No Time To Die

 



A Die For A Die

No Time To Die
UK/USA 2021
Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga
EON Productions
Blu Ray Zone B

Let me once more state for the record that I don’t have anything against Daniel Craig. In fact, I think he’s a great actor. He’s just got the wrong colour hair for James Bond and, also, I just don’t like any of the Craig Bond films. I’d frankly rather watch him in other roles. That being said, my expectations were hopeful for No Time To Die because I was receiving some very mixed, word of mouth reviews from the various friends I have. For instance, my die hard, Bond fanatical friend Chris, who usually has very few bad words to say about the Daniel Craig Bond films, was very disappointed with this one... thinking it one of the all time lows of the series, from what I can make out. Conversely, my cousin Steve said this was one of the very best Bond films and went back to his local cinema in Australia to see it a number of times. So, yeah, I thought this one would at least be interesting if it was dividing people’s opinion so much.

Alas, I have to report back that this latest outing for England’s popular secret agent has a lot in common with the previous Craig films, as far as I’m concerned... in that it’s very boring, drab, dull and any other descriptions which could be best summed up with the modern term... meh! My initial response once the film had concluded was... how can they make a movie which was both worse than Quantum Of Solace (reviewed here) and simultaneously, unbelievably more boring than Octopussy (reviewed here)?

Once again, the film picks up the plot threads from the previous Craig films, allowing them to all be seen as one single arc. We catch up with a now retired Bond living with his girlfriend Madeleine (Léa Seydoux reprising her role from S.P.E.C.T.R.E, reviewed here) but then, of course, Bond manages to find himself back in the thick of the action and attempting to save the world from yet another super villain, this time in the form of Safin (played by Rami Malek).

And... it’s a bit of a yawn, to be honest. The fact that the opening gun barrel sequence has Bond missing his target for the first time ever in the history of the EON Bond films (there’s no red blood washing it out in this version... just a really awkward transition), should have given me a heads up. The pre-credits sequence is certainly plot and character motivated but it forgets to be a big blast of action like the many James Bond films before it. I mean, there’s definitely a little action there but just as it starts to get going it’s already over and we are into a quite dreary opening title animation accompanied by a similarly dreary opening song. Sadly, this is a good guide to how the rest of the film is going to go... it’s a long, slow burn (running two and three quarter hours) with very few action sequences and, for the most part, not enough ooomph in them to really deliver the kind of pace and energy a loyal legion of Bond fans might expect from the franchise. This would perhaps explain why the response to the movie in my timeline on Twitter has been lukewarm at best.

Now, I was pretty careful to pick up absolutely no spoilers for this one before I fired up the Blu Ray but, alas, as I’d revealed to my friend @cultofthecinema on the phone a few days before, I was pretty sure how the movie was going to end (using the same kind of casting information with which I’d predicted, a couple of years before release, a certain event which takes place towards the end of the Star Wars movie The Force Awakens). And, yes, I was dead right on that one. I really don’t want to give away the ending of the film here but, even if I’d had no suspicion before the movie started as to the final trajectory of the story, the writers and director manage to telegraph it so much that it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion by the midway mark. Scenes which would have been better occurring at the end of the movie play out earlier than you might expect and, by some point, I suspect most people in the audience would realise there’s a reason why certain plot points are explored more fully before the final innings, so to speak.

Okay, enough on that. Let me say something positive here. There are two things I did like about the movie. One was the brief but effective scenes where a new character played Ana de Armas shares the one good action scene with her Knives Out co-star Daniel Craig. I could have done with a lot more of her character in the movie, to be honest.

And the other thing was Hans Zimmer’s score. He’s done a wonderful job on this one and managed to deliver a nice score which really gets to the heart of what the John Barry and early David Arnold scores were about. I love Zimmer but I was really surprised he was able to pull something like this off. He also interpolates various themes from the classic Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (reviewed here) for the score and, although the film doesn’t reference the plot of that movie at all (how could it when the Craig films were supposed to be a total reboot), there are a lot of musical echoes of it... enough to inject a kind of ‘surrogate nostalgia’ into the movie, it has to be said. Probably didn't need that ‘emotional association by proxy’ though. Not that there aren’t a lot of visual references to previous Bond films from the history of the franchise in the movie anyway... bit of a strange kind of homage. Nevertheless, I thought Zimmer did a remarkable job with the music... although now I know why there wasn’t too much action music on the CD soundtrack... you can only score what’s on the screen, I guess.

Okay, my biggest problem with the movie is it’s far too long. And that makes no sense since, not long after a scene where M and Bond are at each others throats and Bond is not welcome to return to active duty, it’s almost immediately followed up by them being all pally again and Bond being recruited for the mission. I can only assume that some kind of sequence of events which would have led to this change of heart was cut from the movie to get the time down. Even so, the film drags so much that, you have to wonder why the producers and director didn’t get the editor to trim another hour out of it.

All in all, then, I didn’t have a good time with No Time To Die. I wish Craig all the best in the world and hope to see him in some more movies soon but, as far as Bond films are concerned, I think I’m more than happy to see the back of him. If the series is to continue, as it implies right at the end with the familiar caption ‘James Bond Will Return’, it will have to be a hard reboot with, I suspect, a much younger actor. But let’s see what happens with the ageing producers before we count any more chickens, would be my final word on that.

The Invasion

I, Pod

The Invasion
USA/Australia 2007
Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel
and James McTeigue (uncredited)
Warner Brothers Blu Ray Zone B

Okay, so here we are at the tail end of ‘Body Snatchers Week’ on the blog with the fourth and, at time of writing, last of the big screen adaptations of Jack Finney’s serialised sci-fi novel, The Body Snatchers. At least, the final ‘official’ adaptation at any rate, there have been a lot of movies suddenly springing up over the last few years which have more or less stolen the basic concept and did their own thing with it. So yeah, this is the fourth version after the 1956 Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (reviewed here), the 1978 Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (reviewed here) and the 1993 Body Snatchers (reviewed here). This one is just called The Invasion and, I guess if this is the trend now of sequel titles, when they decide to do it again the only word they’ll be left with is... Of. That’d make a great title for a film about duplicates replacing humans... better than Us at any rate. ;-)

Now, I understand there were problems on this in terms of the suits (or shall we just call them what they are, ‘pods’) at Warner Brothers not liking the cut that Hirschbiegel delivered. So there were rewrites and reshoots with another, uncredited director in the form of McTeigue. This may explain why, at least over here in the UK and from what I can remember, there was no fanfare or publicity for the movie and its cinematic legacy. I think I may have seen a trailer for The Invasion the week before at the cinema or, most likely, saw the title of a new science fiction film starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig listed in my local paper... and decided to go along as there was nothing better on.

I remember sitting in the cinema as the movie opened on a scene from towards the end of the film which is foreshadowing the action to come before putting the title card up and then going back to... how it all started. So I was sitting in the cinema and not expecting any familiarity with the story but, I get about ten seconds into the film when I realise Nicole Kidman’s character is looking for drugs to keep herself awake, I put two and two together with the title of the movie and think to myself... ‘No way! Surely this isn’t yet another remake... I didn’t know it was even being done again?’ So I sit tight and wait for about 5 mins and, yep, the main character names confirm what I already suspected a few minutes earlier... this was definitely a fourth version of The Body Snatchers. Except, and I loved this, they flipped the genders so, instead of Kevin McCarthy playing ‘Miles’ Bennell and Dana Wynter playing ‘Becky’ Driscoll, we had Nicole Kidman playing psychiatrist ‘Carol’ Bennell and Daniel Craig playing her doctor friend ‘Ben’ Driscoll. Which, given the fact that we were now onto the fourth version of the story, I was not bothered by in the least.

Other notable people in the film are Jeremy Northam, playing Carol’s ex-husband Tucker Kaufman (presumably named after director/writer Philip Kaufman, who helmed the 1978 edition) and future Felix Leiter, Jeffrey Wright, as a chemical doctor friend of Ben. When the film was being shot, Daniel Craig was given the role of James Bond and had to halt filming for a few days to fly over and do a press conference about it over here in the UK.

Now, I know this film is probably the most hated by fans of the Body Snatchers movies but, honestly, I don’t think this is a bad film and it’s no worse... possibly even better... than the previous version directed by Abel Ferrera. It does, however, have its problems. It does things a little differently too, while staying almost exactly the same and... I don’t think this is a bad attempt. I do wonder, though, at the hasty soul who typed in a big paragraph in the trivia section of the IMDB listing all the ways this film adds new ideas to the original concept... before listing almost entirely ideas that were already there in the previous versions. It’s almost like the person who wrote that entry didn’t actually see any of the other films. Bit strange.

The one thing this does do slightly differently... and this is a bit of a loss to all the people who loved the prior three... is to get rid of the actual seed pods. These aren’t space spores drifting and finding our planet before growing clones of us and absorbing our intelligence... instead, after a space shuttle that has somehow come into contact with the source in space before crash landing back on Earth, it spreads itself as a virus and replaces our body ‘on site’, as it were. However, it does still need the host human to go to sleep before it can take it over and so the mechanism is essentially the same, just the delivery is a little different. When a human goes to sleep and is cocooned within its own biological material, it also looks just like the unfinished pod people from the 1978 version too.

So instead of growing a huge, novelty seed pod in your immediate vicinity, the alien versions of us here just vomit into our coffee or even onto us to get the dormant aliens into us. This gives us the bizarrely ‘out of place for commercial cinema’ moment where we have Jeremy Northam vomiting all over Nicole Kidman’s face and in her mouth, which also makes her the second Bennell in the movie versions to be actually ‘infected’ by the aliens... although with a much different result to what happened when Donald Sutherland was ‘podded up’ nearly 30 years before. And, of course, Jeremy Northam, who I always think of as the modern Cary Grant, plays a pod person quite well. Although, it has to be said, the aliens in this movie seem really dumb and easy to detect.

The writers and directors haven’t forgotten their long cinematic heritage either. For starters, one of Carol’s patients is played by Veronica Cartwright, who was in the 1970s incarnation of the film (and who is also famous for appearing in such films as The Birds and A L I E N). There’s also the nice moment where an old lady does the whole Kevin McArthy thing of running through all the cars and screaming about the aliens as a foreshadowing technique, before being run over and killed. It’s a shame they didn’t tap McCarthy to pick up this scene again but, you can’t have everything. There’s a nice moment later in the film where Nicole Kidman almost repeats the entire scene, which is a nice moment... from one Bennell to another. And another nod to the original is a scene which is a fourth version... although with people and not pods this time around... of the town square distribution scene. So that’s always nice.

The direction and editing is... somewhat problematic but there’s some nice cinematography in this, with some nice colours and framing, especially in the exterior city scenes when it’s raining at night. There’s also a bizarre, Dario Argento kind of moment where, when Nicole Kidman’s character starts to succumb to sleep a few times and the director switches to close ups of the white cells in her blood being swaddled by the alien virus.

The paranoia of the piece is fairly well done too, with a camera walk with Kidman’s character following her on her way to the office, taking in all the hustle and bustle of the people clashing against each other on their daily routine, contrasted later on in the film with more or less exactly the same sequence of shots... but showing all the people nicely behaved, to indicate that by now the majority of the people on the streets are alien hosts. There’s even a tense moment where the director resorts to using the old, boiling, whistling kettle sound in the background to ratchet up the tension... which works pretty much as well as it always does in these kinds of movies.

One of my biggest problems with the film is in the editing. There are four or five moments in the movie where they just start crosscutting between various scenes showing bits from earlier in the movie, bits which are happening now and bits which will happen later on in the movie, in fairly extended but rapidly edited pieces. Maybe its another stab at giving us some foreshadowing but I suspect it’s more a way of excluding bits of explanatory footage which were either missing and not shot... allowing us to get the jump on the next scene as we slide into the middle of the action on that next sequence... or the shot footage was just too slow and boring and they needed to ramp up the pace. Either way, it looks like the editor is trying to be Nicolas Roeg and, honestly, as much as I appreciate that particular directorial genius and his editing decisions, resorting to it here in an almost random manner really doesn’t serve the film and makes you pop out of the experience, as opposed to letting you make visual, metaphorical connections. It just doesn’t work well.

It’s not a total let down though because John Ottman’s score serves the film quite well and is appropriately sinister, helping to build the suspense when the colliding visuals let things down on occasion. Alas, fans of the previous versions of this may find the ‘magic bullet’ of the ending a bit of a bitter pill to swallow, it has to be said. Actually, being as we’re all now in a kind of magical and somewhat ineffective pseudo-lockdown from Coronavirus at the moment, I found it a nice idea that the aliens come up with the plan a third of the way through the picture to infect everybody under the guise of it being a vaccine. That’s a nice idea. I still prefer giant seed pods though, if I was given a choice.

Not much more to say on The Invasion other than... it’s not a terrible film, it’s quite a good one hobbled by some problems which may well have been exacerbated by the reshoots and re-editing job, I suspect. If you like the various Body Snatcher movies and the ideas in them, then there should be no real reason why you shouldn’t have an okay time with this one. I’d have to say, though, that I’m probably not going to rewatch the third or fourth ones as frequently as I’ll revisit the first two in years to come. But still... this is not a bad shot at it.

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers at NUTS4R2

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956)

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978)

Body Snatchers (1993)

The Invasion (2007)

Knives Out

Old Knives Tale

Knives Out
2019 USA Directed by Rian Johnson
UK cinema release print.

I really enjoyed the earlier films of Rian Johnson and absolutely adored his 'high school mystery told in the vernacular of hard boiled detective fiction' movie Brick. I also thought Looper was quite good. When I’d heard he was on board with a Star Wars movie I was kinda nervous because, from the evidence of these two works, I really didn’t think he was a good match for he project. Turns out I was right too. Although not completely unwatchable (no Star Wars film has been so far), it made the mistake of having a few nicely done and appropriate set pieces kinda grafted on to a story that was possibly one of the least ‘Star Warsy’ we’ve seen to date. So, as far as I’m concerned at least, The Last Jedi kinda ranks right at the bottom of the pile with Attack Of The Clones and Revenge Of The Sith.

However, I was really looking forward to seeing what he was going to do next and was delighted when another mystery story... this time in the vein of those old Agatha Christie ‘Whodunnits’... called Knives Out, was announced. I was also pleased to see it getting a very positive response on the internet too. Alas, the first warning I had that the film might not be ‘all that’ was when two of my real life friends, both who had seen the film at different times in different towns, both told me it was... well... kinda disappointing. That being said, I was still looking forward to the film enough so that, when I saw it, I was indeed disappointed with the end result.

So... good things first.

Johnson has assembled a pretty impressive cast with the likes of Daniel Craig (good actor, bad Bond), Toni Collette, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Chris Evans, Don Johnson, Frank Oz and Christopher Plumber. There’s also a brilliant young actress who I’ve not seen before called Ana de Armas playing the lead character, as becomes clear as the movie progresses. I was always going to be a sucker for whoever was going to be playing this character, to be honest, because she’s written as one of those people who truly are ‘pure in heart’.

The style of the film takes exactly the form that one of those old, ‘gather up all the guests’ whodunnits would have taken and the story, it has to be said, emits a strange and, perhaps, ‘welcome to some’ air of snooziness as it plays out in front of the eyeballs. There’s nothing really offensive or in your face about the movie at any point in the proceedings and, if this floats your boat, then it’s definitely like a Christmas movie that you can fall asleep to after dinner.

And that’s pretty much the only good stuff I can think to say about it.

The real problem for me was that... the film feels kinda uneventful and a little bit like the cast and crew were having a far better time with the material than the audience were ever going to. There are no real surprises in this movie either and though it’s certainly a little twisty-turny as the film continues on its merry way, there aren’t really any revelations in store for anyone either. So even though the story line seems quite fluid for a lot of the time, it still, I’m sad to say, manages to telegraph itself a lot as we follow Ana De Armas trying to dodge an explosive situation which she has, it seems, partially created.

The other thing which I was disappointed by, in all honesty, was the brilliant cast. I mean, you have all these truly wonderful actors and actresses and most of them seem to be just wasted in their roles. It was nice to see people like Chris Evans and Michael Shannon playing against type but, mostly, some really famous people seem like they’re a little relegated to the sidelines and I couldn’t help but think that a lot of these 'A List' performers could have been replaced with relatively unknown people and the studio could have saved themselves some money.

Nathan Johnson provides a score for the movie which is a throwback to those 1960s and 1970s genre films that the director is trying to emulate and is completely appropriate to the on screen visuals. That being said, it didn’t really do a lot for me and I did find it a step down from his absolutely amazing work on Brick. The score for Knives Out doesn’t really stay with you after the movie and, even though I am writing this less than 24 hours after seeing it, I can’t remember much about it, to be honest. It fits the film and probably elevates it but I can’t imagine trying to listen to this one as a stand alone musical experience.

And... yeah... sorry for the short review here but I really don’t have much to say about this one. Knives Out is a competent and unobtrusive little movie which kinda strolls along at its own sleepy pace but never really, as far as I’m concerned (and I know I’m in a minority here), strays into the great or even ‘wildly entertaining’ category. If you like old style whodunnits and want a movie you can relax to without needing to worry you’ll be caught off guard, then Knives Out is probably just for you. As for me... I’m just grateful I don’t have to ever sit through it again.

S.P.E.C.T.R.E

In SPECTRE, gadget

S.P.E.C.T.R.E
2015 UK/USA
Directed by Sam Mendes
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Very slight identity spoilers.

Regular readers of my column and, in particular, my many Bond movie reviews, will know that I really don’t rate the Daniel Craig Bond films all that much. I’ve gone on record in saying that they’re at least better than some of the worst of the Roger Moore era films (my least favourite Bond) but they’re not that far apart from them and they inhabit the lower end of my Bond rankings alongside such terrible Bond movies as Octopussy, Licence To Kill and Die Another Day. That being said, I don’t want you to think I don’t rate Daniel Craig. I think he’s a pretty cool actor, actually... I just think the version of Bond he’s been asked to play - the unsophisticated, everyman’s 007 thug - is not necessarily the right way to go and anyone who's read the original Ian Fleming novels will see a big difference in the character as it's portrayed here. Perhaps, bearing in mind the dubious nature of the character in the first place, a more honest approach but... not necessarily a good role model to have. He is extremely popular however and, I’m sure, this movie will be much loved by fans of this era.

Now S.P.E.C.T.R.E didn’t appear in more than maybe two of Ian Fleming’s later Bond novels. The Bond villain organisation of choice in the majority of the Bond books were the real life organisation known as Smersh (an amalgam of two Russian words meaning “death to spies”). When Doctor No and the early Bond films were made, Smersh was changed to S.P.E.C.T.R.E, I seem to remember, although my memory may be failing me... because the producers didn’t want to offend the Russians. Consequently, when the movie From Russia With Love came out, although Smersh does get a mention (it even gets a mention in the first Flint movie), it’s all about S.P.E.C.T.R.E again and this carried on and was eventually taken up by Fleming in the novels himself, after he based his own novel Thunderball on the script he was developing for the movie with Kevin McClory (again, if memory serves).

So fans of the books always felt kinda cheated when the movies used S.P.E.C.T.R.E as the bad guys... we all knew who the real villains were and the films seemed to be somewhat compromised in their intent before they were even out of the starting block. I remember sitting in a cinema in Llandudno on my summer holiday in 1987 and breathing a sigh of relief when one of the villains in The Living Daylights sent down the “death to spies” message to one of Bond’s colleagues before killing him... Smersh were finally back.

But now, it seems, Smersh have had their day once more and we get the original film version of the organisation not only returning as the title of this latest Bond movie but, also, tying into the storyline from the previous three Daniel Craig films, which are all fully referenced in this movie (along with a few other little nods to Bond over the years). And, of course, with the return of the movie organisation we have the return of one of the main villains of the Bond novels and films... although I think the writers were kind of trying to keep that a surprise. Honestly though, I think pretty much everyone who was interested in this movie, however, figured that out from the word go so... yeah, we have the always excellent Christoph Waltz playing Blofeld.. an exceptional choice of an exceptional actor for an exceptionally Bond fan pleasing role.

We also have some excellent actors and actresses cast alongside him such as Monica Bellucci, Léa Seydoux, Ben Whishaw (continuing as Q), Andrew Scott (Moriarty in the modern TV incarnation of Sherlock), David Bautista, Naomie Harris (continuing as Moneypenny), Jesper Christensen (returning as Mr. White) and Ralph Fiennes (continuing as M). And everyone is excellent in it. They’re all good, every last one of them... but I couldn’t help but think that both the script and the action choreography let them down a bit on this one.

Bellucci, for instance, is totally wasted. She is, and always has been, a phenomenal screen presence but she really is in the movie for a very short time in, I believe, only two scenes (unless you count the time split in one scene as the opening of a third). Waltz is excellent but the dialogue really isn’t up to scratch, I felt. He always delivers it so well and does some really interesting things with his acting but... you need to really give him special lines to work with like Tarantino did on two occasions (to date). And why the writers insist on treating the revelation of Ernst Stavro Blofeld as some kind of reveal is beyond me. Like I said, we all knew this before they’d even started shooting the thing. Andrew Scott is cool but he’s also got an element to his character which is written like it's supposed to be some kind of twist... you will see everything coming, as far as his character goes, pretty much from his first scene in the movie... which is kind of a shame but the storyline even makes it almost impossible for his character’s personal revelation not to be the case as it basically resolves a dramatic problem the writers put in the way of the main protagonists right from the start of the picture. So it’s all a bit of a shame, truth be told.

Now there are some very good things about this particular installment in the Bond franchise. The opening sequence is pretty good... although the lack of ‘racoon eyes’ completely spoils a character reveal... not to mention continuity in all the shots leading up to this, in much the same way that we all thought it was a ridiculous choice to make when Michael Keaton has exactly the same thing happen to him when he pulls his mask off in Batman Returns. Seriously? Movie makers really should start realising that we’re not all completely stupid. You’ll know what I’m talking about it when you see it and if you’re anything like me it’ll pop you right out of the movie. But yeah, other than this and some improbable helicopter shots not matching, the pre-credits sequence is probably one of the strongest things about this movie. A big shout out to David Bautista too, playing one of the most tough and relentless Bond henchmen in the history of the series and, if you’re paying attention, doing it in such a way that the character, alongside another of the main villains, can easily be brought back for another movie if so desired.

Thomas Newman’s score is pretty good in places too... a lot better and more obviously Bondian, I thought, than some of the stuff in the previous movie Skyfall... although during some of the action sequences it does get totally lost in the sound mix, if truth be told. Either way, it’s a lot better than the horrible non-Bond song the producers saw fit to include during the title sequence. I thought the title song for Skyfall was bad enough but this one... well... I guess the writer couldn’t think of anything to rhyme with S.P.E.C.T.R.E and, you know, also forgot to put a strong melody line in it.

Okay... I so I didn’t have high expectations for this movie from the start but I was kind of buoyed up from the strength of the opening sequence. Alas, it didn’t take long before I was looking at my watch trying to work out when the movie would end again, I’m afraid. There were more bad things than good in this movie, I reckon. For instance... the title sequence was really not that great. It didn’t help that it had the aforementioned song playing over it but it did, at least, have a few classically surreal moments that looked like they belonged in a Bond movie credits piece, for sure... but not many, I’d hasten to add.

Another thing is that the action sequences seemed, for the most part, just astonishingly dull for a lot of the movie and, worse, seemed to be getting less interesting as the movie wore on. The editing on them was fine... this is no Quantum of Solace, I’m pleased to say, but I did find myself rather bored through most of these scenes and, the one scene which looked like it would have all the main good guy protagonists storming British intelligence and getting into a big battle, alas, didn’t quite get there. It all seemed just a bit anticlimactic in the end and I really couldn’t get into the spirit of the movie, by the final reel. Add to this a main protagonist who completely relies on his gadgets to get him out of trouble in this one, especially, rather than his own cunning, plus a highly predictable story line and... well... it just wasn’t happening for me, I’m afraid.

Ultimately, this is a big looking Bond film which I’m pretty sure the majority of modern audiences will really get into... however, I don’t think I’m that audience anymore and this really isn’t my Bond. At least they saw fit to resurrect the iconic gun barrel opening shot this time although, bizarrely, they seemed to have forgotten just how to use it to get you into the next scene like the majority of Bond films have easily have managed to do in the history of the franchise. Oh well, I’ll keep my hopes alive that the next movie in the series can breath some life back into the franchise. And as far as S.P.E.C.T.R.E goes... well at least it didn’t have an invisible car in this one.

EON James Bond Movie Reviews on NUTS4R2

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball

You Only Live Twice  

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Diamonds Are Forever

Live And Let Die

The Man With The Golden Gun  

The Spy Who Loved Me

Moonraker

For Your Eyes Only

Octopussy

A View To A Kill 

The LIving Daylights 

Licence To Kill  

GoldenEye

Tomorrow Never Dies

The World Is Not Enough  

Die Another Day 

Casino Royale

Quantum Of Solace

Skyfall

S.P.E.C.T.R.E

Quantum Of Solace

Quantum Destruction

Quantum of Solace
2008 UK/USA/
Directed by Marc Forster
EON Blu Ray Region B

Quantum of Solace marks the last of the EON James Bond films I have to review for a while (I already reviewed the next in the series, Skyfall,  as my first Bond review here).

When I watched this movie again just recently, after five years had passed, I would have to say that it surprised me in that I realised it wasn’t quite as bad as Die Another Day or Octopussy. That being said, those two are the only Bond films I can think of that I’d rather be watching less than this one. Now I really liked World War Z by this same director, so I don’t know why I didn’t pick up on some of the negative things I’ll throw up here in that movie too... but I understand that the editing schedule on this Bond film was quite, let’s say, challenging and I’m guessing maybe some corners were cut where reshoots may have been better? I don’t know... purely speculating here.

There are some really good things in this movie but they are completely destroyed by the negative factors, as far as I’m concerned. Now, if you read my Casino Royale review, you’ll already know I don’t rate Craig as a credible Bond. He just doesn’t quite look or act the part... and that’s such a shame because he is a great actor and he does an excellent job as a toughie here in the Bond films. In fact, I would go so far as to say he plays an incredible modern action hero... just not a credible Bond. Which I think is a shame because I don’t think it’s even his fault. I’m guessing here that the style of the character is being moulded into something deliberately different by the producers? Who knows?

Anyhow, that aside, this movie suffers from a lot of problems. The plot, which picks up from the previous film, just seems generally thin nonsense all the way through. And Bond acts completely and utterly stupidly throughout the majority of the movie.

I find it a little bit of a strain on the credibility of the central protagonist, whether he’s a credible Bond or not, to be able to think a way out of some unbelievably tough traps but at the same time, is unable to keep himself reigned in so he kills every lead he has to the solving of the “spy mystery” element of the story without even stopping to ask them questions. Seriously, why bother to track your leads down if you’re just going to kill them and then, quite by accident, find another clue somewhere else. This seems to me to be really sloppy writing but... I don’t know what those big studio writers have to go through, so maybe this stuff gets re-shaped and gets away from them via studio intervention until the story kinda goes out the window? Again, I’m just guessing here.

And then there’s the editing thing again. I don’t know if it’s the lack of coverage of actual footage or a conscious decision to go with a tougher, more aggressive editing style but the action sequences in this film are confusing to the point where they become an incomprehensible mess for the most part. Peter Hunt was quite successful when he introduced a more aggressive style into the series back in the sixties Bond films but this is just a melange of half shots put together at a pace which seriously jeopardises your ability to read what is going on or, at least, make the metaphorical visual connections to take you into the next shot at the kind of level required to have a coherent reading.

And it’s not just the action scenes that do this in Quantum Of Solace either. There seems to be an abundance of the same sequence shot from multiple different angles and movement speeds in even some quite sedate scenes... to the point where your eye is just flicking around almost randomly on each cut to try to get your bearings in the piece. This is something I didn’t realise could even happen in a movie before but, yep, you can kind of shoot things as such a melange that basic slow shots just don’t work together when they are edited. It’s like the director or editor took the scene five different ways and instead of editing them into something which could easily be understood... just kinda threw everything into the mix and hoped for the best. Now I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings here and I’m guessing this stuff was happening purely because of the shortened editing schedule... but that’s how I perceived things anyway.

There are a few nice things about the movie, of course.

Thing one... it has one of the best Bond songs in a while. It’s different but it doesn’t push the envelope too far away from classic Bond like Madonna’s Die Another Day did... and neither is it so dreary that I couldn’t make it through even one playing of the single version like the Oscar winning Skyfall song was. This one is just a pretty good Bond song, Another Way To Die, and it’s just a shame, since this move actually does have a title that comes from an original Ian Fleming Bond story, that the lyricist couldn’t work in the movie title somewhere... even if it had just been a single mention like in the opening title song to The Spy Who Loved Me.

Arnold’s score tries hard but it doesn’t sparkle like his first two outings. It’s nothing special but it does provide a certain amount of musical continuity with Casino Royale and I’d like to see him have another crack at a Bond score sometime (whether that will happen again, I don’t know, but I’d like to think the producers will call on him again, much like they used to go back to John Barry once in a while).

The other good thing in this film is, simply, Gemma Arterton... in a small role in which she makes her presence truly felt before being wasted in a Goldfinger tribute where she is killed by being covered naked in oil (as opposed to gold). Such a shame because I believe she could have made a good recurring character for the series.

The other notable thing I can think of about this movie is that Jeffrey Wright becomes only the second actor in the series to play the Felix Leiter character for a second time. Wonderful performance but, alas, like Craig’s portrayal of Bond, this incarnation of Leiter is nothing like the one in the novels (I think Jack Lord’s performance in Dr. No kinda hit the nail on the head in that respect).

And that’s all I’ve got to say on this one, I’m afraid. Not a great movie but entertaining enough, if you just let it wash over you without trying to read too much into it.

I’m really glad this is my last Bond movie review for a while. Over the last year I’ve reviewed all the  EON Bonds and, I will get around to taking another look at the four non-EON Bond films sometime in the future for this Blog... but for now I’m done with Bond. But you can take a look at all my Bond reviews by clicking on the relevant titles here...



EON James Bond Movie Reviews on NUTS4R2

Dr. No
From Russia With Love
Goldfinger
Thunderball
You Only Live Twice  
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Diamonds Are Forever
Live And Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun  
The Spy Who Loved Me
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy
A View To A Kill 
The LIving Daylights 
Licence To Kill  
GoldenEye
Tomorrow Never Dies
The World Is Not Enough  
Die Another Day 
Casino Royale
Quantum Of Solace
Skyfall
S.P.E.C.T.R.E

Casino Royale

Card Bored

Casino Royale
2006 UK/Czech Republic/USA/Germany/Bahamas
Directed by Martin Campbell
EON Blu Ray Region A/B/C

Well I always feel a little bit conflicted whenever I watch this film.

It is, of course, the third time that Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale has been adapted - once on TV in 1954 and then again for a big screen spoof version in 1967. This 2006 version, the first to be produced by EON, is the one that troubles me the most because, while it’s certainly a very good film, for me it just doesn’t quite live up to being “a James Bond film” and, given that it’s got a truly delightful script, I find myself even more disappointed by it.

So let’s put the positives up there first... all the actors are great in it, even Daniel Craig (yeah, I’ll get to him in a minute) and the dialogue is pretty good. As are the sets, costumes, lighting, editing... frankly, this movie works really well in a lot of ways. But there are also a lot of things which drag it down to an un-Bondian level too.

Okay, so my biggest disappointment is Daniel Craig and that’s a really unfair thing to say, to be honest, because he’s a fantastic actor and he does really well with the script he’s given. In fact, he couldn’t have done any better... it’s a brilliant performance. However, some roles require the actors to look the part too and Craig doesn’t look like James Bond in any way shape of form. His hair colour is way too light for Bond, for starters. Why the heck didn’t the producers just insist he dye it for the role? I know it’s just a colour but, you know, every little helps. Secondly, I know he pumped up for the part but, honestly, this guy looks like he’s built like a rugby player... and that just seems wrong. I mean, yeah, he absolutely looks like he could handle the situations thrown at him... just not as Bond. He looks too much like a thug and, yes, while I can freely admit, and have argued the point in the past, that Bond is really just a government employed thug... he’s never really looked like one. To be fair to the writers, this is kinda addressed in the script when Judy Dench calls him a blunt instrument and that’s exactly what Bond is... but visually maybe he shouldn’t be.

Now I’m really not having a go at Craig. I even think he may be able to play, not just a brilliant action hero as he does here... but also a good James Bond. But the approach is wrong in this, I think. Not necessarily his fault. For all I know it’s the producers’ doing. And, yeah, I know I’m very much in a minority on this one. I think Craig is absolutely great in this movie... but he’s not inhabiting Bond, just playing a part. And to me that makes Craig as much of an inappropriate choice for the role of Ian Fleming’s well loved character as, oh, I don’t know, right off the top of my head...? Roger Moore. Well, okay, maybe not quite as silly a choice as Roger Moore but, certainly, in the same ball park. He’s definitely my second least favourite of the EON actors in the role... and I really like this guy. So that’s really annoying.

The other big problem I’ve got is that it’s purporting to be an adaptation of the original novel but it misses on so many levels. Now it gets a couple of things right, to be sure. The torture scene, albeit minus the tennis racket, is the most accurate version (although the fifties TV version of a different torture scene seemed somehow more horrific) and there is at least some kind of card game in it. And Bond falls in love. So there you go... that’s three things they got right.

However, they added loads of action scenes, which I don’t blame them for, and it isn’t the first time, but it makes for an adaptation which hits the wrong tone for the book (actually, it’s a weak novel compared to the next couple of novels in the series but, even so, if you state your intention to put Casino Royale up on the screen, then you should maybe make it as sedate as the novel, surely?).

A really big knock, for me, is that they replace Bond’s regular card game, Baccarat Chemin De Fer, with bloody Texas Hold ‘Em Poker. Honestly? How insulting to the character and spirit of Bond can you get? Really stupid. They even run action scenes between the card games. Casino Royale was all about the card game. That was the whole intrigue of the thing.

So for all this, although a blonde American Bond played by Barry Nelson opposite a British “Clarence” Leiter (not Felix Leiter as in the book and in this adaptation here) is way off base, the 1954 version scores big time over this one as being, so far, the straightest adaptation of Casino Royale around. It’s a target this production couldn’t beat and, frankly, it didn’t even look like they were trying to.

One almost Bondian thing, and equally irritating in its “close but no cigar” prowess, is the wonderful composer David Arnold’s score for the movie. The title song really isn’t good but at least it’s on the right track and it has a strong melody line to pilfer, which Arnold enthusiastically utilises in the score. It’s really got some big Barry Bond statements in there but, unbelievably, it’s sadly lacking the full statement of Monty Norman’s original Bond theme until right as the end credits are rolling. Now I know this movie was being seen as a reboot and the theory was that the character earns the theme throughout the movie (there are a couple of small instances where the baseline, at least, is referred to for a short time) but what this actually means is that you have a non-Bond score on something that is already failing to convince me it’s a James Bond film... so this really doesn’t help matters. The gun barrel prelude doesn’t, for the first time since the series started, make it’s traditional appearance before the opening sequence, and this is just another nail in the coffin as far as I’m concerned (one which has been repeated in the series recently and with similar failure).

So there you have it. Great sequences of suspense, intrigue and action. Great actors and actresses (Eve Green’s turn as Vesper is astonishingly good) too. But, for all this, a truly un-Bondian non-event. I wasn’t too impressed by this effort, to be sure but... worse was to come...

EON James Bond Movie Reviews on NUTS4R2

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball

You Only Live Twice  

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Diamonds Are Forever

Live And Let Die

The Man With The Golden Gun  

The Spy Who Loved Me

Moonraker

For Your Eyes Only

Octopussy

A View To A Kill 

The LIving Daylights 

Licence To Kill  

GoldenEye

Tomorrow Never Dies

The World Is Not Enough  

Die Another Day 

Casino Royale

Quantum Of Solace

Skyfall
S.P.E.C.T.R.E

Skyfall

Skyfell

Skyfall
UK/USA 2012
Directed by Sam Mendes
Playing at cinemas now

Skyfell.

But not at the first hurdle.

I think I should probably state here and now that the latest EON Bond movie is actually not a terrible movie. There are some good things in it and I think, well I know actually, that a lot of people will like it. I’m putting this statement up front because I didn’t think that the movie was anywhere near as great as people have been saying and I don’t want people, Bond fans in general, to get the impression that it’s not worth their while seeing. If you’re a fan of the Daniel Craig Bond films then this is probably the best of those to date. Also, I’m pretty sure a Bond movie is fairly review proof when it comes down to whether you’re going to see it so I’m pretty confident that I can give my honest opinion here without worrying anybody isn’t going to see it of the back of this review. I’m getting a fair number of readers on this blog site nowadays but, from the comments some of you leave, you seem to be fairly intelligent readers... so no worries about putting anybody off I reckon.

My personal relationship to James Bond starts very young. In 1973, when I was 5 years old, my parents took me to see Roger Moore’s debut Bond movie, Live And Let Die, at the cinema and I loved it. Even today, while I still think Roger Moore is the least Bond-like of the Bonds, I can still find time to enjoy this one from his era. Since I’d loved this one so much, in between the releases of Live And Let Die and Moore’s second golden shot at the role, The Man With The Golden Gun in 1974, my parents started taking me to various James Bond double bills which were re-released around UK cinemas at this time. So I caught up with the Connery stuff and much preferred it. Roger Moore was already on the decline for me (when I was only a six year old, even I could predict the ending of The Man With The Golden Gun from that stupidly obvious opening set up) and although The Spy Who Loved Me had a cool car and an even cooler Caroline Munro in it, as the Moore Bonds carried on I lost faith in the character and backed off from them. Octopussy had been diabolical and a benchmark for me of Bond awfulness (until I’d seen both Die Another Day and A Quantum Of Solace, which were equally as bad) and I didn’t even bother with A View To A Kill when it first came out (to date, the only Bond film I’ve not seen at the cinema, I believe).

I rediscovered Bond with Timothy Dalton’s excellent debut, The Living Daylights but after the abysmal License To Kill hit the screens I assumed the franchise was dead. I honestly didn’t know anything about the legal wranglings... I just assumed that, even though I loved Dalton in the role, if you make a movie as bad as License To Kill was, even if you’re Bond, your movies wouldn’t be invited back to cinemas anytime soon.

Yeah, okay. I’m naïve.

Somewhere around this time I read all the novels too. They were mostly hit rather than miss (with the odd exception towards the end of Ian Fleming’s career) and so I gained a new layer of respect for just how those first movies were.

When Pierce Brosnan stepped into the role I was really pleased because he was who I’d kept telling people should play James Bond before Dalton got the role. He reminded me of Connery and that was good because, even though my favourite James Bond movie is On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, starring the inimitable ‘Big Fry’ George Lazenby in the role... Connery was a pretty good role model for the part and something the Bond actors had to live up to, in my eyes.

Even Brosnan’s Bond was a little hit and miss. Goldeneye was fantastic, Tomorrow Never Dies was just too action oriented and humorous (and too Roger Moore-like in its execution for me, I think), The World Is Not Enough was almost as cool as Goldeneye and Die Another Day... well that last one was just dead on arrival as far as I’m concerned. An awful movie.

Now I was never okay with the choice of Daniel Craig in the role of Bond. Don’t get me wrong, Craig is a fantastic actor, but something about it wasnt quite Bond for me. Casino Royale was, I guess, kinda okay for a general action movie... just not really hitting the marks for a Bond movie and certainly not as straight to the novel as the original 50s TV adaptation of the book (although a little more faithful than the David Niven version, to be sure). A Quantum Of Solace was... quite bad. The action editing was just completely obscuring whatever the hell was going on and the story seemed to somehow fall short and was, perhaps, overly simplistic (which is saying a lot for a Bond film which generally pride themselves on having simplistic plots as an advantage). So I have to admit to have been not looking forward to seeing Skyfall very much, it has to be said. I waited a week or so after its release and got dragged to the cinema by two people who wanted to go see this one... namely my parents.

Now Skyfall has a lot going for it, it has to be said... but I think that, overall, it falls in the camp of being one of the weaker Bond films to date. The opening sequence (from which I still miss the absence of the gun barrel openings) is pretty good in itself but you will know, just from watching the trailer campaign, that it will leave Bond for dead at the end of it. That being said, the action in general in the whole movie is edited with a certain amount of respect to actually being able to follow it this time around (unlike the last film) and an especially nice touch was the contrast between the sunny location where the action is taking place and the cold offices in London with the rain hammering down.

Actually, the rain gets a special mention here for a nice capper to that last sequence because it does two things rather nicely. One is that it signals the death of Bond, although nobody is going ot believe that, of course, and this wouldn’t be the first time the character ‘died’ in the pre-credits sequence of a movie, they’ve done that a few times now. The other thing it does, though, is to show just how hard it is for operatives who aren’t in the field. As M looks out through rain drenched windows, the contrast between the agents who are ‘out there’ getting death or glory with the bureaucrats who are left behind comes, literally, pounding home. Great use is made of that rain in the early scenes of the film and I was really greatful for it. Is this the first time it’s rained in a Bond film? No, I’m thinking back and my memory is latching onto another rain filled moment from the 80s, but certainly I think it’s never been more effectively utilised here.

Unfortunately, we have a problem right after the pre-credits sequence... it’s called the credits sequence.

They’ve got a not great credits sequence which they’ve managed to prop up ineffectively with what I can only call a pseudo-Bond song. The tragedy of this particular Bond song is that it’s almost, almost there... it’s got a strong voiced singer (someone I’ve not heard of, naturally) but the song’s writers, unfortunately, forgot to write in a strong melody line (not the biggest fan of melody as an element of music but I think a Bond song does need a strong tune) and whats left is a weak foundation, being sung with conviction. Ironically, the last note, literally the very last note, ends exactly as a Bond song should end... but by then it’s too late.

But from that point the movie seems to recover itself for the long haul and becomes a pretty competent action movie. There are less twists than I’d have liked in it. I was waiting for one particular lady to reveal herself as the ‘real villain’ at some point near the finish but the producers have a very different fate in store for her at the end of the movie and I look forward to seeing this actress continue in this role in future movies. A whole host of ‘A Listers’ join Judy Dench and co for this film and all the performances are pretty great from such household names as Ralph Fiennes, Albert Finney and Javier Bardem, and the screenplay isn’t too bad either (not what I’d expect from these writers) in that the title of the movie does have an emotional significance to Bond’s life and, when the title is explained, you realise how clever the psychiatrist near the start of the movie is being. The new head of Q branch is pretty good too, although I would have liked to have seen less damning of the old gadgets from him. Luckily, a surprise gadget reappears in the latter quarter of the movie and is used to the best effect it’s been used in the series since it’s debut in 1964.

The music is kinda worrying. Because director Sam Mendes has a working relationship with composer Thomas Newman, David Arnold, the series’ most regular composer since John Barry’s last score for the series on The Living Daylights, has had to sit this one out, although I understand some of his score from Casino Royale was licensed to track into this one in places to help bolster the music up (not the first time these kinds of shenanigans have occurred in a Bond film) and I have to confess I was a little worried when Newman scores a sequence right at the start where a pocket of light shines on Bonds face with a musical stinger. The age of ‘mickey mousing’ the music to illustrate every on-screen action is alive and well folks... and I have to say it popped me out of the picture straight away. The rest of the score seems competent enough although it’s hard to judge because a lot of it is buried way back in the sound mix. I’ve always referred to Thomas Newman as “the pots and pans man” to my friends because his music seems to me to be very ‘percussion lead’ and there’s a lot of that trademark percussion coming out in the scoring in this one. I’d have to listen to it away from the movie to make a proper call on it but, from what I did hear, I wouldn’t call it a “great Bond score” like I would one of Barry’s scores, or even Arnold's first two scores for the series (he kinda lost it a bit from Die Another Day onwards, it seems to me).

All in all, though, I would have to say that, for me , this Bond film isn’t quite as globe hopping as I’d expect (although I do appreciate the fact that the majority of the film is set in the UK) and while the set piece climax to the movie is quite acceptable, I was kinda hoping for a little more bang for my buck at the end. I was expecting a whole action epilogue but didn’t actually get it, I have to confess.

It seems to me that Skyfall is trying really hard to retain the spirit of Bond while giving it a bit of a jump start so it can go on for a bit longer. It doesn’t really do it for me though... it’s very Bondian in places and in others, not so. Oh, and by the way, there’s still a shaken Martini in it... so everyone can relax on that one. They were drumming up publicity.

Still, it is a fairly decent action film and some Bond fans would possibly be quite correct in saying that this is all that matters. Perhaps they’re right. For myself, I wouldn’t recommend this as a great movie with the kind of vigour that a lot of people seem to be doing right now... but equally, I wouldn’t want to put anyone off if action movies are their thing. But like I said at the start, it doesn’t really matter what I think, these movies are pretty much ‘review proof’, so I’ll leave it at that and say don’t expect too much from it and you can’t be all that disappointed.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (US)

Larsson around!

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo 2011 US

Directed by David Fincher

Screening at UK cinemas.

Warning: Some spoilers about this film

and the Millenium Trilogy in general.

If you’ve read any of my reviews to the previous “native” adaptations of Stieg Larrsson’s phenomenal Millenium Trilogy books, you’ll know how ultimately disappointed I was with the productions... so much so, in fact, that rather than just go with my usual MO and completely ignore the US remake of a film, I decided to give these ones a go in the hopes that they would be more of an adaptation of the original novels and less a remake of their predecessors. I have to say, however, that I was both equally pleased and disappointed by this latest movie by David Fincher.

Now I know a little about adaptation and cinematic shortcuts to facilitate an appreciation of the problems involved when working from a specific piece of source material but, at the same time, when those compromises involve changing the content on which the work of art is based, I have no respect for the artist involved with such a travesty (which is why Lord Of The Rings needs a remake by someone who will do it properly pronto!). So I’ll make this quick with a review conclusion for those of you who have not read the original novel on which this movie is based... The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is an entertaining enough mystery movie which won’t annoy you half as much as it would if you’d have read the original tome.

Now then, there’s good and bad about this new adaptation of the novel but the one wholly positive thing I will say in favour of this US version is that it’s not a remake of the original film (at least as much as I’ve seen of that original version... I’ve only seen the theatrical cuts and not the initial TV editions as yet). This is very much Fincher and the screenwriter going back to the original novel and taking that as something to build from. This is a much more faithful version of the novel than the Swedish version... which really surprised me. Lots of stuff which was missing in the originals was here for me including... Mikael Blomkvist’s sexual arrangements with Erica Berger (although his sexual encounters with a prominent suspect in the case he is working were not included), Lisbeth Salander’s Modesty Blaise-like adventures in embezzlement which lead to the death of Blomkvist’s professional enemy and the misunderstanding/betrayal between her and Blomkvist which leads to her not wanting him as part of her life (a crucial point which was missing from the original movie trilogy and which very much leads to a misunderstood conclusion at the end of the third with audiences who have not read the books) are all present and correct in this version and Fincher is to be applauded by the way that these are all fit into the running time of the movie... although it has to be said the editing is tight. No time for anything other than standard “cause and effect” Hollywoodland editing in service of that preposterous pseudo Holy Grail “the story” I’m afraid.

However, as much as this production team has chosen to include some pretty important points which were conspicuous in their absence from the original versions... it has to be said that there are also some glaring ommissions and negative points in this one too.

Surprisingly, from a film by the likes of Fincher who cut his teeth on the grim and gritty Alien 3 and who has a reputation for making what I could only call “designer bleak” (like Se7en), this seems to me to be a very much dumbed down or softened version of events as depicted in the novel. Blomkvists six month jail sentence, for instance, doesn’t happen in this version... he just gets a hefty fine which kind of changes the tone of certain sequences. Both Salander’s “current” and Berger’s “past” interest in a BDSM lifestyle is also very much absent in anything other than the title sequence (which I’ll have a moan about in a minute). The references to Kalle Blomquist which say everything about how Blomkvist is perceived by the media is also completely excised. Granted the US and UK audiences aren’t as likely to “get” the reference but that’s what cinema is partly here to do, isn’t it? Entertain, educate and illuminate? After all... we “got it” in the books, didn’t we?

The casting in this version doesn’t really seem to be right to me either. Rooney Mara as Salander is probably the most representative of the characters as they are in the novels. She’s no Noomi Rapace but she has a certain quality of her own which she manages to bring to the role in a raw, Salanderish way... so that’s a good, positive thing. But all the other characters, it seems to me, seemed much better served by their Swedish predecessors than as they, at least, look in this version (with the possible exception of Figuerola... we’ll see if Fincher can get himself a stunner of a “muscle-babe” for the third film).

Daniel Craig is, of course, a really excellent actor but, for me, he plays Blomkvist as much too self assured and confident than he is in the books... almost like he’s playing James Bond in a way... which is certainly credible on screen but disturbingly unlike the original character. He’s no cardboard cutout either, and Craig is enough of an actor to play this role... I just don’t believe him as Blomkvist, which is a shame. On the other hand, if you’re not familiar with the original novels then this shouldn’t be a problem for you. However, I did feel that Craig was bringing a certain unnecessary amount of baggage from his 007 role with him when, an actor of this calibre really should have been able to nail the character as slightly more vulnerable. It might have been his direction on set though so I really can’t blame him too much and he does make a convincing on-screen presence.

However, I’m thinking that having the latest 007 in their film must have gone to the producer’s heads on this one. The opening title sequence of this movie is pure James Bond and would certainly not look or sound out of place on any of the recent Bond pictures with it’s curious mixture of heavy rock, fetish wear and girly silhouettes. Where it would look out of place, however, is on a movie like... err.. well this... and it does too. What an inappropriate title sequence for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo! I can’t deny that it’s clever and well designed but... why? It’s just at odds with the atmosphere of both the novel and the movie too (as it happens) and completely killed the mood of the pre-credits sequence while totally failing to set the tone of the movie to come (in much the same way that the “cool and groovy song” over the titles of Hammer’s Moon Zero Two totally fails to set the viewer up for what they are to expect from the film)... that’s a total fail as I’m concerned.

If pushed, I’d have to say that this version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a little more faithful to the novel (although I’d prefer a cross-bred version where the mutually exclusive ommissions were reinstated from the two movies) and possibly a little more entertaining in content... but the atmosphere of the original version is a better match for the subject matter.

Truth be told, though, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is unique in that it’s the only part of the trilogy which can be viewed as a stand-alone story... which makes it very hard to speculate on the success of the next two films in the series. Certainly, if The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest manages to totally miss the story threads represented by Figuerola and Berger as the Swedish original does... I’m really not going to be very happy. All I can say is that I’ll continue to watch the progress of this series with interest and see if the director manages to continue to be as respectful of the source material as this one is... Blomkvist’s prison sentence and sexual exploits notwithstanding.

For reviews of the original Millennium Trilogy movies... please check them out here...

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

The Girl Who Played With Fire

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest

Cowboys And Aliens

The Good, The Bad

and The Alien

Cowboys & Aliens 2011 USA

Directed by Jon Favreau

Screening at UK cinemas

Warning: Okay, there’s a couple of spoilers here involving the end of the movie and some characters dying... Proceed with caution and the odd “Yeehaw!”

You know, I really like Jon Favreau as a director... I loved the Iron Man films, the first of which is an absolute text book study of how to do a comic book adaptation right and hit all the right notes with both the fans of the original characters and the general public at large. And who doesn’t love him as an actor? The absurd but tough fat man with a heart of gold personality he oozes into such characters as Foggy Nelson in Daredevil and Tony Stark’s bodyguard in his own Iron Man movies is an absolute joy to watch... probably also in his many comedy roles which I’ve yet to see (most of the kinds of movies he’s in aren’t really my cup of tea).

All the same though, I was worried about Cowboys & Aliens from the outset. I’ll give you a warning right now that I’ve not read the original graphic novel on which this movie is based but I have just read a synopsis of what happens in that one and I have to say that if I was a fan of the original work... then I’d probably hate Cowboys & Aliens with a passion. It looks like, not only are the characters not used, but it seems like an entirely different story too. The one link seems to be they both have Cowboys & Aliens in it. Probably didn’t need to credit the source for the idea at all I would have thought... but then again, I haven't read it so I don’t actually know.

But like I said... I was worried anyway because I knew Favreau had just quit working on John Carter of Mars and handed over to another director for another shot at it (and I believe after seeing this movie that it’s much to our disadvantage that he didn’t stay with John Carter of Mars because I’ve seen the trailer for that and it looks like a horrendous kick in the teeth of disrespect to Edgar Rice Burroughs' original characters) and the development time on this one seemed to be rather quick. But you gotta love the title. And so I was still keenly looking forward to it... until the first trailers hit. Man, they were bad. This film looked like a total mess if the trailers were anything to go by.

Also, the general buzz on the reviews and the comments I’d seen about this movie on Twitter really did nothing to make me want to see this one. Did anyone like this movie? As a result of all this, it’s taken me this long, which is about three or four weeks into its run, to actually bother to get myself to the cinema to see it. But it looks like it’s on the way out and I did enjoy that first Iron Man movie a lot so I thought I’d give it a go. I sat there last night in a darkened cinema, waiting to be bored out of my mind by a two hour drudge fest and, I have to level with you here and now... I had a great time with this movie.

Everything was right with this movie in the general broad areas of it’s initial paint brush strokes to give us a portrayal of a “hard man” with amnesia on an unspecified mission in the Old West. I was somewhat surprised at the way Daniel Craig played this role. In the opening sequence, where he finds himself alone in the dessert with a funny wrist band which he can’t get off, we are treated to a veritable smorgasbord of facial expressions which seemed to me, with my limited appreciation of the art of acting, to be a little clumsy. But, while I think the reality of the role was not quite there with him, it would also be true to say that he excelled in the tough man, ruthlessness part of the job. Despite what I personally saw as wooden acting for just a little while, he still manages to come off pretty strong against heavyweights Harrison Ford and Sam Rockwell so one can't really fault his performance. It’s a larger than life role after all.

This film went into Western cliché territory very quickly... and that’s just fine. You don't have time with this kind of genre cross-pollination kind of movie to do anything but use all your movie shorthand to get things across quickly. The opening half an hour was absolutely riveting but I’d already been told that. I’d also been told that once the aliens arrive... the whole movie goes to pot. Not true. When the aliens arrive it just kicks up in to high gear even more and moves, yeah slightly away from the Western iconography perhaps, but really makes for a nice ride of an action movie. Although it’s got some heavyweight actors in this, it’s by no means a “star vehicle” but actually a nice ensemble piece with some good chemistry going between the leads and the supporting cast. A real pleasure to watch and the aliens, for once in this kind of movie, are really nicely designed. They are quite terrifying and make for a really serious and potent threat to the main protagonists.

The cherry on the cake is, of course, Harry Gregson-Williams full-on, engaging score. I’ve never been his greatest fan, it has to be said, but he really knocks it out the ball park on this one. A broad, fluffy Western score in the Americana mode but with mild but obvious nods to the Spaghetti Western style of scoring... it still feels very much like a modern soundtrack scored with musical styles which are very much about what’s going on now with movie scoring (yeah, I mean that positively okay? Movie music isn’t dying out as much as everybody thinks it is.). Kinda the Old West meets light Techno would be my best description of it. It’s also very prominently mixed into the foreground of the soundtrack too... some movie makers might like to make a note of that.

I’ve been trying to wonder why this film has had such a lacklustre critical reception and I’m wondering now if that isn’t to do with the female element of the movie. There are two female characters in this film who are romantic figures to Daniel Craig’s anti-hero character and both of them meet with violent ends with no hope of survival... even though one of them has already been seen to resurrect herself after death with her cool alien powers. Also, this self-healing woman kinda usurps both Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford’s manly roles in the movie by sacrificing her own life to save the day, and mankind, by totally destroying the invading, alien menace. No bad thing and a big blow struck for female empowerment but maybe the genre expectations from the audience of this kind of female led resolution were reacting in a less than satisfied manner. I don’t know and I can’t speak for anyone else but, personally, I loved it.

My one complaint on this movie was that I felt it was just a little overlong. It didn’t drag really but there were a few places in the long action sequences near the end when I was thinking, yeah I’ve already seen that... I don’t need to see it again. Maybe a little judicious pruning throughout, taking it down from a two hour film to a 90 minute movie would have been a little better for it.

Still, it was entertaining enough to not let the length hamstring it too much and I would definitely recommend this movie to any fence-sitters out there who can’t quite make up their mind whether or not to go and see it and are up for a rollicking good action flick. This is definitely worth the time!