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BONDING ON EMPTY Saving us from domination by rich mega-crazies, which now has more urgency in the real world than Bond’s, doesn’t lessen the continual emphasis of phallic worship. Judging by audience responses, Craig’s whole package—bod, naughty boy smiles, immersive voice and aura of endangerment—heels us to kneepitulation. As first Bond in Dr. No, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger, Sean Connery’s height and hirsuteness gave audiences plenty to munch on; even his Scot accentuation sounded tasty. Until his smirky specialty of bagging the broads between ridiculous heroics became boring and he wasn’t afraid to show it, and, let’s admit this too, there’s nowhere to go after encountering Pussy Galore. George Lazenby, whose assets essentially left us wanting if only out of reluctance to accept him after the disappointment of Connery’s departure, wasn’t around long enough to hanker for or get sick of and neither was Diana Rigg’s Tracy, the only woman to marry Bond. Close to asexual, Roger Moore’s phooey polish was a fey mock of 007ism negating whatever his masculinity, consistently in peril of sliding into poof spoof. How he survived as long as he did is beyond understanding; those who like him say they take him strictly for the laughs, re the use of crocodiles to hop across—instead of being swallowed up in—a swamp in Live and Let Die. Timothy Dalton’s brief allure was in the shiftiness of bad boy shyster working against both the character, as sinister-looking as any nemesis (and why he’s just right in A & E’s 1992 Framed), and obligatory sexual conquest. Pierce Brosnan’s attraction is being the ultimate (and Irish!) cutie pie. His prowess is verbalizing and responding to double entendres with aplomb. Judi Dench’s M calls him a “sexist, misogynist dinosaur” who’s light on his feet, bungee-jumping with the confidence of nine lives, one helluva of a pussycat bringing dandy apropos to articulation: when Moneypenny voice-mails her wordplay “I trust you’ll stay Onatopp of things,” he concurs with “purr-cisely.” Bond has always been cataloged as an impeccable clotheshorse and no one on screen in recent memory did more for the blue shirt and blazer or Savile Row drapes than Brosnan when globally cavorting. Even the fatigues were perfectly tailored. Connery’s beefiness, having gone flab in his last installments, was often incompatible with his attire; he wore tuxes well but he was comically longshoreman-like in business suits. (Not true in the otherwise purposeless, unassociated Never Say Never Again, which ran out of fuel once Barbara Carrera prematurely exploded.) Returning by popular demand in Diamonds Are Forever, with the inducement of a hefty salary and 12.5% of the gross, his sloppy carriage and the sloppier production would do him in, though Shirley Bassey’s career received a huge boost with sellout concerts at which she stunningly delivered the title song (as the envy of every metrosexual who’d later karaoke it atop dining room tables at parties). Moore’s debonair ascots belonged more to the domain of Louis Jordan, though Lazenby ennobled the kilt in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and Dalton’s knavery obscured 007’s urban finery. Clothed in Tom Ford, and like him a clean queen minus the pejorative, Craig benefits from collar bars and tight tailoring accentuating frame and accommodating size with or without the lifts and camera tricks. Impossible not to see how he “grew” a few throughout the years. Another indispensable for 007 is the mastery of multitasking. All of the actors were at least nuff at controls, but, before Craig, Dalton and Brosnan looked more convincing in driving, flying, steering hardware during the inevitable escapathons. (Well, there’s that Michael Dukakis moment Brosnan has in an armored tank.) In Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, Spectre and, self-sacrificingly, in No Time to Die, Craig dominates the machinery, his ruggedly driven sleight a part of his DNA not so vehemently present in the other Bonds. The camera gobbles this up, and when in fulmination causes shudders on the brutality scales. Craig being the least schmoozy of Bonds rubs against diehards wanting the comfort of James’s humor, as if a walking, driving, flying WMD has an endless burden to crack jocularities, yet he delivers several as revival with Naomie Harris, the most active and satisfying Moneypenny. In case we’ve forgotten, by the time Brosnan met his icy Waterloo in Die Another Day, the quips, as well as the tricks and stunts, immobilized us. Despite the overblown wackiness and poor critical reception, the fridgidaire earned nearly $500 million, confirming in movie parlance that most franchises inherit audiences instead of earning them. Director Martin Campbell didn’t want Brosnan’s début in GoldenEye to be deluged with the gadgetry and super-hyped scenarios as they were already passé. Initially forecasting a move away from formula, he settled for or more likely pressured into accepting some Bond techno candy, and in lieu of battling warped psychos out to rule or destroy the planet he used an enemy (Sean Bean) wrought from within, presaging the betrayal we’d later see in Skyfall. (The loner psychos during the Brosnan years would return in Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough and Die Another Day, each sequentially more reductive.) As counter punch in GoldenEye, we’re introduced to a new M in Dench, a Glenda Jackson-like harridan who gives good edge and gets her share of one-liners throughout her tenure. This shift to a different approach to M is underscored by Eric Serra who, in addition to providing the music, sings the end credits song “The Experience of Love” which he co-wrote with Robert Hine and superior to Tina Turner’s title track; it’s now an alert to what we’ll see as climax in Skyfall. Sine qua non, all Bond broads are expected to be dishes de jour but by appearance many of them are mutts: in GoldenEye, the villainess Xenia Onatopp, played by Famke Janssen, is markedly funny; a Julie Newmar type, she knows how to put the squeeze on those she kills and gets orgasmic when panting “He’s going to derail us!” There’s Izabella Scorupco crossbred as Sheena Easton and Nastassja Kinski and not overjoyed by the “boys with toys” syndrome. The least mongrel of Brosnan’s dames are the beauty Sophie Marceau in The World is Not Enough, curvaceous Halle Berry and cunty Rosamund Pike in Die Another Day. Hands down the cheekiest love interest for Bond, in Casino Royale, is Eva Green as a little bit Parker Posey, a little bit Kate Beckinsale and a welcomed bit of Susan Kohner. (Green and Craig have the single best dialogue sequence of any Bond movie, on a train to Montenegro, from which springs a complicated romance.) Quantum of Solace offers Olga Kurylenko as an agile Ukrainian stand-in for Catherine Zeta-Jones giving Bond a kiss but doesn’t bed him. In Skyfall, Naomie Harris’s Moneypenny, in slinky Viola Davis armor, finally gets what the other Moneypennies didn’t—a covert assignation with Bond following the sexiest shave any 007 ever received. Léa Seydoux tries in Spectre to be Kate Moss eventually slinking to submission to thwart the lingering suspicion she’s not too far above statutory rape bait (the same unease felt in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol). With Craig in Casino Royale, the no-nonsense 007 is firmly ensconced. Knowing the turf and liabilities, Campbell eschewed the hallmark fantasies for, basically, revenge. Fear not, there are the compulsory come-ons, chases and crashes. And one marvel of virtuosity—a Venetian palacio dramatically tumbles down. (Don’t give much credence to the depths of its cascading collapse, for the canals of Venice aren’t too deep: the Grand, in pre-cruise ship non-dredging, averages around sixteen feet and the inner canals three to five feet.) Expanding Dench’s tough play with Brosnan, Campbell substantially enlarged her M for Craig. We’re not too sure what’s clicking inside her about him other than being pissed over his re-occurring insubordination and twice sneaking into her home. Chilling with intent in issuing orders—she impatiently calls for a hit resulting in making Bond “collateral damage” in one installment—there’s a grudging like for him, perhaps somewhat less for the Lazarus Effect epitomizing the liberties in the genre than for the lone wolf demeanor she may empathize with. In Quantum of Solace, a snooty title few of us initially grasp in the scheme of 007 until we see the aguacave prompting reminder of the Cochabamba Water Revolt in Bolivia over the real fears of captialist pigs trying to buy a city’s water supply, and in Skyfall, the bleakest personal rubric before No Time to Die, we’re moving into an increasingly entangled relationship between Bond and M. If the love/hate and accompanying contempt strain into a moldy, not-fully-realized mother & son thing, we nevertheless hang on to the overtones, as they’re both borderline humanoids. With Javier Bardem a sort of Burgess going Blondie Hannibal, we get extra discomforting imports wisely left knotty. Those hoping for a return of outlandish techno flash must have been very disappointed when the “prestige” of Sam Mendes directing Skyfall meant the comic fanfare would be further diminished and in its place (1) the realities about old spies who are about to be mercilessly retired by computer wizards and (2) a conclusion to Dench’s M. These and Bardem’s inclinations help explain the $1.2 billion dollar box office. After the eye-popping nightscapes of Shanghai—a Chinese Epcot as a blue-lit blend of futura with yesteryear—it comes close to feeling like a chore to stay with it: the isolated Skyfall itself, in the Scottish Highlands, recalls the oppressive Reata in Giant. The business attended to there is ugly, with Mendes orchestrating the foreboding action with a whatever-is-available self-defense proficiency. We don’t easily surrender to Craig in Spectre, either; he looks distressed and empty in his resolutions, never ineffectual yet hardly interested in getting it up. Hoping for the Levitra harvest of Casino Royale, Mendes puts the ruffian back on the train, this time as overt tribute to From Russia with Love. Fitting, as it signals the end of the line, advanced not only by Sam Smith’s thematic “Writing’s on the Wall” during the opening credits but also by the attitudinal assumption carried throughout by Mendes; he’s wrapping up the loose ends of Craig’s Bond. Something morbid is highly pronounced in this picture—the excessively jaundiced visuals of the Mexican celebration of El Dia de los Muertos—and something very tired in Christoph Waltz as Blofeld still pampering his Chinchilla Persian kitty. Which may explain why Ben Whishaw’s Q becomes more curious: as in Skyfall, he’s Carnaby Street clad and his hair a welcoming throwback to George’s in Shampoo, and there’s clever subtly in his favoritism to Bond who knows how to use it. The delayed release of No Time to Die could have easily endangered the movie’s big “secret” but somehow it held and initial audiences were genuinely shocked. Believe it or not, I still am. Having studiously avoided the movie, the reviews, the hoopla, my first viewing came on the 1st of July, 2024, when I went on YouTube to continue bingeing on 40s & 50s film noir. On the Home page, No Time and Quantum of Solace appeared. Knowing UA/MGM’s stringent venue guard, these might be teases or fronts for something else. Wasting no time in clicking, No Time starts up—in what turns out to be the longest opener at 23.5 minutes of any Bond movie—and at long last there’s Daniel Craig. (Generally fresh uploads of full movies to YouTube, including illegals, escape the pesty ads for your first viewing but not here; they were clocked in, with more than 250,000 viewings occurring in a few hours before being yanked.) As the movie comes to conclusion, there’s a hard time adjusting to the fact the best Bond of them all would consciously decide to...WTF? Am I missing something, beyond the knowledge Craig wanting to exit the role? The beginning of No Time is a mess of disassociation from Bond norms, and I begin to feel more personally disassociated when Ralph Fiennes’ M seems removed too, and suddenly there’s a new 007—yes, a woman, but the wrong one, as it should be Naomi Harris who got the promotion, having performed previous duty in almost killing Bond on hysterical orders from Dench’s M and then helping to save him from the dangers of Komodo dragons. The script by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade is dispersive, linking not only their six prior Bonders—The World is Not Enough, Die Another Day, Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, and Spectre—but also to squeeze in many of the pre-Craigers. (This article will help explain linkage.) Director Cary Joji Fukunaga contributed as well and the most generous nod would be he’s worked diligently to keep all the connections from pile ups. There are a few congestions. Bond’s most steady lay (Seydoux) has a daughter, revealed at the end to be his but so obvious throughout that what’s the point in waiting to confirm? Ana de Armas’s black-gowned gymnastics in the Cuba sequence a rushed joke. And the unconvincing villain is a strange rehash of Rami Malek’s Freddie Mercury growing batches of the super toxic Heracles virus for what else but more killings, only much more selective. James gets infected, realizes there’s no cure and heroically stays on the island to keep open the silo blast doors for rockets to bombard the protected water-borne microflora. Of course we’re thinking it just can’t be—this is Bond we’re watching, the perfect escape artist. An entertaining chatfest as mini-documentary on YouTube, Being James Bond helps in getting over the Craig departure as subsequent emptiness, explains the inefficiencies in scripts, and has producer Barbara Broccoli gleefully victorious about her decision in selecting Craig, who, before Casino Royale opened to raves, nearly everyone else, including the press, ridiculed. After every Bond chapter, expectedly mindless speculation begins about the next one. Plenty of online comment about maturating Craig having heeded the call to resist re-upping, as it’s time for a new piece. The nancies want Tim Hiddleston, who buffed up a bit in Kong: Skull Island; the masochists crave Tom Hardy (mainly after Mad Max: Fury Road); the sex-hungry nudists petition for Michael Fassbender. Henry Cavill would seem a logical choice, if he hadn’t filmed The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and one too many of those fatuous superhero crappers. Though Danish and in his 50s, actor Claes Bang briefly emerged a while back as contender, who’d swing Bond away from super butch to Fleming’s original intent to be a slender sophisticate. The Bond producers understandably want someone in his thirties for a ten to twelve year commitment. I’ll throw in, against insuperable odds, the freckled Eddie Redmayne, Scott Speedman, Jonathan Bailey. Tendering the following as efficacious if not urgent new story line—maybe the only one left that matters: prepare the new Bond to wipe out the fascist Twitler plague in America. Should guarantee a few chapters. Text COPYRIGHT © 2007 RALPH BENNER (Revised 10/2024) All Rights Reserved. |