Bond: a dissenting opinion
Nov. 29th, 2006 11:17![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
viktor_haagMost of the people I know have now seen "Casino Royale" and have not just found pleasure in it, but have actually enthused about it.
Alas, I'm more of the opinion that the new Bond film was mostly flash but with very little in the way of substance. This is an improvement over other recent Bond vehicles, but that doesn't make it a very good movie. Because, it just isn't.
• Judi Densch managed to do more with less in this film than just about anything else I can recall seeing her in. Some of her dialog was achingly bad, and yet in true career-British-actor form she brought a level of professionalism to the role that held up her end of the project.
• Daniel Craig has depth, nastiness, and is a close match to the original Bond character, and he's not a bad actor. However, he's got that "pursed lips" thing going on that just makes me want to smack him in the head after about 20 seconds (this is, frankly, a disease that's going around Hollywood at the moment: who can we blame for starting this odious bit of physical characterization?).
• Mads Mikkelsen was passable as Le Chiffre, but he didn't bring much in the way of range to the role. Except during the torture scene, when his range ventured to mostly snarling and getting covered with fake sweat makeup.
• Eva Green was, to put not too fine a point on it, horrible. Wooden, unresponsive, and with an accent that wandered all over Southern England. Feh. This was a meaty role: could we not have found somebody with some chops for the role? How about Iben Hjejle, for example (yes, I know she's not English; neither is Green), or Caroline Catz (yes, I know she's a TV actress)? Either one would have been better, in my book, than Green.
• Giannini sleepwalked through his role as Mathis and his exposition during the poker scenes was mind-bogglingly out of place (and, a tip to the film writers, if you're going to include a game-as-action sequence in a movie, it would help immensely to see how (a) others have done it effectively in the past (see Searching For Bobby Fischer), and (b) to know at least something about how the actual game is played at that level in the Real World(tm)).
• Was the ridiculous swiss banker there for comic effect only? Or did he actually suit a useful purpose? His second appearance in the film felt alarmingly out of place.
• The plot had huge holes in it that just didn't add up. The film's ending left a pong of sequel to an unheard of extent within the franchise. The pacing was herky-jerky, uneven, and muddled. There was little in the way of overall unity in character, plot, or presentation to the movie. (When we're presented with the admittedly spectacular free-running action sequence in the first twenty minutes of the film, why are all those physical skills on display entirely ignored for the rest of the film? When you show such stylish choices in camera angles, film stock, and set design in the first three minutes, why then do you fall back on such pedestrian choices later in the film? Why are there so many phony devices to keep Densch onscreen, such as Bond's use of her account from a remote location: why should/would he bother? There was absolutely nothing about the airport sequence that made sense, at all, except as a lame device to connect the dots back to Le Chiffre. We all know (or could easily figure out) who Mr White is working for, so why the hell be so coy with the audience: more false tension, I suppose?)
• The film was badly edited. The continuity of Bond's state of health was not at all carefully maintained. Sometimes there were moments where his visible level of injury changed from shot to shot in the same scene: Look! His hands are all scarred up! No! They're not! Look, his face is scratched up! Look as his mighty healing powers remove the scratches! If he can heal up scratches and mashed hands in a few hours, then why does he spend so long in a sanitorium after having his goolies paddled three times?
If Bond films are supposed to be nothing more than exercises in car-porn, gadget-porn, fashion-porn, and extremely-soft-core-hardbody-porn, then can you please just be true to yourself and serve up the goods? Instead, in a vain attempt to be "relevant", "gritty", and "true to the source", we get a confused mish-mosh that's not really relevant, gritty, or particularly true to the source in any way more than a passing acquaintance. And it's light on all the afore-mentioned porns, to boot.
Why do people like this movie? The only possible answer I can come up with is that it represents complete banality in a package that's above the quality level of the previous dreck shovelled out by the franchise. Rather than drop huge slatherings of crap on the audience, it doles it out in parsimonious amounts. It's MacDonalds-does-nouvelle-cuisine, folks. Just because it's not "super-sized" doesn't mean it ain't fast food.
Here are just two ideas that would have produced a significantly better film:
• If the entire film had been shot in the style of the first five minutes
• If the nod to "back to source" had been more than a passing nod: if the movie had been faithful to the book and set in the original time period
I'm not sure either experiment would have been as "accessible", but for my part, I feel a bit ripped off by this cynical vehicle for "we've done it right this time, really" marketing. Let's see more Bourne movies, please -- they, too, were flawed (especially the second with its Bond-esque chase sequence through the streets of Moscow, and it's shrieking-180-personality-transplanted Julia Styles character), but they were both much more enjoyable than anything the Bond franchise has produced in a long, long time.
Alas, I'm more of the opinion that the new Bond film was mostly flash but with very little in the way of substance. This is an improvement over other recent Bond vehicles, but that doesn't make it a very good movie. Because, it just isn't.
• Judi Densch managed to do more with less in this film than just about anything else I can recall seeing her in. Some of her dialog was achingly bad, and yet in true career-British-actor form she brought a level of professionalism to the role that held up her end of the project.
• Daniel Craig has depth, nastiness, and is a close match to the original Bond character, and he's not a bad actor. However, he's got that "pursed lips" thing going on that just makes me want to smack him in the head after about 20 seconds (this is, frankly, a disease that's going around Hollywood at the moment: who can we blame for starting this odious bit of physical characterization?).
• Mads Mikkelsen was passable as Le Chiffre, but he didn't bring much in the way of range to the role. Except during the torture scene, when his range ventured to mostly snarling and getting covered with fake sweat makeup.
• Eva Green was, to put not too fine a point on it, horrible. Wooden, unresponsive, and with an accent that wandered all over Southern England. Feh. This was a meaty role: could we not have found somebody with some chops for the role? How about Iben Hjejle, for example (yes, I know she's not English; neither is Green), or Caroline Catz (yes, I know she's a TV actress)? Either one would have been better, in my book, than Green.
• Giannini sleepwalked through his role as Mathis and his exposition during the poker scenes was mind-bogglingly out of place (and, a tip to the film writers, if you're going to include a game-as-action sequence in a movie, it would help immensely to see how (a) others have done it effectively in the past (see Searching For Bobby Fischer), and (b) to know at least something about how the actual game is played at that level in the Real World(tm)).
• Was the ridiculous swiss banker there for comic effect only? Or did he actually suit a useful purpose? His second appearance in the film felt alarmingly out of place.
• The plot had huge holes in it that just didn't add up. The film's ending left a pong of sequel to an unheard of extent within the franchise. The pacing was herky-jerky, uneven, and muddled. There was little in the way of overall unity in character, plot, or presentation to the movie. (When we're presented with the admittedly spectacular free-running action sequence in the first twenty minutes of the film, why are all those physical skills on display entirely ignored for the rest of the film? When you show such stylish choices in camera angles, film stock, and set design in the first three minutes, why then do you fall back on such pedestrian choices later in the film? Why are there so many phony devices to keep Densch onscreen, such as Bond's use of her account from a remote location: why should/would he bother? There was absolutely nothing about the airport sequence that made sense, at all, except as a lame device to connect the dots back to Le Chiffre. We all know (or could easily figure out) who Mr White is working for, so why the hell be so coy with the audience: more false tension, I suppose?)
• The film was badly edited. The continuity of Bond's state of health was not at all carefully maintained. Sometimes there were moments where his visible level of injury changed from shot to shot in the same scene: Look! His hands are all scarred up! No! They're not! Look, his face is scratched up! Look as his mighty healing powers remove the scratches! If he can heal up scratches and mashed hands in a few hours, then why does he spend so long in a sanitorium after having his goolies paddled three times?
If Bond films are supposed to be nothing more than exercises in car-porn, gadget-porn, fashion-porn, and extremely-soft-core-hardbody-porn, then can you please just be true to yourself and serve up the goods? Instead, in a vain attempt to be "relevant", "gritty", and "true to the source", we get a confused mish-mosh that's not really relevant, gritty, or particularly true to the source in any way more than a passing acquaintance. And it's light on all the afore-mentioned porns, to boot.
Why do people like this movie? The only possible answer I can come up with is that it represents complete banality in a package that's above the quality level of the previous dreck shovelled out by the franchise. Rather than drop huge slatherings of crap on the audience, it doles it out in parsimonious amounts. It's MacDonalds-does-nouvelle-cuisine, folks. Just because it's not "super-sized" doesn't mean it ain't fast food.
Here are just two ideas that would have produced a significantly better film:
• If the entire film had been shot in the style of the first five minutes
• If the nod to "back to source" had been more than a passing nod: if the movie had been faithful to the book and set in the original time period
I'm not sure either experiment would have been as "accessible", but for my part, I feel a bit ripped off by this cynical vehicle for "we've done it right this time, really" marketing. Let's see more Bourne movies, please -- they, too, were flawed (especially the second with its Bond-esque chase sequence through the streets of Moscow, and it's shrieking-180-personality-transplanted Julia Styles character), but they were both much more enjoyable than anything the Bond franchise has produced in a long, long time.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-29 16:49 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-29 20:02 (UTC)