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

A View to a Kill - Dir. John Glen (The Bond Project #14)

A View to a Kill (1985)

Dir: John Glen

Pushing Sixty, Roger Moore Bond Makes Good, Ends on High Note
by
Jay Maronde

                 A View to a Kill could easily be one of the most underappreciated James Bond films in the entire canon. There have always been many complaints about Roger Moore’s ridiculous agedness, but even a geriatric Bond could not stop the cinematic genius provided in this well-paced, action-packed James Bond adventure. This would be Roger Moore’s seventh and final appearance as James Bond, and rumors have always swirled that he only made this film to overtake Sean Connery’s legacy as Bond. Connery, for his part, weighed in himself on Moore’s age, commenting that, “James Bond should be played by an actor 33-35 years old. I’m too old myself, but Roger is certainly too old.” Needless to say these slightly disparaging comments did nothing to help the film’s press, but as I’ve already said—even Moore’s age is completely outshined by the rest of this fantastic movie.

                The film centers around the evil industrialist and all-time great Bond villain Max Zorin, played classically, perfectly, and brilliantly by a young and delightfully evil Christopher Walken. Walken is at his absolute best. He’s easily one of the greatest, most evil Bond villains in the entire franchise. He’s fabulously wealthy, he lives in a striking French château that actually manages to put the home of Moonraker’s Villain Drax’s château to shame (the compound is so freaking amazingly nice that when Bond arrives he incorrectly assumes that the servants’ quarters are the stables), he lies and cheats at every turn, and he cackles maniacally as he murders his own henchmen. Walken with his weird Walken self could have been born to be a Bond Villain, but his casting as the genetically-engineered, psychopathic, defected KGB agent Zorin is film genius. Shockingly, the role was written specifically for David Bowie, who refused the role saying that he didn’t want to spend 5 months watching his stunt double get thrown off of cliffs.

                Speaking of stunt work AVTAK has numerous fantastic stunts right from the beginning of the film. As the movie opens, Bond is on a mountaintop supposedly in Siberia recovering a stolen microchip from the corpse of a dead 003. Enemies come, and Bond escapes in an expertly choreographed alpine skiing scene. The filming was done in Iceland and Roger Moore never actually went there because, aside from a few studio-shot close-ups, the entire opening scene is all fantastic skiing stunts. During this opening scene the James Bond franchise actually introduced the burgeoning sport of Snowboarding to the world as when Bond is eventually forced to use a single snow mobile ski to avoid capture and make his way down the mountain. The film also ends with a remarkable and memorable final sequence where Bond fights Zorin on the top of the tower for the Golden Gate Bridge in San Franscico. The real life suave of Roger Moore actually aided immensely during the San Francisco shooting as Moore was in real life very good friends with the current Mayor Dianne Feinstein.  Feinstein, being a huge Roger Moore Bond fan, was more than happy to expedite all the necessary filming permits, and the producers eventually felt that the city had provided so much for the production that this film is one of the very few Bond’s not to premiere in London, and the only one to premiere in San Francisco.

Another famous stunt in the movie involves a knocked-out, automobile-entrapped Bond being pushed into a lake by Zorin and his cohorts (the Rolls Royce used in the film is actually owned in real life by producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, even though a dummy car was used for the lake scene). After Bond is in the water, he needs to hide from the villains until they leave, and so cannot surface for air. Instead, Bond uses air from the tires to breathe underwater for a short period of time (this scene has had plentiful homage paid to it throughout cinematic history including a great scene in the Jason Statham classic The Transporter 3). Another scene which is quite notable for being ripped off is the fire truck chase through the streets of San Francisco, which was most notably ripped off for the end of the movie Con Air (it turns out that Moore actually drove the fire truck during filming as the stuntman was too short to reach the pedals, making it his only actual stunt work in the entire series).

                This Bond film is also notable for Bond’s amazing way with the ladies, as during this film he beds a series record of four different Bond girls. This film is filled with very beautiful and famous women including the two female leads Tanya Roberts and Grace Jones. Jones was incredibly famous all on her own and still has a very successful career even though I have quite a few (female) friends who all claim this to be their favorite Bond based exclusively on the revolutionary woman’s casting in it. Personally, and not to be at all offensive towards her, Jones is way too much man for me, as I prefer my women a little bit more feminine. However, when cast as the crazy Zorin’s also genetically-engineered and psychopathic lover/henchwoman MayDay, she absolutely lights up the screen. Luckily the film also has three other very feminine Bond Girls including Ms. Roberts (who would later become the neighbor mother Midge on TV’s That 70’s Show.) It also worth noting that Ms. Roberts’ grace and youthful beauty eventually became the reason that Roger Moore relinquished the role of Bond, as during filming he found out that he was older than her mother. 

                Another facet of the Bond magic that this movie doesn’t disappoint on is the music. As usual the score was done by the master John Barry, and it is high quality, classic, and very well done. However one of the biggest stars and biggest successes of this film is the song “A View to a Kill,” by none other than the 1980s pop-stars Duran Duran. The story behind how the group (who Barry hated and didn’t feel should be making a Bond song) got the gig is rather amusing. The group’s bassist John Taylor (who was a lifelong Bond Fan) happened to be drunk at party one night, and heard that Bond producer Cubby Broccoli was in attendance at the party. He stormed up to the great man and demanded to know, “When are you gonna get someone decent to do one of your theme songs?” Broccoli being Broccoli knew a good thing when he saw it and quickly signed Duran Duran to do the song, which was the first and only Bond song to chart #1 on the Billboard Top 100. It’s also notable that the group’s lead singer Simon Le Bon, shares the same last name with James Bond’s ancestors as explained during the genealogy section of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and as a result Le Bon can be heard at the end of the album version of the song saying “Le Bon, Simon Le Bon.”

                This film is fantastic. The settings, actors, plot and music are all top notch. I could easily go on all night about all the different parts that I really like, but I would rather go back to listening to Duran Duran rock out James Bond style and let you all enjoy this great movie for yourselves.

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?