Why Dalton Was Good

Here’s the truth about James Bond movies… well, my truth anyway.

James Bond movies are like white sliced loaves of bread – you have to catch them first while they are very fresh.

The key word in that statement is ‘first’.  If you get a nice fresh loaf of bread and it slowly goes a bit stale on you, you can still use it.  You can perhaps toast it or grate it up for breadcrumbs or… well, you get the idea. 

If it was somebody else’s loaf of bread, you wouldn’t dream of using it.  You would just throw it out.  But this is your loaf, you knew it when it was fresh and tasty, it has aged and hardened under your watchful eye and so you still hold some deep-seated affection for it.

Let’s face it, most of the James Bond movies are very much like loaves of bread.  They are conceived and executed to be at their best on the day that they are released.  They use ingredients which date and age and lose their quality quite quickly.  They become hard to swallow.

The early ones are the exception to this little rule of mine.   Whether that’s because they weren’t trying so hard to be ‘of-the-moment’ or whether it’s because they come from a time when many of the fans weren't actually born – thus allowing a greater deal of respect - well I’m not sure.  It’s probably just because that young Connery was so damn good that all other considerations pale.  Whatever the reason, those first three do buck the trend and they remain eminently watchable.

So, having said all that, let me present my defence of Timothy Dalton as James Bond.  Many of you will disagree.  That’s understandable.  Dalton, you see, was my ‘Loaf of Bread’.  It’s quite possible that he wasn’t yours.

For me, Dalton’s first Bond film, The Living Daylights, arrived like a super-refreshing bolt-from-the-blue.  Roger Moore had ceased to have any relevance, to anything, several features before he finally bowed out and, as a result, the franchise was two stages past being on its knees.  

Casting Dalton was a brave and imaginative move and he threw out most of what had gone before and made the part his own.  The music was brilliant, the film looked fabulous on the big screen.  It was, at times, romantic and sweet in a way that no other Bond film was ever brave enough to try and it had a re-worked hard edge to it that the Moore Era had successfully worn away over such a long time.  Plus Maryam d'Abo was a lovely Bond girl.

But, just because I like my own loaf of bread, that doesn’t mean that I can’t see that it has gotten stale over time.  It is a fact that Bond movies go stale and, when they do, our affection for them comes down to our memories of how we were when we first saw them – it is this which keeps a particular one high in our esteem and allows us to remember how good it once used to be.

So let it be with ‘The Living Daylights.”

When I see it now, I see the staleness.  I see the rather insipid villains, the unconvincing Mujahideen sequence, the milkman with his exploding bottles… I see how it probably won’t convince anyone who sees it for the first time now.

I also see the value in other people’s loaves of bread, even if they are not mine.  For me, Craig’s Casino Royale remains a stunning and almost flawless reboot and I will not argue with anyone who puts him second best.  I will, perhaps, quietly point out that his second outing ‘Quantum of Solace’ is almost grindingly boring from start to finish (I watched it twice to confirm this) but I will also accept that Dalton’s second attempt ‘Licence to Kill’ was also quite poor.

So, for those of you who will doubtless say that Craig in Casino Royale is the best thing ever, and for those of you who say Brosnan in Goldeneye is the one, think for a moment about my little analogy.  I just bet your favourite (Connery excepted because he wins everything) was the one who arrived fresh and new for you…

…your own personal ‘Loaf of Bread’.

I just bet it was.

Quantum of So-So

This is my review of the new James Bond movie ‘Quantum of Solace’ which I saw (just now) on the first night of its General Release. I haven’t read any other reviews so, hopefully, I feel differently about it to how everybody else will. That always makes me feel good.

I won’t give away any spoilers (not deliberately anyway) but I can’t promise not to colour your expectations. So if you’d like to see the movie ‘clean’, as I just did, leave now but come back another day.


Okay…

‘Quantum of Solace’ can be summarised in one sentence. ‘Not as good as ‘Casino Royale’’.

Need I say more? Well, yes, I should.

More than anything, this movie confirms what a wonderful movie ‘Casino Royale’ was and still is.

The brilliantly fresh Daniel Craig, the engaging story, rippling action, taut dialogue and beautiful settings all added up to the very best latter-day entry in the Bond canon.

The new film constantly suffers by comparison to the first one. It is ‘less’ on practically every front – not always much less but ‘less’ is still enough.

Personally I think there is lots to respect and enjoy in this new release but it is clear to me that the film is scuppered in the first thirty minutes and it struggles to recover.

Those first thirty minutes give us relentless action – chases, fights, crashes – they all come at us in rapid succession. Rapid-fire, outstanding, eye-popping – these are all things that the first half-hour is not.

Simple truth? This director can not 'do' action sequences.

For all the boom, bang and carnage - the action remains unclear and often downright frustrating. Fashionably maniacal camera movements, coupled with multiple cut shots, slo-mo's and God know what else, only serve to leave the audience disenfranchised and wondering what the hell just happened.

One needs only to look back to the first Craig Bond to see how a completely thrilling chase sequence can be kept clear in narrative and characterisation without ever slowing the pace. The action here is all wham bam but with no emotional content. After each of these sequences, the audience was left silent and bewildered – a little lost.

After that, the movie gets better – it really does. But it’s a little too late then, the damage has been done. Subconsciously, we fear the moment when the director will take up on another poorly staged action sequence– his failed opening gambits have lost us.

Which is a shame because Craig does brilliantly again. The story is good. The girl is beautiful (really). It’s just we got left behind in that opening 'Post-Bourne' frenzy and now we can’t quite get back in.

Interestingly, Bond seems to have much more going on with Judi Dench’s ‘M’ than with any of the ladies he comes across (no pun there, you’re on your own with that one). There’s some kind of Oedipus action going on there that still slightly eludes me.

There’s something else too...

All through the film, I was haunted by a pervading notion of Déjà vu. Some view, glance or twitch was always reminding me of one or another of the earlier Bond films. It’s like the producers were playing these Bond trivia tricks to keep the anorak fans entertained. I thought I was imagining all of this until one character turned up covered from head to toe in a black substance – killed by it – and suddenly we were in Goldfinger all over again.

This confirmed for me that my earlier suspicions were not entirely imagined – that the opening moments had clearly evoked the opening of ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ that the Opera has a Roger Moore quality to it, that the bad CIA man looked like ‘Mr. Kidd’ from ‘Diamonds are Forever’. Oh and didn’t the lady envoy feel just like a contemporary ‘Mary Goodnight’? And on and on.

A game was being played and, for me, it betrayed a lack of confidence in the basic material. Casino Royale seemed to stand defiantly on its own, saying ‘Like me or not, do I look like I give a damn?’ This all feels more like a committee-driven attempt to please.

One final in-joke - or is it just my over-active imagination again? The rather insipid bad-guy reminded me so much of Roman Polanski from the moment I first saw him – not so much the actor but rather the role he was playing. Then it is revealed that a major plot point (the McGuffin, if you will) was something which Polanski’s most iconic movie also concerned itself heavily with (you know what I mean) – was this again a co-incidence? I think not.

There is a lovely sequence in the centre of the movie, set in and around a spectacular modern staging of Tosca. I loved it. For me the movie gets much better during and after this. The locations become more ‘real’ and 'explored', the characters take some more room to breathe and the action is entirely more convincing.

The compulsory climactic sequence is jaw-droppingly well staged with high levels of surprisingly unsavoury-but-good violence and some really genuine sense of threat for the main protagonists.

Craig is simply a wonderful Bond. I hope he stays on to do more.

I also hope they find a director who can handle the action a little better.

Next time…

(It's twelve past midnight… two hours since movie end and that's what I thought of it.)

‘Night!

For Your Ears Only

In the week which celebrates the centenary of the birth of Ian Fleming, there has been lots of James Bond Stuff going on all over the place.

I’ve always been interested in James Bond Stuff – sometimes wide-eyed, sometimes appalled but mostly with the grudging boyish admiration that we grudging boys usually deny we possess.

So, yes, I bought the new book this week. ‘Devil May Care.’ Imagine Sebastian Faulks writing a new Bond novel – how could I not get it? I won’t go at it until I read Jim’s Book but I’ll let you know what I think of it then.

The’ Bond Thing’ I actually wanted to tell you about was BBC Radio 4’s new production of ‘Dr No’.



It was adapted from the Fleming novel by Hugh Whitemore and broadcast last Saturday.

One possibly-fun thing about this little review is that you can actually listen to the play, which is online at the moment, if you go here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/saturday_play.shtml

But I don’t think it’ll stay up there for long. (UPDATE - it's gone now, moved on to this week's play - if it appears somewhere else (legally) I will post a link here.)

So, is it any good?

Well, I enjoyed it but, as you may be ‘gleaning’ by now (little pun intended) I like quite a lot of things.

It’s all pretty faithful to the source material. That means there’s a quantum of received pronunciation and clipped military-style tones in evidence. This can be a little bit hard to take but it’s worth sticking with it. It’s mostly ‘M’, Ian Fleming (as occasional narrator) and a few others who dish it out. Bond himself may come across as clipped but Toby Stephens keeps him as earthy and real as possible, given the restrictions of the dialogue.

As a radio drama, the production leans a little heavily on narration to help carry the story along. Narration is the great crutch of radio writing, sometimes it is unavoidable but overuse is very tempting and very dangerous. It is necessary here though. Fleming writes so much background material around his characters that it cannot all be successfully carried through dialogue.

This all sounds a bit negative but there’s great fun to be had along the way.

Some of the neat set-pieces include a giant poisonous caterpillar inching its way up the Bond physique and Honey Rider’s initial appearance on the beach in significantly less attire than Ursula Andress was allowed in the movie.

The uneasy racism of the old books is also retained here – those pesky Chinamen are still as nasty and yellow as the 50’s told us they were and those jolly ‘ol Jamaicans will carry your gear every time if you order them to.

But the best of all, far and away, is a wonderfully, garishly, outrageous performance by David Suchet as Dr. No.

Even if you don’t fancy listening to the while ninety minute play, you really should fast forward through to about thirty minutes from the end to hear how this great actor interprets the role. If I had to describe what he does, I would say it is a cross between ‘I Claudius’, Fu Manchu and a castrated Dalek. Suchet doubtless realised that the role would just be pure parody unless something out of the ordinary was brought to it – he certainly did that and I, for one, loved what he did.

And therein lies the rub. James Bond in the movies is a naked male version of the Barbie Doll whereon the latest fashions, equipment and morals can be hung so as to appease the required generation. Bond in a faithful Fleming adaptation is much more of a validation of all the cruel parodies we all know so well.

So much so that, when the evil Dr. No talks about ‘One Milleen Dollas’, or shows off his Shark Tank or explains his entire master-plan to Bond before trying to kill him off in an excessively-complex-way, the crooked shadow of one Austin Powers is forever lurking in the corner.

But, ultimately, Austin doesn’t win the day. Bond wins the day. Mostly because, in the books, he was always so much more human than in the movies and that is how he is presented here.

While Connery in Goldfinger was wise-cracking his way around the laser beam which was inching towards his crotch, Bond in the book was crapping himself over the advances of a crude circular saw and trying to push himself down onto the blade all the quicker to achieve a mercifully quick death.

I’ve digressed, haven’t I? Old JB can make me do that.

How often can you read a little review and then go and sample the material being reviewed for free?

Go on, click, have a taste of it anyway. (UPDATE: They've taken it off now, sorry)

"Do you expect me to listen to it all, Meester Armstrong"

"No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to try."