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!