No Time To Die

ANOTHER WAY TO DIE!

Finally, the latest Bond-movie arrives at cinemas. I watched it back in October 2021, but why reschedule all other post for being current, plus with almost a year after the movies release in the cinema and probably half a year or so with blu-rays and DVD:s no one can complain of spoilers, right? Great, cause we are diving deep into it. Movie starts out in Italy where Madeleine Swann from the last movie have taken Bond to see Vesper's grave so that he can process that, she is a psychologist after all. And she has memories of her mother's death and her rescue from a man in a mask. At the grave Blofeld left a SPECTRE calling card and blows the tomb up and a chase through the streets of the town. Bond gets away with Madeleine and dumps her on a train since due to his paranoia he believes she told Blofeld after he made a little call. We get a reversed goodbye on the train station as she runs through the wagons from inside and then Bond leaves.

Intro song... and I don't like it. Why are the Craig songs so boring (with exception of Another Way to Die, but that one everyone else hates)? Where's the pop-rock songs like the 80's that pump you up for the movie?  Still, movies return to London 5 years later where a group of special commando infiltrates a secret virus laboratory... FINALLY! A decent Craig plot, and written before the pandemic since it was supposed to be released in 2020 so they wrote it in what, 2018-2019? They also kidnaps one of the scientist that gives them the secret bio-weapon Hercules that... wait, is that the doctor from My Hero?

It is!!!

Didn't live long but that was fun. Where was I? Oh yeah, Hercules. A nanobot bio-weapon that targets specific DNA-codes meaning it acts as an assassin, the side-effect being that it even targets family members since they have similar genetic codes... it's FoxDIE from the Metal Gear Solid-series. Funny that a plot from the video games version of James Bond is being used in the actual James Bond-series. So this was a black ops laboratory so MI6 wants to keep a lid on the story. So in Jamaica CIA with Felix Leiter tries to recruit Bond to get the scientist first. After a run in with the new 007 that tells him to stay away Bond obviously joins with CIA. He head to Cuba, teams up with a CIA operative and infiltrates a SPECTRE party, where they release Hercules and kills all SPECTRE agent present since the scientist switched the code that was targeted for Bond himself. After a scuffle with the new 007, the SPECTRE body guards and lastly the cuban police. Bond and the CIA operative wins the struggle and Bond escapes with the scientist in 007 airplane. He met Leiter and another CIA-agent on a ship out at sea, but turns out that the CIA-agent is actually working for the other team and shoot Leiter and escapes on the plane with the scientist. After blowing up the ship, Leiter dies and Bond heads to London.

In London Bond tries to get information from M and Q and Moneypenny. After getting some information from a USB the scientist had Bond is allowed to meet Blofeld in prison together with his psychiatrist, Madeleine Swann, who got a meeting from her old rescuer that want her to use Hercules on Blofeld. She leaves before Blofeld arrives, but not before Bond takes her arm where she applied the formula. So Blofeld dies after a skirmish with Bond after Blofeld tells him that Madeleine was innocent to the bomb at the tomb. Regrouping 007 is sent after the rouge CIA-agent while Bond is looking for Madeline. Which takes him to Norway and the old house of the White family. Where it turns out she has a 5-year old daughter Mathilde. Gee, I wonder who the father can be. They also have Norwegian children show in the background so that was fun listening to another language that I understand. She also tells us that the bad guy is Safin, the only survivor of a family of poisoner employed by SPECTRA that Blofeld did away with. And then he shows up, kidnaps Madeleine and Mathilde and Bond and 007 joins with Q on a plane toward the Chinese sea to an island between Japan and Russia where abnormal activity have beed detected. Turns out it's Safin's family home that now returned to him and he started mass-producing Hercules. So the agents gotta infiltrate the base and... wait, now it's getting ridicules. 

Looks familiar?

Well, Metal Gear might have stolen that idea from Escape from LA.

They infiltrate the base, rescue Madeleine and Mathilde and Bond is opening the missile blast doors so that the whole base can be destroyed by a missile strike from the Royal Navy. But Safin interfers and is able use a special vial of Hercules on him that is programmed with Madeleine's genetic code so that he can't be near either Madeline or their daughter. So he decides to stay as the bombs rain downs on the island so while climbing up the control tower... what did the writers do? Play Metal Gear all day?

The references never stop.

Climbing to the top he talks with Madeleine over comm-radio saying his goodbyes...

All that is missing is the title song playing.

And then the island blows up and we go to London where the gang from MI6 mourns his death and then back to Italy with Madeleine and Mathilde as We Have All the Time of the World starts playing by Louis Armstrong which have been hinted all over the movie so as someone said, this is very much a reimagining of In Her Majesty's Secret Service. They even use the title song from that movie in the score when M tells Bond about Blofeld and Madeleine. Hans Zimmer, musical genius. 

So as first impression, I liked it. The plot works and it's a pity it wasn't released just before the Pandemic since now it would seem like it just took the headlines while the truth is it was written before it. Music's (beside the title track) great with the call backs and such. Fun how they handle the call for a female or person off colour to be 007 by giving them exactly that. But the Craig movies overall is a bit weird in the continuation of all the movies, since they pretty much waived away that and assumed that it was all Bond. But Craig starts and ends with him. Well, besides Judy Dench. And I assume Ralph Fiennes and the others of MI6 will return for the next movie. One negative is that the main bad guy is a bit weak in his plans, since he's pretty much was gonna sell Hercules. Why not go all out Hugo Drax or Stromberg? Especially Drax since the first look of the Hercules look like the virus containers from Moonraker. Bond villains ain't as crazy as they used to be. 

Skyfall

Still miss the old posters, but at least the barrel is there.

Film 23 and the 50th anniversary of the movie series since it was released in 2012. A bit hyped in Sweden as the the villain in the beginning was a Swedish actor. Begins with a mission where Bond is shot by one of the MI6 snipers (who later turns out to be a Moneypenny so establishing that character as well). Bond is presumed dead and M and is being questioned on how the mission could fail, the bad guy got away with some computer that I guess contained information about NATO agents as such. After a briefing on their way back someone blows up the MI6 building and begins releasing information about the agents. Bond watching in a bar in some village in Turkey or around there, travels back to London and begins the search which leads to South East Asia and some casino in Macao that takes him to some abandoned island.

Turns out that the bad guy is behind all this is some former MI6 agent named Silva who wants revenge after he was captured and suffered from an old cyanid capsule as he tried to take his life. Seems the pain drove him insane. Bond takes him hostage and back to London. Turns out that was part of the plan as the new Q looking into Silvas computer finds a virus that releases him and enables him to escape as a subway cop in order to infiltrate the hearing where M is questioned in order to kill her. Bond arrives in time to save her and take her away and gets his private Aston Martin and drives to his ancestral home Skyfall to fight Silvas off. The grounds keeper, 007 and M fights them off, but in the end M is fatally wounded, but Silva stills bites it. 007 returns to MI6 and meets the new M, Ralph Fiennes that have been in the movie all along.

It might be that I watched them all in a row for a very short time, but I'm getting bored by these movies. Besides that I don't know why. Maybe that I don't care about M which makes the whole emotional weight of the movie rather pointless for me. Cause the conflict is more with her, it has nothing with international politics or such things. They try to put it as a fight between the old and new as MI6 and spies are not needed with the dawn of the internet and such and the cold war ended 20 years ago. And I can see that, but as things like Snowden and Wikileaks proved, you still need someone to give the information away and if you want it from the enemy you need to get in there. Cause a fact was that Wikileaks only released information from the western world since those where the once that where willing to let out the information, none from Russia and China so it pretty much only hurt the western world. Now, don't get me wrong, it showed the hypocrisy and evil things that was committed by what we call democracies and want to have higher standards for it. 

Quantum of Solace

Another Way To Die!!!

Quantum of Solace, the first James Bond-movie I saw in cinema and that was back in 2008 when I was in the US. So maybe I'm blinded by nostalgic feelings, but I think this is the best Daniel Craig Bond-movie. First off, best song and soundtrack for Craig. Everyone else seems to hate the song Another Way To Die, but I love it. It's the only Bond track I got on my iPod after the Dalton-movies. They even used parts of the song in the actual soundtrack.

Story-wise it follows the last movie with Bond taking mr White to M for questioning, but a double agent set him free and is later killed by 007 who chased after him. Looking into the double agent 007 gets to Haiti to look into a contact for the agent, Bond kills him and is picked up by a woman who leads him to Dominic Greene, the head of an environmental organisation. Turns out the organisation is a front for Quantum, the organisation that mr White worked for. Greene is staging coups in Latin America and is looking into Bolivia at the time where a general is after the power. Meanwhile the CIA is striking a deal with Greene for the oil that Greene would be getting his hands on.

007 gets stranded by the MI6 after he gets framed by Quantum for killing a body guard to an adviser to the British government that are part of Quantum so he gets help from the agent he suspected double crossed him in Casino Royale so he gets to Bolivia. MI6 sends another agent to look over him. Both agents gets killed by Quantum, but Leiter slips him information about Greene's deal with the general so 007 and some Bolivian woman who's family was killed by the general go to the desert. Turns out that Quantum isn't after oil, but water. They dammed up the water in the area and are about to get control of most of Bolivia's water supply and are to resell it to Bolivia as a monopoly provider, fooling both the general and the CIA. 007 blows them up and the dam giving water back to the people. And then the movie ends with Bond confronting the agent that lured Vesper Lynd to betray him in Casino Royale and taking him alive.

I like this story. It's smart enough to get that oil isn't fought over more, but water is a new conflict resource, and people needs water. I might find it interesting since I studied American Foreign Policy in the US and it was brought up, conflict due to natural resources like water. Is the Israel-Palestinian conflict still religious, or is it due to who controls the water of the Jordan river? What happens when Sudan decides that it will block the Nile for their own electrical consumption that will make the Nile canal in Egypt worthless? Climate change, Scandinavium stands to be winner with a bit better warmer climate, but we already notice that we might have to think about conserving water since the changed weather patterns creates droughts (even in my own region). Might also be fun in that it pokes fun on the Americans, not only that they are so focused on oil that they miss the water, the bad guys take everything in euros since the dollar isn't what it used to be. That's a reference that the dollar plummeted in value probably around 2006 to be able to make it into the movie until the economic crash of 2008 in September. I mean, you could get a $ 1 for almost less than 6 SEK, it hasn't been that low since 1992 when the Krona was pegged to 5 SEK per dollar (we got used to at least 10 SEK per $ before and now it hovers around 8-9 SEK per $). It was a really great time being in the US with that dollar, but people was a bit scarred when it suddenly rushed up after the crash.

I still like it, it has forward looking plot, a shadowy organisation behind it all and it works rather well.

Casino Royal

 

The first shall be the last

21st film and Danial Craigs first. A reboot of the series as Bond is given his 00-license by killing an informant selling information from within the MI6. His first mission is to get a bomb maker in Madagascar which leads him to the Bahamas... is it the 3rd or 4th time we are in the Bahamas? And that leads to Miami where a terrorist organisation plan to bomb a new prototype airplane to tank the stocks of the company and win by betting against it. Bond stops that and the man with the money is in trouble. Le Chiffre as he is know is the treasury of an unknown organisation that take cares of terrorist groups money and lets them get it from everywhere in the world. And he gambled the money on the stock market and now the customers want their money back so he arrange a card game at the Casino Royale to get 150 million dollars to pay off the debt, the MI6 sends in 007 as their player.

So most of the tension is on the card game, throw in one assassination attempt on Le Chiffre from a dissatisfied customer and another on Bond with some poisoned drinks. Bond also loses the game at one point, but the incognito CIA-agent Felix Leiter allows him to use his part of the buy-in since he isn't good enough to beat Le Chiffre. Nice to see Leiter again since License to Kill. Bonds win, but after the game he and his assistant Vesper Lynd gets kidnapped by Le Chiffre to get back the money since his organisation will have his head. And they still do since as a Mr White said before killing him, trust is very important for their organisation.  Bond is rescued, believes that their contact man Mathis betrayed them and gets him taken by the MI6 for questioning. 007 and Lynd goes on holliday in Venice... also for the 3rd or 4th time. Turns out that Lynd was the snitch as she was black mailed by the organisation and she dies in a shoot out in a sinking house. Ends when Bond confronts Mr White who is the man behind it all. 

It was way better than the Pierce-movies, and I think it might be that it doesn't have the obvious fake effects like the missiles, explosions and paragliding in Iceland. It even have decent behind the scenes documentaries with Bond and the producers. The main title song don't move me, but the soundtrack works rather well. Still not as good as the older movies. M is still Judy Dench, but no Q or Moneypenny. Also, the threat is grounded in terrorism and a shadowy organisation behind them all. Good enough for me. Stock market gambling and all that still works and you shall never use company funds for your own pleasures. And you especially don't gamble with them. Especially more fun after the GameStop stockmarket debacle at the beginning of 2021.

Die Another Day

 

Is it over soon?

20th Bond-movie and the last of Brosnans-movies and basically the last of Classic Bonds. Or maybe Classic Bond is always before the current Bond? Whatever, we start in North Korea as Bond infiltrates the country and leads a helicopter astray with a diamond curier... not another diamond smuggling story! This gonna be bad. Still, he gets in and meets the son of a high ranking general, Moon, that I think gives weapons for diamonds, but they get information that Bond is a British spy so they arrest him and intends to kill him so Bond activates the bomb within the case of diamonds and hunts Moon until he crashes into the sea and apparently dies. Bond gets taken in by the father and is tortured for 14 months, all over Madonna's song Die Another Day. Worst Bond-theme ever.

He's exchanged for Moon's closest ally (who got some of the diamonds lodged into his face after the bomb went off) that got caught after killing three Chinese agents in some peace summit between China and South Korea. He's also believed to have broken down and given information on agents in North Korea so that was why MI6 had to get him out. To clear his name 007 escapes the facility in Hong Kong he been taken too he enters a hotel to get refreshed as well as get information from the Chinese agents running it. They send him to Cuba where diamond face have been going. There he meets a CIA-agent Jinx and enters a clinic that focuses on genetical engineering of rich clients. 007 tries killing diamond face, but fails and only gets some diamonds that are identified as conflict diamonds from Sierra Leone, but engraved with Gustaf Graves insignia, a businessman with a diamond mine in Iceland.

Bond confront him in a gentleman club with some fencing action until he's stopped by Graves personal instructor Miranda Frost. He's contacted by M and learns that Frost is an undercover agent tracking Graves so Bond is off to Iceland and Graves Ice Palace where he unveils Icarus, a solar satellite that can give solar energy for crop development all year round. But 007 discovers that he is in fact the genetical engineered Moon that survived the intro of the movie. Bond have him corned but is betrayed by Frost that also was the informant that got him caught in North Korea. And she did all that because Graves made the fencer that won gold medal in an olympics against Frost to default by giving the person steroids. Feels a bit small for betraying your country to a terrorist. Bond and Jinx escape and goes to the Korean border where the Americans and MI6 are stationed. A coup in North Korea where Graves father been overthrown by the nationalist and Graves as they begin using Icarus to level the mine filed and also take away the US nuclear umbrella, enabling North Korea to take over South Korea. Jinx and 007 boards Graves plane, kills Graves and escapes by dropping a helicopter midair from the plane.

Seen by many as the worst in the series and I'm inclined to agree. The effects doesn't look that good, not compared to earlier movies. Might still be the higher quality of the picture overall showing the faults more easily. Music is not that good, and it starts with the gun barrel sequence at the start of the movie with updates to the original theme. I liked it in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, but that sounded good (or I prefer that sound would probably be more correct). It's also bit problematic in that it's the 40th anniversary so they look back to the older movies, the plot is inspired by Diamonds Are Forever for example with the diamond smuggling and satellite plot. The Aston Martin is back and we get a whole sequence with the old gadgets. But Bond should try to predict the future and this just defeats the purpose since it's already been done. Also, the North Koreans... yes, they are the only country one could show as evil during 2002 since that wouldn't affect box office numbers, but would they really risk biting the hand of China by killing their agents? China is pretty much the only reason no one does anything against them? 

Also the only Bond movie I owned before this collection. Must also add, that this movie had the worst content on how they made the movie. Overall, Brosnan-era wasn't that good. The only one who still would stand up would be GoldenEye since that threat is the only that would still work. All the other fails in some way, this one has North Koreans infuriating China, Tomorrow Never Dies have a Britain that believes they can take on China and The World Is Not Enough is destroyed by the collapse of the oil price after the recession of 2008. At least an EMP against a modern capital still works... but wasn't the microchips from A View to a Kill supposed to neutralise that threat?

The World Is Not Enough

 

The family motto

The 19th film and the last Bond-movie of the last millenia. As well as Desmond Llewelyn as Q as he tragically died after the films release. Longest serving actor on the movies so that won't probably be beaten for quite some time. Begins in Spain as Bond picks up some money that have been taken back by some Swiss banker, but 007 really want the name of the person behind it, but a fight breaks out, but he is saved by an unknown sniper. Back in London the moneys owner Sir Robert King thanks him, but is killed as a pin on him triggers an explosive reaction with the chemicals in the money and blows him up.

Turns out an old enemy of the MI6, ex-KGB Agent Renard that got a bullet in his brain from agent 009, is back to exact revenge. Bond goes to Azerbaijan to protect Elektra King, Robert Kings daughter and former kidnapped victim to Renard. King is an oil company that builds a pipeline on the north of the Black Sea (even more north you have Russian pipelines and on the south of the Black Sea  you have the oil from the Middle East). 007 follows a lead that takes him to a Soviet former nuclear base where Renard steals the plutonium from a bomb. It looks like the bomb is used to blow up a King plant via a pipeline but when Bond is there he finds that only half the plutonium is there and the rest is missing so he lets the bomb explode before reaching its target. Meanwhile Elektra has lured M to Azerbaijan and kidnaps her and moves her to Istanbul.

There Renard takes over a nuclear submarine on the pretense on getting equipment via deal with the ex-KGB agent from GoldenEye. The plan is to use the last of the Plutonium and get the submarine to meltdown and destroy the competition for the King company. Bonds stop it and blows it up.

I assume its the first time we have a female bad guy as the main antagonist, but they really muddle it with Renard so it looks like they try to have it's cake and eat it as well, since Elektra doesn't do as much sadistic things like the old main antagonist. Renard does it all and it's only in the end it's revealed Elektra is behind it all. Also, I get its ripped from the headlines with the oil pipes and such, but it feels like the plan falls short in 10 years when the oil price collapses and still haven't recovered some 10 years after that. Compare to Man With The Golden Guns focus on solar energy or A View To A Kill and the believes that microchips will be of importance. Maybe they thought oil would still be important even after like what happened with gold even though the gold standard fell 7 years after Goldfinger was released. 

Another things that bothers me is M. In GoldenEye she is described as all numbers and no gut reactions, following all the rules and all that and here... she seems to be to personally involved in the case just because she knew Sir Robert from school and putting her self in danger by bypassing  security protocols. Feels a bit inconsistent with her earlier portrayal, might be a problem related to that they try to give the supporting cast more depth and a calculating person is rather one-dimensional.

Tomorrow Never Dies

 

Fake News: The Movie

18th movie and I'm wondering if I'm getting fatigued on Bond-movies since I can't seem to keep my mind focused on them. Or even watch more than one movie a day. Or the quality of them really is slipping. It starts somewhere in the Russian mountains where terrorist are selling weapons toward different terror groups. Bond is there broadcasting it to London and the Royal Navy orders a missile strike. Turns out that one of the planes are equiped with some nuclear missiles so 007 have to get them out before the missiles strike. Which he does, credits roll and... the music is so boring. Music is really getting worse.

We start up in the Chinese sea where a British ship is being harassed by Chinese MIG:s for trespassing in their waters. In reality there GPS is being tampered by the News media corporation Carvers Media Group headed by Elliot Carver. With him is one hacker that was present at the terror auction and escaped before the missile hit. Carver has a stealth ship which torpedos the ship and then they blow up one of the MIG:s and lastly kills the surviving sailors with Chinese rifle ammunition. And Carver prints it directly so the next morning at London they get the information first from the news. The Navy wan't to retaliate and MI6 wants to investigate. Bond gets 48 hours and are sent to investigate Carver since they noticed something strange from one of his satellites as well as the interesting news that was released long before the Secret Service got news of the death of the sailors. 

007 gets to know Carter and a Chinese Agent. He gets in to the HQ and gets the machine that causes the GPS to malfunction. After escaping heads to South East Asia where he meets the CIA that with the machine can pinpoint where the ship actually sunk. He HALO drops into the water and finds out that a missile is missing and meets the Chinese agent again. Both gets captured by Carver that takes them to Saigon, they escape and finds out where the stealth ship is as it's about to push Britain and China to war as their navy's are standing against each other. 007 blows the stealth cover so Britain begins blowing the ship up. All enemy dies and the plan is foiled. The plan was causing a war, Carver would help by launching the stolen missile on Beijing killing the Chinese high command so that the General in his pocket could take over and give him broadcasting rights for 100 years, which he was denied before. In the process destroying the whole British navy.

On one hand, the fake news angle, media moguls holding the power and all that is off its time and would still works partly today, with the exception that the internet pretty much destroyed the monopolies of information that media moguls had. On the other hand... in what world does the British navy stand a chance against the Chinese military? I get being able to fight off Argentina in 1982, but the Chinese? Why not do it like in the older movies, put USA against China and Britain playing the mediator (think You Only Live Twice between USA and USSR)? On the other hand, we can probably track the huge overconfidence of the British that lead to Brexit from this time, what with New Labour and the British pop invasion of the 90's so why not global security as well? Or, thinking about it... maybe China in the 90's wasn't that military strong? I knew that the economy started to take off in the 90's and its GDP rose with 10 % per year up until the economical crash of 2008 and that they are trying catchup with the US, but the US is so far ahead I hardly see that as feasible for several decades, but they gotta have been able to take on China? Or was it some reaction for leaving Hong Kong to China? 

Goldeneye

 

Finally Bond is in Russia

17th movie and the first Pierce Brosnan-movie. Together with Judi Dench as M and Samantha Bond (haha) as Moneypenny. Q is still Q. It was also 6 years after the last movie so that was the longest delay between Bond-movies and still is. It begins in Archangels as 007 infiltrates a chemical plant together with 006. The mission goes wrong when 006 is captured by General Ourumov. 006 is shoot and Bond blows the plant up after escaping on an airplane. Credits and we go 9 years into the future. During an evaluation in Monaco Bonds encounters an operative of the Janus syndicate, Xenia Onatopp who seems to take a Canadian admiral to a yacht owned by Janus. 

Infiltrating the ship the next day he finds the corpse of the admiral and figures out that the target is the showing of a new french military helicopter. It's invisible for the radar and can withstand  an electric magnetic pulse (EMP). He can't stop it being stolen and returns to London. The helicopter travels to Russia and an old military space base which contains the keys to a weapon called GoldenEye. A couple of satellites that can once shoot an EMP. Xenia works together with Ourumov as they take the keys together with the hacker Boris that worked on the base. The only survivor is Natalya Simonova after Xenia kills all the worker and sets one of the satellites to fire at the base to hide the theft.

In London they watched the theft in realtime by satellite until the EMP blows all equipment. Connecting the fact that the Tiger Helicopter was at the place and probably stolen by the Janus syndicate Bond is sent to Moscow to confront the unknown leader of Janus. In Moscow he meets the CIA-agent Wade (who is played by John Don Baker that played Whitaker in the Living Daylights) that shows him to an ex-KGB-agent turned mob boss that leads him to Janus that turns out to be the very much, but scarred 006. 007 is knocked out and put in the Tiger Helicopter together with Natalya that searched for Boris the hacker and got caught by the bad guys. After escaping the heat seeking missiles they are taken in by the Russian military. The Russian Defence minister is questioning them, but seems to be aware of Ourumov's foul play. Doesn't help much when Ourumov appears, kills the minister, escapes with Natalya and Bond chases after them with a tank.

Ourumov escapes to an armoured train where 006 is. They use Natalaya as hostage to ensure that Bond can't kill them. Doesn't help that much since Ourumov gets killed, but 007 and Natalya is looked on the train with a bomb as 006 and Xenia escapes. Natalya tracks Boris with some hacker mumbo jumbo and that leads to Cuba. They escape the train and we are in Cuba. Wade gives them a plane, they get shot down from a secret base under a lake and taken in. Action, explosions. The plan of 006 is to fire the last GoldeEye on London after they hacked the banks and stolen all money to destroy the trace back to them, and also so that 006 can get vengeance on the British for betraying the cosacks in 2nd World War which was 006 family or something like that. Bonds blows everything up and then the marines and Wade show up from Guantanamo... another poor choice by the Bond crew after 9/11.

On one hand, I haven't seen it that much, but I played the N64 game a lot more so the first parts of the movie I know fully well. Never finished it though. For some reason I never got that they where in St. Petersburg, I thought they where in Minsk, Belarus. Don't know why I thought that. Back to the movie, watching it now... it's alright, but I don't get the nostalgia like for the older movies (even though I pretty much have seen all of them around the same time). It could also be due the effects not giving that aura of fantasy since the picture quality might be too good. Most of the time I couldn't see the tricks and miniatures on the old movies beside the documentaries, but here I clearly saw that it was a miniature setting they crashed the MIG-plane into and the heat seeking missiles on the Tiger looks really fake. 

Could also be that there doesn't seem to be the same documentaries that existed for every other movie, might be that there was more things saved that was shown around the release. I still want an explanation why Dalton quit, why it took 6 years for the next movie and the casting process for the other. And the other actors as well. They had Baker for The Living Daylights, why not his other Bond-movies? And the discussion of the music? It has some decent sounding themes, but they aren't that bombastic, and John Barry said himself that the sound should sound bombastic. But the main theme is nice, didn't know Bono wrote it. I should actually like the movie more than I do now, since I was obsessed with helicopters as a kid, with reruns of AirWolf and such. Maybe it's because the helicopter seems very much like the helicopter from the Batman the Animated Series.

License to Kill

 

Worst Bond?

16th movie, Timothy Daltons second and last movie as Bond, and it's said to be the grittiest of them all. Pre-credits scene follows first the drug lord Franz Sanchez getting back his girlfriend who ran away with some other bandit... and they proceed to cut his heart out. Out of sight of course. Then switch over to 007 together with Felix Leiter on the way to Felix wedding, when the drug patrol or whatever appears and tells them that Sanchez is in the Bahamas right now so Felix that heads the case for this goes off and 007 tags along. They capture him with their helicopter escaping to Cuba in his own plane. And then follows the song License to Kill. A large step down from the last movie, but who can top John Barry and A-ha? 

So Felix gets married. Sanchez escapes with the help of a dirty cop that he bribed with 2 million dollars and Sanchez retaliates by killing Felix's bride and feeding him to a shark. Not the whole body, just the leg to send a message. Which Felix survives so not a good plan I would say, even for the cop who took the money. I don't get why even try to take revenge on Felix. He even says it's nothing personal, only business, so why not just leave? As we learn he is on the cusp of a big deal so why even antagonising the Americans for killing their CIA-agent? Maybe they didn't expect a British rouge agent to deal with.

As this gets personal for Bond he finds the shark in a fishing centre owned by some researcher. Who in actuality is smuggling drugs for Sanchez with subs and aeroplanes. Oh, underwater action, must be a good Bond-movie. He finds the dirty cop and feeds him to the shark by throwing the case of money on him, which is a nice symbolism, greed kills him. 007 and Sharky, a mutual friend to Felix, starts to prepare an operation against the researcher, when Bond is taken to M who wonders why he isn't on his mission the arguments gets heated enough that Bond resign, but escapes to finish his own mission. At the yacht of the researcher he meets the girl again from the intro. Meanwhile they prepare to send a shipment to Sanchez and another boat appears with the body of Sharky. So 007 kills the man responsible, destroys the shipment of drugs and steals the money from the plane that made the delivery. A good scene.

Alone, 007 gets to Leiters home where he saw Felix hide all information he had on the Sanchez case where he locates the last living informant, Bouvier. Bond finds Bouvier at a bar when Sanchez henchmen shows up, Bouvier is packed with a shotgun and is able to hold the place so that she and Bond can escape. As a former pilot she agrees to fly 007 to Ishtmus City, the capital of Ishtmus in Latin American country, mimicking the strongmen militaries of that continent and the drug lords around there. Of course, many of them was sponsored by the USA as to try to stop the spread of communism. The film doesn't go into that. In Ishtmus Bond get closer to Sanchez and during the night he lays explosive plastic around the plexiglas window to blow it up and with a special gun that only 007 can use, that Q gave him, intends to assassinate Sanchez. He's stopped by Hong Kong drug police that works with the British operative. The failed assassination disturbs their plan to get to the factory that creates the drugs Sanchez is selling around the world. They were there undercover as drug lords to join Sanchez in a drug cartel over the whole Pacific with some new experimental drug that can be hidden in petrol and then extracted, making it impossible to track.

Bond is taken to their hideout and is about to be sent home to England, but Sanchez military tracked them down and in the fight kills the other agents, leaving Bond unconscious tied to a table. Already established with Sanchez, the drug lord thinks the other agents tried to kill him and Bond tried to stop them, and was the reason for being tied up. So Bond starts manipulating him by making him paranoid over his own henchmen. The researcher he insinuates payed the sum to get Sanchez killed so Sanchez investigates the ship as it comes back. He finds the money Bond stole, but now it looks like it was embezzled. So the researcher is thrown into a decompression chamber and makes him explode. 007 is invited to the laboratory and when the henchmen that was at the bar recognises him, he starts burning up the place with the high explosive drug. He also get Sanchez to kill the head of security. Then follows a chase with tanker trucks, all destroyed and in the end Bond lights the petrol drained Sanchez up in flames with a cigarette lighter he got from Felix as a present at the wedding. Everyone in Ishtmus celebrates and Bond talks with Leiter over the phone that recovered. And then he gets away with Bouvier. The end.  

One of the movies I saw the least of, mostly since my parents though it probably wasn't good for a kid to see it. And they were probably right. The violence is graphic, the revenge theme is heavy. Watching it now, it's pretty decent. Maybe not the best plot to go with two drug related movies after each other. Also, the plot isn't that world endangering. Music is not that great. And I can't help notice that something looks off with Daltons hair. It's only been two years between movies, but looks like Dalton got hit hard with aging. Compare to Connery and Moore. Connery got some silver in the hair while Moore only got wrinkles. And the title for the Swedish version was Time for Revenge since they already used the title back in first movie and after this they didn't even bother translating the movies.  

The Living Daylights

Best Bond?

15th movie and the first with Timothy Dalton as Bond. This was my favourite 007-movie as a kid (well mostly due to being from 1987, the best year of them all) and now we shall see if it still holds up. Begins in Gibraltar when three 00-agents are sent in by parachute to test the security of Gibraltars military. Doesn't go that well when one is taken by the Gibraltar military and the other is killed by an intruder. 007 spots him and starts to chase him in an amazing chase scene down the serpentine roads and then see it flying over the edge and Bond escapes by opening his parachute and landing on some girls yacht. And then we're hit with the best Bond-song of them all, the living daylights by A-ha. Amazingly enough the overall soundtrack is amazing. The horns and synths work in fantastic combination for every action scene. And of course it's the sound of the blu ray-menu.

Following this we end up in Czechoslovakia where Bond is to aid the defection of General Koskov from the Soviet army. Apparently he is watched over by a female sniper that played the cello in the orchestra Koskov was watching. 007 guts feeling tells him that she doesn't appear as a Soviet assassin and just wounds her. After he gets away they send Koskov over the border in the natural gas tubes and back to England with a fighter jet that takes off from a roof. Koskov defects due to the new KGB-chief Pushkin that seems to have restarted a Stalin program called Smiert Spionem that was behind the death of the 00-agent in Gibraltar. Pushkin is supposed to be in Tanger for a conference and 007 gets the order to kill him since he is a threat to the west. 

Bond accepts the mission, but takes a detour back to Czechoslovakia in order to find out who the sniper is. Turns out it's Koskov's girlfriend and she followed Koskov's order. They escape to Austria where another agent is killed in Smiert Spionem so Bond and the girl goes too Tanger. Koskov have also been taken by what appears to be a KGB-agent but turns out works for an American arms dealer named Whitaker. The plot is that Koskov and Whitaker worked together and as Pushkin took over began looking into the affairs as embezzlement. So Whitaker wants Pushkin dead and Koskov try to get the British to do it. 007 meets up with Pushkin and he agrees to act dead to let the bad guys show their hands. And after escaping, meeting Felix Leiter again for the first time since Live and Let Die as they have been looking into Whitaker, he meets with Kara (the girl) and is put to sleep as the alleged KGB-agent and Koskov takes them to an airport and a plane en route to Afghanistan. With a case of diamonds.... are we in a diamond smuggling operation again? That's a bad omen.

Apparently they are using the diamonds to buy opium from the mujahideen and then sell it, for around half a billion dollars and then get more weapons. Bond gets some plastic explosives and intends to blow the plane up. He gets recognised and a shoot out happens, and then Kara with a group of mujahideen who's leader Bond saved from the Soviet army prison. After Kara and Bond escapes on the plane, and dropping the assassin Whitaker hired off the plane... and the plane crashed due to running out of fuel, they had back to Tanger to take in Koskov that returned to Whitaker. But Whitaker fights Bond with the latest technologies, but in the end the little gadgets from Q wins the day, and then Pushkin arrives taking Koskov to Moscow for defection. 

Maybe it's nostalgia but I still like it. It doesn't get boring, the music is great. The plot might not be the most dangerous for the world. Just some arms dealer that smuggles diamonds and opium and embezzles the Soviet Union. I really like Dalton as Bond in this and you get the Aston Martin and some other gadgets from Q. Today maybe the mujahideen is a bit bad after 9/11. It was also translated as Mission Ice Cold... not much ice here beyond the escape from Czechoslovakia. I also always thought living daylight meant some thing akin to living target, that wasn't apparently true.

A View To A Kill

Last Moore-movie, might need more cowbells.

14th film, last Moore-film, and the last movie with the original Miss Moneypenny. Starts up in Iceland (it was filmed on Iceland, but I assume they are somewhere in Russia) where 007 finds the corpse of 003 with a locket containing a microchip. He escapes Russian soldiers on skis, scoters and helicopter and we have the music back. A step up really. He blows the helicopter up and escapes on a mini-submarine. And then the title theme. One of the best one yet, A View to a Kill with Duran Duran. Great start.

So the actual story is that the microchip is a copy of one of a microchip the British government contracted a defence contractor to create to be able to withstand an electric impulse from a nuke or something like that. The contractor was bought by Zorin Industries and therefore Bond is sent in to investigate the businessman Max Zorin. Suspicion arise as he constantly wins horse races so Bond meets a french investigator that gets killed in the Eiffel Tower so 007 goes undercover with another agent (which I learnt in the documentary was the voice for all the documentaries on the movies). Turns out that the horses are operated with microchips that with a remote control can add natural steroids to the horses so that they can win the race... and the audience learns that Zorin is a KGB-agent that supplies microchips to the Soviets, but he intends to break off since he intends to stand on his own by taking control of the microchip market.

Apparently he intends to cause an explosion on the San Andres fault and flood the whole Sillicon Valley which stands for 80 % of the worlds production of microchips. And apparently he is genetically engineered human from East Germany that seems to have made him into a psychopath... and now it's just Bond catching up to the plot. He spots a woman that was given a check and after looking into one of Zorins oil platforms that pumps salt water into the pipelines he visits San Francisco City Hall where he meets the woman again that was at Zorins home in France. She works as a geologist there while processing against Zorin for stealing her father's oil company. They team up and follow him to the fault and stops the explosion after Zorin kills all the workers. He tries to escape on a zeppelin and kidnapp the girl, Bond follows and they have a fight on the Golden Gate Bridge where Zorin falls off and the Zeppelin explodes after a stick of dynamite gets lost in a shuffle.

I've had memories of this being the worst Bond-movie, might have been since it was the one I've seen least. Probably due to all the deaths. Sir Godfrey and the CIA-agent got strangled while a Soviet KGB-agent gets dropped into an underwater propeller. I can stomach it now, but as a kid it was probably the right decision by my parents not show it for a long time. The biggest crime the movie has is that it feels a bit disjointed. First the introduction, then horse races followed by oil rigs that ends up in mining facilities and talks about a psychopathic villain (what differs Zorin from anyone else? He's practically reenacting Goldfinger but with Microchips). And maybe that Moore isn't that nimble anymore. The music though is great, every action scene has a sound. Compare that to Octopussy and the tiger hunt. I can't recall a sound beyond the people and elephants. 

And the plot at its core isn't that interesting. Microchips that doesn't contain any information isn't that interesting, but at least it was something that would be important for the computer industries. Also, this one was titled Living Target.

Octopussy

 

We're entering the bad Moore-era

13th movie and we start in... Cuba? I think it's Cuba, looks like Fidel Castro look-alikes all over the place. And 007 destroys some hanger with a plane and then leaves... That's it? Title roll and then we appear in Berlin as a clown is chased by some dagger throwing people in red. The clown gets a knife in the back, but is able to get to the British embassy and delivers a Faberge egg. Turns out it's a double 0 agent and as we return to London it's shown that the egg is a fake and meanwhile the real one is being auctioned away. Bond attends and switches out the fake with the real one, getting the sights on Kamal Khan, an exiled Afghan prince that payed for the Egg.

Apparently he acts as a seller of stolen Russian treasures that a Soviet General Orlov uses to fund... whatever he funds. They uses the smuggler Octopussy who have a palace in India to get the treasures across the Iron Curtain. But Kamal Khan and Orlov sets her up since Orlov plans to, instead of the jewelry, plant an atomic bomb that will go off on an American Air base in West Berlin, triggering protest of unilateral disarmament in the West, enabling the Soviet military to take Western Europe without the American Nuclear umbrella.

Now that's an interesting plot. The movie was made in 1983 and it was not until after the cold war ended that it was understood that the leaders of Soviet Russia was as paranoid as General Orlov and slightest believed aggression would have caused the Soviet Union to launch their nuclear arsenal. We also know that the peace protest was in some cases financed by the Soviet Union to try to disarm the West. So all this is really interesting and is on point with history... then why is this one of the most boring movies in the franchise? Well, I would assume the fact that instead of focusing of the internal power struggle of the Soviet Union, we get another diamond smuggling operation. I begin to see a pattern here.

After 007 stops the bomb, dressed in a clown suit I might add, Octopussy (who was gonna be collateral damage) travels back to India where Kamal Khans palace is and tries to catch him, but she fails so Bond arriving with Q in a hot air balloon. After getting on an airplane he rescues Octopussy and gets out. As stated it didn't do anything for me. It had exotic locals in India, but the music is terrible, there's hardly any in it. As mentioned, the politics of the movies are interesting, but it's hidden behind the boring main plot. Orlov should have been the main bad guy, I don't even get what Khan gets out of this besides money. And I assume they tried to make Octopussy appear as a female Blofeld with the not showing her face and the images of the octopus looking like SPECTRAS emblem. Why not go for that angle full time? Damn, why not have a female main antagonist? 

For Your Eyes Only

 

Snow and water, must be one of the good Bonds.

12th movie and we start off at the cemetery with Tracy Bonds grave. Used to watch this movie and eating some licorice candy as a kid. 007 gets called in to London and a helicopter arrives, but as he flies in it is hijacked by a man in a wheelchair and a neck bracer with a white cat in his lap. Obviously a reference to Blofeld. After getting in the front of the helicopter and taking over the controls the music pumps up and Bond picks up Blofeld and drops him in a smoke stack. Awesome beginning and then the title sequence with the song For Your Eyes Only. I really like this song, probably one of the better Bond-ballads. 

In the mediterranean a British spy ship is blown up by a mine and the computer that gives orders to the British Polaris fleet isn't self-destructed. Moscow gets the news and contact a specialist in Greece. Afterwards a woman arrives to her parents research boat, but the parents are killed by her pilot since they where tasked by the Secret Service to try to locate the sunken ship and get the computer. Bond is called in and sent after the killer in Spain. Arriving he is quickly captured, but is able to escape as the woman from before kills her parents murderer. They escape and Bond goes to London. There he research the one paying the assassin and that leads him to an olympic village in Italy where his contact introduces him to Kristatos, a greek smuggler that pinpoints a man named Columbo as the man behind the assassination. Meanwhile he avoids several murder attempts from an East German athlete, a hockey team and some bikers.

Back in Greece Bond tries to get info on Columbo by his mistress, but she is killed by the same person paying the assassin. Bond meanwhile is saved by Columbo who reveals that Kristatos is the man he really is looking for.

Look at this face, does this not look like a trustworthy guy?

They attack an opium fabric and kills the man who was Kristatos delivery man. Afterwards Bond meets up with the girl from before and locate the ship to get up the computer (or whatever it is). Intense action underwater and as they emerge Kristatos have taken their ship and prepares to keelhaul them or whatever the term for dragging someone in water. They escape and track Kristatos to a mountain monestary and together with Columbo and three of his men they scale the mountain and get the better of Kristatos, but not before the KGB arrives. The only option is destroying the computer so Bond throws it of the mountain. The Soviets just laughs and leave... somehow I have a hard time seeing that option. But they did.

The computer thing gets some From Russia With Love-vibes with the Lektor, but it works. Not world shattering since it basically only effects Britain as I get it.  Bernard Lee as M doesn't appear anymore. I really like the music. No fun gadgets though. Overall still a good movie, would probably put this in the top 3 with Thunderball and The Spy Who Loved Me. This one had the title A View to a Kill... which will cause some problem in the near future. Took me a long time getting that Kristatos actor was Julian Glover who was both in Star Wars and Indiana Jones... where he also played a villain who posed as a good guy, and that movie even had Sean Connery!

Moonraker

 

The Last Frontier

11th movie and we're going to space. Someone steals a space shuttle that the British was transporting for the Americans and the Secret Service sends their best man, James Bond. The only lead they have is looking at the shuttles manufacturers, Hugo Drax i California. And the instant he arrives Drax tries to kill Bond and it gets so obvious that Drax is behind it all so I don't get why Bond just calls for support. Meanwhile CIA have their own operative and as they goes around Venice and Rio trying to uncover his grand plan the CIA girl gets kidnapped and the clues leads to the Amazon. Where Drax has a hideout in some Aztec... or is it Mayan ruins? They travel to a hidden space station in orbit around the world where Drax begins firing special globes containing a toxin that will kill humanity so that he can basically wipe it out and start a new race with the people he gathered in the space station... his master race... It's the damn plot from the last movie!!! With the toxin idea from OHMSS!!!

Yeah, basically is. 007 and CIA destroys the radio jammer, the Americans sends up a shuttle with a platoon of space marines, an epic space fight occurs, the whole station blows up and as 007 and the CIA girl chases after the 3 globes that was fired, blasting them with the laser on Drax own space shuttle.  They are destroyed and the world is saved.

I remember liking this as a kid, probably watched this one the most. I mean, it had lasers and astronauts!!! And it could also be that we had it on a taped VHS and afterwards there was a taped episode of the original Ducktales where Launchpad becomes agent 000. Which I think was the inspiration for making Darkwing Duck after that. I gathered people disliked this one and thought it to gimmicky with trying to be a Star Wars-movie because that was popular. I would see it just like You Only Live Twice, a movie that is fine on its own, but compared to the one before doesn't hold up. Moonraker more so since it basically was the same movie again. And the fact that the only reason the plot unfolds is that Drax promised the Americans a shuttle, but one of his owns have a manufacturing fault so he got to quickly get it back... why not just make a new one and postpone the operation a month or so? Is it really worth it getting the Americans and British looking into his business? 

Drax is also rather interesting, since it feels today as they nailed the industrialist space corporations based in California like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. But that's pretty much the most interesting bit.

The Spy Who Loved Me

 

An underwater adventure again

10th movie and by many seen as the best Roger Moore Bond-movie. And yeah, it works. A British and a Soviet nuclear sub disappears so KGB sends their best, female agent XXX... bad code word today with the internet and all. Secret Service of course sends 007 who on his way kills another KGB that is the lover of XXX. They search for some microfilm in Cairo that contains the plan for a submarine tracking device that KGB and Secret Service believes are the one that made it possible to take the subs. As they search everyone getting in contact with the film is killed, most of them by the recognisable Jaws, the tall man with the silver teeth. He was scary in this I remember as a child and still is. 

007 and XXX is fighting over the microfilm until they meet up with their bosses, who finds a clue to a man named Stromberg who has a marine laboratory outside the coast of Italy. They meet him and get a lead to a gigantic tanker, They land on an American sub that is tracking Strombergs tanker, but they are taken in like the other subs by being swallowed by the tanker, reminiscent of You Only Live Twice and the shuttle rockets. Apparently Stromberg have taken the submarines in order to use their nuclear weapons to launch at New York and Moscow, kickstarting World War III and the total destruction of mankind. This is the MAD-doctrine, Mutual Assured Destruction. The terror balance of the world is that both sides of the iron curtain knows that if you fire a nuclear rocket, you will get the same in kind, so if one side fires it, you gotta answer. That was what the Star Wars program under the Reagan era tried to bypass. If you had Strategic Defence Initiative in place it would destroy any incoming nuclear missiles and give the US nuclear supremacy. Of course it never worked, but that's the idea.

Stromberg himself would survive in his underwater city Atlantis with the future of mankind, the übermenchen apparently. The übermenchen idea is a nazi idea that the aryan race was superior to everyone else and therefore you needed to commit genocide against all other. So he's pretty much a nazi. XXX is taken to Atlantis because... why do it? Still, Bond breaks out, releases the 3 kidnapped submarine crews (I think, I recognise the British crew from the start of the film and the American one, but I can't hear the Russian one) and we get the first mass action scene from Moore. There's guns, grenades and explosions. Awesome! They get control of the command centre and gives the submarines instruction to fire the missiles at each other. They escape on the American sub as the tanker explodes and then given orders to destroy Atlantis. Bond sets out alone to infiltrate and rescue XXX. Killing Stromberg and fighting off Jaws before escaping in the escape pod as the Americans fires their torpedos.

Yeah, it's probably the best movie since Thunderball. A great threat, awesome car that turns into a submarine, spectacular stunt in the alps, a competent Bond-girl and the music is good throughout the movie (although I'm not that into the title theme). Didn't get any gadget explanation from Q though, and that was to keep the submarine part of the Lotus Esprit part secret... although XXX looked surprised, yet she stole the schematics for the car 2 years ago? Ah, nit picks. And the Swedish translation was akin to The Loved Spy  or maybe The Beloved Spy

Man With The Golden Gun

 

A bullet with your name on it

9th movie and this time we have Cristopher Lee as Scaramanga, the assassin that seems to be after 007 and trying to get his hand on some solar device (a Solex) that will make solar energy the most efficient energy source in the world and combat the energy crisis. The energy crisis which they never mentions is the founding of OPEC, the oil cartel, that after the Yom Kippur war between the Arab countries and Israel stopped the flow of oil to the west since US and UK supported Israel. The price hike that followed pretty much destroyed the cheap energy boom that probably helped the upward spiral of the economies of the west after World War II. It showed how reliant the western economies was on oil and therefore most countries tried to try to get out of that. So much of the alternative energy resources was spearheaded just for that reason. So here is one of the most forward looking plots of the Bond-movies so far. Sadly we don't explore that avenue but instead looks on Bonds dark shadow, Scaramanga.

Cause it's more a Scaramanga movie than a Bond movie. Who gets the awesome flying car? Scaramanga. Who gets the gadgets? Scaramanga. Who gets at least a competent Bond-girl (until she betrays him at least)? Scaramanga. So the plot kicks off a golden bullet being sent to MI6 where it pretty much points toward 007 as the next target of Scaramanga. Bond goes to Beirut to get the bullet that killed 002... why not use the bullet they got in the mail? Is it since they don't know what caliber gun was used? They still figured out where the bullet was from with the amount of nickel and gold so why not just use the bullet they got? It leads to Macao where 007 is able to tail Scaramangas girlfriend and get the info that Scaramanga is staking out this club. Before entering Scaramanga shoots a person leaving which turns out to be the solar specialist Bond was originally working to find, but was discharged from due to the Scaramanga situation. 

007 looks into the scientists boss who hired Scaramanga, but Scaramanga takes the solar device and kills the boss. His girlfriends betrays him, since she was the one arranging Bond to look for Scaramanga so that 007 could kill Scaramanga. Scaramanga kills her and after some complications kidnaps 007's assistant that happened to have the device on her. So Bond has to go to Scaramanga's secret island hideout, duel Scaramagna, get the Solex and escape after the assistant by mistake puts the whole island on a countdown to explosion. As well as almost frying Bond with the solar laser when she accidentally pushes a switch. I can't stand that girl. She caused more troubles and pushed the movie 30 more minutes.

Still, great music and there is an interesting conflict on the world stage behind the movie so I give it at least that. Best things about the Roger Moore movies is the rock music titles and the Lulu song is no exception. The biggest problem though with the Solex plot is that, it should have had some effects on the real world. All other we can believe that Bond stopped World War III before it began or something, upholding status quo and all that, but here he actually gets the one thing that would end the energy crisis and therefore put the Bond-universe to another trajectory than our own world. Where are the solar farms, why are there still oil being drilled for and whatnot?

Live And Let Die

 

The Beginning of a new era

8th film, first with Roger Moore. Begins with showing the death of 3 British agents in different locals in America and the West Indies, all three tracking the affair of Katanga, an island dictator. Title track and a much better title song, now with Beatle Paul McCartney doing the writing and singing. And then we are just introduced to this new Bond. Give Lazenby that, he got an introduction. First the silhouette, then the lighting of the cigarette and then full view at the beach. Here we are just shown Bond in bed with an Italian Spy. No build up, no suspense. But we got the Bond-watch with the magnetic field and rotor-blade. Then off to America. First New York where 007 instantly gets harassed by the local gangster Mr. Big who seems to own the whole of Harlem.

Off to the Caribbeans and I gotta admit, feels like a retake of Dr No. I like all the talk of voodoo and stuff, reminds me of Gabriel Knight. Turns out that it's really all about opium smuggling.  Katanga, who's also Mr Big intends to flood the market with free heroin, destroy all competition and then have a monopoly to wring all the new drug addicts out of their money. I gotta say... not the most interesting threat against world order. We get a chase scene with boats in New Orleans and a bus driving scene in the Caribbean. Final fight ends with Katanga being forced feed a bullet for a shark gun that inflates him and then he explodes. 007 and the movies Bond girl travels by train which feels rather reminiscent of From Russia With Love and the fight against Tee-Hee, Katanga's second in command with the claw hand. You can clearly see that he hold the hand from the arm due to the whole arm being longer than the other arm and the weird angle where the real hand is.

Overall a good movie, maybe missing the high stakes of earlier films, but it feels rather more fast paced. Better than the last two at least.

Diamonds Are Forever

A girls best friend

7th movie, Connery is back and the Swedish localisation team named it Diamond Fever. Missed opportunity back in Goldfinger not to name it Gold Fever. Probably one of the old Bond-movies I watched the ending for the most since, as we had it on VHS, there was the animated movie Elfie of the Blue Sea afterwards that was a bit more interesting to watch. Begins with 007 looking for Blofeld to avenge Tracy and then finding Blofelds secret plastic surgeon clinic where he prepares to make clones of himself. Of course Bond puts a stop to that. And then we start the diamond smuggling plot. Most fun is that the one giving the assignment is the judge from The Persuaders with Roger Moore.

So yet another movie where the threat really isn't up to the standards of the earlier movies I would say. Would have been better if they focused on blood diamonds instead. And we are taken to Las Vegas for the most of the movies which is run by some Willard Whyte who no-one seen for 5 years. Turns out everything is run by Blofeld who has assembled diamonds to create a laser satellite and holding the world hostage as he uses it to blow up nuclear bases in USA, Soviet and China. Finally, a threat, but it's at the end of the movie. Before that you pretty much believes that its only shady smuggling activities behind the facade of this major company. At least the plot moves faster than the last movie and the death count is much higher. 

Although this is the first movie that I think looks ugly. Maybe because I don't like Las Vegas, but it's not enticing or exotic. And there's really no cool gadgets and the biggest action scene seems to be the car chase scene and it doesn't do it for me. At least OHMSS had interesting locals and some nifty gadgets. Best thing I read somewhere was the fan theory that every Bond was separate and that Connery-Bond retired in You Only Live Twice, Lazenby took over and due to the end of OHMSS disappeared, followed by Connery-Bond returning to avenge the other Bond, he is still the best after all. Doesn't explain all things Lazenby had from Connery's movies or the fact that he did another mission after the Blofeld pre-credit mission.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

 

Really miss the posters on the blu ray cases

6th film, first without Sean Connery and instead George Lazenby's one and only Bond-movie. And... you know what. It's the most boring of the Bond-movies yet. I mean, first part of the movie is 007 meeting this girl Tracy, meeting her father that turns out to be the head of one of the biggest mafia families in Europe that want's Bond to... (in his own words I might add) dominate her. And 007 agrees if he can get a lead on Blofeld. Then get into a lawyer firm to get connections to a count Bluchamp that lives in Switzerland. Where Bond infiltrates as a heraldic specialist. And now we get to a normal Bond-movie. This is by far the longest Bond-movie ever at the time. There's not really a threat to the world at the moment. 007 just does it as a continuation of the last movie. 

Well, this institute in the mountains is actually brainwashing women to become SPECTRE agents that at a given order will use a toxin that can eradicate a strain of plant or animal making it infertile, causing famine and world chaos. And Blofeld does all this for the chance to get acknowledge as the count of Bluchamp and amnesty for his crimes... somehow we went from a world spanning organisation that lived on committing crimes to a personal vendetta to get off scot free. The action is not bad though, first skiing sequence in a Bond-movie and the attack on Blofelds compound is a thrill. I like the title song and I noticed that they put in some electronic sound in the Bond theme that wasn't there before. 

I have no problem with Lazenby, maybe the fact that they try to hard to push that 007 is the same character as in all adventures with the scene at MI6 where he packs his things and we get musical bits from the older movies (which is a nice touch I might add), but then you can't have his first line being  "this would  never happen to the other guy". But overall you could cut 10-20 minutes cause it drags. Really, this is the longest Bond movie until Craigs run. And you don't need it here. Maybe it's the love story I can't stand.

You Only Live Twice

 

Unless you are a cat

5th movie and we start in space as the Americans shuttle is taken by some unknown rocket. The Americans is blaming the Soviets, but the British intelligence is one step a head and says it's some unknown force that have been spotted in Japanese sea and they sent their best man to investigate, which is 007 that spends time in Hong Kong with some beautiful lady and instantly gets killed. Credits and Bonds funeral, but instead his wrapping that is dropped in the ocean is picked up by a British sub and he gets his assignment. A quick tour of Japanese cultural events like Sumo wrestling and he meets up with his contact that gets killed and leads to this industrial giant. Getting some hidden dossier he gets out and meets up with the Japanese secret service and they begin investigating the company. Meanwhile The Soviets sends up their own rocket and that one is also taken.

Turns out its SPECTRA that tries to instigate a war between USA and Soviet (assumed to be payed by the Chinese) from a volcano lair on an island. The company leads Bond to the island and as the Japanese special commando infiltrates the island as fishermen and workers Bond it able to enter the lair. As he rescues the astronaut and cosmonauts he meets Blofeld face to face, and he is played by Donald Pleasence. Perfect casting. You got the President from Escape from New York, Dr Loomis from Halloween and the wine specialist from that Columbo episode. Ends with ninjas attacking the volcano base and blowing it all up. 

Stakes are high with the space race setting once again and the brink of the 3rd world war looming. Obsessed with Japanese culture as a kid the ninja battle was amazing, rocket bullets, cigarette rockets, sword fighters in gun fights. Little Nelly fighting off 4 helicopters. Don't like the title song though, kinda slow. I had a hard time watching the beginning as a kid. The desperation of the astronauts in the beginning really made me uncomfortable. I gotta say this is the first time I feel that the movie doesn't get better than the last one. Mind you it's not bad, but maybe it was a good call for Connery to skip the next movie. Also just a translated title. Roald Dahl, the children's book writer behind Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, wrote the script so that was an interesting tidbit.