James Bond: The Wrap-up

Wow, so it took a lot longer than expected, but we have finally gone through all the Eon-produced Bond films. Of course, as a new film is released, I will be sure to promptly review it and rank it in its proper place.  And someday I would like to review the "unofficial" Bond films, such as Never Say Never Again and 1967's Casino Royale, but I think it is a time to take a short break from our British super spy!

Watching all the films again, in order, was truly a fascinating experience.  For better or worse, the franchise changed with the times, accurately judging the latest fads that audiences were into and capitalizing on them.  Sometimes that meant you were getting lean and hungry spy thrillers, and sometimes that meant James Bond was going to space!

This flexibility is also what allowed the franchise to survive longer than any other.  Historically, most film series would chug along until the studios felt the audiences had lost interest, and then they would be put out to pasture.  Bond was different.  When Cubby Broccoli felt the audiences tuning out, he would tweak the formula to get them back in.  We see this phenomenon more often today, as old franchises are rebooted for modern sensibilities. But Eon Productions was ahead of the curve; they’ve been playing this game and playing it well for over half a century.

First things first, here is my final ranking to all the Bond films, as well as links to their individual reviews.  I don’t feel entirely confidant about the middle of the list, as some of these films really shift in their spots depending on my mood.  But I am confident about the films that are in the bottom, and even more confident about Casino Royale being at the top. It really is that terrific.

1. Casino Royale
2. Thunderball
3. From Russia With Love
4. Goldfinger
5. Skyfall
6. The Spy Who Loved Me
7. Goldeneye
8. The Living Daylights
9. Dr. No
10. Octopussy
11. For Your Eyes Only
12. Tomorrow Never Dies
13. Live and Let Die
14. License to Kill
15. Man with the Golden Gun
16. Quantum of Solace 
17. Diamonds are Forever
18. Die Another Day
19. Spectre
20. The World is Not Enough
21. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
22. Moonraker
23. You Only Live Twice
24. A View to a Kill

I also wanted to rank the actors who played Bond themselves.  I have already spent some time going into this, but thought it would be important to official rank them here at the end.  The good thing is that I feel the Bond producers have almost always hit the mark with their lead character, only having missed the target once.  I truly do not like Lazenby as Bond, even though I have liked him in other films.  The rest of the performers playing the iconic role have been excellent choices – though only two have been the perfect package.

1. Sean Connery – the first, the best, the man who made Bond what he is.  Connery perfectly embodied all the elements that Bond needed – he was ruthless and believable as both a spy and a warrior, he was charming and debonair, he could handle a good pun and was completely at home flirting with the ladies. He is universally considered the best, and for a good reason.

2. Pierce Brosnan – the man born to be Bond.  He is the only other actor who I feel really embraced all the different elements of the character.  I do feel that he took a different approach to the character, however. As mentioned in earlier reviews, I always felt that Connery was a fighter who taught himself to be a suave man of the world.  Brosnan seems to me to be the opposite.  He was a charming and roguish prep school kid who then learned how to fight.  However you come into the role, I still feel these are two actors who most embodied everything Bond could and should be.  People discount Brosnan sometimes because his movies were not the best (and two of them are close to the worst), but they should really revisit those films just to observe Brosnan himself.  He truly was born to play the role.

3. Daniel Craig – another bruiser who became debonair, like Connery.  No actor has so fully embraced the flaws in Bond’s character, especially his arrogance, as Craig has.  His Bond is not a role model.  He has deep rooted problems. Craig is dangerous and is excellent in action mode. Admittedly, I don’t think he is as strong in the lady and comedy department. While part of this is because his films are more serious, he has had some opportunities to show off Bond’s lighter side.  And he is fine at it, just not remarkable. Can he nail the one-liner like Connery, Brosnan and Moore?  Sometimes he can, but sometimes the jokes fall a bit flat. And his Bond is also missing one important component – Bond has a certain joie de vivre.  He genuinely enjoys his work.  Craig’s Bond really seems to hate it, which might be why he tries to leave MI6 every single movie. I know that is a character decision and not necessarily the fault of Craig’s performance, but on the other hand, good producers also know to play to their actor’s strengths. Creative teams see what their actor is good at and they build around it to reinforce those strengths.  And Craig’s brooding anger is a huge asset that you can build around.  It just doesn’t necessarily vibe with a character who just loves being a spy.

4. Roger Moore – talk about someone who loved being a spy! Moore was the perfect Bond for the 1970s. He could play up the absurd, and was terrific at delivering a pun.  And his flirting with the ladies was always entertaining.  Look, could anybody in real life get women to swoon the way Roger Moore’s Bond did?  No, absolutely not. It is completely unrealistic. But in the context of the insane world that Roger Moore’s Bond inhabited – with its iceberg submarines and hovercraft gondolas – yes, I absolutely believe all of these women wanted to sleep with him. Yes, the world was crazy, but Moore’s Bond was in on the joke and winked at the audience through seven movies. Could I take Moore seriously as a dangerous spy?  Not really, though he had his moments.  Were Moore’s fights sometimes clunky and not particularly exciting?  Definitely.  Moore was better at throwing a quip than a punch.  But it is hard to deny that the man was having fun, and we were having fun with him.

5. Timothy Dalton – Dalton was the polar opposite of Roger Moore. Until Daniel Craig arrived on the scene, Dalton was easily the most serious Bond, and certainly the most dangerous.  In fact, if you were to think about which Bond actor fits the mold of a real spy, I would pick Dalton hands down.  I totally believe Dalton as a Cold War superstar, whether it is assassinating KGB agents or stopping heroin smuggling in Afghanistan.  Where he faltered was the other part of Bond's character.  He wasn’t particularly funny, and his romantic scenes always seemed forced. I do understand the producers wanted to tone down Bond’s promiscuity as the headlines of the late 1980s were dominated by the AIDS crisis.  But that doesn’t change the fact that Dalton’s Bond just looks uncomfortable with the ladies.  He just doesn’t want to be there.  He’s acting like he is begrudglingly sleeping with these women because he knows it is expected of him, and he would really rather be off somewhere else, beating up bad guys.  Dalton’s Bond can be a complete stick-in-the-mud (which Craig can also be guilty of).  Though he does sometimes enjoy himself like a true Bond should (look at the sheer pleasure he gets from sliding down the side of a mountain on a cello case in The Living Daylights), that is only the case when he is in the thick of the action, which I feel is only half the equation.

6. George Lazenby – the only terrible Bond. I like all the other actors who have played Bond.  They may have some flaws, but I enjoyed all of them and thought they brought something cool to the role.  But I really do think Lazenby is awful.  And it is nothing against George Lazenby himself.  I’ve seen him in a few other movies and he is fine.  I think he is downright hilarious in his cameo appearance in Kentucky Fried Movie.  But as Bond, I just think he is dull and flat.  Maybe I can give him a pass because this was his first movie and he just didn’t know what he was doing yet.  Maybe if he had accepted that multi-picture deal, he would have grown into the part and developed into a worthy 007.  But in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, he’s just dull and I feel he brings the whole picture down with him.  I don’t believe him as a dangerous spy for a second, he’s not particularly suave or charming, he can’t really deliver a joke, his romantic scenes with Diana Rigg seem forced (apparently, the two actors didn’t like each other very much).  I will say that the man clearly knows how to throw a punch.  So I guess there’s that.

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, let’s go into a few other iconic Bond “elements” that I didn’t really get into during my reviews. There are a lot of pieces of the James Bond formula, aspects that have now become just as iconic as the character himself, and it would irresponsible for me not to mention them!


Best Bond Song:

The Bond films are now famous for their opening credit songs. As every new film goes into production, people wait with anticipation to see which artist has been Selected for the opening credits.  It’s a brilliant marketing ploy to build buzz, sell soundtrack CDs, and potentially bring a new audience to your movie. Seriously, how many hardcore Adele fans do you really think would have seen Skyfall if she hadn’t performed the opening number?

Just like the films themselves, the Bond songs have kept up with the popular trends of the day, and a number of huge hits have come out of the franchise. I generally prefer the brass-heavy or faster-paced songs, but the franchise is just as well known for its slower ballads.  There are some truly great songs in the canon: Diamonds are Forever, You Know My Name, Skyfall, Goldeneye and A View to a Kill - the last of which gets a special nod because the first 20 seconds are the coolest James Bond has ever sounded.  The whole song is good, but those first 20 seconds...brilliant!

But in the end, these songs (except for the aforementioned 20 seconds) are just honorable mentions. There are two true titans of the franchise, two songs are so good they need to be separated from the rest of the pack. These songs are not just the best Bond songs, but should be considered among the best songs written for any film ever.

Paul McCartney’s Live and Let Die is so dynamic and thrilling that it was used as the soundtrack for the entire film, and was somehow perfectly appropriate for both the love and action scenes.

And then there is Goldfinger – the perfect Bond song - full of towering brass and featuring the titanic vocals of Shirley Bassey.  This was also the first time that the song was dedicated to the villain of the film, which I think is just hilarious.


Opening Title Sequence:

For better or worse, the franchise has also become famous for its elaborately designed opening credit sequences, popularized by the late, great Maurice Binder.  Stylized and always heavily symbolic, these opening title sequences ranged from octopus tentacles engulfing the screen to footage of the characters projected on gold-painted belly dancers (and yes, it is just as weird as it sounds).  The title sequences were probably most famous (and infamous) during the Roger Moore years when they truly went off the rails – often featuring blue-tinted nude silhouettes dancing, bouncing on trampolines, swinging off of giant gun barrels (with the guns often serving as the ultimate phallic symbol). They are bizarre and often unintentionally funny, but I wouldn’t call them good, necessarily.

For the best title sequence, I am going to have to go with Goldeneye – it features all the hallmarks of the Bond title sequences (tinted colors and silhouetted dancers), but they are dancing on top of crumbling monuments of Cold War Russia – and in some cases, smashing these monuments apart with giant hammers.  What is a perfect symbol of the uncertain era that Bond is about to enter – a chaotic new world where it isn’t always as clear who the good guys and bad guys are.  It’s pretty brilliant.

Best Pre-Credits Sequence:

Bond was also the first franchise to feature a pre-credits tease, a little mini adventure for audiences to enjoy before the film actually gets started.  Sometimes these pre-credit sequences are connected to the main plot, sometimes they are completely random.  But you can always count on a Bond film to start with one.  There have been a number of truly superb sequences, including the stylized black & white scene in Casino Royale where a newly minted 007 gets his first kills.  But for my money, you have to go back to Goldfinger for the best.  This short adventure is Bond at his most iconic – everything we know about Bond’s character and the formula that has served is his character so well for decades is featured in this tight 5-minute sequence.

Bond sneaks into the villain’s base in a wet suit, plants some explosives and then peels off his wet suit to reveal a tuxedo underneath so he can go to a swanky night club nearby.  We have some sneaky spy work, a few well-choreographed fights and even some spare time to make out with the local belly dancer.  And who can forget Bond giving one of his best Bond puns.  After electrocuting a bad guy at the end of a fight, he looks around in disgust, mutters “shocking” to himself and walks out.  If there is a sequence that manages to literally define everything Bond is about in under 5 minutes, this is it.


Best Bond Villain:

I know the answer is supposed to be Ernst Stavro Blofeld.  As the leader of SPECTRE, Blofeld is Bond’s ultimate nemesis and has plagued him for multiple films.  But honestly, I feel the franchise has always sort of missed the mark with Blofeld.  He was at his most terrifying and powerful when he was not seen, when he was just a faceless, intimidating voice in a Board Room full of villains.  As soon as he started appearing in the films, he somehow became less scary.  Whether it was Telly Savalas, Charles Gray, Donald Pleasance or Christoph Waltz, I never thought Blofeld was a truly credible threat.  Instead, Blofeld’s henchmen were always more menacing – Dr. No, Red Grant, Fiona Volpe, even Mr. White and Silva in the Craig movies (following the logic that both worked for SPECTRE).  But they all pale in comparison to the greatest henchman in the Bond movies, and maybe in any movie: the unforgettable Oddjob! 

I have loved Oddjob, played by Hawaiian actor (and Olympic medialist!) Harold Sakata, ever since I saw him crush those golf balls with his bare hands in Goldfinger.  The guy doesn’t have a line of dialogue, but his silence, with that “I am better than you” smirk permanently plastered on his face, is sublimely and menacingly perfect.  I love that he has an unbelievable weapon (a killer hat he throws at people) that is somehow made believable by his badassness.  And I love that Bond truly cannot defeat him.  He just can’t.  Oddjob mops the floor with him.  In order to win, Bond has to cheat.  I’ve always loved that.  So for me, this really isn’t a difficult choice.  Oddjob is my favorite villain, hands down.


Best Bond Stunt: 

The franchise has also become famous for its stunt work.  Lately, thanks to the vast improvements in digital effects, Bond's stunts have become a bit less flashy.  But back in the day, there was a lot of buzz about the next big stunt - whether it was the record setting bungie jump in Goldeneye or the 18-wheel tractor trailer that pops a wheelie in License to Kill...or the entire winter sequence in For Your Eyes Only that is more imaginative and stunt-laden than most chase scenes today.

But there are a few amazing sequences that rise to the top.  Here are my picks for top three stunts in Bond history below:

Coming in at #3, is The Spy Who Loved Me.  While the franchise had employed a lot of fantastic stunt work in the past, this is the film where they really said, "hey, audiences, guess what?  We are about to blow your mind!"  And when James Bond skies off that mountaintop (another record-breaking moment for the franchise) and deploys his Union Jack parachute, audiences were given one of the most iconic stunts in movie history.  And minds were indeed blown!

Then at #2 - we have what is easily the best car stunt ever, featured in Man with the Golden Gun.  This stunt is important in movie history because it was the first stunt to ever be conceived and calculated with a computer program.  There was some debate among my friends about whether this stunt was real or not, but I assure you it was.  This was an actual car with an actual driver, a driver who thought he was going to die, and who refused to do a second take when the first take miraculously went off without a hitch.  So enjoy this awesome car stunt.  I urge you to watch this with no sound, because the stupid slide whistle pretty much ruins the whole thing!

And now, at #1, the best stunt in James Bond history!  The cargo net fight in The Living Daylights.  Sure, in the tighter shots, this is Timothy Dalton fighting in a studio.  But for the wide shots...those are literally two stunt men hanging off the back of a cargo plane...this is an incredibly dangerous and awe-inspiring stunt once you realize what those stunt men are actually doing and how life-threatening it is...well, I'll just let the video do the rest of the talking:

Best Bond Girl:

Last but not least, the Bond Girl has become an enduring and iconic part of the franchise. The Bond Girl has become such a key ingredient of the franchise that there is actually an entire documentary about the phenomenon (Bond Girls are Forever).  It’s an exclusive club – though in fairness, these actresses were often given nothing to do except to look pretty and get rescued.  There is certainly a lot of sexism in these films, and watching how many of the female characters are treated, especially in the older films, can at times be uncomfortable.  But there are also a lot of empowered and progressive Bond Girls – badasses like Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman), Xenia Onatopp (Framke Janssen), Tracy (Diana Rigg), and Agent Mai (Michelle Yeoh) who go toe-to-toe with Bond and serve as equal partners or powerful villains.

So who is the best Bond Girl? I know I am supposed to say Ursula Andress in Dr. No.  She was the first, and she has that famous entrance as she walks out of the ocean with a knife in her belt, like some sort of armed Venus de Milo.  It's an iconic moment, and rightly so.  And for that beach walk alone, she probably should go near the top of the list.  But I would never put her at No.1 because after that iconic entrance, she kinda…doesn’t do anything.  She’s just there, serving no purpose and adding nothing of value (except for her looks, of course).  So who would I pick in her place?
 
It's also tough to choose just one because the Good Bond Girls and Bad Bond Girls are so different and hard to compare to each other.  So I will pick a favorite in each of the three categories.

For the Bad Bond Girl, I love Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi) from Thunderball, one of the few truly dangerous villains in Bond’s rogue’s gallery. One could argue that she is actually smarter than Bond; she’s almost always one step ahead of him.

For the Good Bond Girl, I would say Vesper Lynn (Eva Green) is terrific in Casino Royale; she is the one Bond Girl that I honestly believed the character could fall in love with.  Her arc in that film is positively heart-breaking.

But wait, I hear you say, you mentioned three categories. Was that a typo?  Definitely not!  There is of course the important third category, the Bond Girl That I Would Most Likely Fall In Love With...and that is without a doubt Solitaire from Live and Let Die, played by Jane Seymour.  Because it is Jane Seymour.  And...well, yeah, there really isn't much else to say about that.  It's Jane Seymour.

So there we go.  That’s it.  This series of reviews is over!  This has been a fun experiment, and while I hope you enjoyed revisiting this franchise as much as I did.

But I’ll be honest, I do look forward to reviewing other films again!

Until next time…

A View to a Kill

A View to a Kill

In 1983, Albert Broccoli found himself up against the fierce competition of a rival Bond film called Never Say Never Again, starring the greatest James Bond of them all: Sean Connery.  The news changed the way Broccoli's production company Eon approached their next film in the Bond franchise, evocatively entitled Octopussy.  Originally Broccoli was going to go with a new actor, most likely the American actor James Brolin, but now they couldn't take any chances.  They needed to ward off this new threat.  They needed a sure thing.  They needed the reliable Roger Moore to come back for one more film.  And even though he was a bit old for the part at age 56, Moore agreed to return for a final hoorah.

Though it has its problems, Octopussy proved to be a big hit, and outperformed Never Say Never Again. And overall, for Roger Moore, this was not a bad film to go out on.  After 11 years and 6 films, Moore could now retire from the role on an all time high (coincidentally the main song for the movie).  He was even given one of the great iconic Bond moments during the film's climax, when he slides down a palace bannister with a machine gun, mowing down down the bad guys.  It's a fun moment.  Check it out!

What a great way to start to retirement!

Except...that's not what happened.

Instead A View to a Kill happened.

Oh, dear heavens, the horror. The horror.

What can I say about A View to a Kill?

The movie begins in Siberia, where Bond is searching for the corpse of a fellow agent 003. But more important than 003 is a Soviet microchip he had stolen just before his death. After recovering the chip, Bond is attacked by the Russians. Bond quickly captures a snowmobile and when that is damaged, he takes off the front ski and uses it as a snowboard...he proceeds to surf down the mountain as the music switches to a cover of The Beach Boys' "California Girls." After a number of slapstick stunts to evade his pursuers, Bond makes it to his iceberg submarine where a nubile fellow agent is waiting to sleep with him.

Sound bad?  That's only the first six minutes.

The film just gets worse from there.  Bond's snooping eventually leads him to Max Zorin (Christopher Walken), a billionaire industrialist psychopath/Nazi experiment gone wrong, who is interested in breeding race horses and blowing up Silicon Valley.  On Zorin's side, we have his super strong bodyguard May Day (a towering Grace Jones) and silly cartoon German scientist Dr. Mortner (Willoughby Gray), who helps him with his genetic experiments.  On Bond's side, we have Sir Godfrey (Patrick McNee), a horse breeding expert, and state geologist Stacey Sutton (Tanya Roberts).

The less said about the plot, the better.  Just know that we are treated to a long and mind numbingly dull sequence where Bond and Sir Godfrey infiltrate Zorin's race horse breeding event. Then it's time for a slapstick car chase on a firetruck and a building fire where Stacey Sutton's shrill screams will make your ears bleed.  Oh, and let's not forget the thrilling action scene at Sutton's house. After 23 years of fights in locations as intriguing or exotic as the Orient Express, an ancient Greek monastery, an Indian palace, Fort Knox, and a secret volcano base, we are now treated to an extended fight scene in a big, empty room. Really?!  Come on, guys, you're better than this.

Almost no one comes through this mess unscathed, not even Roger Moore.  His performance is as assured as always, but he is just too old, plain and simple. He looks out of shape, it appears as if he's had some strange plastic surgery, and his eyebrows look long enough to hang Christmas ornaments from.  He just isn't believable any more in the action scenes and even less so in the love scenes. It's incredible what a difference only 2 years can make, since he was fine in Octopussy.  Even Roger Moore knew he was too old for the part and said so in his autobiography.  He was shocked when he found out he was old enough to be Tanya Robert's grandfather.  That was when he knew he had to really retire.  But it's not just Moore who suffers in the film.  Tanya Roberts, while easy on the eyes, is bland and monotone.  Christopher Walken overacts and is just trying too hard.  He's Christopher Walken, for crying out loud.  He's already awesome and weird as it is.  He doesn't have to try so hard!  John Glen's normally assured direction is slow moving, and even the always reliable John Barry sounds to be on auto pilot.  What a disappointment!

So is A View to a Kill all bad?  No, it has moments.  Grace Jones and Patrick McNee are fine; the former isn't required to do much but stare angrily at people and she does so convincingly.  And Patrick McNee is just as charming as he was in The Avengers TV show.  He also has a fun chemistry with Roger Moore which gives us the only truly amusing parts of the movie.  There is also a sequence in a flooded mine near the end of the film that is generally horrific.  And lastly, while John Barry misses the ball with his score, he did co-write one of the better Bond songs. The title song by Duran Duran is pretty awesome!

But that's it.  This movie stinks.  I'm done.

RANKINGS:
I remember in my earlier Bond reviews, I was explaining why I disliked On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice for very different reasons.  And in terms of ranking the films, I had to decide whether boring or ridiculous was the worse sin.

Well, A View to a Kill is both.  And it's going straight to the bottom of the list.  No further debate needed.

1. Thunderball
2. From Russia with Love
3. Goldfinger
4. The Spy Who Loved Me
5. Dr. No
6. Octopussy
7. For Your Eyes Only
8. Live and Let Die
9. Man with the Golden Gun
10. Diamonds are Forever
11. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
12. Moonraker
13. You Only Live Twice
14. A View to a Kill


BEST LINE:
Here is a line that is so bad, it's good.  It's Christopher Walken at his most Walken-y.
Max Zorin: More!  More power!

TRIVIA:
Here's a cool little fact.  A View to a Kill was Dolph Lundgren's first movie.  He was only in the film by accident.  He was dating Grace Jones at the time, and he was visiting the set.  Director John Glen needed a KGB bodyguard at the last minute and Lundgren happened to be in the right place at the right time.  He has all of maybe 5 seconds of screen time and no dialogue.  Can you imagine that in just a few months this guy would be killing Apollo Creed in the ring and taking on Rocky in a showdown for the ages?!?!?!?

MVP:
Though I am tempted to give the MVP to Dolph Lundgren, that would be petty.  Especially since there is a clear quality MVP winner here.  After four films featuring love songs and ballads, Bond is finally able to rock out again. The title song by Duran Duran is a great addition to the canon and is easily in the Top Five Bond Songs.  The song is more dynamic and exciting than anything in the film. This is an easy MVP pick.  And I think most of the world would agree!

Octopussy

Octopussy

For Your Eyes Only was a divisive film in my group of friends - they found it tedious and frustrating, whereas I appreciated the return of a semi-realistic tone to the franchise and truly believe that just a few missteps derail it from being a great film (though they are pretty big missteps, to be fair).  Roger Moore's next film Octopussy ended up being even more divisive - only this time, it is my friends and me against pretty much the rest of the world!

A British secret service agent is murdered, dressed as a clown and carrying a fake faberge egg (basically a very fancy, jeweled egg).  It's all very peculiar, so James Bond is sent in to investigate. Of course, his sleuthing introduces him to a whole gaggle of villains, including exiled Afghan prince Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan) and his right hand man Gobinda (Kabir Bedi), as well as a circus run by a mysterious and dangerous woman named Octopussy (Maud Adams).  Leaping from London to India to Germany, Bond has to discover why these villains need something as rare as a faberge egg and how that all connects to a renegade Russian general named Orlov (Steven Berkoff), who wants to ignite the Cold War into a hot one.

A lot of people point to Octopussy as an example of all that is wrong with the Roger Moore years. And they point to very specific things - silly gadgets (alligator submarine, anyone?), unbelievable action (that silly fight in the Indian market), and ridiculous jokes (there is a Tarzan yell that is frankly unforgivable).  Plus, Roger Moore is looking too old to be wooing such young women and throwing punches.  He looks more likely to throw his back out.

I can't defend against any of these points.  These specific moments are indeed bad, and Roger Moore is starting to look a bit long in the tooth.  But if are trying to find an example of over-the-top Bond shenanigans that go too far, then look no further than Moonraker.  After that space epic, the Bond films actually came back down to Earth and became more realistic.  Octopussy has these absurd and ridiculous moments, but they are only moments.  For the most part, this is more of a Cold War thriller that tonally is feels like it has more in common with Goldfinger and Thunderball than Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker.

There is a lot to like here.  The pre-credits scene is terrific. The villains - especially Jourdan and Berkoff, are chewing scenery like they were told they'd never get a chance to act again, and they are both very entertaining.  Roger Moore is looking a bit old, but I think he is still able to hold his own. As for the Bond girl, the producers were wise to cast Maud Adams (in her second Bond film after Man with the Golden Gun). Though 13-years younger than Moore, she exhibits a maturity and authority that makes her the perfect romantic partner for an aging super spy.  I actually think she is the best Bond girl of the entire Roger Moore run.

Also, John Barry makes a stunning return to the franchise and delivers another brilliant score.  The stunts are exciting, much of the humor actually is funny, and some of the gadgets are actually pretty cool (buzzsaw yoyo? Hell yes!).  Octopussy also presents what is easily one of the most tense moments of the Roger Moore run, when Bond has to get to diffuse a nuclear bomb in the circus. It's just a terrific scene.

I don't love Octopussy, but I think it is woefully underrated.  It's a worthy entry to the franchise and is way better than its reputation. I was pleased that my group of friends agreed.  We just don't get it. Why all the hate?

I think it must be that damn Tarzan yell.


RANKINGS:

This one is tough. There is a lot I don't like in Octopussy, but large portions of it work really quite well.  And it is hard for me to ignore the nostalgia factor, as much as I want to.  Octopussy was probably the first Bond film I saw, and it was on a constant rotation in my house growing up. Despite the fact that most people put it near the bottom, I'm putting it firmly in the middle.  The big question is which side of For Your Eyes Only should it be on?  When both films are good, I think Octopussy might be better. When both films are bad, well, they are equally bad.  So I think that gives Octopussy the slight edge - and yes, I know I just made a big deal about For Your Eyes Only having the potential to be Moore's best Bond film.  But the reality is I think Octopussy is just a little bit better.

1. Thunderball
2. From Russia With Love
3. Goldfinger
4. The Spy Who Loved Me
5. Dr. No
6. Octopussy
7. For Your Eyes Only
8. Live and Let Die
9. Man with the Golden Gun
10. Diamonds are Forever
11. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
12. Moonraker
13. You Only Live Twice


BEST LINE:
This is an easy one, even if it is just a one word line of dialogue. It's all in Louis Jourdan's seedy and scenery chewing delivery: "Octopussy."

TRIVIA:
1983 was the year that Kevin McClory was supposed to get his payback.  After decades of litigation, he finally got the rights to the James Bond story "Thunderball" which he had co-written with Ian Fleming in the 1950s.  He also won the rights to SPECTRE and Bond's arch nemesis Ernst Blofeld. And now he was finally going to get to work on producing his own Bond film - even if it was going to be technically a remake of 1965's Thunderball.  McClory even managed a huge coup when he convinced Sean Connery to return to the iconic role that had made him a star.  The new Bond film, called Never Say Never Again as a joke about Connery's refusal to play Bond ever again, was going to come out the same summer as Eon's Octopussy.  It was going to be a battle of the Bonds.  For Roger Moore and Sean Connery, who were good friends, it was a friendly competition.  But there was bad blood between Team McClory-Connery and Team Broccoli.  And I wouldn't be surprised if both sides were out for blood.

And sure enough, the allure of Sean Connery returning to the role made waves at the box office.  The film grossed $55 million in 1983, which is pretty impressive.  Of course, Octopussy grossed $67 million.  Sure, everyone knows that Connery is the best Bond, but let's never forget that when the two actors went head-to-head, Roger Moore won the fight!

MVP:
This one is tricky. Roger Moore is good as usual, though he is definitely starting to show his age. Maud Adams is terrific as the title character, and John Barry gave us his last truly great Bond score. But ultimately, I think the winner has to be the Acrostar - one of the coolest vehicles of the franchise, probably just behind the Aston Martin in Goldfinger and the Lotus in The Spy Who Loved Me.  The Acrostar is the tiny jet that Bond uses in the beginning of the film to take on the Cuban military. Super sleek and insanely fast, this mini jet is just amazingly cool.  I wanted one when I was 8...and I kinda still want one today.  It's just pretty damn awesome.

For Your Eyes Only

For Your Eyes Only

Albert Broccoli was a smart man.  As I've already mentioned, part of what enabled the Bond franchise to last as long as it did was its ability to adapt with the times.  So science fiction is the new fad?  No problem, let's send James Bond to a space station!!  But Broccoli was also smart enough to know when he had gone too far. Despite the fact that Moonraker had been one of the biggest blockbusters in franchise history, Broccoli knew that he couldn't go any bigger. You can't get much crazier than space.  So instead, he took a 180 turn and brought Bond back to Earth, literally and figuratively.  For Your Eyes Only is a smaller affair, more in tune with the tone of earlier films and Fleming's source novels.  Oh, there were still plenty of quips and silliness floating around the film (this was all happening under Roger Moore's watch, after all), but this is a remarkably simple film, with no gadgets, no huge special effects, and some really, really solid stunt work.  And after the insanity of Moonraker, it really is a breath of fresh air.

A British spy ship is sunk in the Mediterranean Sea, and it contains a secret encryption device called the ATAC.  When the British ask salvager Timothy Havelock is retrieve the ATAC, he is betrayed and brutally murdered.  James Bond is sent in to investigate Havelock's death and locate the ATAC before the enemy does - but who is the enemy?  Certainly there are some vicious henchmen on Bond's trail, including the quietly efficient Locque (Michael Gothard), blonde super man Kriegler (John Wyman) and blink-and-you'll-miss-him Claus (played by Game of Thrones badass Charles Dance).  But who is the real enemy?  Is it the KBG, once again led by General Gogol (Walter Gotell) or is it businessman and ice skating patron Kristatos (another Game of Thrones alum Julian Glover) or smuggler Milos Columbo (Topol)?

Out of all the Bond films, I have to admit this is the one most of my friends and I disagree on. They generally think it is just okay...probably better than the worst of the franchise, but certainly nothing to write home about.  And they have some good points.  First of all, the opening sequence of the film, featuring a deadly encounter with long-time enemy Blofeld, is possibly the worst beginning in the entire series, full of terrible puns, bad acting, non-sensical action, awful music, and just some truly bizarre head scratching moments (why does Blofeld offer to buy Bond a delicatessen?!).  We also have a subplot with a ditzy, underage ice skater Bibi (Lynn Holly-Johnson) who becomes obsessed with Bond and continually tries to sleep with him.  Thankfully, Bond is never even tempted or else this movie would have gotten really awkward really fast.  And while this relationship does give the film its best line, the whole subplot is uncomfortable and inappropriate.

I also have to point out the score by Bill Conti, which just confuses me.  Why Broccoli didn't turn back to John Barry just befuddles me, especially after his stunning work on Moonraker.  Perhaps he wanted something more hip and modern and cool.  But the poppy, synth work by Bill Conti (an Oscar winner for The Right Stuff) just dates the film and worse, hangs over its shoulders like a musical albatross. Whether fairly or not, For Your Eyes Only is doomed to never feel timeless, unlike other Bond films, even some inferior ones. It will always feel like an early 1980s film, and that is the fault of Bill Conti.  Let me cut to the chase.  The score for For Your Eyes Only is just awful, plain and simple.  It is easily the worst score of the entire franchise, possibly one of the worst scores of Conti's otherwise solid career, and just makes me want to jab a pencil into my ear.  Because that would be less painful than having to listen to this again.

It sounds like I have a lot to complain about.  And rightfully so.  But...but...damn it, despite all of this, For Your Eyes Only is actually pretty darn good.  This is an enjoyable and creative movie.  First of all, coming to this from Moonraker is like night and day. The plot is interesting. I like the villains. Carol Bouquet is a great Bond girl with an actual real storyline (she is trying to avenge the death of her father, the aforementioned Timothy Havelock). Roger Moore is at the peak of his abilities before he started to look too old. John Glen, the editor and second unit director of three earlier Bond films ascends to the director's chair this time around and brings fresh energy and much needed new blood to the proceedings - especially to the stunt work.  For Your Eyes Only has some of the most creative stunt work of the franchise.  Among some other crazy stunts, we have characters being dragged behind boats, a crazy ski chase down a bobsled course, and a harrowing climb up the Greek mountain, Meteora. It's all hugely impressive.  I mean, look at the picture.  Some poor stunt man had to climb that - and even fall off at one point!

In the end, what it all comes down to is this - what is not good about For Your Eyes Only are some details, while what is good about the film is its potential, what it could have been, and that is kind of exciting to see.  So let's take a second to rewrite the film.  Let's take out the ridiculous opening sequence and replace it what was originally supposed to be the opening sequence - the Havelock's murder.  Let's get rid of Bibi the ice skater, which cuts about 15 minutes of unnecessary padding from the film.  And for the love of all that is good in this world, replace Bill Conti's monstrosity with a new score by John Barry. And you know, with these small changes, you know what you get?  Possibly Roger Moore's best Bond film.  And that simple fact is why I disagree with my friends, and find For Your Eyes Only to be so fascinating.

Or it is possible that I was just so desperate for something halfway decent after Moonraker that I have inflated this film with artificial importance.  Who knows?  I'm not a psychiatrist!

RANKINGS:
So where does that put For Your Eyes Only in the rankings?  I would certainly put it in the top half, though it doesn't deserve to be with the real champs.  I'd probably put it right under Dr. No, and right above Live and Let Die.

1. Thunderball
2. From Russia With Love
3. Goldfinger
4. Spy Who Loved Me
5. Dr. No
6. For Your Eyes Only
7. Live and Let Die
8. Man with the Golden Gun
9. Diamonds are Forever
10. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
11. Moonraker
12. You Only Live Twice

BEST LINE:
James Bond to the underage Bibi: Yes, well, you get your clothes on and I'll buy you an ice cream.

TRIVIA:
So what was the point of the ridiculous beginning of this film?  It had been years since Blofeld had last menaced James Bond (in the over-the-top Diamonds are Forever).  Since then the character and SPECTRE had been caught up in a fierce legal battle with Kevin McClory who claimed he helped create the characters.  McClory had won the case and was now prepping his own James Bond film. Broccoli wanted to show McClory that James Bond didn't need SPECTRE to be awesome.  So he had put together this opening scene, which has nothing to do with the rest of movie and which exists solely as a way to ingloriously kill off the Blofeld character (while being careful to never mention him by name) in the stupidest manner possible.  The entire scene is only in the film as a big "F YOU!" to McClory. Which is a shame, because it all comes across as a bit petty.  It doesn't help that the scene is ridiculous.  Hands down, it's the worst scene in the movie.


MVP:
For Your Eyes Only might feature Roger Moore's best performance as Bond.  While he still quips his way through most of the film, he holds back from indulging too far in the silliness, and devoid of gadgets, he is left to his own devices and reminds us why Bond can be dangerous (I particularly like his takedown of Locque).  Moore was a good Bond, and an underrated one.  And he is the clear MVP of this film.

Moonraker

Moonraker

Damn it, James Bond, this is the second time you've done this to me.  In 1967, Eon Productions came out with Thunderball, one of the best of the series, only to follow it up with the ridiculous You Only Live Twice.  It took awhile for the series to fully recover, but they finally did with The Spy Who Loved Me, the best film of the Roger Moore era and another true highlight of the franchise.

The future looked bright.

And then that future gave us Moonraker.

The Spy Who Loved Me was a big hit, so Bond producer Cubby Broccoli decided to make pretty much the same movie...in space!  There is no denying the similarities between Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me.  Only instead of secret underwater lairs, we get to now visit the villain's secret space station.  And instead of Karl Stromberg stealing nuclear submarines as part of a nefarious plan to resettle the future of humanity on the ocean floor, we now have Hugo Drax stealing space shuttles as part of a nefarious plan to resettle the future of humanity in space.

What the hell, Bond?!  What. The. Hell.

So if you can't tell already, I really don't like this film.  It pretty much encapsulates everything people did not like about the Roger Moore era - bad puns, ridiculous gadgets, slapstick comedy.  Originally, Cubby Broccoli had wanted to make For Your Eyes Only, but the franchise's longevity has always been in large part because of its flexibility to adapt to the popular trends of the day.  Star Wars was the biggest hit of all time. Therefore, James Bond had to go to space and have a laser gun fight.  The strategy worked like a charm. Moonraker, inexplicably, was a monster hit, and made even more money than its better predecessor.

This movie is just a stinker.  I don't even know where to start.  How about with the fact that it makes no sense?  Hugo Drax is one of the wealthiest men alive and among his many business ventures is the design and construction of space shuttles.  If he has a space shuttle factory, why does he feel the need to steal space shuttles from the American government??  And why would James Bond suspect Drax of stealing the shuttles, which he automatically does without any evidence?  And when he visits Drax's mansion, why does Drax decide to just try and kill him for no reason?  The answer is "because this is what happens in James Bond movies" whether it makes sense or not.  More than any other film, Moonraker lines up the formula in a bullet point list and literally just checks the boxes without any sort of rhyme or reason or connective tissue.

It doesn't help that Hugo Drax is lame.  Lame, lame, lame.  He is easily one of the dumbest Bond villains, which is a shame because Michael Lonsdale is terrific actor.  We also have a bland Bond girl (the solid Lois Chiles is also wasted here), and the return of fan favorite Jaws.  Everything cool about Jaws is completely undone with this movie, where he is basically reduced to Wile E. Coyote. In the film's opening fight, the super villain ends up falling out of a plane without a parachute and flaps his arms like a bird, trying to stay afloat. Seriously. Jaws is just ridiculous in this movie, and it is no wonder the character never made a third appearance. 

Later, a gondola sprouts wheels and pops out of the water to drive across St. Mark's Square in Venice, and a pigeon does a double take. I'll say that again. A pigeon does a double take.

So do I like anything about Moonraker?  Well, I still like Roger Moore.  And I suppose there are moments that are good.  A horrific dog attack in the beginning of the film is effectively terrifying - even if the entire scene is undercut by the fact that the victim could have easily just gotten back into a car and driven away instead of running into the woods to get hunted in the first place. 

There is one thing I like a lot - John Barry's music. The Spy Who Loved Me sorely missed Barry's artistry, and the producers did not make that mistake this time around. Barry is back in full force, producing arguably the best score of the Roger Moore years.

I have to give credit to Moonraker for one other thing, and this is an important point.  The movie is like a gateway drug for the franchise. When we showed the Bond films to the young son of a friend, he was sort of ambivalent towards the Connery films.  He just wasn't old enough to enjoy them.  But Moonraker...now, Moonraker, he understood, and he loved every minute of it.  And when that stupid pigeon did that stupid double take, this kid started laughing so hard that he fell off the couch.  It was impossible not to enjoy the film a little bit when I could see it through his eyes.  And it reminded me that I liked the movie when I was his age, too. Moonraker probably contributed to my love of the franchise, even if I am trying to turn my back on it now.

So there you go.  This movie is a turd, but I guess I can't completely hate it.  Meh.


RANKINGS:

Technically, Moonraker is probably the worst Bond film so far, but I can't bring myself to put it at the bottom of the list.  Not after I saw it with that 8-year old.  It changed my perspective on the movie. Granted, it doesn't move it that far up the list, but it definitely keeps it from being at the complete bottom of the barrel.

1. Thunderball
2. From Russia With Love
3. Goldfinger
4. The Spy Who Loved Me
5. Dr. No
6. Live and Let Die
7. Man with the Golden Gun
8. Diamonds are Forever
9. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
10. Moonraker
11. You Only Live Twice

BEST LINE:

Minister of Defense: What's Bond doing?!
Q: I think he's attempting re-entry, sir.

TRIVIA:

Moonraker was the first film to feature the modern space shuttle.  In fact, the release of the film was going to coincide with NASA's first use of the shuttle.  But unfortunately, the launch was delayed for two years.

MVP:

This one is easy.  John Barry wins hands down.  It's not even a contest.  And despite the fact that Moonraker is horrible, it does have the most awe-inspiring musical moment of the franchise.  What I love about film is that it is multiple different arts all working in synch to create one single piece of art.  And there are rare moments in moviemaking when all of these elements merge so seamlessly, so perfectly, that is creates something truly sublime, sending chills down your spine.  This doesn't happen often.  John Williams has a few of these moments - the Map Room in Raiders of the Lost Ark and the final light saber duel in Return of the Jedi come to mind.  John Barry gives me one of those moments in Moonraker as the shuttle nears Drax's space station.  The score in this sequence is stunning, but then Barry ratchets it up another notch, cranking up the organ as the space station makes its first appearance, slowly appearing out of the blackness as the sun comes over the Earth.  It's a BEAUTIFUL shot, and Barry's score just rocks the moment. This moment is a masterpiece in film composing.  It's just the best moment of what is already a terrific score.  So Barry wins the MVP hands down.

The Spy Who Loved Me

The Spy Who Loved Me

Following the financial and critical drubbing of Man With the Golden Gun, the James Bond franchise was in dire straits. Many were calling for the franchise to call it a day. After all, nine films wasn't so bad a run, right?  Perhaps now was the time to get out.  Deeply in debt, one of the original partners Harry Saltzman did just that, selling his stake in the series and leaving Cubby Broccoli on his own.   Broccoli had a decision to make, and it is to his great credit that he stayed stubborn in his faith in the character. Instead of ending the series and salvaging what money he could, he doubled down and went out to make the biggest James Bond film ever.

The gamble worked.  The result was The Spy Who Loved Me and it ranks among the best of the franchise, and is easily the best film of the Roger Moore years.  For the director, Broccoli turned back to Lewis Gilbert, who had directed an earlier Bond smash hit, You Only Live Twice.  Personally, I don't think that was a particularly good movie, and I have to wonder if deep down Gilbert agreed.  Perhaps he realized the missed potential of the storyline and set about doing it the right way, because The Spy Who Loved Me has a lot of similarities. The plot is very similar - only this time instead of stealing space shuttles, the villains are stealing nuclear submarines.  The producers even wanted Blofeld back as the villain behind the nefarious plot; alas, that character and his organization SPECTRE were tied up in legal battles with Kevin McClory (see why in my Thunderball review), so instead of Blofeld we are given Karl Stromberg (who I personally think is a much stronger villain than Blofeld, anyway).

Nuclear submarines are disappearing out of the ocean.  Nobody knows what is happening, but both American and Soviet vessels have been targeted so the world's two super powers decide to work together to solve the mystery.  They order their top spies, England's James Bond and Russia's Anya Amasova (Agent Triple X) to work together. Unfortunately, the partnership is destined to be a bit of a rocky one since Bond had killed Amasova's Soviet assassin boyfriend in the film's intro.  Oops. Together, the two must take on Stromberg and his ultimate henchman, Jaws, a near invincible giant with metal teeth.

I'm not going to lie.  The Spy Who Loved Me has its share of problems, but for the most part, it's good.  It's very, very good.  After experimenting with Live and Let Die and Man with the Golden Gun, the production team finally finds the right way to use Roger Moore.  Every actor playing Bond has to walk that delicate balance between humor and danger, and The Spy Who Loved Me finds the formula that works best for Roger Moore.  He will save the day because of his deep sense of duty, but you get the sense that he would much rather charm the ladies or make a bad pun to taunt his enemies than actually throw a punch.  Which is not to say Moore's Bond isn't dangerous.  The ruthlessness with which he pushes one of Stromberg's henchmen off a roof in Cairo might be the most badass thing Moore did during his entire run as the character.  But this Bond doesn't seem to enjoy violence.  It's just a means to an end (which is usually in the lead Bond girl's bedroom!).  Most of the rest of the cast is also quite good, with acclaimed German actor Curd Jurgens starring as the admirably menacing megalomaniacal Stromberg and Richard Kiel's Jaws is a fan favorite for a reason, even if his metal teeth are a bit silly.  Even the crew of the American submarine is full of interesting faces and cool character actors (most of whom you would recognize from other films in the 1970s and 1980s).

The production design is also terrific, from the underwater car (the Lotus Esprit replacing the Aston Martin) to the super tanker to Stromberg's ocean headquarters - the Bond team, led once again by the legendary Ken Adam, really came through for Broccoli on this one, delivering spectacular work. I also have to mention the opening scene, which features an amazing cliff jump which ranks easily as the most famous Bond stunt ever - and possibly one of the most famous stunts in movie history.

All in all, Broccoli set out to make the biggest Bond film of all time, and he succeeded with flying colors.

So what's not to like?

Well, a couple of things.  Despite my earlier praise of the cast, I have to say that Barbara Bach is a bit of a weak link.  She isn't bad (and oh, there are some really bad Bond girls out there) and she certainly looks the part of a glamorous Russian spy, but her presence sort of flatlines whenever she has to speak any dialogue.  I don't know if the script or director let her down or if she was just really tired during the entire production, but she doesn't make the strong impression that a character as tough as Triple X should.

I am also a bit disappointed by the score, by Oscar-winning composer Marvin Hamlisch.  While his title song and love theme are quite good, he also felt the need to update Bond for the new era and litters disco tones throughout the soundtrack.  While not an abomination like Bill Conti's For Your Eyes Only, The Spy Who Loved Me just really disappoints and makes me miss John Barry - especially for a movie this good.  And the real shocker that The Spy Who Loved Me was the first Bond score to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Score!.  Huh?!?

The Spy Who Loved Me also foreshadows some of the silliness to come in future films.  We are far removed from the serious Bond of Dr. No and From Russia With Love.  Here, some of the humor is cartoonish, several puns don't work, and while the balance is struck well, it is clearly a sign of things to come - it is this childish humor that gives the Moore films such a bad reputation today (undeserved, I think).

All in all, this is a terrific film, and a great entry into the franchise.  Broccoli's gamble worked.

Shame he had to follow it up with Moonraker.

RANKINGS:

This is a tough one.  The Spy Who Loved Me earns its spot among the top films, but it is crowded up there with Connery's best.  I think I would put it in the #4 spot, after the Thunderball, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger set.

Here are how the rankings are coming together:

1. Thunderball
2. From Russia With Love
3. Goldfinger
4. The Spy Who Loved Me
5. Dr. No
6. Live and Let Die
7. Man with the Golden Gun
8. Diamonds Are Forever
9. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
10. You Only Live Twice


BEST LINE:

Again, it's all in the delivery.

Stromberg: Well, well, a British agent in love with a Russian agent.  Detente, indeed.


TRIVIA: 

As part of his "spare no expense" philosophy for this film, Cubby Broccoli hired esteemed director of photography Claude Renoir.  Renoir did great work on this film, but unfortunately his eyesight was failing him.  When it came time to work in the massive super tanker set, he was unable to light the film properly.  Desperate, production designer Ken Adam turned to one his best friends, legendary director Stanley Kubrick.  On the condition that his involvement would be kept absolutely secret Kubrick came to the set and supervised the look of those scenes, and the result is pretty remarkable.  The lighting, the use of symmetry...several of these scenes just have the look and feel of a Kubrick film.  That's a pretty cool bit of trivia, I think!  Also, Kubrick's stepdaughter Katherine created the metal dentures that Richard Kiel had to wear as Jaws.  So that's kinda neat, too.

MVP:

Ken Adam.  It's a no brainer.  Many thought he could not top his volcano set in You Only Live Twice, but Ken Adam did it twice in The Spy Who Loved Me.  First, Stromberg's ocean headquarters is a superb set - ranking as one of my favorite secret lairs ever.  And I have to go back to that sprawling super tanker set - the location of one of the most exciting climactic battles of the franchise as the escaped submarine crews and Bond try to defeat Stromberg's army and dismantle the nuclear weapons.  The battle is choreographed to take advantage of carefully placed levels, stairways, ramps, and little eccentricities that fill the set.  It's just a brilliant piece of work, and I actually think it's the best thing about the film. Ken Adam designed a lot of brilliant sets in his Bond career, but this one was the best.  And for that, he gets the MVP.

Man with the Golden Gun

Man with the Golden Gun

Man with the Golden Gun hurts.  That's probably the best way to put it.  Roger Moore's second outing as James Bond isn't awful (though there is a lot that is awful in it), but it should have been so much better.  There is so much potential here.  It could have - no, it should have been one of the great films of the franchise.  But unfortunately, it just doesn't come together.

That fact also makes Man with the Golden Gun a bit hard to review because so much of the film veers from good to bad and then back again (sometimes within the same scene).  This extends even to the plot.  Francisco Scaramanga is the world's greatest assassin, who uses a golden gun as his weapon of choice.  He charges $1 million a shot - which is all he ever needs to get the job done.  And it seems as if he has now set his sites on James Bond, sending a golden bullet to MI6 headquarters as a warning that he is targeting the British super spy.  Now Bond has to find out why before he is assassinated. That's an interesting plot, and not the type of story you ordinarily see in a Bond film.  Unfortunately, there is also a nonsense storyline about Scaramanga's solar powered super laser weapon that he plans to sell off to the highest bidder, a story device that is obviously shoehorned in because the studio wanted the villain's plan to be more grand while also taking advantage of the energy crisis impacting most of the world at that time.  The laser weapon is silly, and doesn't make any sense - Scaramanga is an isolated, refined man who does not like attention.  He prides himself on his secrecy.  So the fact that he is also a mad scientist who has created a laser weapon which he plans to very publicly auction off to the world's countries just doesn't make a lick of sense.

The film wastes a lot of time on this storyline - time that would have been better spent developing one of the major ideas of the film - that Bond and Scaramanga are two sides of the same coin.  A slight nudge in either direction, and you could easily believe that Bond and Scaramanga could be on the same side.  Bond is also the only man Scaramanga respects and perhaps even fears.  And this invigorates him; indeed the thought of competing against Bond is the only thing that breaks Scaramanga out of his quiet, stiff upper class stoicism.  It's a fascinating character dynamic...which sounds a whole lot more interesting in this paragraph than in the movie because the movie doesn't go there.   It certainly HINTS at it, and acknowledges it once with one short dialogue exchange at the end, but it never does anything with it.  Such potential wasted!

Unfortunately, the whole movie plays this way.  You have one of the very worst Bond girls in Britt Ekland's inept Miss Goodnight and one of the most intriguing in Maud Adams' Andrea.  You have some dark encounters (like Bond's separate interrogations of Scaramanga's arms dealer and Andrea) and some bizarre elements (like Scaramanga's flying car and fun-house death trap).  Bond films can be gritty and they can be absurd.  I don't think I've seen one that tries to mix the two like this, forcing the film into two tones that are completely at odds with each other.  So the movie as a whole just never really works.

I know this all sounds bad.  But I have to stress that there is a lot to like here, and it is definitely worth seeing because the elements that work are quite good.  Scaramanga and Bond's cat and mouse game is excellent, Andrea's storyline gives us one of the better twists of the entire franchise, and we even get a random and quite bad karate scene which is obviously in the movie to cash in on the martial arts craze sweeping theaters and doesn't make a lick of sense, but still manages to be entertaining at the same time.  And I of course need to mention the acting of Christopher Lee and Roger Moore, who play off each other really well.  Lee, who was a cousin of Ian Fleming, makes a superb Scaramanga. He is every bit Bond's equal and the fact that he is not James Bond's greatest enemy has nothing to do with Christopher Lee's performance and everything to do with bad storytelling!  

The movie also manages to do one other thing quite well.  Live and Let Die is a better film, but it can't survive the presence of Sheriff J.W. Pepper who drags the entire film down with him.  Well, J.W. Pepper was so inexplicably popular (WHY?!?!?!??!) that they brought him back for Man with the Golden Gun.  He is conveniently vacationing in Thailand and bumps into Bond during a car chase.  And once again he is the worst thing about the movie.  But Man with the Golden Gun pulls off the impossible; it survives his presence.

And that is pretty remarkable.


RANKINGS
It's interesting.  I put this film right up next to Live and Let Die, which is almost its polar opposite.  Live and Let Die, when you think about it, is pretty stupid, but it works for long stretches. Whereas Man with the Golden Gun should be so good, and just continues to let you down throughout the film's runtime.  But the film's potential and its good qualities are too intriguing for me put it too far down on the list.  I'd put it right in the middle, under Live and Let Die and above Diamonds are Forever.

So here are the rankings:

1. Thunderball
2. From Russia With Love
3. Goldfinger
4. Dr. No
5. Live and Let Die
6. Man with the Golden Gun
7. Diamonds are Forever
8. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
9. You Only Live Twice

BEST LINE: 

James Bond: I mean, sir, who would pay a million dollars to have me killed?
M: Jealous husbands!  Outraged chefs!  Humiliated tailors!  The list is endless!

TRIVIA: 
Man with the Golden Gun is important for another reason.  It was the last film co-produced by Harry Saltzman.  Saltzman and Broccoli's relationship had been souring over the course of the production and by the end of it, Saltzman (saddled with mounting debts) was forced to sell his stake in the franchise.  Among the many disagreements between Saltzman and Broccoli was whether or not to include a scene featuring an elephant stampede.  Broccoli and the production staff balked, but Saltzman continued looking into it.  He discovered in his research that elephants require a specific type of shoe for their feet when they are running on hard surfaces.

Months later, while filming in Thailand, Broccoli got a call that his 2,600 pairs of elephant shoes were ready (!!!).  Saltzman apparently ordered them, thinking he'd be able to convince everyone to include the scene.  When that didn't happen, I suppose he forgot to cancel the order.  Broccoli was incensed and refused to pay the shoemaker.  So far as I know, I don't think Eon has paid him back even to this day.


MVP:

I know you expect me to go with Christopher Lee.  And while Lee is terrific actor (and has won my MVP award in the past), he is not in serious contention for the award in Man with the Golden Gun.  Nope, the choice is really easy for this one.  I present you with this YouTube clip.  Be warned, you may want to consider watching this with no sound because the dialogue and corkscrew effect almost ruin what is...The. Greatest. Car. Stunt. Ever.

Yep, no special effects there.  That is a real car with a real driver in the first stunt ever conceived with a computer program.  The stunt team wasn't sure if it was even going to work.  They unbelievably got the stunt right on the first try.  When the director suggested they get a second take, the crew absolutely refused.

Shame about that damn corkscrew sound...still, that stunt gets my MVP!

Live and Let Die

Live and Let Die

With Diamonds are Forever a huge success at the box office, Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman must have felt the franchise was back on track.  But just like that - Sean Connery declined to return and the producers found themselves once again trying to recast the iconic role of James Bond.  I can imagine there must have been a lot of pressure to find the right person - after all, last time they had gone through this process they had ended up with Lazenby!  Luckily, this time they went for the right actor - Roger Moore, known to audiences at the time from the TV show, The Saint.

Roger Moore catches a lot of heat from people these days.  They point to the films under his watch as among the worst of the series, accusing them of being silly, indulgent and representative of everything bad about the franchise.  I think people just forget what decade we were in.  These were the funky 1970s.  I also think that people who don't like the absurdity of the Moore years conveniently forget that the run of self-referential craziness did not begin with Moore, but with Connery in Diamonds are Forever (some would even argue that it started with You Only Live Twice, but I disagree with that.  You Only Live Twice thinks its being awesome.  Diamonds are Forever is in on the joke and is laughing with you. There's a BIG difference).   Roger Moore's films were also always in on the joke, with the star continuously winking at the audience in between gunshots and martinis, and trusting that the audience was winking back.  And I would argue that Roger Moore was absolutely the right man for the job.

When George Lazenby left the role after On Her Majesty's Secret Service, he said that Bond had no place in the 1970s.  And to his credit, he was right.  The Bond of the 1960s - the last gasp of British superiority in the wake of their Empire's breakup - would have quickly become archaic in the new decade.  What Lazenby (and many critics of the day) did not expect is that Bond could adapt with the times, continually re-inventing himself - sure, the franchise would shamelessly take advantage of the hot topics and fashions of the day, and while that has dated some of the films, it has also contributed to the franchise's longevity.

The hot genre of the early 1970s was blaxploitation, and Live and Let Die jumps right into the pool, trying to cash in on the same vibe that brought Shaft and Superfly box office glory.  The film is full of the archetypes and cliches that fill blaxploitation films, including even a plot about drug trafficking - hardly a scheme that should merit the attention of a super spy who is used to battling megalomaniac super villains.  In Live and Let Die, Bond is going up against strange group of villains, including a voodoo dancer/assassin Baron Samedi (Geoffrey Holder) and drug dealer Kananga (Yaphet Kotto). Kotto also uses a tarot card reader Solitaire to help him identify and kill his enemies - given that this beautiful psychic is played by the radiant Jane Seymour, it's a sure thing that Bond will be interested in, uh, getting a psychic reading himself.

There is actually quite a lot to like in Live and Let Die.  The blaxploitation stuff is ridiculous and dated, but is also so bizarre that it is more funny than offensive (for example, the bad guys drive a "pimp-mobile").  Director Guy Hamilton (Goldfinger) is back in the director's chair and pushes the film along at a nice clip, with some marvelous set pieces - a terrific car chase with a shoddy old bus, an awesome way to dispose of poisonous snakes, and a scene where Bond is trapped on a small island surrounded by alligators.  The villains are acceptable, if not up to the standards of the Connery era (Red Grant, Oddjob, and Fiona Volpe will never be topped).  Most importantly, Eon Productions had now found a worthy replacement in the lead.  Roger Moore makes a great debut in the role.  He certainly was not as physical or dangerous as Connery, and perhaps he knew how to throw a punchline better than a punch, but that is exactly what is needed in this film.  And I also think the music merits a special mention - the title song was written by Paul McCartney, and it easily ranks as one of the series' best.

The movie certainly has its share of misses in the first 2/3 of the film, but it also hits just as much. Unfortunately, at the two-thirds mark, it all falls apart.  In the middle of what should be an exciting boat chase, we are introduced to the comic relief, actor Clifton James as Sherif J.W. Pepper - a character so annoying and ridiculous that he drags the entire film down with his bloated stupidity. That audiences enjoyed this character is beyond me, but apparently they did.  If anyone needs proof that drugs were too readily available during the 1970s - that's your proof.

Ultimately, Pepper is not in the film for that long, but the movie never recovers.  The rest of the film, featuring Bond's rescue of Solitaire and his final fight with Kananga, is kind of blah - it's almost like Pepper sucked all the energy out of the production, and the rest of the cast and crew are just going through the motions, trying to finish the film as quickly as possible so they can all go home and shower off the tainted odor Pepper has left on them.  Ugh, I hate that character so much.

So in the end, what can I say?  If you could only see one film in the Bond franchise, this would not be it.  It wouldn't even be close.  But there is a lot to enjoy about the film, featuring a rocking main song, one of the most beautiful Bond girls, and a worthy debut for Roger Moore.

RANKINGS:

This is a tough one. In a way, Live and Let Die and Diamonds are Forever have a lot in common. Both have many of the same problems and strengths.  But ultimately, I think Live and Let Die is a stronger film.  It has a more clear voice and handles the balance between the serious and absurd with much more grace.  They run close in the ratings, but I think I am going to tip the balance in Live and Let Die's favor.

So the rankings so like this:

1. Thunderball
2. From Russia With Love
3. Goldfinger
4. Dr. No
5. Live and Let Die
6. Diamonds are Forever
7. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
8. You Only Live Twice


BEST LINE:

Hamilton: Whose funeral is this? 
Old man: Yours.

What a fun scene!

TRIVIA:

Kananga was named after Ross Kananga who worked on the film to help with the alligator scenes.  He was the owner of the alligator farm used in one of the more memorable sequences in the movie (and that sign in the movie, "Warning: Trespassers will be eaten!" is really on his front gate).  He also performed the big stunt in the film when Bond jumps across the backs of the alligators to escape.  The producers liked Ross so much that they decided to rename the villain of the film in his honor.

MVP:

So this one is tough.  There are three serious contenders.  Do I go with Roger Moore who showed that someone else other than Connery could succeed at playing James Bond?

Or do I go with Jane Seymour? Because its Jane Seymour.  Solitaire, while she isn't the most assertive or tough Bond girl, is an interesting character.  And plus, she has that delectable English accent.  And it's Jane Seymour!  I mean, look at her!

But in the end, the winner isn't Moore or Seymour.  If there is one thing about this movie that truly elevates it, it's that main title song by Paul McCartney.  Apparently, the song was so expensive that it ate up the entire music budget, which is why there is no real film score.  John Barry was missed, though the instrumental variations on the title song admirably fill in.  The song "Live and Let Die" was a big hit, and was the first Bond song to be nominated for an Oscar (ultimately losing to "The Way We Were" by Marvin Hamlisch).  This song is amazing, and is the perfect piece of rock music to usher Bond into a new era.  It's the most memorable and badass thing about this film.  So it has to win the MVP.

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!