Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning

More Implausible Than Impossible

or

Deciding Not To Accept It

Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning may well be the last of the "Mission: Impossible" movies, the series based on the espionage TV show that featured a crack-team of specialists engaged in "heist-movie" scenarios for the government.* The films had some of the tropes, the "fuse" logo, the late Lalo Schifrin's pulsating, propulsive theme, the clandestine mission briefing (that then self-destructed leaving no trace). But, in the movies it spawned,  the "team aspect" always played second-fiddle to its star and champion, Tom Cruise, who increasingly dominated the films, while his character, Ethan Hunt, still remained a bit of a cypher as a character. Other than doing the hardest stuff, of course.

 

But this latest, maybe last, entry, given the evidence on display, indicates the series is past its self-destruct status. At nearly 3 hours in length, what could have been a lean and mean entry feels bloated with a first act crammed with flash-backs (ill-advised as they'd never connected story-lines before and even dropped connections with past movies at the drop of an un-negotiated contract) and a star who, at 62, is looking a little too doughy—in a Brad Pitt/Jerry O'Connell kind of way—to be romping around doing his own crazy stunts and skittering the world in his signature tin-soldier full-tilt run. 

All the worse, because this one really leans (and leans hard) in to Ethan Hunt being the end-all, be-all "only one" whose destiny it is to save the human race from Mutually Assured Destruction at the hands of an AI "anti-god" called The Entity...which featured in the last one and, it turns out, was the undefinable McGuffin dubbed the "Rabbit's Foot" from Mission: Impossible 3.** As The Church Lady would say "Isn't that convenient"***

At the time it came out, I thought it was a nice joke that the "secret thing that everybody wants" (and spends so much time obsessing over) in M:I 3 was so much vapor-ware in the story-line. Nobody knew what it was or what it could do, but it was important enough that everybody wanted it, whatever it was. Turns out, in reality (or film-reality, anyway), it was merely the plot-line of Colossus:The Forbin Project.

"Oh, yeah, there are other people in the movie..."

And Ethan Hunt turns out to be as mythic a lynch-pin to world affairs as Luke Skywalker or Paul Atreides.

 

It appears original, but it's merely a re-gift, just put in a new wrapper.

They also serve—briefly—watching Tom do the hard stuff...

So, anyway, the mission should you decide to accept (and I didn't) is that after the events of Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part 1, Ethan Hunt was in possession of The Cruciform Key, which would allow him to somehow destroy The Entity which is embedded in the Interwebs and is slowly but surely filling it with misinformation, turning the World Wide Web into a cesspool that has man turning against himself (as if it needed any help!) with the eventual end of taking over the nuclear capabilities of all the world's powers. What it would do then is anybody's guess, but even a digital anti-god would know that anything actually using those weapons would create a nuclear pulse and wouldn't do it any good at all, disabling any electronics throughout the world. If it's aim is murder-suicide then you need some other term than "artificial intelligence". Artificial psychosis", maybe? The Entity sounds like it's related to Monty Python's "Black Knight" ("You're a loony!")

They also serve who sit in boardrooms and clutch pearls...

Anyway, getting the thing to destroy The Entity involves two impossible missions: get to the Russian submarine Sebastopol (scuttled in arctic waters in the last movie) to use his Cruciform Key to obtain the Entity's "Podkova module" (containg its source code); then, using a "Poison Pill" developed by IMF whiz Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), get that module to the world's "Doomsday Vault" located in South Africa—a huge mainframe designed to withstand said nuclear pulse even in a planet-wide armageddon—and plug the "Pill" into the "Podkova" thus isolating the Entity and somehow managing to contain the thing.

But, there are complications—there always are—such as the sub Sebastopol starting to roll down a continental shelf when Hunt is inside it (evidently it doesn't have a conning tower or fins or sail planes or...ya know...rudders that might impede the progress), or Hunt having to discard his hi-tech diving suit to get out of a jam and swim...in just trunks...in arctic waters...with no oxygen...and no decompression gear (except on the surface), or—a major one—the bad guy Gabriel (Esai Morales) manages to steal said "Poison Pill" making his escape on a bi-plane (...a bi-plane!), thus forcing Ethan to hijack another one and do a godawful amount of gyrating on wings and struts to get on the bad-guy's plane to get said "Poison Pill."

Now, look...the plot-line is insanely complicated and stupid...way too much so...as well as being openly subject to criticism by what Hitchcock called "The Implausibles" (I can't wait to see the "Goofs" tab on its IMDB page). Such things as Hunt being able to take out two competent goons moments after biting down on a cyanide capsule, or being able to survive "the bends" or the crushing water pressure of a deep-dive while only in his swim-trunks, then being able to do all that dangerous wing-walking the very next day boggles everything that I have left of a mind. The onslaught of implausibles tend to overwhelm such trivial matters as grabbing the barrel of a recently-fired automatic weapon without scorching your hands in the process.

Still, I can appreciate the length and breadths—in IMAX, even!—to which the cast and crew have gone to present such shenanigans. The rolling submarine set that they present is a wonderful little concept design for all sorts of mayhem, and the whole bi-plane sequence is an amazing showcase for what can be done with remote cameras and a star with a death-wish (but one with a goofy absurdist sensibility). As an actor, Tom traditionally dials it to 11, it's in these insane stunts where these proclivities really pay off.

However, the movie is a logical and editorial mess, with sporadic flashbacks that don't quite connect dots or light emotional fuses. It does provide considerable down-time between action set-pieces to make an assault on a snack-bar or sabotage a theater restroom.  

 

If that's your aim I will disavow any knowledge of your actions. Good luck.

*Poof!* hsssssss

Ethan cares, man. He really cares. 

* I'm throwing a lot of stick here, but the TV series, as great as it could be, had elements rolled eyes. For instance: why did every potential, autocratic, generalissimo, and revolutionary look like Martin Landau?

** That was, what, 4 movies ago, the one with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, which, when you see him in the flashbacks, causes actual grief.

 

*** Yeah, okay, M:I fans, I know that the James Bond series just wrapped up an uncharacteristically continuity-obsessive five-film arc, where everything tied together to the point where Bond super-baddie Ernst Stavro Blofeld turned out to be the step-foster-brother (or something) of Bond—in a plot-twist borrowed from (of all things) the "Austin Powers" series. Connecting the dots has a way of diluting the power of a story. In the Craig years, Blofeld wasn't so much an international criminal as a red-headed step-child. Just like in the first Michael Keaton Batman, the criminal who became The Joker was the one to kill Bruce Wayne's parents, rather than just some rando gunman. It waters things down, sometimes to an unpotable degree.

Black Bag (2025)

"You Are Cordially Invited to a Night of Fun and Games at George and Kathryn's"

or

"Will There Be a Mess to Clean up?" "Only if We Do it Right"

 

Something is brewing at the NCSC ("Making the UK the safest place to live and work online"), a division of the GCHQ, which is a branch of British Intelligence. Even before the titles come up, George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) is called to an off-site meeting with his boss, Philip Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgård—another one! A month of movie releases can't go by without one with a Skarsgård in it) who informs him "we have a traitor in our midst" regarding a very hush-hush program called "Severus" and Meacham wants him to find the "mole" and "ferret" them out. "Give me two weeks" says George. Meacham replies "If Severus is deployed as intended, thousands of people will die."

 

"Okay," says George. "One week."

 

It will be that kind of movie.

 

George, you see, is a highly-regarded agent at intelligence. And so is his wife, Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett) and he is absolutely devoted to her, as she is to him. But, we've seen enough movies with husband/wife teams in the same professions where vows and oaths clash enough that they can hasten the expiration date of "'til death do you part." And in the spy game, trust is everything, depending on verifiable proof. In the marriage game, trust is usually handled in another department and hemisphere of the brain.

And George has been informed by Meacham that his wife is one of the suspects. Oh, bother. That can tests one's concepts of loyalty, what? But, being a punctilious sort he begins his investigation by inviting the suspects over for dinner, prepared by him, and with the added ingredient being a drug to lower everyone's inhibitions—he has a reputation of being able to catch anyone in a lie—and that gets an amused admonition from his wife ("Darling, you must not dose our guests."), but, as we know, he only has a week.

The dinner guests include the agency's psychiatric analyst Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris), her boyfriend and agent, Col. James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page), his counterpart Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke) and his girlfriend, satellite imagery specialist Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela). All work together for the agency for the head of the department Arthur Steiglitz (Pierce Brosnan), but all that really gets revealed at dinner is that Freddie, as is his way, is cheating on Clarissa, which results in her stabbing him in the hand with a steak knife. It is only one of three violent acts in the film, but it gets George no closer to the truth.

And he hasn't begun to investigate his wife, yet. As she was preparing for dinner, she happened to mention that she liked it when he watched her, but, she has no way of knowing how far that will go. He finds out her schedule—she's traveling to Zurich on business—and persuades Clarissa to temporarily way-lay a satellite and discovers that Katheryn is meeting a Soviet operative there. James informs him that she's got access to a Swiss bank account with £7 million in it and that a highly-placed colleague of the fellow she there has gone missing. Perhaps most alarmingly, Meacham—his boss who gave him the assignment of "finding the rat"—has unexpectedly died of a coronary. Things are happening pretty fast.

But, then it's a Steven Soderbergh movie. Black Bag is the second 

film he's directed film to be released in three months (the earlier one was Presence, also written by David Koepp), and it is more in the style of Soderbergh's caper movies (the "Ocean's" films, Logan Lucky, or Out of Sight), although slicker and with more of a professional veneer given the spy/thriller setting. It's stylish, witty, but with an underlying smartness that might leave some watchers in the cold. Things get complicated, red herrings abound, and if you're not paying attention, you could get lost. But, the spy vs. spy bubble the movie moves in gives it a certain edge where you're not sure whose side anybody's on at any given moment.

Call it Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy-lite, with a little bit more tech with spy-satellites and AI-enhancers and the like, plus a bit of sleuthing, psychological games, a big "MacGuffin", and even an Agatha Christie "it's-someone-in-this-room" reveal, checking off a lot of film-fan favorites. And the structure of the thing is a nice little touch. It's a clever little game, if not much of a thriller, although Soderbergh keeps it moving at a fast clip, and the badinage witty even if no one smiles. 

The Mackintosh Man

The Mackintosh Man (John Huston, 1973) One of the best kept secrets (until 1974, anyway) of the second World War was Project Ultra, the British operation centered in Bletchley Park tasked with breaking the German Enigma codes that scrambled their communications so as to be undecipherable. What the Germans did not know (because the British kept it secret) was that their dispatches were being regularly decoded and read, and their plans made known to forces in the field. This was a great boon to the generals who took advantage of the intel—many, including General Patton, did not—but there were times when the messages were merely shelved. The most egregious example might be the Coventry Blitz, although the facts are in dispute. Some authors (including the man who first shed light on Ultra) have claimed that Churchill knew of the devastating November 14, 1940 raid by the Luftwaffe, but did nothing to warn the populace or take counter-measures, lest it tip off the Germans that the code had been cracked, thus nullifying an important source of information and intelligence. If the Nazis knew their messages were being decoded, they might (probably would) make new measures to keep their transmissions secret. And so (the story goes) Coventry burned in order to keep the secret. War is not logical, and spycraft even less so, but there's an absurd madness there that parallels the Vietnam-era quote stated "we had to destroy the village in order to save it."

That logic (or lack of it) is much in display in John Huston's film of The Mackintosh Man (written by Walter Hill based on the novel "The Freedom Trap" by Desmond Bagley),* a spy thriller the director made in Britain and Malta with Paul Newman. In it, a British Intelligence agent (Newman) is framed and sent to prison, in order to infiltrate a criminal organization. But, unknown to him, the deceit goes much deeper, as his superior, Mackintosh (Harry Andrews), is using the mission to ferret out a leak in information in the British government.

Once the agent, named Rearden, is sprung from prison by the conspirators, overseen by an enigmatic figure named "Mr. Brown" (Michael Hordren). Rearden and another prisoner, Blake (Ian Bannen), are spirited away to an unknown location, drugged and held until the police activity surrounding the prison break cools down. The escape causes a row in Parliament, led by a law-and-order lord, Sir George Wheeler (James Mason), who rails against the bumbling way in which the prisons and the law are handling it, until he is persuaded to cool down the rhetoric by Mackintosh, himself.

Things get complicated when Mackintosh is run down in the street, and the operation taken over by his deputy, Mrs. Smith (Dominique Sanda), who is now charged with a double mission—Rearden's and the murder of Mackintosh.

Huston barely takes any of this seriously, even if Newman plays it straight, and Sanda—well, it's hard to tell if she plays it at all, her character being so enigmatic as to be undecipherable. But, it's all staged well (and photographed by the legendary Oswald Morris), especially a car chase through winding Irish country roads that looks dangerous as Hell, and Huston ends on a typically ambiguous note. But, he's made much better films about duplicity and duty (as has Hill, for that matter), and this one feels like a minor effort before tackling much more ambitious projects. His next film would be his long-planned adaptation of The Man Who Would Be King.

* This was around the era where Huston was no longer adapting classics, but beginning to take advantage of the scripts of the new college-class of film-makers, including Hill and (for his previous film) John Milius.

Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning, Part 1

"Couldn't You Have Told Me This a Little Bit Sooner?"

or

"Is There Anyone Not Chasing Us?"

 

One can't start out a review of Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning (Part 1) without giving props. It is one busy movie, filled with some amazing stunt work and a dedication to craft that one shakes their head in amazement that these things were thought up and brought to some spectacular life. The immediate reaction to one of these things evokes horror and then giggles as they are pain-stakingly realized to convince you that 1) they actually happened and 2) that they actually COULD happen. And a rueful head-nod must go to "Mr. Gung-Ho" Tom Cruise for putting himself "out there" just because he could. One has to say all this, because for the most part this review will trash this entry in the franchise, surely its weakest entry since Mission: Impossible 2.

 

But, wow, those stunts sure are amazing. The trouble is that's what the movie is all about, the stunts and those alone have never made a good movie. What they show is that the characters have an abnormal survival instinct and the tenacity of pit-bulls to pull though whatever obstacle can be thrown, dropped, propelled and fired at them. And that's it for character development. Oh, there's some ret-conning about "how Ethan Hunt became Ethan Hunt" as well as other agents into the IMF, but it's as unsubstantial as...well, as the entire make-up of the IMF apparently is in the spy hierarchy if we're to believe this movie.

The mission this time (should we decide to accept it, and I, frankly, didn't) is to recover the latest "McGuffin" in the series, the two-part "Cruciform Key", which is used to power up "an active learning defense system" which is touted by its Soviet creators as "the state of the art of war." Timely, since we're all worried about AI (and this is where I insert my "written by human hands" disclosure). The Vicious Thingy was last seen on board the Soviet submarine K699, the Sebastopol, which sits at the bottom of the Bering Sea a victim of its own system's ability to present false data to the sub crew causing them to launch a torpedo attack against a ghost target and blowing themselves up. This is one nasty little AI that can wreak havoc on countries and their defenses, but the world's governments don't want to destroy it, so much as control it. World leaders tend to have a lot of hubris; who wants to bet that they learn a lesson in humility in Part 2?

IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise), despite his"habitual rogue tendencies," is enlisted to find the key. Who has it? Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), late colleague, who is not so late and has one-half of the key. Hunt and the team (Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg) decide to go after the other half of the key, where they run into an atomic bomb trap (okay) and a pick-pocket named Grace (Hayley Atwell), who manages to lift the other half of the key from the prospective seller, complicating matters. Hunt also runs into a "face from the past" (Esai Morales), who seems to have the ability to not appear on surveillance systems. But, not the ability to make one of those full-head disguises that Ethan depends on in these movies.

What happens next? Chases. Lots of chases. Ethan and Grace are chased by land, foot, wheels, by the CIA, by Morales' "Gabriel"—along with Pom Klementieff's killing machine, Paris—by the forces of arms dealer The White Widow (Vanessa Kirby), by his own IMF Chief Kittridge (welcome back to the series, Henry Czerny!) by the local constabulary, and evidently anyone with a cell-phone or police scanner, until everyone meets on the Orient Express, and everything just goes literally right off the rails. Most of this is played with deadly earnestness, but one can't help but chuckle at the "Perils of Pauline" aspect of it, some of it is right out of silent movies.

But, the plot is a clunker. And the dialog at times is so vaguely inconsequential (and delivered so seriously) that you wonder if people are speaking in spy code. So, this entry in the series—the 7th—is overwhelming in stunts and underwhelming in story—and inventiveness—even though everyone bravely battles on.

I had much the same reaction to the very stunty recent Indiana Jones movie, which was only saved by a particularly risky (and fanciful) last act. This doesn't have something like that, but it does have another fight on a train with subsequent derailment, and another smashing car chase in a vehicle not built for those things.

 

The trailer for M:I7 exposed the weakness of the film by just showing stunts and fights, as that seemed to be all it has because, for the first time, they seemed to be borrowing from the James Bond series: the train fight from Octopussy, the Citroen chase from For Your Eyes Only becomes a Fiat 500e chase here, with Cruise and Atwell handcuffed as a similar situation in Tomorrow Never Dies, the whole "world-spy-network-hijack" idea comes from SPECTRE (notice that when the "Mission: Impossible" series borrows from Bond, it doesn't borrow from very good ones?), then that very hyped motorcycle jump has echoes of The Spy Who Loved Me. Usually, it's the Bond films that borrow from other films—maybe M:I is running out of ideas.

There are other odd little issues, like that director McQuarrie (who has done some inspired work in previous film in the series) seems to have shot some dialog scenes using three cameras, that are edited in such a way that, when edited together, seems to have the actors not addressing each other in conversation. It's odd...and a little off-putting. Given the attention to detail in the action sequences, why would something like that occur?

 

Still, despite the reservations I have about the film, I hope it has a great box-office return. The film industry needs a little help right now, and this Summer's expected blockbusters have been under-achieving. A solid box-office return could reverse that trend, and help movie-makers battle the real-world challenges of AI.

A Dandy in Aspic

A Dandy in Aspic (Anthony Mann, Laurence Harvey, 1968) Another spy thriller from the 1960's, just one of dozens that were released post-James Bond boom, hoping to capitalize on the success of those films.

 

In this one, Laurence Harvey plays a double agent—Alexander Eberlin—working for the British Secret Service. He's upper-class, arrogant, and a snob, but quite good at his job, and when we first see him he is in the business of burying a colleague—killed by the Soviets, apparently, the third agent to meet such a fate recently. The Service is in a tizzy With three men down, they assign Eberlin the job of tracking down the suspected soviet agent behind the killings, whom they identify as Krasnevin. They want the agent tracked down and killed before any more harm can come top one of their own. Seems easy enough.

 

The only complication—which the British do not know—is that Eberlin himself is Krasnevin. He has been working for the Soviets for years, infiltrating the British Service for years. The man identified in the briefing as Krasnevin is actually his Soviet contact "Pavel" (Per Oscarsson). Somehow, he must convince the British that he can do the job, while at the same time, get back to his masters in the USSR, before he is found out. 

One can see why the story would attract director Anthony Mann, who directed a slew of fine films (mostly in the film-noir and western genres) about conflicted men pushed to their self-imposed limits by individuals just that much worse than they are. For Eberlin, it's his fellow agent Gatiss (Tom Courtenay), who is determined to find the traitor in their midst and has a sociopathic zeal to do whatever it takes to bring him to ground. Gatiss, ironically, is the perfect spy, while Eberlin is not. And they're pitched in a mano a mano battle, while Eberlin fights his on a larger scale between nations and their bureaucracies.

The film itself is not so interesting, save for that one aspect. It has the curious distinction of being one of those spy films with no one to root for, everyone in a pitched battle of wits with merely the size of the arena being the distinction. No, the curious thing is that it feels like two distinctly different films, owing to the fact that it's Mann's last film—he died after finishing principal photography in Britain and while filming in West Germany, where star Laurence Harvey (who had directed The Ceremony in 1963) was picked to complete the film in mid-filming to protect the project's investment. And their styles are decidedly different.

This (I'm fairly certain) is an Anthony Mann shot.

Where Mann has a composer's eye for interesting angles and communicating relationships with where he puts his camera relative to its subject, Harvey's style is less classically-trained (especially with wide-angle compositions) and more geared to current catch-as-catch-can fashion. Mann, also, traditionally, tried to fill the frame with as much detail as possible, those specifics forming patterns to direct the eye to what he thought was important, whereas Harvey seems satisfied just to "get the shot" artfully or not.

This looks like something Harvey shot.

Mann's way has a scope to it, a dimensionality, whereas Harvey's compositions are flat and uninteresting, almost static and off-kilter (something Mann was more than capable of, but to a narrative purpose). It makes it a distracting watch, not because it's a good movie, but because one ends up playing "who shot this?" as a way of passing the time, until, finally, one just runs out of good material to admire and admits that "Harvey did this" for the remainder of the movie.

"Harvey" again

Hardly a way to generate suspense. But a way to get through it, at least. Plus, one has early roles for Mia Farrow, Peter Cook (playing straight but in a disorientingly comic way) as well as Lionel Stander, who's always fun to watch.

Mann directing? The shadows make me think so.

So. A potentially good film, tragically not living up to it. The film didn't do well at the box-office as the 1960's "spy-craze" was waning, and about to go undercover as comedies. And although Mann is officially credited as being the director on it, I have a hard time thinking of A Dandy in Aspic as his last film.

Speculations in the Bond Market: 2022 Edition

So, who's your favorite actor who has played James Bond (if, in fact, you even give a rip about the series)? It depends on a lot of factors, and a lot of it depends on the times. There are some who say the first Bond you encounter is your favorite (this is not true for me, as my first Bond experience was On Her Majesty's Secret Service!), and I know a lot of Brits who prefer Roger Moore's Bond to all others, which seems odd to me. I've also read that as you get older, the first James Bond younger than you has a hard time being accepted (Again, that's not true for me).

Then there's the Bond you're talking about; are you a fancier of Ian Fleming's "book" character or of the one portrayed in the movies? They differ. The book Bond is a bit of a stick-in-the-mud professional with a penchant for fast and easy living, owing to his inevitable expiration date. The movie Bond knows-all, tells-all, is a gourmand, a sartorial snob, and quips...a lot. He has no expiration date. The book Bond had a fussy housekeeper. The movie Bond is the fussy house-keeper. The book Bond not only smoked and heavily imbibed, but was known to have a benzedrine habit before going out "in the field." The movie Bond has dropped all but the watery vodka martini's.

Do you see Bond as the cruel-mouthed, scarred resembler of Hoagy Carmichael (right), or is your Bond so male-model-fresh that you can't imagine ever having his perfect nose broken in a scrap?

The Broccoli kids at Eon Productions, Bond's film maker, have maintained their father's code that it's not the actor that audiences come to see, it's Bond (this was useful in salary negotiations). And one need only look at the track record of each actor's non-Bond films to bear that out. But in their time in the gun-harness, they had the world's attention, whether they wanted it or not. 

Everyone has their favorite Bond, if they have one. I thought I'd do my own personal ranking of the actors and their interpretations of the characters,* as factored in today (tomorrow may be different). Every time such a list, and my reasons, have appeared in various places, they've generated controversy. 

This one will be no different.

From least to best:


George Lazenby: There are some who consider Lazenby's one film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service the best Bond film. Especially "shippers." I might agree. But the one thing that keeps it from being a classic (and fronting Bond retrospectives rather than being an after-thought) is the black hole in the center sucking the thing. George Lazenby is a bit of a stiff as Bond, going through Connery's motions, trying to look casual. And God knows, director Peter Hunt uses all his editing wizardry and over-dubbing to try to improve his performance. But, he might have taken the "blunt instrument" description too literally by playing Bond as a block of wood. He has two really good scenes: the "those girls" confrontation with Blofeld (Telly Savalas) and the post ski-chase confrontation with his boss, "M" (Bernard Lee). But, the rest of the time he's lost at sea, looking unsure or overly confident. The man shouldn't have been put in the position—he'd never acted before, while "the other feller" had done Shakespeare and already made his embarrassing moves in ten years of supporting film-roles. Lazenby's were front and center and bathed in neon for all the world to see. It was like he was set up to fail. But, then the man wanted the job. He has no one but himself to blame.

Roger Moore: Moore never believed in Bond, but he loved the pay-check. He saw Connery's humorous take on the character and took it even further. In fact, when Moore roughs up a woman in The Man With The Golden Gun it seems really distasteful—he was much better at seducing (which was always a little too "instant" in the Moore Bonds, his era being marked by the producers relying on a "bond-formula" short-hand in the scripts). But, he was cool, collected, looked great in suits—even in India, extending the sartorial jokes, despite the age of bell-bottom tuxedos—hit his marks and smirked winningly. He's actually much better than he's been given credit for. He was the class "A" Brit, maintaining the Colonial Attitude even after the Empire had turned to dust and blown away. That seemed to be part of the joke, too—Moore walked around with an air of superiority through some of the world's dustiest hell-holes, looking elegant. A fine satiric point for an age cynical about spies and subterfuge. But Moore's Bond was never Fleming's secret agent. Not when played for laughs.


Pierce Brosnan: If Brosnan had taken over after Moore, he might have continued in the same vein, cut by Remington Steele. But Tim Dalton buffered Moore and Brosnan with a more serious, more respectable Bond, and Brosnan, wisely, built on it, throwing in more elements of humor (which he could pull off with aplomb), while also turning Bond into a round-firing machine. Despite his male model looks, Brosnan did extraordinarily well, winning back Bond's popularity, and there are moments in each of his Bonds where he does something uniquely his own that I admire. But, he had a tendency to over-dramatize, and his insistence on making Bond more of a romantic weakened the character. A Bond made up of elements of his predecessors, ultimately Brosnan's Bond is a little dull and unmemorable, and...generic, his first film, Goldeneye, containing his best performance. Want to see him at his best as an actor?  The Tailor of Panama or The Ghost Writer.


Sean Connery: Yeah, yeah, I know. Sacrilege. Connery created the screen-Bond. He made Bond in his image and every actor has been chasing Connery's for years. But, I hew to Fleming's Bond, and as perfect as Connery is, he just ain't it. That was part of the humor that he and director Terence Young ("He should have played Bond" says Connery) brought to the role. The effete snob with the soft purr in the voice, and a lorry-driver's hooliganism combine to make Teflon-Bond, who may get a little dusty, a little smudged—only shaken, not stirred. Plus, the violence towards women grates, especially as it's played so jokily in Goldfinger and Thunderball, whirling women into the paths of black-jacks and bullets. The girls get slapped around in From Russia With Love and Diamonds Are Forever. And, really, isn't the barn-clinch from Goldfinger a rape (which...excuse me?..turns Pussy Galore "straight" and "good?"). Then, there's the sexual blackmail against the spa nurse in Thunderball. You could try to defend it as "the times," but the argument doesn't hold up against other acts of violence like, say, lynching. Connery's Bond makes me cringe at times. But, as someone wrote about him in "Total Film's" letters section, "There might be better Bonds, but he'll always be the alpha-wolf."  Just so. 


Timothy Dalton: Maybe he's not as good as I remember him—there was some over-emoting on occasion, but you knew, when watching Dalton, that he'd read his Fleming, and made the huge actorly leap of making a 50's hero work in the 80's, even after 15 years of mocking the character through the "Less-is-Moore" years. I had worries about Dalton. Before Bond, he was king of the mini-series, the "male" lead, the chiseled pretty boy you couldn't believe had ever taken a blow to the face. But, Dalton roughed himself up for the role, threw out most of the one-liners, treated the character and the "out-there" situations as real—outlandish, but real (even his Bond can't believe some of them)—and added an element missing from Bond for many years: danger. Dalton's Bond worried you. At moments of stress, his Bond might go off the handle and "pop" a few innocents. His Bond got angry, could snap, and was a bit of a Byronic cad towards the ladies. Oh, he was civil, even romantic, but he'd lie like Connery's rug to get information. He was a stark contrast (and for me, a welcome change) from Moore, but, as it is apparent now, he was ahead of his time, and audiences couldn't make the transition. Brosnan would provide that, and from Dalton to Brosnan to Craig, the Bonds would build on each others' performances to strengthen the character.

Daniel Craig: No, he doesn't look like Hoagy Carmichael...well, he does through the nose, but the face and hair are not Fleming's description. But, damn. Craig kind of nails it, right down to the dichotomy of Bond acting differently in front of his boss and then loosening up "in the field." Craig's "soccer-tough" of a Bond makes you believe in the foot-chases, the fast-thinking short-cuts, and the pit-bull-on-two-legs tenacity that has always made those extended chases probable. And, he's dangerous. He's the only Bond who kills the way the book Bond does, by strangling a man with his bare hands, gadgets be damned (one can imagine Craig in a "Q" scene, the way they used to be played, with an air of "What is this crap?"**). His Bond is impetuous, diffident, an asshole at times, feeling his way through an investigation without trying to feel too much, drinking heavily (and actually suffering the effects), and keeping the sexual conquests to a manageable level. The squabbling banter between Bond and Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) in Casino Royale was some of the best dialogue ever written for Bond, and certainly for the "Bond-girl," and reflected the book-Bond's annoyance with women "getting in the way" of the assignment. Craig's version is full of surprises, sometimes unpleasantly, and is the best thing in his movies, whether the script is good (Casino Royale) or bad (Quantum of Solace). That's why I think he's the best Bond...today.

Who's your Bond? Take your shot.

2022 Update:

James Bond is dead. Long live James Bond.

 

With the release of No Time to Die (one year ago on Saturday, but today is "James Bond Day" although it's not on my calendar), one can safely reveal that at the end of it, James Bond died in a hail of rocket-fire for a good cause. It threw a bunch of people off plumb—what does this mean? Is it the last Bond movie? What are they going to do?

 

They're going to start fresh is what "they" are going to do ("they" being Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, inheritors of the Bond franchise from their father Albert R. Broccoli). They've been doing it every time a Bond actor has quit or been fired or hasn't met financial agreement. Daniel Craig announcing that he would do "one last" Bond allowed them to do something no other actor had done—go out with a bang, a big finish. Bond author Ian Fleming had done something similar when he was doing the novels—having him dispatched, leaving the reader hanging as to what the agent's fate was at the end of the book.

 

Now, when they'd signed Craig they had an extraordinary opportunity—after decades of litigation, Broccoli and Wilson had finally acquired the filming rights to the first Bond novel "Casino Royale" and they could do something that Wilson had been trying to convince his dad to do since Roger Moore left the series—start Bond from scratch as a new "00" and follow his career through to the end.

 

Mission accomplished. Now, what? Well, they could start re-making all the films, or just make the ones that were less than stellar, do original stories with an eye on the headlines (like they're doing), or something else...a period piece with Bond during the Cold War, for instance. They can basically do anything, which is the best position to be in....and usually when the film-series has come off the best.

 

So, who should play Bond? I have no idea. I've had ideas...But, I know that the Bond producers will be looking for someone they can do a series of Bond films with—the Broccoli team has traditionally liked multi-film contracts. So it's going to need to be somebody who can play James Bond for a run of at least 4 films, and, given the shooting pace these days—with no Fleming titles left to adapt (and only scraps of them left unexplored) and something approaching originality in a Bond-like action movie-saturated market taking time—that actor should be, ideally, 28-35 years old...tops. Look at the past. Connery was 31 when he started. Lazenby, 29. Dalton, 40. Moore, a boyish-looking 46, Brosnan was 42, and Craig, 38. So...that's limiting. You need to find an "established" actor who can be fascinating and seasoned enough to "carry" a film and still be that young. I'd always wanted to see Jason Isaacs play Bond. Too old, certainly now. Clive Owen—was possible but he couldn't carry a film. And now...too old. I was worried about Dalton and Brosnan when they were cast (they were "pretty" boys), and with Craig I took a "wait and see" attitude (as so many didn't) and he proved everybody wrong.

 

So, let's look at some possibilities, many of which have been too well-chewed over in the "we-know-nothing-but we'll-publish-anyway" internet.

Idris Elba. (Born September 6, 1972) Talk was circulating about him while they were making SPECTRE (I love Craig's mock-glare in this photo). And Elba is a very strong actor, first attracting attention with "The Wire" and "Luther." Given strong material, he is tops, he held The Suicide Squad together in a way that Will Smith couldn't in Suicide Squad (without the "The") and George Miller's Three Thousand Years of Longing depended on his nuanced performance. But...with weak material...like The Dark Tower, Star Trek Beyond, the "Thor" series, and Hobbes & Shaw, he fades into the special effects. Plus. The man is 50. He'd be older than Moore was when he started (and Moore was older when he started than Connery was when he quit!). Recently, Elba said he was out of the running, but it has more to do with age...and that he has a very good choice of roles with his popularity...and the fact that the man doesn't NEED Bond.

Tom Hardy (Born September 15, 1977) Well, Number one question—what would director Christopher Nolan do if Hardy wasn't available for one of his movies? (Answer: Hire Cillian Murphy, probably) Hardy is like Elba. The man does not need Bond. He's certainly shown that he can carry a film...and a franchise. And his independent work is always reliably strong. So strong that Bond might just bore him. Recently, he's said that he wasn't too interested and was concentrating on his kids, anyway. Plus, the man is 45. If he goes the Craig-distance of 15 years, he'd be playing Bond as a pensioner. Plus, what is the make-up department going to do with all his tattoo's? CGI them out? Nope. Hardy isn't the man.

 

Henry Cavill (Born May 5, 1983) The clear fan favorite, but also an obvious, if specious, choice. If you believe the press, he would appear to be a front-runner, but... But. He had a chance to play someone very Bond-like in Man from U.N.C.L.E. (criminy, Ian Fleming even created the name "Napoleon Solo") and it wasn't impressive, both his acting and the box-office, which was disastrous (and one can't blame Armie Hammer for it). He did fine as Zack Snyder's Superman—but Snyder ham-strung him as a morose haunted super-hero. He was practically auditioning for Bond in U.N.C.L.E. and Mission:Impossible-Fallout, and, acquitted himself, but he was not what drew your eye to the screen or audiences to theaters. And...he's an "eyebrow-actor." There's a distinct charisma problem with Cavill, and just as fan-favorite Pierce Brosnan proved to be a bit dull as Bond, so, too, I think, would Cavill (judging by his history). He's 39, though.

Those are the ones everybody is talking about, but there are some dark horses that I've found interesting.

John Light (Born September 30, 1972) A staple for guest-spots on British TV, where he usually plays villains, Light's one recurring role is on the "Father Brown" series, where he turns up once a season as the international thief Hercule Flambeau—except Flambeau was a detective in Chesterton's stories, probably because Light has a less than heroic air to him. With a gruff whisper, Light has a Pierce Brosnan quality to his acting but with a darker edge to it and certainly gives off the air of someone you couldn't trust, plus he's done some nice work with accents on the "Brown" show, where the character has been in disguise. He's quite short—but, then, so was Craig. He'd be an interesting choice. However...he's 50, the same as Elba.

 

Aidan Turner (Born April 2, 1977) Known for his role in The Hobbitt series and currently starring as the new version of "Poldark," Turner hadn't occurred to me until I saw him play the character of Philip Lombard in a recent British TV adaptation of Agatha's Christie's "And Then There Were None." He held the camera's attention very well and looked great in a tuxedo, and gave off the sense that—even though I knew the story—that he'd be the murderer, after all. He looks darned good for 45, but that age-factor, I think, knocks him out of the running.

 

Richard Madden (Born June 18, 1986) A lot of people like Madden for Bond. He gets mentioned quite a bit these days, especially after appearing in The Eternals and his work on "Game of Thrones" and he had a nice cruel streak as John Reid in Rocketman. But, its his work on the "Bodyguard" series that makes him an interesting prospect. His character in that is a bit of a mechanic, and thus his portrayal "on-duty" is a bit mechanical and efficient and unreadable. All "pluses." On the "off-duty" side, he can look ferocious, but also betrays a vulnerability that works against the Bond characterization. Also, he has a "go-to" acting weakness (like the Roger Moore "eyebrow") and that is a dependence on his jaw muscles to clench to show conflict. Still, an interesting prospect.

 

Matthew Beard (Born March 25, 1989) Definitely an outlier as he's slight and a bit callow-looking, but his resemblance to both Hoagy Carmichael and Ian Fleming makes him an interesting choice...especially if EON decides to do a series set in the past. Plus, his work on the BBC series "Vienna Blood" showed a character of intelligence who kept his emotions in check, could underplay a laugh-line quite ingeniously while also doing some nice stunt work. Definitely an outside shot, but he'd be quite capable of taking the character in a different direction.

 

Thomas Doherty (Born April 21, 1995) Relatively new to acting, Doherty has been doing mostly series work since 2017. So, I went to his film The Invitation to see if he could pull off a movie and it's very eerie—the man looks like a CG recreation of Sean Connery circa 1963. And he seems to know it. He has the same animalistic glint in the eye, the wide mouth that splits his head with a cheeky smile, and he moves with weighty purpose. Maybe it's a bit too spot-on to have an Edinburgh boy who looks like he's Connery's love-child to play Bond, but Doherty has more than the looks, he has the confidence and swagger, and, judging by The Invitation, he can play a bastard quite well. Maybe he doesn't have the off-screen personality or rigor for it, but this is the guy I'd like to see play Bond. 

* I've excluded the actors who've played Bond in the "non-canon" films outside of the Eon Productions Empire, those being the first Bonds of the first "Casino Royale" adaptations, Barry Nelson and David Niven, and Sean Connery's Bond in "Never Say Never Again" (although he's a bit closer to the book Bond's in it than his others—he drives a Bentley).

** Which is (when "Ben Whishaw's 'Q' was introduced in Skyfall) how he played it.