approach a terrorist group to assist them with their funding.  They give him a large amount of cash in briefcases and request that he invest it in a portfolio with no risk.  He leaves, and he calls someone on his cell phone and says, “Buy one hundred million dollars worth of stock in Skyfleet.”  The man on the other end says, “Why?  Everyone knows that stock is only going to go up.”  As a student taking a course in Corporate Finance, this part was quite interesting to me.

                The next scene shows Bond in Madagascar, and this is one of the best chase scenes I have seen in recent memory.  He is hunting down a bomb-maker for a terrorist organization in an attempt to get information about who is helping to fund his and other organizations.  This bomb-maker is quite an acrobat, and it is quite humorous to watch Bond—admittedly in very good shape, but no acrobat—try to catch up to him.  Perhaps the key moment is when he jumps to an elevator, and slams the lever down so that he drops to the bottom at near free-fall speed.  This “motif” will arise in the penultimate scene in the film to nearly-heartbreaking effect.

                A word on Daniel Craig as Bond: he is icy.  He plays a cold, ruthless killer, who has no sympathy for his victims (or at least so he later says when questioned on the matter—“I wouldn’t be good at my job otherwise,” he explains).  He has the ability to turn on the charm when necessary to do so, but he rarely allows his emotions to get in the way.  This does happen in the film near the end, but in such a manner that one could not call it “false.”  He is a good Bond, perhaps lacking the suave of Pierce Brosnan, but adding a hard-nosed “darkness” to the character that is quite appropriate for this era of film where morally ambiguous characters tend to fill the screen and most filmmakers want to achieve the kind of success that Christopher Nolan has turned into a trend.

                In London, M (played to perfection, again, by Dame Judi Dench) chastises Bond for allowing the bomb-maker to die in a melee and tells him never to “go rogue” again.  Bond has actually broken into her home while this conversation takes place.  He then goes to the Bahamas—not for a vacation, but to track a cell phone call that he found in connection with the bomb-maker. 

                The first time we see Bond driving a car, he is driving a Ford rental car to the hotel on Paradise Island (The Ocean Club, which may or may not be a stand-in for the famous luxury resort Atlantis—which is shown in at least one shot).  The subtle humor of this scene is escalated when Bond waits for his valet to return to park the car.  Bond kneels down to tie one of his shoes, and another hotel patron arrives in a Range Rover.  He throws his keys at Bond and tells him to hurry up and park the car.  Bond drives the Range Rover rather aggressively, parks it carefully, then slams it into reverse as if he is going to park perfectly in another spot behind him—but does not slam on the brakes and instead smashes into a car in the next spot behind him.  Many alarms go off, and Bond throws the keys to the Range Rover aimlessly across the parking lot.  The lesson is that you do not mistake James Bond for a parking valet or he will ruin your car.

                The cell phone information leads him to check out a surveillance camera tape from the date and time of the call, wherein he is able to view the caller: another bomb-maker.  This one has a beautiful wife/girlfriend/mistress that Bond sees as he comes out of the ocean from a swim at the beach.  She is attending to a horse.  He eyes her, and she notices.  Later, Bond seduces her in his hotel room in order to get information about the bomb-maker.  This scene is quite suggestive and may show that audiences in 2006 are not as “prudish” for PG-13 purposes as in the past.  This film could get an R-rating, but excessive cursing is not necessary in a Bond film, and the sex scenes are edited just to the point that nudity does not occur while still remaining quite intense.  It appears as if he may spend the night with her, but instead he leaves and goes directly for the bomb-maker—who has gone to the Miami airport. 

                There is apparently a new prototype of a plane being unveiled: Skyfleet’s biggest airplane ever.  The bomb-maker is on the scene to destroy the plane, in the hopes of sending the company into bankruptcy and the stock down to almost nothing.  I do not understand the economics of this plan, and I may be incorrect either about the motives of the bomb-makers and the financier of the terrorist organization or principles of Corporate Finance—but it would appear that they would want the stock to go up!  I am probably missing some subtle plot point here but I confess I watched this film on my laptop and that sometimes it can be difficult to catch everything that a character says in this film.  You really need to pay close attention. 

                The financier is Le Chiffre, who may or may not be French, but is quite a good poker player, known for his famous bluffing which sometimes involves crying tears of blood from his glass eye.  I will not reveal what happens during the scene in the airport, but the Skyfleet plane model itself is fantastic, and the scene itself is probably the second “great” one in the film.

                From there Bond returns to London and is informed that Le Chiffre (who has by now been connected to the bomb-maker in question at the Miami airport) will be playing at a $150 million poker game in Montenegro—will Bond play?  Of course he will.

                On the train he meets the beautiful Vesper Lynd, whom he calls “Miss Money.”  Initially it made me think that this was his token scene of flirting with Miss Moneypenny, and that Miss Moneypenny had stopped working for MI6 and had started working for the British Treasury department, which is funding Bond’s $10 million buy-in for the game.  But like I said, I have not seen any of the Bond films in their entirety.  For this farce in Montenegro, she will play his wife, and they will share a two-bedroom suite.  He buys her a dress to wear, and she buys him a dinner jacket to wear.  They go to the game, and it is adjourned twice.  Violence ensues during the first adjournment, and Le Chiffre is targeted by the terrorist organization demanding their money.  They threaten to cut off his girlfriend’s hand, but he does not seem to care. 

                Shortly after the second adjournment, something happens to Bond that I will not reveal, but which sets up the third “great” scene—which is the final long stretch of the poker game.  After that Bond is captured, subjected to an act of torture that is both frightening and hilarious (in terms of Bond’s reactions, at least), and saved by a mysterious figure in an almost random act of violence.

                From there he escapes with Vesper Lynd to a tropical location and they live happily ever after.

                Obviously that last sentence is not true but this is a film that seems rather easy to spoil.  I will just say that the final hour of the film is probably its strongest part—and that means no disrespect to the opening and middle sections of the film, which are quite well done.  I just enjoyed the ending because everything seems to fall apart rather quickly and become extremely dramatic in a way that catches the viewer off guard.  And the final scene (and more precisely, the final shot) of the film is instantly classic.  Perhaps there is a Bond film with a better closing line, or cliffhanger, but it would be hard to imagine.

                The writer for THE BOND PROJECT, Jay Maronde, informed me that Quantum of Solace picks up where Casino Royale left off, and in this way, the two films are the only Bond films that might be considered “two parts of one very long film.”  Jay has also intimated that he finds these two films to be amongst the very best of the Franchise.  While this initially shocked me, with so many classics in the past, after watching Casino Royale I can certainly understand why, and am very excited to see what happens next.   

The World is Not Enough - Dir. Michael Apted (The Bond Project #19)

The World is Not Enough (1999)

Dir: Michael Apted

The Best Brosnan Bond
by
Jay Maronde

                While many people have complained that The World is Not Enough is simply, not enough, it’s easily the best of the Brosnan Bonds. It does have a mightily convoluted plot, but ultimately the film is beautifully made and a perfect example of the “Bond Formula.” The movie also has a few Bond firsts, and plenty of allusions to other Bond films—including the title itself, which is supposedly the James Bond Family Motto as first espoused in the much earlier On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

                This movie starts with by far the longest pre-credits sequence in the entire Franchise, which is almost a mini-movie in itself. Right from the very first scene where Bond is in Bilbao, Spain in front of a Guggenheim Museum, the viewer realizes that this Bond is going to be a classic with epic locations that really highlight the globe-trotting character of Bond. Here Bond is recovering some a large sum of money and in true James Bond fashion the spot gets blown and Bond has to fight his way out. As he does, the Bond theme plays and Bond escapes with the money achieving his mission. I should point out that the credits were originally supposed to roll right here, but test audiences found the scene lacking, so the sequence continues back to MI6 headquarters where the money is being handed over to Sir Robert King, who happens to be a very old friend of M and apparently a person who needs to die, as the money explodes, killing King, destroying MI6 HQ, and exposing an assassin floating on a yacht in the Thames. Bond steals a fantastic speed boat from Q’s workshop, and jets out after the assassin. This is easily the best boat chase in the entire series and it’s worth noting that Pierce Brosnan did all of the boat driving and stunt work himself as in real life he is a power boat aficionado. The chase is great and eventually ends with Bond catching up to the assassin and offering her protection in exchange for information before she commits suicide on a hot air balloon leaving Bond to fall precariously onto the roof of the just finished Millennium Dome (at that time). Bond suffers a dislocated collar bone from the fall and this leads to two of my other favorite parts of this movie. Part one: Bond is injured and fights and spies with a broken collar bone the entire film. While this comes into play several times, it really seems to highlight how tough James Bond is as a character. He keeps fighting his way through the mission even with an obviously painful injury. Part two: being injured, Bond needs to obtain clearance from medical branch, and as such seduces the doctor in fantastic James Bond fashion, and indeed after he copulates with her, she notes in her documentation clearing him for active duty that he has incredible stamina.

                Once Bond is returned to active duty he immediately gets back on the case and is sent to protect Elektra King, the daughter of the assassinated Sir Robert King. Elektra is a wonderful Bond girl and played very convincingly by the beautiful Sophie Marceau. This is a Bond first here as it actually turns out Elektra is actually the very first Bond villain to be a woman. Bond spends almost the whole movie discovering this, and in the end eventually puts a bullet into her even as she swears he could never murder a woman he has loved. I personally think this Bond first is great as it clearly highlights Bond’s personal coldness and willingness to do whatever for the mission with no compunction towards whatever personal feelings he may have had.

While Bond blunders about thinking with his penis, he and Elektra go on numerous worldwide adventures. These include a skiing adventure which clearly brings to mind all the fantastic Bond skiing scenes from throughout the Canon, and also features some of the finest cinematography in the entire Franchise. The sprawling mountain skiing scenes are absolutely gorgeous.

                Another highlight of this movie is the return of former Bond villain but ally since GoldenEye, Valentin Zukovsky, again played wonderfully by Robbie Coltrain. Now if you remember correctly, Zukovsky walks with a limp and a cane because Bond shot him in the hip. As this movie races to its dramatic conclusion, Zukovsky is shot and uses his dying breath to shoot Bond’s restraints (freeing Bond from another precarious situation) with a secret one shot gun hidden inside the cane that he only carries because of Bond.  This is that fantastic Bond magic that can only occur within such a long and well established Franchise.

                The one major complaint that others have had about this movie, is really a tremendous gift to the viewer, because honestly, who doesn’t like Christmas—Dr. Christmas Jones that is. Bond’s ally Bond girl in this film is played by none other than Charlie Sheen’s abused ex-wife, Denise Richards. I would like to comment first off, that Miss Richards is definitely in the peak of her beauty in this film, you can easily see why she was in Playboy and many have often noted that her white shirt during the flooded submarine scene could have crossed a few tableaus, BUT SHE IS AWESOME. Bond girls should always have fantastic names, But DOCTOR Christmas Jones is definitely on level with Plenty O’Toole, Holly Goodhead, and Pussy Galore. While maybe she is not quite as outwardly scandalous, Richards provides sooo much sizzle that it doesn’t matter. Also many people have complained that she’s far too ditzy for the role of a nuclear physicist, but she’s a Bond girl nuclear physicist, so the fact that she’s clearly reciting lines that she has no idea about only makes the movie better.

                The World is Not Enough also features the title song The World is Not Enough, as performed by Garbage. I really like this song as I feel it elicits many of the aspects of the great Shirley Bassey Bond songs of yore while still having it be performed by a modern rock band with more modern instrumentation. Also worth a note is that it’s the last film with Desmond Llewelyn in his classic role as Q. He died shortly after filming and the film is dedicated to him.

                This movie has had a lot of mixed reviews, but in the end I feel as though it’s the best of the Brosnan Bonds. The movie is exciting and features a very epic pair of villains bent on complete world catastrophe. The movie features exquisite Bond girls, a very active Bond, and fantastic scenery and filming locations.  

GoldenEye - Dir. Martin Campbell (The Bond Project #17)

GoldenEye (1995)

Dir: Martin Campbell

Rebirth of Bond
by
Jay Maronde

                First and foremost, I should mention that this was the first Bond film I ever saw. I distinctly remember when my father took myself and my brothers to the movies opening week because he wanted to see the new Bond. The people at the theater tried to give him shit that he was taking three children to a PG-13 movie, but if you’ve ever met my Dad clearly you can understand why this wasn’t going to stop him at all. Now, a big part of the reason that he was so insistent upon us seeing this film is that it had been six years since the last film and there had been a lot of talk at the time that there would be no more Bond films. Fortunately, GoldenEye easily became the most profitable Bond since Moonraker, and effectively rendered Licence to Kill’s poor box office performance a nullity.

                The reasons for the many years between Bonds are always convoluted, but GoldenEye ‘s longest-ever-delay also had some of the craziest reasons ever. First, MGM had sold the broadcast rights to the entire Bond Canon to a company that wanted to broadcast them on TV. At the time this was a huge copyright issue and lawsuits ensued fast and furiously. For some time the Eon Productions team was intent on never making another Bond film unless they had control of these lucrative re-broadcasting rights (yes, I’m fully aware that the SPIKE network generally shows the entire Canon during these recent few Thanksgiving holidays, and I have no explanations for you as to why other than money—but in the early 1990s this was not going to happen without a fight). Second, there were no more Fleming novels to make films from, and as such GoldenEye is the first film ever that draws nothing from the works of Fleming (other than the Bond character himself). Further, after the script was finally delivered it required substantial rewriting as apparently it bore numerous similarities to True Lies, which was also being made and released around the same time. And even further, while all of these legal and creative issues were delaying the project, the U.S.S.R. was dismantled, and the Berlin Wall fell; as such the standard James Bond enemy of Russia wasn’t the best enemy anymore. Finally, while all of this bickering was going on, Timmy Dalton and numerous other Bond standards quit their roles making this the first James Bond to replace Bond, M, and Moneypenny all in the same movie.

                So again the producers were searching for a new Bond. Luckily for them they had already decided two films previous that they had wanted to give the role to Pierce Brosnan, who at the time was unfortunately unavailable due to contractual obligations to the Remington Steele television series. So while numerous actors were again auditioned (including again Mel Gibson) the producers eventually went with Brosnan, and personally I think it was a wonderful choice. Brosnan is a great Bond. He’s got the Roger Moore suave, Lazenby’s youthful looks, Dalton’s willingness to do his own stunts, and Connery’s grittiness. For me he just looks the role maybe the most of all the Bonds. Also new to this film was the casting of Dame Judi Dench as M, and she is fantastic (many early reviews of the new film Skyfall have critics clamoring that she deserves an Oscar for her performance). Dench is the first female to portray the MI6 chief and while initially there was much talk about how Bond would look taking orders from a lady, Dench’s outstanding performance quickly removed all doubts as she’s far more imposing and leader-like than Hilary Clinton (who is the only person I can even think to compare her character with).

                The film also featured two fantastic Bond girls: not only the lovely and very-much-come-hither Izabella Scorupco as James Bond’s Russian computer programmer Ally Natalya, but also the fantastically gorgeous and very sexually aggressive Famke Janssen as Xenia Onatopp—the extremely memorable henchwoman who literally copulates men to death. Now the name On-a-Topp is a fantastic Bond girl name, like tops up there with Plenty O’Toole and Holly Goodhead, but Janssen (who later becomes Jean MF Grey in the X-Men movies) is easily at the peak of her youthful beauty. She’s stunningly gorgeous and easily one of the best looking Bond girls to ever grace the screen with any Bond. Her performance in this role is stunning, moaning orgasmic as she murders people all over the world—she is so convincing as a henchwoman that it is remarkable.

                The casting in this film isn’t the only thing that makes it awesome, as this particular Bond has some record-breaking stunts (many of which Brosnan preformed himself) including the tallest bungee jump ever performed, and the most scale models ever used in a Bond film.  There is also a fantastic tank chase through the streets of St. Petersburg. I should mention first that the producers were so pleased with the stuntman who performed the record-breaking bungee jump that they gave him a cameo later in the film as one of the helicopter pilots whom Xenia kills. The other helicopter pilot is actually the other stuntman who performed the stunt in the beginning where Bond defies the law of physics and jumps into a falling plane (the stunt was actually performed in real life, and no laws of physics were actually broken—as while all objects fall at the same rate, a human will fall faster than a plane whose propeller is running in reverse, which is how the footage was actually achieved). These two amazing stunts right at the beginning of this film definitely let the viewer know that this new Bond film is going to be action-packed and utterly fantastic. The other stunt I would like to mention is the wonderful tank chase through the city as Bond is pursuing the kidnapped Natalya in a stolen Russian tank. Brosnan is actually in the tank for all these scenes, which adds tremendously to the realism of the film even though the tank was modified so that a professional was covertly driving from a hidden location. My favorite part of the chase (which is almost always cut from the TV version) involves Bond driving said tank directly through a Perrier tractor trailer truck and smashing millions of cans of Perrier everywhere (in real life the company paid to have every single can recovered from the streets of St Petersburg so as to avoid any chance of crafty Russians being able to bootleg their product).

                Also of note about this film is the Car—not necessarily for the car itself, because it has a very small role in the film and never uses any of the cool gadgets that Q branch has installed—but instead because the deal struck between EON and BMW is always recognized and the world’s most successful product placement deal ever. The James Bond edition of the Z3 in this film sold out in less than 24 hours. Several Z3’s were used to ferry journalists from the Premiere at NYC’s Radio City Music Hall to the after party at the MOMA (also of note: this is one of two Bond films to not have its world premiere in London, and the only one to premiere in NYC (San Francisco hosted the premiere of A View To a Kill)). While this car may not be the most “James Bond” of all of Bond’s cars it is clearly a very recognizable symbol of this movie.

                Before I close I feel I should mention that I really like the title song GoldenEye, sung by Tina Turner and written by Bono and The Edge. Personally I hate U2, and loath Bono (I could go either way on The Edge) but the song is great it really recalls to mind the great Shirley Bassey Bond anthems of earlier films.  And while it is only a small part of the film, I feel like the song really envelops the viewer into this new world of Bond. This entire film is wonderful. It’s gritty at points, sweet at points, extremely interesting, and beautifully filmed with wonderful locations. Brosnan’s transition into the role of new Bond was more than successful and the continuing viability of the Bond franchise may be attributable in part to his performance.