1. From Russia With Love is a near perfect adaptation.  Tense, atmospheric. Kerim Bey. Gipsy fight. The Orient Express. Red wine with fish.
2. For Your Eyes Only feels like an attempt to do On Her Majesty’s Secret Service correctly, after the original adaptation wasted all that potential – there’s a reference to Tracey, a thrilling snow chase and Bond makes an alliance with a crime boss. And there’s Carole Bouquet.  And on discovering Lynn Holly-Johnson naked in his bed, with a raised eye brow: “Yes, well.  You put your clothes on, and I’ll buy you an ice-cream.”
3. Casino Royale also captures well the emotions and atmosphere of the book. Plus there’s Daniel Craig. And Eva Green. That torture scene.  Incredibly tight, thrilling stunts and expert direction from Martin Campbell.

Honourable mentions here to Dr No, Goldfinger, Goldeneye and The Living Daylights, the others that have earned a place in my DVD collection.

The worst:

1. Die Another Day starts interestingly but it doesn’t last.  This film features a ludicrous invisible car, excruciatingly cringe-worthy references to its various superior predecessors and some of the worst blue-screen you will ever see in an bizarre ill-conceived tidal-wave surfing sequence.
2. Moonraker is very nearly as bad (worse, some days) since it is an unimaginative remake of The Spy Who Loved Me, itself pretty awful to start with, set in space rather than under the sea, to give it a Star Wars spin (and it comes close to being as bad as that film).  If that weren’t bad enough, Jaws is in it again, worse he has a love interest, and the use of speeded up film makes the blue-screen in Die Another Day look cutting edge.  Truly awful, verging on the unwatchable.  The only good thing about this film is the end title mix of the theme song.
3. Diamonds Are Forever is probably the next worst.  It’s a crowded field, there are plenty of mediocre entries in the series, but this truly is a by-the-numbers effort. Connery and Bassey are both recalled, and the film is full of increasingly ludicrous set pieces, but there’s a mean-spirited nastiness (including the cliched homophobic portrayal of the assassins Mr Wint and Mr Kidd) that runs beneath the lightweight action.  Very missable.

While films like On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, The Man with the Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me and Quantum of Solace are all fairly bad too, they fail to make the grade by having one or two redeeming features…

Update: See also – The defence of Moonraker, & what makes a good Bond film: Bond in Retrospect | Lone Locust Productions

Then I looked up one of Peter Bradshaw’s (two, contradictory) reviews and found that he too had spotted references to other Bond films in Quantum of Solace. And, bar the obvious Goldfinger reference, they’re different ones.

Are there any others? Is it possible that every film was subtly referenced?

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You may well be familiar with Dione Warwick’s Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang or Julie Rogers You Only Live Twice but there are many more out there of which the Guardian links to only a few. These include Johnny Cash, The Pet Shop Boys and Saint Ettienne, but, alas, not Vic Flick and Eric Clapton which sounds awesome. Most of the songs here are pretty awful, though a couple are better than the official ones largely because the official ones are even worse…

Their link to Ace of Base’s Goldeneye doesn’t have the film’s titles so here‘s a better link.

The film’s really still as impressive as it was 2 years ago. It’s incredible how true it is to the book, and how much it dares to improve on it. Yet at the same time, it’s notable (and perhaps unfortunate) how true it also is to the traditions of the films, with all of the trademarks, from the naff quips to the disfigured villain’s tic (in this case the ventolin inhaler which Bond bugs). The cold war and SMERSH update unexpectedly well to a post-9/11 secret organisation engaged in bankrolling terrorists in a symbiotic relationship that is only threatened by Le Chiffre’s failure at the card table; the stakes are as high as in the book and even when tension of the card game that provides the heart of the film is unfortunately interrupted by disgruntled clients it is to reinforce the peril that Le Chiffre faces simply from Bond’s skill and luck at the table. Even the silly difribulator in the glove compartment is an improvement on Fleming’s walking-stick gun. And all for all the fuss made about Daniel Craig and his swimming trunks, in the book he takes them off!

Although the sequence in Madagascar has to be one of the best stunt sequences in any Bond film ever, after this it’s not until the card game that the film really gets going. Here the excitement and the tension of Fleming’s story is realised so well it eclipses the book. It’s only the last quarter of an hour of the film where doubts about the changes made set in. It is good – but does it match up to Vesper’s final evening with Bond in the book, where in the knowledge of what she will do she is so cold she almost makes Bond look human?
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And I missed Mathis’ talk about playing Red Indians which, while not very politically correct, would have had some resonance given Bond’s behaviour in the Nambutu embassy, as well has helping to define Bond’s conviction to stay with MI6 to prevent such traitors simply strolling off with state secrets.

Performance-wise, Mads Mikkelsen is a little cartoonish as Le Chiffre. While it’s true that there’s not a lot of the character in Flemings original to realise, his portrayal has little depth and it’s not until his final scene that he pushes the desperation he must feel at his predicament. On the other hand, Eva Green is incredible; similarly poorly served by Fleming’s sketch of the character Green makes Vesper cooler, smarter and sexier than her literary precursor. Both the sparky encounter on the train and the shivery scene in the shower give the her a range and depth that Fleming failed to capture. I’ll admit I’ve fallen in love with a few previous Bond girls but Green’s Vesper is peerless. And the chemistry with Craig, who it has been widely noted is simply excellent, is electric.

Will the Quantum of Solace, a.k.a. New Bond 2, live up to quality of Craig’s first outing? There are several factors against this. There’s the source material: Casino Royale‘s best moments, the heart of the film, are around the card game and the torture scene which come straight from the book. Take that away and you’ve got a distinctly less impressive runaround. As noted, the old Bond cliche’s are there – for example in the Nambutu embassy, when the sirens go off and all the men with machine guns run out it’s reminiscent of every film from You Only Live Twice to Tomorrow Never Dies, it’s just that it’s done with a conviction and care that makes it work. So then there’s the Martin Campbell factor: he’s a man with a track record of launching new Bonds; in the past subsequent films have failed to live up to the promise of the first. And for me the most persuasive argument that we’re about to be served a dud is the budget factor – Casino Royale has a smaller budget than the three films that preceded it, yet Quantum‘s budget is over twice as big, easily the most ever spent on a Bond film. The final nail in the coffin is that despite having the good sense to use Fleming’s title for the film, this will be marred by naming mysterious organisation from Casino Quantum for, I imagine, no better reason than trying to justify the choice of title.

On the plus side, there’s Daniel Craig again, it’s the shortest Bond film ever (even though Casino Royale was a full 2 hours 20 it would have been a much better film if 40 minutes had been trimmed from the first half). There’s Paul Haggis back writing the script. Then there’s the fact that even if it’s not another Casino Royale, as long as it’s not Moonraker or Die Another Day it’ll probably make me happy.

The Governor paused and looked reflectively over at Bond. He said: “You’re not married, but I think it’s the same with all relationships between a man and a woman. They can survive anything so long as some kind of basic humanity exists between the two people. When all kindness has gone, when one person obviously and sincerely doesn’t care if the other is alive or dead, then it’s just no good. That particular insult to the ego—worse, to the instinct of self-preservation—can never be forgiven. I’ve noticed this in hundreds of marriages. I’ve seen flagrant infidelities patched up, I’ve seen crimes and even murder forgiven by the other party, let alone bankruptcy and every other form of social crime. Incurable disease, blindness, disaster—all these can be overcome. But never the death of common humanity in one of the partners. I’ve thought about this and I’ve invented a rather high-sounding title for this basic factor in human relations. I have called it the Law of the Quantum of Solace.”

The Sun article suggests that Martin Campbell will return as director, though there’s no further info on who will be writing. I’m still hoping Michael Wilson and Stoppard.

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So, does it work? Well, the producers essentially had three options in adapting Casino Royale:

• Leave out the “Bond begins” elements, and just go for the back to basics feel.
• Make a period prequel to Dr No
• Reboot

I thought the reboot the least favourable option, and would have like to seen a more subtle use of Fleming’s material worked into the series (after all, we’re prepared to suspend our disbelief about the fact that Bond has been around for 40 years without ever ageing more than 20). This is what they did with For Your Eyes Only and The Living Daylights with, in my view, reasonable success. A 50s or 60s set Cold War story might have been good, but would never have had the broad appeal an up to date Bond could have. It would also have suffered unfavourable comparisons with the films that would then be supposed to follow it: an unfair challenge, how could a period film compare with a contemporary picture in capturing the exuberance of the era or the sinister menace of the cold war?

Instead, the reboot gets its edge from the current global political climate, and it works. Casino Royale is a great opening to a new Bond series, and I’m looking forward to see Craig’s Bond in several more films evolving into the sophisticated super-spy he is destined to become.

Here are Channel 4′s results:

1. Goldfinger
2. Diamonds Are Forever
3. Live and Let Die
4. From Russia With Love
5. For Your Eyes Only
6. Nobody Does It Better
7. You Only Live Twice
8. Dr No
9. Die Another Day
10. View To A Kill
11. Goldeneye
12. O.H.M.S.S
13. Tomorrow Never Dies
14. The Man With The Golden Gun
15. Licence to Kill
16. The Living Daylights
17. The World Is Not Enough
18. Thunderball
19. Never Say Never Again
20. Moonraker
21. Casino Royale
22. Octopussy

For Your Eyes Only at No. 5? Blimey!

Beside the inevitable fact that they ranked the themes wrongly, it wasn’t clear whether they were taking into acount all the music for the films, just the songs, or just the title song. For example, Casino Royale (number 21) seemed to be there on the strength of “The Look of Love”, which was not a title song. For O.H.M.S.S (number 12) it was “We Have All The Time In The World” that was mentioned, and it’s a great song, but would any one regard their Bond theme collection complete without Barry’s terrific instrumental title theme? And whilst they mentioned closing title songs “Surrender” and “If There Was A Man” they didn’t mention “The Experience of Love” from the end of Goldeneye. But they did discuss the score to Goldeneye (compared to the music from Tetris by one commentator, but as “ahead of its time” by David Arnold who has scored every Bond film since). So does the score count? Do the other songs count? Should we mark down “Nobody Does It Better?” because of Hamlisch’s cheesy score, or boost a-ha’s feeble “Living Daylights” because of the contributions from Barry and The Pretenders?

No the only way to do it is to rank soundtracks separately from the title themes and songs, and rank each song separately (and forget the unofficial Bond movies). So, here’s my themes and songs ranking:

1. The James Bond Theme
2. Goldfinger
3. Nobody Does It Better
4. View To A Kill
5. Live and Let Die
6. O.H.M.S.S
7. You Only Live Twice
8. We Have All The Time In The World
9. From Russia With Love
10. Surrender
11. The World Is Not Enough
12. Tomorrow Never Dies
13. Thunderball
14. Goldeneye
15. Where Has Everybody Gone?
16. Licence to Kill
17. Diamonds Are Forever
18. Under The Mango Tree
19. Moonraker
20. The Man With The Golden Gun
21. All Time High
22. If There Was A Man
23. The Experience of Love
24. The Living Daylights
25. For Your Eyes Only
26. Die Another Day
27. You Know My Name
28. Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown?
29. If You Asked Me To

I’ve probably missed a few. Let’s say they didn’t make it into the top 29.