I liked the Daniel Craig version of Casino Royale a lot more than I thought I would, but it lost SO MANY POINTS for using poker instead of baccarat. It was a mostly understandable decision but oh so lazy from a creative perspective.

James Bond is an expert card player. So there should be a scene about cards in just about every movie. They should have stuck to baccarat in Casino Royale and come up with a creative way to use poker in the next film set in the U.S. DUH!

LAZY LAZY LAZY!

And not just plain old poker, but the "Texas Hold 'em" poker that was popular at the time on tv.

I think Casino Royale is over-rated and that the only good aspects are those drawn from the book, but I also find it completely understandable why it made such an impression at the time - because it was the first Bond movie for many years that took the least inspiration from the books apart from the title and the character's name.

Because there were intrinsic qualities to the books and the Bond character as conceived by Fleming that made it such a huge success that Bond has become one of those immortal fictional characters that takes on a life of their own. It wasn't just JFK's endorsement, though that impetus might have been an important factor.

I remember a few months afterwards seeing a younger guy (maybe early 20s? so hard to tell, they all look alike to me) who worked at the gym I went to back then, sitting at the desk reading one of the Fleming Bonds. I asked him how he liked it and he said something like, "I can't believe how good these books are." He had gotte into them because he'd heard that the Craig movie was more or less based on a novel, tried Casino Royale and was hooked. I can't see that happening with any Bond movie since the Connery days or the Lazenby one.


OTOH, I do think he does capture one aspect of the character, besides the obvious competence and charisma, that most other actors haven't - a kind of dogged determination to keep pursuing his objective no matter what the odds or what seemingly insurmountable obstacles and setbacks he might encounter along the way. Lazenby had a bit of it, but perhaps inadvertantly, through his somewhat wooden acting.

That's pretty much sums up Craig's 007 Movies ... nuff said!

Skyfall



Starring Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Naomi Harris, Albert Finney, Ben Whishaw, Rory Kinnear.

Released Oct (UK)/Nov (US) 2012

Bond and Eve Moneypenny are chasing a mercenary with a stolen harddrive, compromising MI-6 agents who have infiltrated terrorist organizations. The chase moves to a train and Moneypenny tries to take out the merc with a sniper shot (from a .226 cal M-16 variant, which is not an optimal weapon for long range precision shooting) and hits Bond instead. Bond is presumed dead. M is pressured into retirement by the Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, Gareth Malloy. M is then taunted by a message, via hacked MI-6 computers, just before a bomb explodes in the MI-6 headquarters. Bond turns up, alive, in London and makes contact with M. he is put through a series of tests, which he fails; but, is still reinstated. He meets the new Q, a cybergeek genius. He is sent after Patrice, the merc with the stolen harddrive, which takes him to Shanghai. He fails to stop patrice from killing a target, but kills Patrice. A casino chip leads him to a Macao casino, where he meets Severine, who says her bodyguards will kill him, unless he promises help her try to kill her employer. They travel on the yacht, Chimera, to a private island, near Macao, where they are taken prisoner and Bond meets Raoul Silva, a rogue MI-6 agent and cyberterrorist, who hacked MI-6 and set off the bomb. Bond is tortured but manages to get free and capture Silva. Silva is brought back to MI-6, where Q attempts to decrypt his laptop, which allows it to hack MI-6's control systems and release Silva. Silva attempts an attack on Parliament, while M is there; but, Bond thwarts it. he takes M to his family estate, Skyfall, in Scotland. There, they fight of a siege attack, launched by Silva. They escape through a priesthole and boobytrap the house. Silva corners them in a chapel and puts a gun in M's hand and presses his forehead against it. Bond kills Silva and M succumbs to wounds she received, during the siege, and dies. Malloy ends up the new M. moneypenny formally introduces herself to Bond (she used a cover name, before) and has retired from fieldwork to be the secretary to the new M.

Filming was delayed, due to the financial collapse of MGM, leading to its bankruptcy. A distribution deal with Sony finally gave the ability to move forward. Sam Mendes had bee signed as director, shortly after Quantum. mendes was a noted stage director in the West End (London's theatrical center), who garnered acclaim as a filmmaker with such films as the Oscar-winning American Beauty and the adaptation of Max Allen Collins' Road to Perdition, in which Daniel Craig appeared. mendes adds a lot of style to the project, which had been missing from the series, giving it a modern look; but also a greater emphasis on characters. He did much to improve the erratic stories, though much of the film is still overtaken by action sequences. The plot gets overly convoluted, at points and the computer hacking is typical Hollywood SFX displays, with the typical assumptions that government agencies (especially intel services) don't use multiple security layers and nothing can be done without computer controlled electronics (such as the cell locks, which allows Silva to escape).

This is the second time we see a bomb go off in MI-6 HQ, which shows how much these films feed on past plots. However, they add a nice touch of an emergency HQ, located in a WW2 bunker. The new Q lacks the schoolmaster personna of Desmond Llewelyn; instead casting a younger actor as the boy genius who arms Bond. However, in typical Hollywood fashion, he is a classic nerd, who has trouble communicating with "regular" people. Not every scientist or tech person is a social misfit, lost in a world of 1s and 0s; but, Hollywood can't exist without stereotypes.

The cast is terrific and Mendes gets the most out of them. Bardem's Silva is an interesting take on both the rogue agent (ala 006, in Goldeneye) and the deadly international threat (ala Scaramanga). he has definite mental issues, which was part of his undoing in a past mission, which he blames on M. There are layers to him, though a homoerotic scene with Craig suggests elements that drew criticism for equating homosexuality with deep psychoses. Well, at least they didn't perpetuate Fleming's ridiculous notions, like the idea that homosexuals couldn't whistle (stated in Dr No, as I recall) or his take on lesbians (Olga Krebb and Pussy Galore).

Eve, the agent who shot Bond, is named as Moneypenny, at the end, though she is more of a departmental assistant, rather than an actual clerical secretary. In this instance, she becomes a secretary, in the civil service sense, for a government department (a job title, referring to a departmental member, of a certain rank, such as deputy assistant secretary, assistant secretary, permanent secretary, etc...). She has some good scenes with Bond, carrying on the tradition.

Judi Dench gets quite a bit more to do and gets to have a death scene, every actor's favorite. She also gets to act alongside Albert Finney, who is cast as the caretaker of Skyfall and an old friend to Bond's family. Consideration was given to offering the part to Sean Connery, but it was never put forward, as it was felt it would smack too much of stunt casting. More than likely, they sent out feelers which indicated he wasn't interested in doing it.

There are some disjointed segments and there are still too many 9/11 metaphors, with everything from extraordinary rendition, stolen cyber files, destruction of major landmarks and the like. Although it represents the world of modern terrorism, it does feel like the "larger than life" Bond elements have been lost, in a desire to mimic the success of the Jason Bourne films. Both are fantasies; but, Bourne is about an ordinary guy with no memory of his past; but an exceptional set of skills, trying to discover who he is. Bond is about a knight sent to fight wizards and slay dragons, from the moment Fleming put typewriter key to paper and when the first frame of film was exposed in Dr No.

Thomas Newman, who worked with Mendes, on American beauty, provided the music, with a theme song from Adele. It proved popular, though I'm fairly cold to Adele, as a singer. My personal tastes, in these themes, tends to favor the big, bold ones, like Goldfinger, Thunderball, Live and Let Die, Man With the Golden Gun and View to a Kill. I like many of the others, such as For Your Eyes Only, Goldeneye, and We Have All The Time in the World; but, ever since Goldeneye, they haven't done much for me.

This was a nice recovery from Quantum, with greater emphasis on story and character, though it still feels Frankensteined, with diversions for stunt shows and everyone except Bond being total morons (though I would say the MI-6 nucleus proves more than capable, after a few stumbles). Finnes is set up as the new M, which is a good choice, as he plays the modern civil servant well.

SPECTRE



Starring Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Lea Seydoux, Dave Bautista, Andrew Scott, Monica Bellucci.

Released Oct/Nov 2015.

M sends Bond a posthumous mission, to Mexico, during the Day of the Dead celebration, where he stops a terrorist bombing plot (ignoring that Mexico's drug cartels have been decimating the country on a much cheaper budget). Bond kills the terrorist and finds a ring, emblazoned with an octopus. Bond returns to London and is suspended, because M is locked in a power struggle with C, new head of the Joint Intelligence Service, a merger of MI-5 and 6, which is privately backed. C is pushing for the UK to join Nine Eyes, a cyber security and surveillance initiative. Bond disobeys M and follows the lead of the dead terrorist, leading him to Rome and a meeting of a global terrorist organization, led by Franz Oberhauser. He orders The Pale King to be killed and Bond learns that is Mr White, of Quantum. He also finds himself pursued by Mr Hinx, Oberhauser's assassin. Bond finds Mr White and learns he is dying of thallium poisoning. He agrees to save White's daughter, Madeleine Swann and White kills himself. Bond rescues Swann from Hinx and meets, clandestinely, with Q. he identifies links between Oberhauser and Le Chiffre, Dominic Greene, and Raoul Silva. Swann identifies the organization as SPECTRE. Bond and Swann travel to Tangiers to locate info from Mr White's stash and run into Hinx, on a train. They are taken to Oberhauser's Sahara base, where Bond is tortured and learns that Oberhauser is the son of the man who temporarily became Bond's guardian, after the deaths of his parents. Oberhauser felt Bond supplanted him, in his father's eyes and faked his own death and took the name Ernst Stavro Blofeld, creating SPECTRE. he organized terrorist attacks throughout the world and then backed the creation of the Joint Intelligence Service and C, to gain access to their intel, to counter any investigations and operations against SPECTRE. Bond was personally targeted in all of this. Bond and Swann escape and return to London, to try to stop Nine Eyes from going online. Q stops the system, while M and Moneypenny go after C (who falls to his death). Bond finds Blofeld in the ruins of the MI-6 building, scheduled for demolition. he has to save Swann and escape and they then shoot down Blofeld's helicopter. Blofeld is arrested by M and Bond and Swann drive off for some R & R.

So, everything in the past three films was an elaborate smokescreen to f@#$ with Bond, because Blofeld has daddy issues.

Yeah.

As much as I wanted to love a return of SPECTRE, and, as much as the basic plot of contriving terrorist threats to infiltrate the security services, for counter-espionage, really works, the whole personal revenge thing just falls like a big fat pile of bird doo-doo. These personally directed conspiracies that dominate film are more than boring and cliched. Why does Blofeld need a personal connection to Bond? His operations are a modern extension of the classic SPECTRE, without the need to prove himself better than Bond. Who wrote this, Steven Spielberg? For every great element, like Mr Hinx, the desert base, the big meeting that harkened back to the glory days of Bond, there was all of this modern psycho-babble twaddle that no one wants to see in a James Bond film. Stylish cars, beautiful women, charismatic villains, deadly henchpersons; yeah;, but, not villain therapy sessions. Casting Andrew Scott, as C, pretty much telegraphs that the character is in with the villains, as he seems to specialize in playing them (Moriarty, in Sherlock).

If not for that element, this would have been a nice return to the classic format of the Bond films. Bond gets some gadgets, a world-threatening enemy group, with a charismatic leader, a damsel in distress, and a psychotic monster sent to kill him. Dave Bautista (Batista, of WWE fame and Leviathan, in Ohio Valley Wrestling developmental territory). He is physically imposing and his wrestling background makes him strong on body language and fight scenes (though he was a middling worker, as a pro, who got by on size and look, compared to an all-rounder, like the Undertaker). He joins the fraternity of pro wrestlers in the Bond films, starting with Harold Sakata (Goldfinger), Peter Maivia (YOLT), Yuri Borisenko (OHMSS), and Pat Roach (NSNA).

Christoph Waltz is great, except the character isn't. he would have made a great, straight Blofeld; but, the whole Oberhauser thing drags the character down.

The use of Blofeld and SPECTRE came about in 2013, with MGM acquiring the full rights from Kevin McClory's estate. This is probably why Quantum ends up as just another front, when it was originally introduced to be the new "SPECTRE." They also eliminated the acronym element, probably thinking it was too old fashioned. I say phooey on that, as film audiences love a good acronym, especially a classic one. Thank heavens they didn't do the same with the Man From UNCLE film.

Sam Mendes returned to direct (after originally turning it down) and Thomas Newman returned for the music. Title song was from Sam Smith. Not my cuppa.