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.  

Licence to Kill - Dir. John Glen (The Bond Project #16)

Licence to Kill (1989)
Dir: John Glen

A Gritty Film for a Gritty Bond
By Jay Maronde

John Glen’s final entry into the Bond Canon could easily be one of the most violent and divisive James Bond Films ever produced for two reasons. First, Timmy Dalton had already shown that he wanted to play Bond in a very different, much more gritty way. Second, Producer and Broccoli family member Michael G. Wilson wrote most of the movie because the Writers Guild of America was once again on strike. These two factors contributed to this very gritty entry into the Canon, which leaves everyone to wonder what would have happened had the franchise continued with this director/ actor pairing.           


The first thing I want to mention about this film is that the villains are extra fucked up and crazy. Robert Davi plays Franz Sanchez, the biggest of the big-time South American drug lords, and he is fucking awesome. Sanchez is so evil he doesn’t kill his enemies; he feeds them partially to sharks and lets them live so that he can enjoy their suffering. He also is more than willing to travel to America (where he is under indictment) and risk arrest, exclusively for the purpose of recapturing his escaped girlfriend (the radiant Lupe, played by the beautiful Talisa Soto) and beating her (but only after cutting her new boyfriend’s still-beating heart out of his chest (which he later refers to as his little valentine). This is where the film opens. James Bond and his old friend Felix Leiter are on their way to Leiter’s wedding in Key West when the Coast Guard flies over, stops the limo motorcade, and enlists Bond and Leiter to capture Sanchez. Felix Leiter in this film is once again played by David Hedison of Live and Let Die fame, making him the first actor to reprise the role of Felix. Leiter advises Bond that he is only along on the adventure in an observatory position, but Bond jumps out of the Coast Guard chopper and literally hooks the tail of Sanchez’s escape plane, dragging him back into American airspace and a waiting jail cell. Bond and Leiter then parachute into the wedding, making for one of the most positive James Bond pre-credits sequences.* After this moment however, the film gets progressively darker.               


After the credits, the song for which is sung by Gladys Knight and isn’t that great but is very catchy, we are returned to the duel scenes of Leiter’s happy wedding and Sanchez’s unhappy (yet remarkably calm) interrogation. Then in a plot twist which was completely ripped off by the 2003 Samuel L. Jackson action flick S.W.A.T., Sanchez offers 2 million dollars to anyone who will spring him from the clink. Of course there’s a dirty cop who takes the cash, and he gets his later as Bond feeds him to a shark. But Sanchez escapes, and sends his goons after that CIA guy who arrested him, our old friend Felix Leiter, who is literally carrying his new wife across the threshold as the goons show up. Here we get our first view of a great young actor who was cast because he was weird and creepy but not too much. This young actor is Benicio Del Toro, and he is fantastic, like easily one of the best Bond Henchmen ever, and he is actually the only Bond henchman ever to win an Oscar. Later on in the film right before Sanchez feeds only part of Leiter to a shark,  Dario (played by Del Toro) remarks in the creepiest way ever that he gave Leiter’s wife “a nice honeymoooon”  (YOUTUBE LINK, http://youtu.be/r5rUWO1ZUQA , BAM!) implying that they raped her before killing her. This is the first rape I can remember from the entire Canon so far, further adding to this film’s almost surreal grittiness. Clearly this upsets James Bond greatly and he begins his plans for revenge. Unfortunately, M wants him to go to Istanbul and solve other more pressing British problems. Bond refuses, resigns, and then is forced to escape from MI6 custody, as clearly being a super spy isn’t really a job you are allowed to just quit.               


With the help of Former CIA pilot Pam Bouvier (played by the ultra-lovely Carey Lowell (who is one of my favorite Bond girls exclusively because she later became an ADA on “Law & Order”) Bond escapes America, and travels secretly to South America to confront Sanchez on his home turf. Bond deposits a ton of Sanchez’s own money (which he stole) in Sanchez’s Bank, and then heads to Sanchez’s casino to play a quick game of no limit card counting. Personally, Bond blatantly counting cards could be one of my favorite James Bond casino scenes in the entire Canon, and it definitely works perfectly for Bond’s purposes of having a face-to-face with Sanchez. The two meet, Bond tells Sanchez that he is an unemployed assassin looking for work, which is shocking because it’s actually true. The two eventually become associates before Dario blows the whistle while they are all at Sanchez’s secret cocaine processing facility which of course Bond burns to the ground before escaping. Bond then chases down Sanchez and eventually lights the gasoline soaked villain on fire using the lighter that the Leiters gave him as a gift for being the best man at the wedding.               


Also worth a mention in this film are Desmond Llewelyn as Q in his biggest role ever, covertly helping Bond, acting almost as if he’s a field agent when officially he’s only on vacation in South America (Moneypenny arranged this particular vacay without M having any knowledge), and the Great Wayne Newton. Both of these characterizations have unique back stories. First, this was supposed to be a Bond film where Bond takes out Noriega. Unfortunately the British have no jurisdiction over South American leaders which is why Bond quits before running off to settle this score. The producers didn’t want the movie to not feature Q branch but how would an expatriated James Bond be receiving his standard help other than to have Q covertly helping of his own accord, so for many parts of this film Q is almost Bond’s sidekick. The Wayne Newton appearance is far more amusing as Newton had always wanted to be in a Bond film so he wrote the producers and nicely asked if they could make it happen. Originally he was given a very small part but after the production team got him in front of the camera his role was greatly expanded to what we see today as the final product.                


Licence to Kill is certainly not the best of all Bonds and certainly wasn’t the most profitable films of that era, but it is quite gritty and is the exact type of film that Timmy Dalton should be the star of and therefore the movie is definitely worth a viewing.

 *Apparently the opening sequence in The Dark Knight Rises pays homage to this one.  -JK

Octopussy - Dir. John Glen (The Bond Project # 13)

Octopussy (1983)

Dir: John Glen

Bond Goes to India

By Jay Maronde

                 Director John Glen struck cinematic gold for the Bond Franchise in his second Bond film and it couldn’t have come at a more critical time. The movie easily has the best title of any film in the series as it’s the most blatantly sexualized Bond title that I think the censors could ever even tolerate. This could easily be one of my favorite Bond movies as right from the very beginning it’s action packed, full of great gadgets, and completely full of awesome plot twists.

                Let me start right with the pre-credits sequence as I personally feel that it could be one of the most entertaining of the entire series. Bond is in Cuba, posing as a Cuban General, and trying to blow up some sort of fighter jet. He gets captured, which is about typical for the old-ass Roger Moore Bond, but it doesn’t matter. As Bond is being transported as a prisoner, a lady-friend driving a super cool topless Range Rover towing a horse in a trailer distracts the guards. Bond escapes and takes care of his captors, but alas, mission failed….OR NOT. As more Cuban military personnel pursue him, Bond kisses the girl goodbye, and then hops into the horse trailer disconnecting it from the truck. The viewer is like geez, how confused has Roger Moore become in his old age? This isn’t a western—a horse isn’t going to help this situation. But Q branch and Bond have a plan. As Bond enters the trailer, the horse’s rear end is revealed to be a dummy meant only to conceal the real cargo: a mini jet. In true and perfect James Bond fashion, Bond lowers the retractable wings and accelerates directly towards the enemies. At the very last second he lifts off, scattering the hapless Cubans. Bond then continues to kick ass in the way only James Bond can, and flies back over the base he was supposed to destroy, and in a fantastic piece of cinematography, directly through the hangar that was the original target. Then, trailing the surface to the air missile, he destroys the hangar and all the planes and Cubans inside! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Then just to remain extra suave, Bond lands at a gas station and says, “Fill her up.”

                The movie then cuts away to the title sequence, again, as always, designed by Maurice Binder. The titles are some of the most interesting Bond titles yet, accompanied by the song “All Time High” by the classic Rita Coolidge. The song, while not one of my favorites, did spend almost a month in the number one spot on the adult contemporary charts, and looking back at this film it’s easy to realize why James Bond is at a new “all-time high.” Speaking of all time high, Roger Moore is at his all-time oldest. Granted he would be older in the next film A View to A Kill, but he’s definitely looking his age again in this film. In reality, Moore had wanted to stop playing Bond after For Your Eyes Only (that movie was so bad it would have made me want to quit the role too), and the producers conducted a very public search for a new Bond (there is a special feature on the Octopussy Ultimate Edition DVD  titled James Brolin: The Man Who would Be Bond, and features 3 of his screen tests). I would also like to comment right now that despite his agedness, Roger Moore puts in an excellent performance as Bond in this film, which was lucky, because 1983 also saw the release of Kevin McClory’s rival James Bond tale, Never Say Never Again, which was of major concern to the producers as McClory had secured the original James Bond, Sean Connery. This opposing casting in a very similar movie (actually a remake of Thunderball) is the reason the producers eventually decided to stay with Roger Moore as Bond as they felt it would be a big leap for an audience to also have to deal with a new actor playing Bond when Connery was busy in the next screen at the multiplex also playing an aged Bond.

                After the titles the story picks back up with a clown-suited 009 fleeing from some knife-throwing henchmen. He escapes and spends the last moments of his life delivering a spurious Faberge egg to the British Ambassador. It turns out that the non-counterfeit egg, which this fake is designed to replace, is actually on sale at Sotheby’s in London the very next day. Bond and nerdy type fellow attend the auction in an attempt to glean what the now departed 009 was willing to die for. Here we meet Kamel Kahn, the real evil villain of this film. Kahn is a fantastic villain, played exceptionally well by the actor Louis Jourdan—an exiled Afghan prince with a castle in India and a business association with the film’s title character, the world wide smuggler Octopussy. Apparently there is a Russian general, bent on U.S.S.R. domination of the world, who has been stealing and auctioning rare Russian treasures, and replacing them with fakes. Since this fake has been “misplaced,” the general must now retrieve the original at auction to avoid being caught by an ill-timed inventory. Bond seems to smell Kahn’s need to have the egg and proceeds to bid (with the Queen’s Money) on the egg and drive the cost to a half of a million pounds. In another moment of sheer Bond brilliance, Bond swaps the real egg for the fake right in the middle of the crowded auction, thereby allowing himself an out later when M angrily asks him what he would have done if he had won the auction. All of this is sheer writing and directorial genius as the viewer doesn’t even realize the swap has gone down until the later meeting with M and I had to go back to watch for Moore’s very quick hands.

                Following this new lead, Bond travels to India in pursuit of Kahn and the egg. The Bond producers had long wanted to film in India with its extreme scenic beauty, but it took until this film to find a province whose ruler would grant them permission. It’s well worth the wait as all of the scenes are filled with so much natural beauty and cultural history that the location is definitely one of the biggest stars of this film. There’s a wonderful homage to the film Goldfinger where Bond goes to the casino and beats the cheating Kahn using his own loaded dice. Here in India we also meet Bond’s Station I connection, Vijay, played sublimely by India’s first international tennis star Vijay Amritraj. Amritraj is a great actor, and there are numerous running jokes in the film about him being a tennis player, including a scene where he fights off henchman using a tennis racket. It turns out that the actor’s union had a huge problem with this “tennis star”  being a film actor, so Broccoli pulled some strings and got him a cameo on the television series The Love Boat so that he could earn his SAG card and alleviate the problems.

Bond has some troubles—being captured and escaping from Kahn—before finally meeting Octopussy, who, as it turns out, knows quite well of James Bond and is very excited to have him as her guest on her Floating Paradise full of only women. This is the perfect setting for the super suave Roger Moore and his senility actually works to the film’s advantage here as his age makes the beautiful Maud Adams look even more radiantly young and beautiful. Octopussy tells Bond that she is traveling to Germany for a business meeting with her circus, and so he follows.
                While in Germany, Bond realizes that this whole scheme has very little to do with stolen jewels, and everything to do with this crazy conquest-bound Russian general attempting to start WW3 (also in Germany, if the viewer looks very close they might catch a glimmer of a 16-year-old extra playing a soldier at Checkpoint Charlie, who would go on to make notoriously thorough award-winning documentaries: Ken Burns). Soon after there is a great chase scene where Bond must catch up with Octopussy’s circus train and stop the bomb from detonating in the middle of a US air base. Of course he’s successful, but in the process he defuses a bomb right in front of a circus audience and becomes the hero of the day. If it wasn’t enough that Bond saved the world from nuclear annihilation, he then travels back to India with Octopussy and her team and storms Kahn’s palace.  Desmond Llewelyn gets probably his largest amount of screen time from any film in the entire franchise when he appears with Bond in a union jack painted hot air balloon over the palace to provide air support and back up to Bond. Personally, I think these are fantastic scenes as the battle that is raging is wonderful and for Q to sail in to the rescue makes this already awesome movie even better. The scenes with the army of ninja girls are also Bond classics, and after Octopussy is captured, Bond chases the villains to their airplane where he jumps from a horse to the back of the plane at the very last second. Then, again in true super hero fashion, he grounds the plane from the outside by disabling a motor and then forcing the flaps down with his feet. He climbs into the plane, frees Octopussy, and the two dive to safety seconds before the plane plunges off a cliff. Bond is then shown “recovering” with Octopussy as the movie closes.

                This film has everything that we have come to expect in a Bond film. There is fantastically beautiful scenery, a big globetrotting plot that takes Bond all sorts of places and requires him to literally save the entire world, truly bent and evil villains, cadres of beautiful women, and enough action-packed scenes to keep everyone cheering. Also this film is the only one to be named after a Bond girl—and who could deny that Octopussy is truly deserving of that honor?

 

 

Live and Let Die - Dir. Guy Hamilton (The Bond Project #8)

Live and Let Die (1973)

Dir: Guy Hamilton

Blaxploitation Bond

by

Jay Maronde

As 1973’s Live and Let Die opens we see British agents being murdered all over the world: one in New York right in the middle of the UN, one in New Orleans while watching a funeral parade, and one in the middle of a crazy voodoo ceremony on the Caribbean island of San Monique (really Jamaica, but renamed to avoid repetition of Dr. NO). After that we cut to a fantastic set of titles accompanied by the first real rock song in the James Bond franchise. “Live and Let Die” (the song) was written by Paul and Linda McCartney and performed by Wings. It is a great song, it’s featured prominently throughout the film, and it was the first Bond song to win major success on the Billboard charts, reaching #2 for several weeks. I would like to note that I hate Sir Paul, and extra-hate Wings, so for me to note the quality of this song--it’s definitely very good. It’s also worth noting that the producers spent so much money on McCartney that the only person who would take the gig to score the film was Sir George Martin, so this whole film certainly has a Beatles kinda feel to it, which is amusing considering that only a few films ago, during Goldfinger (also directed by Guy Hamilton), James Bond made a joke about how he can’t listen to The Beatles without earmuffs. Anyways, about three quarters of the way through this great song, one starts to realize that we have watched almost 20 minutes of film and we haven’t seen the main character yet. There’s a very very good reason for that
Live and Let Die is the first film to star Roger Moore as James Bond. It was big deal to have Roger Moore, as he was an incredibly successful film star, and a skilled, well-practiced actor. In fact Moore was the oldest Bond, being 45 when he first debuted. Now, let me also get this out of the way right now: Roger Moore is definitely not my favorite Bond. He’s too old. His only qualification as Bond is his Sauvé. Watching this and the other Moore films, the viewer clearly gets the gist that Bond’s best asset is his mojo, which is always impressive, and clearly critical to the role. But Moore at no point seems like the type of guy who would fist fight it out (at the very least you wouldn’t want him on your side in a fist fight, even though you would love to have him as your wingman at the bar).

The producers were very conscience of this new Bond issue. They again tried to get Sean Connery. I personally find it shocking that Connery refused, considering they offered him over 5.5 million dollars* (which would be over $100 million in today’s money), but he did refuse and again the producers were in the pickle of having to not only find a new Bond, but again transition the franchise. Many actors were considered, and among them again were Adam West and Burt Reynolds, but also Paul Newman and Robert Redford and Clint Eastwood. Eventually the decision to have a British Bond was made and Moore was cast. Sean Connery was quoted in the press as having approved the new casting and Moore announced that he would be playing his own type of Bond. Both of these things greatly helped to assuage the raucous British Press. Moore’s new Bond would drink bourbon and smoke cigars, and he would be introduced after the title sequence by perennial favorites Moneypenny and M. Q is noticeably absent in this film for the only time before the death of Desmond Llewelyn, which resulted in a calamitous uproar by fans. This led to a constant reprisal of the role by Llewelyn, which gave him the record for appearing in more films in the franchise than any other actor.

 Instead of Q giving Bond his new toys, M and Moneypenny make the delivery in an early morning visit to Bond’s home. This is the second and final time we ever see inside of Bond’s home, and as M arrives, Bond is in bed with easily one of the most beautiful Bond girls ever: the lovely Italian  Agent Caruso, radiantly played by the darling, young, shapely, doe-eyed Madeline Smith.  Miss Smith is famous for those gorgeous eyes and curves--and a longtime favorite from her appearances in horror movies around the world--but she steals the film as well as anyone could with a three-minute role.  After Moneypenny helps conceal the scantily-clad Italian agent (which made Smith uncomfortable--she noted that Moore’s overly jealous wife was always on set and “making comments”), Bond is dispatched to NYC and the Blaxploitation begins.

While New York doesn’t feature all that prominently in this film, it is definitely “James Bond does NYC.” It’s here we meet the Prime Minister of San Monique, Dr Kanaga (played famously by none other than Yophet Kotto fresh off his success from Across 110th Street) and his lovely virgin fortune-telling personal secretary Solitaire (acted--plus dubbed) by a very young and nubile Jane Seymour. This was Seymour’s first big role and the opening credits give her an “introducing” line. Again personally I think Madeline Smith is a way better Bond girl, even though Seymour was voted #10 on several lists of “10 Best Bond Girls.” In any case Bond meets up with his old pal Felix Leiter (played jovially by David Hedison, who is actually the only actor ever before Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace’s Jeffrey Wright to appear twice playing the role of Felix Leiter), but not before having a pretty sweet car scene on the FDR expressway, and then having an extensive old-time grimy Harlem adventure where he meets the films other villain, a highly pimped out crime boss named Mr. Big. All these scenes were really filmed in NYC and the mood of 1970’s NYC really shines through. Apparently while the crew was shooting in Harlem, they had to pay “protection” to a local street gang, and when the cash ran out they were “encouraged” to leave. It’s here in NYC that the Blaxploitation is most prominent, many social commentators have complained that this is in bad taste. But from a historical perspective I feel that it enriches the entire Bond franchise because it shows how adaptable the stories really are. Shortly after the Harlem scene Bond jets off to San Monique.
It’s in San Monique where we meet the franchise’s first African-American Bond Girl that Bond fornicates with, the lithe Rosie Carver (delightfully cast with Gloria Hendry, another classic Blaxploitation star) and the film’s first major allusion to the other films in the franchise with Quarrel Jr. (Quarrel Sr was Bond’s boat operator in Dr. No) After Carver turns out to be a double agent and has to die,  Bond seduces and couples with the beautiful Solitaire (causing her to lose her fortune-telling powers) by using a stacked deck of tarot cards where every card is “The Lovers” (there was also a “Bond Brand Tarot Deck” and instruction book released as part of the film’s merchandising). The two escape, and explore Kanaga’s personal “voodoo land” where he discovers what this film is all about: dope (like most almost all Blaxploitation films). There’s a helicopter chase and Bond escapes to New Orleans. In New Orleans we discover that Mr. Big and Dr. Kanaga are the same person, and that the plan is to give away two tons of heroin, grown in San Monique, for the dual purpose of driving the Mafia out of business and doubling the number of American junkies. Bond escapes a crazy alligator farm where the dope is being processed, and leads the villains on a high speed boat chase throughout the outskirts of New Orleans which happens to include a Guinness World Record setting boat jump over and into a sheriff’s car (the boat chase was made possible by a corporate sponsorship/ product placement deal between EON productions and Glastron Boats, who supplied 26 boats for the film, 17 of which were completely destroyed).
The movie speeds to an incredible conclusion as Bond travels back to San Monique, shuts down the whole operation, kills the villain (which happens to be “Film Bond’s” first political assassination), and saves Solitaire. As the movie closes Bond and Solitaire are traveling via train and in a final allusion to From Russia with Love, Bond is forced to vanquish another henchman by throwing him from a moving train window.
This movie is classic and even smooth old Roger Moore can’t bring down the fantastic sets, locations, effects, music, castings, and direction supplied by Guy Hamilton’s team. The fact that this was Hamilton’s 3rd Bond film really seems to show, as while the film is certainly no cinematic masterwork like On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, it certainly is a very fun to watch--an entry which has its ups-and-downs and sticks to the Bond “formula” well, all the while dealing with integrating yet another actor into the role.
*I am not sure whether this figure is meant to be pounds or dollars -JK