Goldfinger!

I write these Bond reviews with the expectation that everyone has seen all the movies, if not read the all the books. So, tread as carefully as it seems prudent. 

Goldfinger is a great movie, but only a so-so novel. The movie and the novel though both offer up a great villain, the titular "Goldfinger", but both alas share the terrible ending which requires hundreds if not thousands of people to pretend to die. It's somewhat ludicrous that this could be accomplished and seems frankly to be a writer trying to get out of a hole. The novel also has the peculiar lesbian myth that men like Bond can turn such women. It's pretty ludicrous.

In the novel Bond has just wrapped up taking down a heroin smuggling outfit and is headed home for America when a rich American who sat next to Bond at the Casino Royale asks him to help him to discover how a fellow Brit is cheating him at Canasta. With a few days on his hand and being offered a good paycheck for light work, Bond takes up the case.  He encounters Auric Goldfinger for the first time and ruins his scheme. It is of note that the infamous golden girl of the movie does exist, but we only hear about it second hand from her sister Tilly Masterson. Bond finds himself looking to scotch the schemes of Goldfinger and we meet the gruesome Oddjob, a terrifying Koran martial arts master. As in the movie there is a plot to rob the mint at Fort Knox and there is a woman named Pussy Galore. Tilly and Pussy supply the sexual tension in this novel. It's a wild ending for certain, if implausible. 

Goldfinger is often tagged as the gold standard of Bond movies, but for my tastes it falls short in many respects, though still quite diverting in many ways and so comes in as my fourth favorite Bond film. The notion of Bond taking on someone other than SPECTRE is fine and dandy, but the lack of that secret organization's shadow on this story hurts the motivations for me personally. If Goldfinger (portrayed by portly Gert Frobe) had been working for them all along and making monkeys out of the Chinese who seem to be his benefactors, then I'd have liked this one more.

The high points in this are the girls. Both Masterson girls end tragically in this tale, but both go out in memorable fashions. Jill (Shirley Eaton) gets painted gold and has become an icon for the Bond films and Tilly (Tania Mallet) out for revenge gets knocked in the noggin by Oddjob's deadly hat. But the star of the show is the insanely named Pussy Galore played by Honor Blackman, the first woman in the Bond series who can occupy the screen with Connery on equal footing.

The flaw in this one is the finale which is downright stupid. Somehow, we are to think that Bond after converting Pussy to his side with his awesome maleness uses her to undermine Goldfinger's scheme by having hundreds and hundreds of soldiers and others fall down (rather unconvincingly) as the supposed deadly gas passes through them. They all then stay still as legions of Red Chinese soldiers motor into Fort Knox. Then they all jump up and knock down the bad guys when the atomic bomb shows up. The battle between Bond and Oddjob is a classic but the tag ending with Goldfinger while perhaps fitting undercuts the potency of end.

This is the one in which a gleam gets in the eye of the producers, and they start to treat Bond with more humor than is really necessary. It's not readily noticeable in this installment, but the trend will continue until the whole shebang becomes open farce in the post-Connery years. Goldfinger has some dandy scenes, but its overall impact is diminished mightily by its impossible ending. But I do always like to see scenes of Kentucky in a movie of this scale.

James Bond Returns in For Your Eyes Only.

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From Russia With Love!

I write these Bond reviews with the expectation that everyone has seen all the movies, if not read the all the books. So, tread as carefully as it seems prudent. 

From Russia with Love from 1957 is easily the best of the Bond novels, despite the fact Bond himself doesn't show up until the last half. Red Grant is a worthy opponent and in fact in this head-to-head with SMERSH, Bond is battling his main foe and not quibbling with mere hoods. Money ain't the motivation in this one, humiliating Britain's hero spy is the goal, and the plan is a whopper. Kerim Bey is a fantastic helper for Bond, a character worthy of a few stories all his own. The ending is an absolute hoot, and it caught me looking.

This is one in which the book and the movie align quite closely, with mostly cosmetic changes made for the film. The book's great strength is its structure. We get two parts, titled the "The Plan" and "The Execution". The former focuses exclusively on the enemies of Bond, devoting whole chapters to their backstories. This scheme is a deft one, with actual levels of subtlety. Fleming's powers of description are top-notch again, as the setting for this one is the exotic Istanbul and later the equally romantic Orient Express. 

As has become a regular thing in these novels, Bond's strongest relationship in book is again with a man, specifically Kerin Bey, a sly pirate who runs the British operations with wit and savvy. There is a strong sexual attraction to Titiana for certain, but once again it's a sexual one almost exclusively with a dash of parental concern. Bond saves his feelings for his few male friends as is evidenced in the beginning of the second section when we learn that his relationship with Tiffany Case has broken up and he seems rather unconcerned. And the previous novels had featured a game of some kind at the core of the story or at least strongly featured in the background. In this outing the entire adventure is a chess match, embedding the motif into the plot. 

From Russia With Love the movie is to my thinking the absolute best of the Bonds as a pure spy thriller. It doesn't have the super-spy vibe in any serious way but rather gives us a relatively low-key (by Bond standards) Cold War yarn which puts our hero within reach of the clutches of those vile Russkies and more deadly yet, his enemies in SPECTRE.

Pedro Armendariz as Ali Kerim Bey supplies the movie with a ton of old-fashioned charm and his demise toward the climax of the movie is genuinely sad. The back and forth of the spies in the ancient streets of Istanbul are fun to watch as the exotic locales add lovely character to scenes which are mostly mundane.  Daniela Bianchi is gorgeous and a proper lure for the always randy Bond, though his dismissive treatment of this girl who truly loves him is sometimes difficult to understand.

At heart of this one though are the delightful villains. Kleb and Kronsteen are a duo from hell, a Russian man-hating crone and a cold-fish chess master are the ideal opponents for the virile Bond even though he never meets the latter personally. At the top of the heap though is Grant played by Robert Shaw. Grant doesn't speak through nearly the entire movie, but with his shocking white hair and deadly demeanor offers up a strange counter-image of Bond himself. As Bond stumbles through the story, Grant always seems in control. When they do finally face off, it's simple greed which proves the villains undoing.

James Bond Returns in Dr. No. 

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Diamonds Are Forever!

I write these Bond reviews with the expectation that everyone has seen all the movies, if not read the all the books. So, tread as carefully as it seems prudent. 

Diamonds are Forever takes James Bond out of his usual environment of espionage and pits him against U.S. gangsters. It's a bit of a stretch and frankly Bond doesn't seem natural in this one. Tiffany Case is the usual damaged Bond femme fatale, but she does remain strong through most of this one. The gangsters aren't especially brilliant despite being dubbed "The Spangled Gang". They come off almost like baddies from Chester Gould's Dick Tracy. But Bond perhaps underestimates them. 

The story takes Bond from London to NYC and then upstate New York for some horse racing and then veers to Las Vegas. It begins with diamond smuggling and then veers into all sort of crime the mobs were engaged with. When this novel was written in 1956 the mobs were dominant in the United States in places like Las Vegas and other gambling centers. In Las Vegas, Bond finds the strange world which the mob created to attract gamblers and he finds great danger as well. Bond is tracking down a smuggling ring which specializes in diamonds, and he finds danger and allies both new and old at every step. 

It's against that backdrop that Bond takes up the case which gives a wonderful glimpse of what it was like to fly overseas. We get a cruise of sorts aboard the Queen Elizabeth. Listening to these guys argue over "millions" seems so quaint, a like a reverse Dr. Evil. Felix Leiter returns, a bit worse for wear and now a Pinkerton Man. Scotland Yarder Vallance returns as well, as Fleming seems to be building up a cadre of recognizable mates for our hero. Fleming is building a world around his indomitable hero. 

Of the original Sean Connery Bond movies, Diamonds are Forever is easily the least of them. Connery returned to the role that defined his career after a brief hiatus and in this somewhat bleak adventure follows the trail of stolen diamonds as they wander across the globe from the mines of South Africa to Holland and eventually to Las Vegas. Along the way he encounters two gay killers named Kidd and Wint who offer up a satirical look at hit men to say the least. Also, along for the ride is Jill St. John as Tiffany Case, and if not for her presence this Bond flick would be a total bore. St. John is extremely hot in this movie, among the most delectable of the Bond girls but sadly it's a somewhat remote Bond she interacts with.

Missing from this humdrum yarn is the usual Bond tropes like an armoring by Q, though the delightful Q does make a showing. The interaction between Bond and Moneypenny is pretty minimal in this one. M does get in some funny lines as Bond demonstrates a limited knowledge of diamond lore. All in all, it's an exceedingly atypical Bond adventure and it's one which lacks the high-tech romance which had come to define the series when Connery left it the first time.

The plot, as far as I can make it out, is that Blofeld is scheming (apparently sans SPECTRE) to gather diamonds while posing as reclusive tycoon Wilbur Whyte and use them to make a satellite which will power a laser which will destroy nuclear weapons across the world. His scheme barely gets underway when it's cut short by Bond and Case working in tandem. The finale battle atop a highly-specialized oil rig falls well below the spectacle which had been entertained on earlier movies. There's a lot of location shooting in this Bond movie and sadly that give the whole affair a more realistic and mildly grubby look. Connery looks disinterested most of the time and also just a little old as the gray in his hair is evident.

As Bond movies go, it's a bit of a snooze with a few nice moments. The least of Connery's original Bonds for certain.

James Bond Returns in From Russia with Love. 

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Casino Royale!

I write these Bond reviews with the expectation that everyone has seen all the movies, if not read the all the books. So, tread as carefully as it seems prudent. 

Like most men of my generation, I grew up with the James Bond movies. Every few years, we'd get another action epic featuring Ian Fleming's super-spy. But as familiar as I am with the various iterations of the movie Bond, I am less familiar with the original James Bond novels by Ian Fleming which touched off the fantastically successful series of films as well a boom of spy-related material in books, comics, and television. 

Casino Royale I have read a few times and this time it didn't disappoint. It's a rapid read introducing most of the key Bond tropes. The gambling is front and center of course as Bond attempts to block a "Redlands" (Soviets specifically SMERSH) agent from getting hold of some needed cash to keep him in good graces with his iron-willed managers. The details of chemin de fer, the game they play bore me a bit, but the notion of two foes battling over the cards does not. The actual game goes on for several chapters. The torture Bond endures is pretty basic and powerful, and indicative of the almost sadistic quality of the early Fleming books.

Needless to say, Bond's infamous attitude towards women is well on display, and speaks to the fundamentally barbaric nature of this man who functions so well at times in the precise world of manners. He is after all a confirmed cold-blooded murderer, or he'd not have a "00" designation. There are times when the book reads like a romance, and a few pages are actively erotic. But a fatal tragedy undermines the potential happiness. 

Casino Royale was published in 1953 and quickly adapted to television in a live hour-long episode of the series Climax. The show features Barry Nelson as Jimmy Bond an Americanized version of Fleming's hero. He's up against La Chiffre again, who is played by the great Peter Lorre. Linda Christian is the obligatory Bond girl in this brief effort that never leaves the titular casino. It's a curiosity and you can check it out for yourself at this YouTube link which offers up a small glimpse. 

In the now quite deep James Bond canon, the offbeat 1967 Casino Royale is a novelty of the highest order. If you like your movie adventures shaken with absurdity and not stirred by actual real suspense, then this might be the Bond movie for you. I enjoy it well enough, but watching it is always more of an act of beholding a pop-art piece than falling into the throes of a sweeping spy flick. The story just doesn't cling together in any way which might allow a viewer to get swept away, the movie always brings you up short and reminds you that all of the farce which is writhing on the screen is not for a moment intended to elevate your endorphins, save for the bits which feature some beautiful dames, and the movie does that splendidly.

For those who might not know what this particular Casino Royale is, let me try to explain. The world is threatened, and all of the usual spies have been taken off the board because they have become overly consumed with sexual antics. The leaders of the spy world convene to bring back the original James Bond (David Niven) who is quite prudish and effete, the very opposite of the classic manly Bond type. He investigates the near immediate demise of the spy leaders and gets caught up in an absurd scheme to stop him which involves pretty girls (who are led by Deborah Kerr) and pheasants. He lives. Then we find out that there are other "James Bonds" in the world and  we end up with Peter Sellers as a James Bond who is trying to bring down Le Chiffre (Orson Welles) in a card game with the help of Vesper Lynd (a gorgeous Ursula Andress) and meanwhile the love Matta Bond (Joanna Pettit -the daughter of Niven's Bond and Matta Hari) investigates behind Soviet lines in Germany, and Jimmy Bond (Woody Allen) is on the run in a South American country. Along the way we meet Moneypenny (the ravishing Barbare Bouchet) and someone called the Detainer (the lovely Daliah Lavi) and others. Add in cameos by John Huston, Charles Boyer, William Holden, and George Raft and you get the idea. Actually, it all makes much less sense than the paragraph I just wrote.

The movie had at least four directors and took literally years to create. It cost a fortune as producer Charles K. Feldman lavished money and time on the project. Peter Sellers apparently cracked up during the film and was kicked off, which was what inspired the creators to make it into the exotic romp it is. The finale is an event which evokes the later work of Mel Brooks. Casino Royale ain't really a good movie and it ain't a bad one. But it is a curiosity, a museum piece from an era when spies were all the rage, and movies were spectacles. This one is all of that. I used to dislike this movie for what it wasn't, but now I enjoy it for what it is. That's one way.

The Casino Royale of 2006 was nothing less than a rebirth. The change of Bonds from the excellent Pierce Brosnan, who despite some criticism was still not too old to play Bond a few more times, was at best a sketchy move by the producers. I was not happy to hear that an actor I knew mostly from his sidekick role in a Tomb Raider movie was the new guy. He seemed at first too short for the role and lacked that certain chemistry needed for the incredibly demanding role. I was dead wrong.

He might well be too short, but that doesn't matter as Daniel Craig has returned to the violent roots of Ian Fleming's highly successful character and has given us a Bond who is more man than superman.  He's no longer just someone to root for, he is someone we can root alongside with, a man who is dark and dangerous and familiar.

In Casino Royale we meet the new Bond, in a story which turns out to be his secret origin. We see him become a double "O" agent, and we seem increasingly hardened by the killing he is required to do. Where has death-dealing has always been the calling card of all the men who have been called Bond, this one seems less aloof and more emotionally vulnerable, though no less ready to end an enemy's life. Hard-bitten cruelty is part of the character from the very beginning in Fleming's pages, and you find them in Sean Connery's early portrayals. But even by the end of his initial run, the darker aspects of Bond's character had been replaced by over-reliance on charm, wit, and gimmicks. The gritty willingness to kill a dangerous man with a simple direct gunshot, so brutally demonstrated in Dr. No, is almost never repeated in the series.

In Casino Royale that brutal man is back and not only willing to kill, he is willing to break a sweat doing it. That change, the decision to show Bond as a man with deficiencies and doubts is what makes this new Bond so compelling. And while we know that Bond will never die, we suddenly feel that he thinks he could, and that's a game-changer on how to involve yourself with the narrative. By the end of this story, he is a hard edge of an agent, fully Bond, but with motives and plans apart from what "M" might design for him.

James Bond Returns in Live or Let Die. 

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Bond Ratings - Diamonds Are Forever!

Of the original Sean Connery Bond movies, Diamonds are Forever is easily the least of them. Connery returned to the role that defined his career after a brief hiatus and in this somewhat bleak adventure follows the trail of stolen diamonds as they wend across the globe from the mines of South Africa to Holland and eventually to Las Vegas. Along the way he encounters two gay killers named Kidd and Wint who offer up a satirical look at hit men to say the least. Also along for the ride is Jill St.John as Tiffany Case, and if not for her presence this Bond flick would be a total bore. St.John is extremely hot in this movie, among the most delectable of the Bond girls but sadly it's a somewhat remote Bond she interacts with.

Missing from this humdrum yarn is the usual Bond tropes like an armoring by Q, though the delightful Q does make a showing. Also the interaction between Bond and Moneypenny is pretty minimal. M does get in some funny lines as Bond demonstrates a limited knowledge of diamond lore. All in all it's an exceedingly atypical Bond adventure and it's one which lacks the high-tech romance which had come to define the series when Connery left it the first time.

The plot, as far as I can make it out, is that Blofeld is scheming (apparently sans SPECTRE) to gather diamonds while posing as reclusive tycoon Wilbur Whyte and use them to make a satellite which will power a laser which will destroy nuclear weapons across the world. His scheme barely gets underway when it's cut short by Bond and Case working in tandem. The finale battle atop a highly-specialized oil rig falls well below the spectacle which had been entertained on earlier movies. There's a lot of location shooting in this Bond movie and sadly that give the whole affair a more realistic and mildly grubby look. Connery looks distinterested most of the time and also just a little old as the gray in his hair is evident.

All in all it's a bit of a snooze with a few nice moments. The least of Connery's original Bonds for certain.

A different kind of Bond movie tomorrow.

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Bond Ratings - Thunderball!

Thunderball is a movie which should be so much better than it is. It has all the elements, but somehow, someway the thing always shakes apart a bit when I watch it. The first problem is that already Connery is getting a bit paunchy to sell the role, something a little bit evident in Goldfinger. The glimmer of a virile energy he projected on the screen in the first two Bond movies is missing a bit. That said, the plot rumbles around a bodacious scheme by SPECTRE.

The movie begins with blazing coincidence when James Bond, the arch-enemy of SPECTRE just so happens to be healing up at the same facility at which the schemers are hiding their fake pilot who will infiltrate NATO defenses and make off with an atomic-laden plane. Bond gets onto the scheme before it really gets going and that makes for some weird connections to what is happening, an almost too personal relationship which undermines the professional nature of his work. It's an action-movie thing, but not a Bond thing, if you follow my meaning.

We do get to go to the Caribbean again, which is good, but this trip unlike that in the first movie lacks novelty and the helpers are less interesting. Paula (Martine Beswick) is Bond's aide and like most of them gets killed off, but not in any particularly memorable fashion. The guy playing Felix Leiter (Rik Van Nutter) this time looks like a member of the Beach Boys and not a spy. It all feels lightweight somehow. Bond finds the villains almost immediately, but his superiors never seem to send him any real help to fend off the threat to world order until the very finale. Domino (Claudine Auger) is beautiful to look at, but seems to lack the snap of earlier dames in the series. More interesting is Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi) but she gets killed off too soon.

The final battle underwater was more enjoyable for me this time. In the past I've found it a bit too difficult to decipher, but somehow it worked for me as I watched it. The battle aboard the yacht is still a low-point for the series, the weird fast-action outside the windows is like something from an old silent comedy and almost completely undermines the rough and tumble of the fight.

All in all this one has all of the moving parts, but they just don't hang as well as they ought.

More to come tomorrow.

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Bond Ratings - Goldfinger!

Goldfinger is often tagged as the gold standard of Bond movies, but for my tastes it falls short in many respects, though still quite diverting in many ways and so comes in as my fourth favorite Bond film. The notion of Bond taking on someone other than SPECTRE is fine and dandy, but the lack of  that secret organizaiton's shadow on this story hurts the motivations for me personally. If Goldfinger (portrayed by portly Gert Frobe) had been working for them all along and making monkeys out of the Chinese who seem to be his benefactors, then I'd have liked this one more.

The high points in this are the girls. Both Masterson girls end tragically in this tale, but both go out in memorable fashions. Jill (Shirley Eaton) gets painted gold and has become an icon for the Bond films and Tilly (Tania Mallet) out for revenge gets knocked in the noggin by Oddjob's deadly hat. But the star of the show is the insanely named Pussy Galore played by Honor Blackman, the first woman in the Bond series who can occupy the screen with Connery on equal footing.

The flaw in this one is the finale which is downright stupid. Somehow we are to think that Bond after converting Pussy to his side with his awesome maleness uses her to undermine Goldfinger's scheme by having hundreds and hundreds of soldiers and others fall down (rather unconvincingly) as the supposed deadly gas passes through them. They all them stay still as legions of Red Chinese soldiers motor into Fort Knox. Then they all jump up and knock down the bad guys when the atomic bomb shows up. The battle between Bond and Oddjob is a classic but the tag ending with Goldfinger while perhaps fitting undercuts the potency of end.

This is the one in which a gleam gets in the eye of the producers and they start to treat Bond with more humor than is really necessary. It's not readily noticeable in this installment, but the trend will continue until the whole shebang becomes open farce in the post-Connery years. Goldfinger has dandy scenes but its overall impact is diminished mightily by its impossible ending. But I do always like to see scenes of Kentucky in a movie of this scale.

More to come.

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Bond Ratings - From Russia With Love!

From Russia With Love is to my thinking the absolute best of the Bonds as a pure spy thriller. It doesn't have the super-spy vibe in any serious way but rather gives us a relatively low-key (by Bond standards) Cold War yarn which puts our hero within reach of the clutches of those vile Russkies and more deadly yet, his enemies in SPECTRE.

Pedro Armendariz as Ali Kerim Bey supplies the movie with a ton of old-fashioned charm and his demise toward the climax of the movie is genuinely sad. The back and forth of the spies in the ancient streets of Istanbul are fun to watch as the exotic locales add lovely character to scenes which are mostly mundane.  Daniela Bianchi is gorgeous and a proper lure for the always randy Bond, though his dismissive treatment of this girl who truly loves him is sometimes difficult to understand.

At heart of this one though are the delightful villains. Kleb and Kronsteen are a duo from hell, a Russian man-hating crone and a cold-fish chess master are the ideal opponents for the virile Bond even though he never meets the latter personally. At the top of the heap though is Grant played by Robert Shaw. Grant doesn't speak through nearly the entire movie, but with his shocking white hair and deadly demeanor offers up a strange counter-image of Bond himself. As Bond stumbles through the story, Grant always seems in control. When they do finally face off, it's simple greed which proves the villains undoing.

This one has a tone of style and for that reason alone gets the nod as my third favorite Bond movie. More to come.

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Bond Ratings - You Only Live Twice!

I was very much surprised to discover that You Only Live Twice is my second favorite Bond movie. The movie itself is such a mess in terms of narrative and it's painful transformation of Sean Connery into an utterly unconvincing Japanese man is more than a little bit embarrassing. All that said, no Bond movie before or since has a more dynamic finale and the utterly awesome volcano secret rocket base is my favorite set in all the history of film. Roald Dahl is credited with the screenplay, but the haphazard nature of the story makes me imagine things were wildly off the original outline.

This movie is really what most people think of when they imagine the movies of super spies. We have a strong heroic lead who tumbles into a bizarre twisting impossible scheme to hold the world in fear and who by dint of strength, skill and a lot of luck defeats the villains in the most bombastic ways conceivable. That's what defines this movie, a series of strange and sometimes confusing set pieces which eventually add up to a plot to destroy the world. The villain too is a bit weak as we finally meet Blofeld, but as portrayed by Donald Pleasance is not as awesome as the character was in the shadows. Karin Dor is lovely and dies much too soon in this story, but then that's the way this unravels.

We get the ironic Bond in this one, the one who realizes there's some absurdity in all this mishegoss, but when the action starts it's full on and the tempo is wonderful. I realized watching it this time that the story itself makes almost no sense, but the pacing is so good that you have little time to realize it. The idea that SPECTRE could build an entire volcano facility with apparently no hint of it to people on the island is bewildering, but then the decision to invade the island by posing as fishermen is equally absurd. It serves to give the viewer glimpses of Japanese culture, but little beyond that.

And finally in a movie in which Bond is supposedly killed to make his secret agent status a bit more secret, he gets found out and attacked with regularity, though of course as usual others pay the freight. All that said, this one is a blockbuster which despite its myriad flaws offers up a thrill ride of a movie that pays off completely. Watching it now, I see the lines and shapes which informed Jim Steranko in his memorable SHIELD work.

More to come.

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