Bond, Part 2

Alan Cumming in GoldenEye

Let's get this out of the way: The very dumbest scene in all of the 25 Bond movies occurs in The Man with the Golden Gun. Bond jumps his car across a small waterway in Southeast Asia. He is able to do this because on each side of the water there is an inexplicable wooden ramp that does not look like it can hold the weight of a car, but the car goes up one ramp and lands on the other one. Ordinary Bond stuff. However, each ramp also has an inexplicable twist in it, so that as the car flies across, it corkscrews 360 degrees to land on the tilted structure on the other side. The trick is accompanied by a cartoonish slide-whistle sound - even the filmmakers knew it was silly.

(I just read that the jump actually took place. A stunt driver did it one take, which is really impressive. It's still an idiotic moment.)

I covered the Sean Connery movies, other than Never Say Never Again, and the Daniel Craig movies, in a previous post. Since then, we watched Never Say Never, all the Roger Moore films, both Timothy Daltons, and all four Pierce Brosnan efforts. I have no interest in the David Niven version of Casino Royale. As it was, we watched 25 Bond films.

Never Say Never Again came out 12 years after Diamonds Are Forever, and after six of the seven Roger Moore movies. An aging Sean Connery was still better than Moore, and the movie is decent, a sort of remake of Thunderball, including a villain named Largo and a female lead named Domino. Kim Bassinger plays Domino, and Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean and Black Adder) has a small role.

The Roger Moore movies are a low point in the franchise, with at least three clunkers and four okay movies, but no standouts. Moore himself is decent as Bond, but he seems a little too relaxed and cheerful, as if he knows as well as we do that it will always work out. Moore is not the problem with the Roger Moore movies though.

The series gets a little too jokey and silly for too many of these movies. There are some goofy characters that I will talk about more. Some dumb scenes besides the car flip. Lots of sexual innuendo, including endings in which Bond is having sex with a woman and somehow MI6 finds him and gets him on camera, resulting in lines like "I'm holding up England's end!" or "He appears to be attempting re-entry."

Movie by movie:

• Live and Let Die is bad, very bad. More later.
• The Man with the Golden Gun is boring, plus the car jumping and twisting scene, plus the worst character in all of the Bond movies (I'll explain.)
• Maud Adams is in Man with the Golden Gun, as the villain's girlfriend. Sadly, she dies during the film, like so many Bond women, so when she shows up again in Octopussy, it's as a different character (named Octopussy.)
• The Spy Who Loved Me is the first decent Moore movie. Barbara Bach gets the prize for showing off her boobs for more screentime than any other Bond woman.
• Moonraker has a dubious main story, plus a second outing for Jaws, the giant guy with huge metal teeth who debuted in The Spy Who Loved Me, and who can chew through a chain. You have to set aside your disbelief for any of the Bond movies, but sometimes the craziness works (You Only Live Twice), and sometimes it does not (Moonraker, Die Another Day.)
• For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy (despite the name) are not too bad. Topol is in For Your Eyes Only. I like the theme song to Octopussy. Octopussy was her father's pet name for her, by the way - shades of Donald Trump.
• I remembered A View to a Kill as being a bad entry, due to Tanya Roberts as a geologist and the plot to use an explosion to set off a double-earthquake and bury Silicon Valley in a flood (still both pretty bad), but Christopher Walken makes a decent psychopath, and Grace Jones looks the part as his assassin.

To my surprise, I had never seen either of the Timothy Dalton movies, or at least they seemed completely unfamiliar. Both were serviceable, although Licence to Kill - and that is the real spelling, because of the British - has a few too many wild stunts, like popping a wheelie with a semi-truck, but what do you expect? Dalton makes a better Bond than Moore. A young Benicio Del Toro is a bad guy in Licence to Kill. Desmond Llewelyn as Q has a substantially bigger role in that movie than he has in any other.

I like Pierce Brosnan as Bond, although some of the dopiness of the Roger Moore era still seeps in. Daniel Craig's movies downplayed all that - good choice. Judi Dench starts her role as M, making a bigger impact than any previous M ever did. We also have a new Moneypenny, and John Cleese eventually takes over for Desmond Llewelyn as Q. That one's an odd choice, but he is not too bad. Also, Michael Kitchen is in these movies as part of the MI6 establishment.

• GoldenEye is excellent, with Sean Bean as the bad guy, and Alan Cumming in a great role as a quirky Russian programmer. Too bad about the cartoonish ending.
• Robbie Coltrane of Hagrid fame is in GoldenEye as a Russian gangster. He returns in The World Is Not Enough in the same role. Minnie Driver also has a small part, singing Stand By Your Man, badly.
• The plot of Tomorrow Never Dies - trying to create a war between Britain and China by using a stealth technology boat, in order to get exclusive coverage to feed an international media network - is a bit too much. Jonathan Pryce is in this one.
• The World Is Not Enough is decent, despite Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist in a bit of stretch. Robert Carlyle, of The Full Monty fame, is in it, and Sophie Marceau is a different sort of villain.
• We watch Demond Llewlyn retire during The World Is Not Enough and hand the reins to John Cleese. Llewelyn was in 17 Bond movies, more than anyone else.
• The movie ends with the Bond line, "I thought Christmas only comes once a year," because Denise Richards' character is named Christmas, and... It's maybe the most cringeworthy of all of the Bond innuendos and double-entendres despite a great deal of competition.
• Die Another Day has some decent action sequences, but the main story - a North Korean military officer converted into a pale-skinned British guy with a British accent through the miracle of gene therapy- is hard to swallow, as is the infamous invisible Astin Martin. Rosamund Pike is good as a bad girl though.

Best and worst movies by actor:

• Roger Moore: Best - For Your Eyes Only, just for the least silliness. Worst - Live and Let Die.
• Timothy Dalton: Take your pick. I liked The Living Daylights a little better, but the Internet disagrees with me.
• Pierce Brosnan: Best - GoldenEye. Worst - Die Another Day.

Time for best and worst movies overall. Let's start with best. The contenders:

• Goldfinger. The song, Oddjob, the golden girl, the Astin Martin, the bad guy getting sucked out of an airplane window. Downside is that the Sean Connery films seem dated, especially the way he slaps women on the ass, or in the face, or forces them to kiss him, and so on. Goldfinger is good though.
• GoldenEye. A good story, lots of action, Sean Bean, Alan Cumming, Judi Dench. I was OK with the tank-chasing-a-car through a city scene, but not everyone will be. The final scene, where Bond and a pretty Russian woman find themselves alone in the countryside, only to find out there are about ten Marines hiding in the grass all around them, is a disappointing ending to a good movie.
• Casino Royale: Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Giancarlo Giannini, Jeffrey Wright as Felix, a good villain in Le Chiffre. Nothing much to complain about. Some people like Skyfall better, but I'll take this one.

And the winner is... Casino Royale, although any of these will do.

The contenders for worst:

• On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Again, the Internet disagrees with me on this one, but the filmmakers decided to jettison a lot of the things that made the previous movies work and go in a different direction, and they should have stuck to the formula (and they went right back to it afterward.)
• Live and Let Die. The song is not my favorite, but it's okay. The portrayals of Black people may have worked at the time, but now they seem, let's say, anachronous. There is some Get Smart-level nonsense, like Bond escaping a bunch of crocodiles by quickly stepping on the backs of three or four to get to the shore. I would advise you not to try this. There is a sorceress (Jane Seymour) who can actually predict the future with uncanny accuracy using Tarot cards until Bond takes away her magic by taking her virginity. (If you have not seen the movie, you may be doubting me right now, but that's what happens.) Worst of all, there is the worst Bond movie character of all 25 movies, an American, Southern, tobacco-chewing, Foghorn Leghorn-sounding, racist, useless dumb sheriff who I suppose someone thought was funny. Incredibly, some genius liked the character so much that they brought him back for Man with the Golden Gun.
• Die Another Day. As described above, although I did not mention the melting ice hotel or using part of a speedy car and its parachute to kiteboard on a huge wave caused by ice breaking into the sea. Madonna is in this one with a small role, and Halle Berry is fine as a Bond collaborator, but the movie is not great.

And the loser is ... Can you guess? Live and Let Die. Very, very bad.

If I were to watch again, I would skip these movies as not worth the two hours:

• Dr. No
• On Her Majesty's Secret Service
• Live and Let Die
• The Man with the Golden Gun
• Moonraker
• Die Another Day

If I only wanted to watch the best ones, while sampling the different eras, I would watch:

• From Russia with Love
• Goldfinger
• You Only Live Twice
• For Your Eyes Only
• The Living Daylights
• GoldenEye
• All of the Daniel Craig movies