Skyfall Countdown Day 6: Goldeneye

November 4, 2012November 5, 2012 ~ Graham Milne ~ 1 Comment

The years following Licence to Kill were depressing for James Bond fans. Legal wrangling surrounding the ownership of parent studio MGM/UA, rumours that the rights were being sold to insert-hack-Hollywood-producer’s-name-here, and a general ebbing of talk of James Bond from the zeitgeist seemed to indicate that 007 was finished, finally gone the way of Derek Flint, Matt Helm and all the second-rate imitators he’d managed to spawn in his nearly 30-year screen career. But then, as the tide of the recession of the early 1990’s receded, promising hints began to spring up like the fabled green shoots from the blanket of winter snow. The lawsuits were settled, and Albert R. Broccoli’s Eon Productions remained firmly in charge. A screenwriter, Michael France, had been hired to write a new Bond movie. Questions then naturally arose about Timothy Dalton. It had been five years since Licence to Kill – would audiences still want to see him as Bond? Dalton ended the discussion by announcing in April of 1994 that he would not be coming back, and informal polls suggested there was one actor at the top of every fan’s list to take his place. On June 7, 1994, eight years after his first brush with 007, the world’s press was introduced to the new James Bond: Pierce Brosnan.

With their new star locked, the biggest challenge for the filmmakers was how to re-introduce James Bond to a world that had seen tumultuous changes since his last outing. The Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain and the Cold War that had birthed Bond in the first place were all gone, and some critics were suggesting that 007 should disappear with them. But rather than making a period piece, or wallowing in anachronistic nostalgia, it was decided to embrace this new climate with the following mantra: “The world has changed; James Bond has not.” Bond would always be Bond, but now this “sexist, misogynist dinosaur” would find himself confronting the new world with its new threats. To that end a complete creative shakeup was required, both in front of and behind the camera – director John Glen, who had handled the previous five films, was not asked to return, and the reins were instead handed to Martin Campbell, the first real “outsider” Bond director who hadn’t come up through the Eon system. And the story would see Bond’s world turned completely on its head, thrust into a realm of shadows as old adversaries became awkward allies and trusted friends, bitter enemies.

In the prologue, set during the height of the Cold War, Bond and Alec Trevelyan, 006 (Sean Bean) are assigned to infiltrate and destroy a Soviet chemical weapons facility. The mission goes awry, 006 is killed and Bond makes a spectacular if implausible escape by diving after a falling plane, climbing on board and pulling it out of its dive. Following the stylish opening credits in which silhouetted beauties smash apart Communist iconography (a sequence which apparently greatly upset several still-active Communist parties throughout the world) the story picks up nine years later where Russia is a shambles struggling to adopt capitalism and Bond is considered a relic by the new, female M (Judi Dench). But he’s thrust back into the fray when an experimental helicopter that can withstand electromagnetic pulse damage is stolen and used to facilitate the theft of an old Soviet space-based weapon called Goldeneye, which, when detonated, will destroy everything that contains an electronic circuit. Bond travels to Russia, where retired KGB agent Valentin Zukovsky (Robbie Coltrane) points him in the direction of the mysterious arms dealer known as Janus, who turns out to be none other than Bond’s old friend Trevelyan, who faked his death in order to abscond to the other side and carry out a long-simmering scheme of revenge against the United Kingdom for its betrayal of his family. With the help of Goldeneye computer programmer Natalya Simonova (Izabella Scorupco) and CIA agent Jack Wade (Joe Don Baker), and while dodging the lethal advances of femme fatale Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen), Bond must chase down his former ally and stop him from unleashing the Goldeneye against London and igniting a worldwide financial collapse.

The filmmakers knew they were down to their last chance, that failure would mean the end of James Bond as a viable cinematic property. With the screenplay they smartly chose to add depth to the basic machinations of the plot, pulling apart Bond’s character and using the movie itself to ask if Bond was still relevant in the modern world, as well as confronting some of the more absurd elements of Bond’s character directly. Bond is belittled, first by his immediate superior, and ultimately by Trevelyan, who chastises him with the screenplay’s finest lines: “One might as well ask if all the vodka martinis silence the screams of all the men you’ve killed, or if you find forgiveness in the arms of all those willing women, for all the dead ones you failed to protect.” Is being James Bond good for the soul? Alec Trevelyan by contrast, is James Bond pushed over the narrow divide, and the inspired casting of Sean Bean, who at one point was rumoured as a potential Bond himself, gives us an example of how destructive Bond’s lifestyle can be to a man’s moral center. The rich cinematography by Phil Meheux provides a striking palette of shadows and darkness, in contrast to the brightly and somewhat flat-lit adventures of Bond’s past, to emphasize this murky uncertainty lingering over every action that Bond takes.

As well as Bean’s compelling “anti-Bond,” the cast boasts a solid bench of supporting performers who round out this new world with a wealth of memorable characters – the singular Dench, although underused here with only two brief scenes, establishes a new kind of relationship between Bond and his hitherto remote boss that hints at a deeper exploration to come. Robbie Coltrane is an energetic delight, Boris Badenov accent and all, channelling Sydney Greenstreet as Valentin Zukovsky. Joe Don Baker gets to have much more fun here as the nickname-happy Jack Wade than he did as his previous character Whitaker in The Living Daylights. Izabella Scorupco is a perfect companion for Bond – she is spirited, competent, brave and unafraid to challenge Bond on his failings. Famke Janssen has her over-the-top moments as the assassin who kills men by crushing them with her thighs, but she is clearly enjoying the hell out of her part. Even Alan Cumming makes an impression as hapless wannabe supervillain computer nerd Boris. Filling the roles with strong actors, rather than the cheaper bit players one would have seen in previous films, forces the lead to up his game.

Pierce Brosnan has since admitted that he thought he probably would have been too young in 1987 to play James Bond convincingly. The years between then and this movie have filled in his face with more character, that slight world-weariness that 007 should always possess, even in his lighter moments. His Bond is less outwardly morose than Dalton’s, but one gets the sense that the veneer of playfulness radiating from him is just that, and it is only skin deep. But no one really wants to follow a sad sack around for two hours, and Brosnan gives Bond more than enough charm to endear him to us again, even with subtle, very Bond-ian touches like patting his face with a towel after tossing a thug down a set of stairs. If there is a single reservation about his Bond it’s that in this movie he seems a bit physically slight, which was noted by more than a few critics and seemed to inspire him to bulk up significantly for his next go-around.

How fares Goldeneye where action is concerned? Exceptionally well given the benchmark set by movies like James Cameron’s Bond pastiche True Lies, which came out the previous year. The movie opens with a visually stunning bungee-jump leap from a dam and only gets better. Apart from a couple of inoffensive gags in the tank chase in the middle of the film, mercifully abandoned is the tendency of the 80’s Bonds to stage action as slapstick, replaced with true suspense and the need for Bond to be inventive in how he extricates himself from danger, rather than just relying on whatever Q has given him (a missile-equipped car presented to Bond at the beginning of the movie goes almost entirely unused). The final fight scene atop the Arecibo telescope, doubling for Trevelyan’s Cuban satellite base, is brutal, raw and the most even-handed matchup Bond has ever had to face, made all the more emotionally consequential since this isn’t just some random evil billionaire he’s tangling with, but a man he once called friend – and Bond must decide if it’s truly “for England, James.”

Peter Lamont, the series’ regular production designer since Ken Adam’s departure, does a remarkable job here with a bigger budget – until now his sets had always looked somewhat artificial, as though the paint had just dried seconds before the director called action. Goldeneye is a “used universe” where even the walls have earned their history. And creative use of London locations and outdoor soundstages makes for a believable St. Petersburg, Russia setting despite the actors and first unit never setting foot there during filming. Daniel Kleinman, taking over for the late Maurice Binder as main titles designer, pays homage to Binder’s traditions while incorporating the themes of the story into his canvas of beautiful naked women swirling through a surreal landscape, accompanied by Tina Turner as a worthy successor to Shirley Bassey singing the theme song penned by U2’s Bono and The Edge. One area where Goldeneye receives a lot of criticism, however, is in its musical score. French composer Eric Serra, who works largely with synthesizers, was hired to bring a 90’s take on the usual John Barry bombast. It was certainly different, although not, it seems, in a positive way. After a test audience bemoaned the lack of the Bond theme, a different composer was brought in to re-score the tank chase, and this would be Serra’s only kick at Bond’s can. The electronic sound is somewhat jarring, particularly if you’re watching Goldeneye as part of a Bond marathon, but it works in context, particularly when conveying the coldness of the Russian setting. At least, it was better than Michel Legrand.

Goldeneye was a huge international smash, bringing James Bond back to the forefront of the public consciousness and proving that there would always be an appetite for more, so long as it was done right. In addition, it showed that 007 could compete against the Die Hards and the Speeds of the world that had attempted to fill the gap he’d left open for six long years. As Goldeneye’s end credits rolled and “JAMES BOND WILL RETURN” drifted by, fans could catch their breath and be assured this time that he would, in increasingly spectacular style.

Tomorrow: James Bond vs. Rupert Murdoch.

Skyfall Countdown Day 7: Licence to Kill

November 3, 2012November 5, 2012 ~ Graham Milne ~ 1 Comment

Throughout the James Bond series, Bond’s biggest challenge has not been any of the seemingly endless ranks of supervillains he’s come up against, or even the bevy of beautiful women who’ve sought to tame him. Rather, it has been that most complicated of adversaries, the United States of America. Bond’s relationship with America has been one of push and pull, give and take, with America always wanting more, it seems, than Bond’s willing to give. Many of Ian Fleming’s 007 novels take place in America, or feature American characters. American audiences have embraced this English hero and propelled him to unimagined heights. It was an American President, John F. Kennedy, who first brought Fleming’s novels into the national spotlight. Yet America’s more crass, tentacled, Borg-ifying side that seeks to remake the entirety of global culture in her commercialized image has always been a wolf nipping at James Bond’s door. American studio executives push hard for more American content in 007; American actors have tested for the role of Bond, and American performers have been forced into Bond casts to ensure American audiences won’t be put off by too many foreign accents. Ironically, Bond’s quintessential Britishness has been protected from these attempts by the American producers who continue to shepherd his legacy. But if there is a single Bond movie that feels the most American, it would have to be Licence to Kill. (The ironies continue to abound given that the movie’s working title, License Revoked, was abandoned when test marketing suggested American audiences would think the movie was about a teenager losing his driver’s license.) That the movie is an effectively told tale but at some gut level just feels wrong speaks to this concept that a little America in Bond goes a very long way.

When Bond’s longtime friend Felix Leiter (David Hedison, reprising the role from Live and Let Die) is maimed and his wife murdered by seemingly untouchable South American drug lord Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi), Bond defies an unsympathetic M, resigns his commission and goes rogue to pursue vengeance. Succeeding first in stealing $5 million from Sanchez’s cohort Milton Krest (Anthony Zerbe), Bond travels to Sanchez’s home country, and, with the assistance of CIA pilot Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell), Sanchez’s mistress Lupe (Talisa Soto) and a helpful Q (Desmond Llewelyn), infiltrates Sanchez’s world. The stakes are raised when it turns out Sanchez is purchasing shoulder-mounted missiles he intends to use against American passenger airliners if the American Drug Enforcement Agency doesn’t leave him alone. By sowing seeds of mistrust, Bond leads Sanchez to dismantle his own kingdom, the villain himself killing off his associates in ever more brutal fashion – before Bond’s true nature is revealed and he squares off against the object of his quest in a final, gasoline-soaked showdown. Vengeance is never a picturesque road, and Licence to Kill was the most violent Bond film to date, with character after character meeting grisly end, either in shark tanks, decompression chambers, pillars of flame, or simply in a hail of machine gun bullets. Bond himself is embittered, cynical and remorseless as he winds his way through his elaborate plan of retribution. The trouble was, particularly in the summer of 1989, there were already plenty of antiheroes crowding the box office, and a gentleman English spy couldn’t compete on that level – not only that, audiences didn’t really want him to. Bond had, in effect, become too American for the Americans who loved him.

Numerous subtle factors contribute to the over-American sense of this movie. Filming in England proved too expensive this time around, and so the entirety of the production relocated to Mexico, with the opening scenes shot in and around Key West, Florida. American accents abound – casting took place out mainly of the States and the supporting players are a roster of familiar if lesser known TV actors, people like Hedison, Zerbe, Frank McRae, Priscilla Barnes, Grand L. Bush, Everett McGill, Don Stroud and Anthony Starke. In fact, leading lady Lowell’s most prominent role since this movie has been on Law & Order. Given that a portion of the design budget had to go towards refurbishing the Mexican studio first, the resulting sets lack the polish and finish of the Ken Adam creations of old, looking very much like locations thrown together on a much leaner American TV budget. Michael Kamen’s score evokes his previous work on Die Hard and the Lethal Weapon series. And then of course there’s the presence of Mr. Vegas himself, Wayne Newton. There is something to be said for the exercise of taking a character out of his comfort zone and plopping him down in an unfamiliar environment – the old “fish out of water” trope – but watching James Bond order a Budweiser in a redneck bar just before it explodes into a full-on brawl as cheesy 80’s rock wails on the jukebox just makes him seem… ordinary. The appeal of Bond is watching him move through exotic worlds unattainable by us mere mortals, not seeing him slumming at the karaoke dive just down the street. Anyone can do that; why do we need to go to the movies to see it?

Despite the Americanized aesthetic, there are a few standouts of note. As Sanchez, Robert Davi delivers the most complex, multi-layered portrayal of an antagonist yet seen in a Bond movie. Sanchez is a sadistic man, yet he has his own strong moral code which values loyalty above anything else, and betrayals merit the cruellest punishments. Without delving even slightly into the origins of this man – no elegantly related backstory to be found here, he just explodes onto the screen as a force of nature – Davi rounds him out and gives him a degree of the elegance common to the finest Bond bad guys, and a correspondingly wicked sense of humour to boot. And a 22-year-old Benicio Del Toro, in only his second movie, shows hints of greatness to come as Sanchez’s eccentric, hot-tempered young cohort Dario. But in some ways, the biggest joy in the movie comes from the ever-endearing Desmond Llewelyn as Q, who is freed from his laboratory and his usual briefing scene to become a significant partner in Bond’s mission. With more screen time here than in his last half-dozen Bond movies combined, Llewelyn gets to do some genuine character work and become a father figure to Bond in a way that the cold, bureaucratic M (Robert Brown) never did.

But it’s still Timothy Dalton’s movie, and in what would turn out to be his final performance as James Bond, he dares to give us a 007 consumed with passions and doubts that his usual veneer of sophistication cannot control. Fuelled by animalistic anger and the desire for retribution, Bond begins to lose his way, and himself. But he comes to realize that in order to complete his mission and bring Felix Leiter some justice, he cannot be that simple “blunt instrument” – he has to become James Bond again. Particularly telling is the moment where Bond sits, bloodied and bruised, watching Sanchez and all that remains of his drug empire dissipating into smoke, and there is no sense of triumph to be had, only the quiet solitude of the end of the long night – an oddly European ending for such an American-feeling movie, but one that suited Timothy Dalton’s interpretation of the classic role.

In times past, if you were disappointed by a Bond movie, you could comfort yourself with the reassurance that there would be another, hopefully better one coming in only a couple of years. One wonders how many fans walked out of Licence to Kill thinking the same thing, only to find that studio politics, lawsuits, shady financial dealings and plain old greed had vastly different plans.

Tomorrow: Pierce Brosnan finally gets his second chance.

Skyfall Countdown Day 8: The Living Daylights

November 2, 2012November 5, 2012 ~ Graham Milne ~ 1 Comment

This was almost Pierce Brosnan’s debut as James Bond. It was clear to all involved after A View to a Kill that it was time for Roger Moore to exit stage left, and for the James Bond series to begin anew with a younger face. Brosnan’s popular TV run as Remington Steele was ending and he had tested successfully for the part, beating out dozens of other contenders including Sam Neill and Lambert Wilson (the Merovingian from the Matrix sequels). Pre-production was underway, the remainder of the cast was set, and then, NBC decided to drop a spanner in the works. The network retained a 60-day option to commit Brosnan to another season of Remington Steele, and, seeing dollar signs in the publicity that his impending debut as James Bond was generating, decided to exercise it at the very last minute. Albert R. Broccoli did not want the Bond movies to be reduced to advertising for a TV show that had already been cancelled once, and so a change had to be made – opening the door for Timothy Dalton.

The trailers for The Living Daylights used the tagline “Dalton – Dangerous,” trying to play up a return to the hard-boiled intensity of the Ian Fleming novels, a characteristic that had been abandoned in the recent Bond films and that Dalton himself was keen to bring to his interpretation of the role, describing 007 as “a man living very much on the edge of his life.” The plot would borrow a kernel from Fleming’s eponymous short story and expand it into a topical Cold War thriller, borrowing heavily from the Iran-Contra affair which dominated the news in the mid-eighties. Bond is assigned to protect the defecting Soviet General Georgi Koskov (Jeroen Krabbé), who warns of a plot by his colleague General Pushkin (John Rhys-Davies) to murder Western intelligence agents in the hopes of igniting a war. As Koskov escapes, he is targeted by a beautiful female assassin, whom Bond makes a split-second decision to only wound instead of kill. The assassin winds up being Koskov’s girlfriend, a Czech cellist named Kara Milovy (Maryam d’Abo) whom Bond befriends after Koskov is apparently re-abducted from British custody by the KGB. The trail leads to exiled American arms dealer Brad Whitaker (Joe Don Baker), who is working with Koskov in a scheme to use Soviet military funds to buy and sell opium from Afghan rebels instead. Koskov’s “defection” has been a ruse to try and convince the British – and by extension, Bond – to eliminate the innocent General Pushkin who knows too much about their plans. Allying with mujahidin rebels led by Kamran Shah (Art Malik), Bond leads a battle at a Soviet air base in Afghanistan to destroy the opium and spoil the deal.

While the characters and the grand plans of the villains are scaled back somewhat, the spectacle is not. The movie feels enormous. Its canvas is much broader and has a much more international flavour than the previous entry, with visually sumptuous locations ranging from the slopes of Gibraltar to the opera houses of Vienna, from the quaint English countryside to vast Moroccan deserts standing in for Afghanistan. And the progression from one location to the other is more organic, as though the story is leading us there naturally, rather than forcing in a bunch of exotic places just for the sake of variety. The energy of the chase scenes has been amped up considerably by having a younger, more physically capable actor in the lead, as Dalton throws himself into as much of the fray as nerve (and insurance) will allow – you could hardly see Roger Moore, even in his prime, jumping on the roof of a Land Rover as it speeds along the winding roads of Gibraltar as Dalton does in the exciting teaser. And yet, there is something of a battle going on within the very tone of the movie as the filmmakers can’t seem to let go completely of their less appealing instinct for the gag, as much as they want to embrace Dalton’s more serious side. Dalton struggles somewhat to project a dark soul even as his Bond finds himself in preposterous situations like steering a cello case down a ski slope. In fairness, this stemmed largely from the uncertainty in the pre-production phase with the script being geared more for Pierce Brosnan’s perceived persona, and consequently, one-liners that might flow smoothly from Brosnan’s Irish tongue clatter clunkily on the floor as Dalton utters them. When Dalton is required to be intense, he’s in his wheelhouse – brooding over the corpse of a murdered colleague or putting a gun to Pushkin’s head. Interestingly enough, Dalton became a lot more comfortable in comedy as he grew older and settled into himself – he’s hysterically funny in Hot Fuzz. But here it’s clear which arena he prefers, and he soldiers on gamely despite the filmmakers’ insistence in looking for laughs in all the wrong places.

Another choice was made in this new era of Bond to make him a one-woman man, despite the implied one-off dalliance suggested at the very end of the teaser. Maryam d’Abo as Kara is a definite step back from the glamour girls that populated the Bond movies up to this point; while nothing to sneer at looks-wise, she’s not the larger-than-life figure that one comes to expect from 007’s romantic interests. Operating very much in her favour, however, is that no attempt is made to prop her up as “Bond’s equal” – she is an innocent, working-class woman caught up in something well beyond her everyday experience. But that makes her a far more appropriate partner for this more down-to-earth James Bond. The bad guys, too, are cut from a more sedate cloth, with no cackling or cat-stroking – Joe Don Baker, who would return to Bond in a different role later on, is an adequate stand-in for Oliver North, and Jeroen Krabbé is almost too likable as Koskov – it’s a bit difficult to accept him as a threat, particularly when he’s hugging everybody within sight and the filmmakers elect to turn him into Wile E. Coyote at the finale, in another one of their struggles with consistency of tone. A couple of “where do I know that guy from” faces fill out the cast, with Andreas Wisniewski, a.k.a. the first guy Bruce Willis kills in Die Hard, taking the role of explosive-milk-bottle-wielding henchman Necros, and John Terry, best known to fans of Lost as Jack’s father Dr. Christian Shephard, as the (brief) new face of the long-absent Felix Leiter. And the boisterous John Rhys-Davies is always a delight even if he’s not in the movie very much.

This would be the late John Barry’s final turn at the podium for James Bond, and he ended his tenure as much as he began it, by pushing the music in new directions with the inclusion of synthesized rhythm tracks to accompany the action, a tactic embraced and expanded upon by his spiritual successor David Arnold. With these new elements, the music has an energy and a pulse to it that was absent from the lilting string-heavy scores of his two previous Bond works, intensifying the movie’s pace. He also co-composed three different pop songs whose themes resonate throughout the score – the title track (with Norwegian rock group a-ha) and “Where Has Every Body Gone” (the theme for Necros) and the love theme “If There Was a Man” with the Pretenders. And Barry himself makes a cameo appearance conducting the orchestra at the film’s close – a suitable sendoff for the man who more than anyone defined the sound of James Bond, and for that matter, spy movie music in general.

The Living Daylights is not perfect; as I mentioned it does suffer from an inconsistency of tone and the final act is bloated and longish, with one climax coming on top of another as all the disparate plot threads are tied up (not helping is a similar musical phrase used to score each big moment). But it does what it needed to do in 1987 – free 007 from the burden of Roger Moore, update him to the modern era and set him off on a journey toward adventures bold once more. With Timothy Dalton established in the role, the next movie would be able to tailor itself specifically to his strengths as a performer and to the qualities that he brought to the cinematic James Bond. Unfortunately, it turned out not to be somewhere audiences wanted to go.

Tomorrow: Licence to Kill and the long dark night.