Goldfinger

Goldfinger
Goldfinger has quite the reputation.  If Dr. No introduced the icon, and From Russia With Love showed what the character could really do, then Goldfinger is when lightning struck and the Bond formula was solidified.  Goldfinger is considered the quintessential Bond film.

It is hard to argue with that assessment.  If the previous films introduced pieces of the Bond formula, they all truly come together perfectly in this third film of the franchise.  It is in Goldfinger that the villains go over-the-top, and where we are introduced to the truly outlandish gadgets from Q Branch (the briefcase in From Russia With Love is too realistic!  It doesn't count.).  It is also Goldfinger where Bond's pun-ful sense of humor goes from an occasional aside to self-aware silliness ("Shocking," he says, after electrocuting an assassin to death).  And Goldfinger is when we have the sequence that perfectly incapsulates the Bond character.  In the opening scene, Bond dressed in an all black wetsuit swims into a harbor to complete a mission.  Once finished, he unzips the wetsuit to reveal a perfectly tailored tuxedo on underneath.  He proceeds to go into a bar to drink and ogle belly dancers.  If that sequence of events doesn't describe Bond in a nutshell, I don't know else could!

This time Bond is on the trail of Auric Goldfinger, an incredibly rich gold smuggler who plans to contaminate the U.S. gold supply in Fort Knox in order to increase the value of his own holdings.  The plot doesn't sound like much, especially compared to the world endangering plots of the other Connery films, but Goldfinger is a lot of fun.  In fact, that is probably Goldfinger's greatest strength - fun.  The previous films are much more serious, and it is Goldfinger where the franchise fully embraces its silliness.  A car with an ejector seat?  A villainous henchman with a steel-rimmed hat that he basically uses as a deadly frisbee to kill his victims?  Come on, that's silly stuff.  But wow, it is entertaining!  And unlike later films, the absurd elements are perfectly balanced with the serious secret agent adventure.  Goldfinger is the film future Bond directors should watch to see how to interweave what should have been two competing tones.  Even the character of Bond seems to be in on the joke now.  Connery plays the character like someone who works as a suave super spy as a lark. Quite simply, he loves his work.  This is a key character trait that you don't quite get in the earlier movies.  Goldfinger also has a lot of my favorite moments of the franchise.  His Aston Martin is easily my favorite Bond car.  The aforementioned henchman, Oddjob, is a personal favorite of mine, and I love the final fight between him and Bond.  Even the gray three-piece suit Connery wears is my favorite Bond suit.  Simply put, Goldfinger really is the quintessential Bond film. It is the pinnacle which every film that followed judged itself by.

So why isn't it my favorite Bond film?  It used to be my favorite when I was younger, but it has slid down a little bit in the rankings.  Just because the film best represents the Bond formula doesn't make it the best film.  There are things that have really begun to grate over the years.  BIG SPOILERS AHEAD.  Why does Goldfinger proceed to tell the American gangsters his master plan as if he wants to recruit them, only to kill them all?  Huh?  I used to laugh that off.  Maybe now I am just old and cynical, but this bothers me now.  How did the entire army division guarding Fort Knox, as well as the thousands and thousands of people who live in the area effectively coordinate to simultaneously fall down and play "dead" in order to trick Auric Goldfinger during the movie's climax?  This really doesn't make a lot of sense.  The way Bond is first captured is ridiculous, and is a completely uncool way to destroy of such a great car.  And the way Bond convinces Pussy Galore to turn on Goldfinger is just uncomfortable and a bit rapey to me.

This may sound like nitpicks, but the more you watch the film, the more these things will bother you. They certainly bother me, and they knock the film down enough points to keep it from being number 1 on my list.  But in the end, it doesn't change the fact that Goldfinger really a great film.  The direction from Guy Hamilton, filling in for Terence Young, is terrific.  Connery is at his best.  Gert Frobe is a great over-the-top villain, and Harold Sakata is brilliant as his henchman Oddjob.  So far as Bond Girls go, I thought Honor Blackman was solid as Pussy Galore.  She is one of the better actresses of the Connery era, though I feel they could have done much more with the character.  The title song and the score are both superb, with the former staking a valid claim as the best Bond song ever (for me, it is a tie between this and "Live and Let Die").  All in all, it's a great movie and possibly the single most important, defining film of the franchise.    

RANKINGS:

As I mentioned, a couple of years ago, Goldfinger was firmly in the #1 spot.  But those nitpicks knock it back.  And I have grown very fond of the steely professionalism that is on display in From Russia With Love.

1. From Russia With Love
2. Goldfinger
3. Dr. No

BEST LINE:
You have to go with the classic on this one.  Other than "Bond, James Bond," this exchange has to be the most iconic of the entire franchise.

Bond: Do you expect me to talk?

Goldfinger: No, Mr. Bond.  I expect you to die. 

MVP:
Now this is really difficult.  I almost want to say John Barry, the Oscar-winning composer who wrote the fantastic title song and composed one of his most memorable scores.  But I think I am going to have to fall back to Connery, who delivers his most assured performance as Bond in this film.  He was terrific before, but the line between actor and character vanish in this film.  It's such a charismatic performance that you simply can't look away.  Connery gets my MVP.

TRIVIA: 
When Shirley Bassey recorded the theme song, she sang as she watched the opening credits of the film, to make sure her vocals were matching the images.  When she hit her final high note, the credits...kept going...and going...and going, and Bassey was forced to hold that high note.  She made it to the end, but almost passed out in the process!

From Russia With Love

From Russia With Love

We are continuing our reviews of all the Eon-produced Bond films...and up next is the second film in the series, From Russia With Love, which is universally considered one of the classics.  The original film of the franchise, Dr. No, is also considered a classic, but I found it to have a few considerable flaws that keep it solidly in good, but not great territory - the biggest issue being that everyone seems to be still finding their way with the character (with the huge exception of Sean Connery, who just knocks it out of the park with his first performance of the character).  So what about From Russia With Love?  Does it deserve the title of classic?

Oh, without a doubt.  The film has the same team (including director Terence Young and writer Richard Maibaum), but they showed that they are fast learners and From Russia With Love is an improvement in every way.

With the Cold War at its height, the villainous organization SPECTRE sets out to steal a secret Russian encryption device, called The Lektor, which they will then sell to the highest bidder.  Of course, they will play the Western allies and the Russians against each other, upsetting the delicate Cold War balance in the process.  SPECTRE's intricately woven plan, which involves tricking a Russian agent Tatiana (Daniela Bianchi) into thinking she is duping the British Secret Service into stealing the Russian Lektor, might be a bit overly complicated, but it's also rather ingenious.  And of course, SPECTRE specifically targets the British agent who messed up their operations in Jamaica and killed their lead scientist Dr. No in the previous movie - James Bond.

There's a lot going on in From Russia With Love.  And more-so than any other Bond film, this one feels like a true espionage thriller.  Though there are a few fight scenes, this is not an action film.  Instead, there is a lot of lurking about, snooping, delivering secret passwords, getting fake passports, and other deeds of intrigue you would generally see in a more realistic spy film.  The pace is deliberate, but unlike Dr. No, it never drags.  The cast is terrific - Connery shows yet again why he is the best Bond, and he is ably supported by a solid Bond girl in Bianchi, a terrific ally in Pedro Armendariz (in his last film), and two iconic villains with Robert Shaw as Red Grant and Lotte Lenya as Rosa Klebb.

Admittedly, I do have a few problems with the movie.  There is an excursion to a gypsy camp that just seems like a sexist tangent, and an excuse to have two Gypsy girls viciously fight it out over a man they both want, conveniently tearing at each other's clothes in the process.  I don't care if the scene is in the book.  It's just strange.  I also was a bit underwhelmed by the climactic scenes.  Minor spoilers here - even if there is not a lot of action in From Russia With Love, it does still contain the greatest fight scene in the franchise, a brutal fistfight between Bond and Red Grant on the Orient Express.  The fight is so good that both the helicopter fight and boat chase that follow pale in comparison.  They just seem a bit limp.  Now, a film professor friend of mine said that I need to put myself in the mindset of the early 1960s.  Audiences were not used to seeing helicopters, not until Vietnam.  So the scene where Bond is running in a field, chased by a helicopter, knocked audiences out of their seats back in the early 1963.  He remembers being knocked out of his seat.  So there is no way the climax of From Russia With Love is ever going to have the impact that it did 50 years ago, and I'll never quite understand why it was so exciting at the time.  But even if I can intellectually admit that, I still can't help feeling letdown after the Red Grant fight.

All in all, these are quibbles.  From Russia With Love is a huge improvement over Dr. No.  It should be said that audiences noticed, too.  It wasn't Dr. No that was the huge hit and cemented the franchise.  It was From Russia With Love (I suppose it helped when President Kennedy talked about how much he loved the book).

RANKINGS:
Easy.  From Russia With Love moves ahead of Dr. No on the list.

So here is the list which is taking shape...

1. From Russia With Love
2. Dr. No

BEST LINE:
Bond approaches the clerk in the Russian embassy.

Bond: Your clock, is it correct?
Clerk: Always.
Bond: But of course. (he walks away, checks his watch, then comes back) Excuse me, you did say your clock was correct?
Clerk: Russian clocks are always - (Bomb explodes in the embassy) 

TRIVIA: 
Lots of good trivia in this one.  Ultimately, I am going to go with a near fatal accident involving director Terence Young.  A helicopter carrying Young during the climactic scene crashed into the water, trapping him beneath the surface.  There was a small air bubble in the helicopter canopy that kept him alive until the crew managed to dive down and save him.  Safely back on shore, his injured arm in a sling, Young just shrugged it all off like it was nothing and went right back into filming. Wow, that is pretty badass.

MVP:
As good as Sean Connery is in this film, he is challenged in the MVP spot by Robert Shaw, playing one of the super spy's better adversaries, Red Grant, a brilliant killer in the employ of SPECTRE.  Grant is every inch Bond's equal...in fact, you could say that for most of the film, he is running rings around Bond.  Shaw embodies the role perfectly.  Audiences who have only seen Shaw as the craggy, grumpy, and dirty Captain Quint in Jaws need to see From Russia With Love so they can see him play the polar opposite.  Clean, tall and muscular, quietly efficient and brutal beyond words, this character is no joke.  People fear him.  I get the sense that even Bond is afraid of him, and that is the most telling thing of all.  Bond?  Afraid of anybody?  To make that believable, you better cast the right actor.  And the producers did.  They got Robert Shaw.  He gets the MVP.

Dr. No

Dr. No
So this is where it all began, one of the longest-running franchises in Hollywood history, the introduction to one of cinema's greatest heroes and the progenitor of the modern action film.

Our first James Bond adventure takes us to the Caribbean.  A British agent John Strangways disappears in Jamaica and James Bond (Sean Connery) is sent to investigate.  Almost immediately, he is targeted for assassination.  The attempts on his life grow more frequent as he closes in on Strangways' killers, signaling that the murdered agent was on to something really big and potentially explosive.  But what does all of this have to do with the mysterious scientist with metal hands named Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman).

I will be honest, it can be a bit difficult to review Dr. No objectively.  After all, this is where the formula originated: the smug and charming know-it-all agent, the women, the fanciful villains...it's a classic!

But is it really?

Well, it must be.  Everyone says so.  But again, is it really?

Look, make no mistake.  Dr. No is a fine film.  I really enjoyed it.  And it is a fascinating piece of cinematic history, but it is hardly a classic piece of filmmaking.  Let's start with director Terence Young, who deserves a lot of credit for making the franchise what it is and for helping mold Connery into what the character could be, but this is hardly visionary directing.  His pacing seems sluggish at times, the fights are rather silly, the dubbing is poorly done, the climax is anti-climactic, and the camera remains detached, contributing nothing to the escalating tension we are supposed to be feeling.  I actually never actually felt Bond was in any danger throughout the entire film except for his encounter with the spider and when he meets Dr. No himself, and that has more to do with the fact that I don't like spiders and because Joseph Wiseman's performance is so deliciously malevolent.

At first, I just figured that it was a different time, with a different standard of filmmaking and I should cut the film some slack.  But then I realized that this reasoning was a bit ridiculous.  Dr. No is lacking even when you compare it to other films made in the 1950s and 1960s.  Look no further than North by Northwest (1959) or To Catch a Thief (1955), both inspirations for the Bond series and both infinitely better.

I was also admittedly uncomfortable with the way Bond treats his black colleague Quarrel, a character whose introduction is badass but who then quickly devolves into a Caribbean stereotype. Bond just bosses him around with colonialist superiority that I could not help but feel a bit offended.

But what I can say is there must have been a learning curve - for the director, the writers, the producers, the composers...really, for the whole darn production team.  And they learned quickly because they came together and made one of the very best films of the series when they produced the sequel From Russia With Love. But they are fumbling a bit in this first film.

Okay, I know this all sounds bad, so now it is time to backpedal a bit.  Remember I said I liked the film?  I actually really do.  I like the fact that it is mostly an investigation, with Bond interviewing Stangways' friends and doing actual spy stuff, instead of bursting into rooms with guns a'blazing.  I love how ruthless and cutthroat the character was in the early 1960s.  They softened him a bit as the franchise continued, but this movie features Bond murdering unarmed men and also having a female enemy spy arrested only after he sleeps with her.  These are reminders that Bond is not a role model. And he's not supposed to be.  But these actions do make him an infinitely more interesting character.

I feel like this review would not be complete unless I mentioned the Bond girl and the villain!  For the Bond girl, you have Honey Ryder, played by the volcanic Ursula Andress.  Most people consider her one of the best, probably because of the iconic moment when she steps out of the ocean in her bikini with a knife strapped to her waist (no better way to capture the franchise's obsession with sex and violence in the same image!).  Andress is fine in the role, but after that first scene she doesn't really have much to do.  So I wonder if the reputation is based less on the character and more on that entrance and the fact that Andress is so explosively attractive.

For the villain, I gotta say I am a fan of Wiseman's Dr. No.  He is cruel and calculating and so unemotional, it is downright eerie.  He also begins the two Bond traditions of having a strange physical attribute (metal hands) and monologuing about what his master plan is.  Though I give credit to Dr. No for actually giving the villain a good reason to monologue - he is trying to recruit Bond to join the ranks of his organization, SPECTRE.  While the final fight between No and Bond is a let-down, it is still a memorable performance and a very cool villain.

So there you go.  I know I spent a lot of this review complaining about Dr. No, but I want to make it clear - this is a solid movie.  I enjoyed it and it is intriguing to watch how everything got started.  And it is very clear from the beginning that there is something cinematically magical about Bond - and especially about Connery playing Bond.  It is no wonder the film was a success.  But let's be careful about calling it a classic.  Because it most definitely is not.

RANKINGS:

So I will be ranking all the Bond films as I watch them. Obviously, there is only one film so far, so we might as well let Dr. No enjoy its brief time in the sun before From Russia With Love comes a'calling.

MVP:
"Bond.  James Bond."

And with that short phrase, two stars were born - James Bond and the legendary actor who played him, Sean Connery.  Connery just owns this role.  Even if he had only made one film, he still would have an easy claim to being the best Bond ever.  Other Bonds generally excelled at one or two of the character traits that are essential to character.  Roger Moore handled the one liners quite well.  He was charming, suave with the ladies, and adept at handling Bond's ambivalence (or pretended ambivalence) to danger.  But I never really believed him in a fight.  Timothy Dalton brought danger to the role, but was completely unbelievable when flirting, Brosnan could handle himself equally in an action set piece and in the bedroom, but the over-the-top antics they put him through kept him from ever being truly believable, George Lazenby...well, let's just skip George Lazenby, and Daniel Craig, who is my second favorite Bond behind Connery, has completely inhabited the role of a brawler who has turned himself into a sophisticated man of the world, but he has yet to show me the nonchalance and the charm that is so essential to the character.  It all goes back to Connery.  He did it all.  He inhabited it all.  Without Connery, Dr. No would have been well received by audiences, it may have even warranted a sequel, but it would be remembered now by only spy film enthusiasts and Ian Fleming fans.  Connery made Bond a legend.  He's the MVP!


BEST LINE:

This is a tie between one of my favorite Bond pickup lines and when Bond ruthlessly kills one of his enemies.  First, the pickup line, spoken just after Honey Ryder comes to shore from the beach.

Honey Ryder: Are you looking for shells?

Bond (clearly ogling her): No, I'm just looking.

And then the great line when Bond kills an enemy whose gun has run out of bullets:

Bond: That's a Smith and Wesson, and you've had your six. (boom)

TRIVIA:
The hunt for Bond was an arduous one.  Connery came late in the search. As fans of North by Northwest, Broccoli and Saltzman first asked Cary Grant, who would only agree to one picture and who also expressed a concern that he was a bit too old for the part (he was in his mid-50s at that point in his career).  Broccoli and Saltzman then asked North by Northwest's villain, James Mason, who also would not agree to a multi-picture deal.  Several actors were thrown into the discussions, such Steve Reeves (Hercules), Roger Moore (who would go on to play Bond in later films), and Stanley Baker (Zulu).  But they liked Connery.  He was manly, a former body builder, but still moved gracefully "like a cat."  Ironically, Fleming did not like the casting at first, but was so taken with Connery's performance that he began to write with him in mind in the later stories.

BOND...JAMES BOND

Bond is my franchise.  Let me just get that out there.  It was something I realized around the time of Casino Royale (2006).  As a child of the 1980s, I grew up in a time when franchises were really beginning to explode, and I was raised on a healthy diet of Star Wars, Star Trek, Indiana Jones and James Bond.  Since then, I have seen all of these franchises hit some dark days.  In fact, in some ways, I'm not sure I want those franchises to survive.  I think many of us would agree that the Star Wars prequels and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull almost killed Star Wars and Indiana Jones, respectively (even if they did make a lot of money).  We'll see what Disney has in store for these series moving forward, but my expectations are not that high.  And Star Trek, while I like the cast and found the first reboot to be genuinely entertaining, was not really Star Trek to me.  It felt more like J.J. Abrams' demo reel to get the Star Wars gig.

So why do I prefer Bond to those others?  Longevity and consistency.  Look, there is not a single James Bond film that is as good the original Star Wars Trilogy, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  No Bond film even comes close to hitting the triumphant peaks that those films reached.  And yet, the character and the formula of Bond endures.  And unlike other franchises, there doesn't seem to be a lot of second guessing.  If Eon Productions makes a bad Bond film, they shrug their shoulders, fix what isn't working, and then move on to the next one.  There is comfort in that consistency.

There is also the matter of Bond himself.  I hear Disney is rebooting Indiana Jones with a new actor in the lead.  That's not gonna work.  Indiana Jones is Harrison Ford.  Bond is bigger than any of the actors who played him.  He has entered the territory of Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, and other icons who are far more important than the actors who are playing them.  I think that is an important point that needs to be made.

As far as I'm concerned, the Indiana Jones series ended with The Last Crusade.  Star Wars only had three films that ended in 1983, and Star Trek was ruined by the Next Generation's cast moving to the big screen (three out of those four films were garbage, and even the good one, First Contact, was only okay).

Nope.  It's official. Bond is my franchise.

One of the longest continuing film series in history, James Bond was the literary creation of Ian Fleming, a British author who had spent time as a naval intelligence officer in World War 2.  While his war service was nowhere near as adventurous as Bond's career, it did give the books a bit of authenticity.  I always felt that Bond was the spy Fleming wished he could have been, but that might just be me reading into it too much!   Either way, the books were hits, and it didn't take long for Hollywood to come calling.

The first Bond adaptation was the Casino Royale episode of the Climax TV show.  It featured Barry Nelson as American (not British) spy James Bond and weaselly Peter Lorre as the villainous Le Chiffre.  I think most people just consider Casino Royale as an interesting side note and mark the true beginning of Bond's cinematic career when producers Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli teamed up in 1962 to make Dr. No.  And that is where I will begin my reviews.

I plan on watching all these films and reviewing them in order, and ranking them as I go.  It will be fascinating to watch the series change as the decades pass, always riding a wild roller coaster from fairly serious and realistic to over-the-top special effects bonanzas, and then back again, always staying current by cashing in on current trends (including even Blaxploitation, Kung Fu and the Star Wars films) and continually riding on the timeless coattails of one of the most entertaining characters in movie history.  This is going to be fun.

So let's get going!