Never Say Never Again (1983)

Never Say Never Again, released in 1983, is the movie that saw Sean Connery back in the rôle of James Bond twelve years after Diamonds Are Forever. The story of how this movie came about is more interesting than the movie itself but we’ll get to that later.

This is of course a remake of Thunderball which had been the most comercially successful of all the Bond films.

SPECTRE have hatched a plot to steal two American thermonuclear warheads. They naturally intend to use the warheads to blackmail the governments of just about every country on the planet.

Bond meanwhile has been sent to a health farm. There’s a new M in charge of the Secret Service and he’s a health nut. He also disapproves of the unconventional methods of the Double-0 section. Bond witnesses an odd scene at the health farm - one of the female nurses beating up a make patient.

By now SPECTRE’s threat has forced M to recall Bond to duty and send him to the Bahamas. I confess I wasn’t clear why the Bahamas was chosen as his destination.

Bond encounters a beautiful glamorous young woman improbably named Fatima Blush (Barbara Carrera). They go scuba diving together, they have sex and she tries to kill him. The audience already knows she’s an assassin working for Maximillian Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer). Largo is the SPECTRE agent in charge of the nuclear plot.

Bond meets another beautiful young woman, Domino (Kim Basinger in the rôle that made her a star). There’s a curious connection between Domino and that odd incident Bond witnessed at the health farm. Domino is Largo’s mistress. Largo has a huge yacht on which he keeps his many valuable and beautiful possessions and he certainly regards Domino as a possession. Largo is not pleased when he sees Domino being kissed by Bond and obviously enjoying it.

Largo’s yacht is one of the keys to the solution of the puzzle of the present whereabouts of those warheads. Domino is another. Fatima Blush makes numerous attempts to kill Bond. The story builds to an action finale in a series of desert caverns.

The story of this film starts in 1958 when Ian Fleming wrote a screenplay in collaboration with several other writers, most notably Kevin McClory. The screenplay failed to attract any interest so Fleming turned it into a novel with the title Thunderball. And as a result was sued by Kevin McClory. The rather complicated legal settlement allowed McClory to act as producer on the film version of Thunderball but it also allowed him to make further film adaptations of the novel after ten years had elapsed.

By the late 70s McClory had managed to interest Sean Connery in starring in a new film version, which would become Never Say Never Again. This resulted in more legal battles with Eon Films (the makers of all the other Bond films) determined to prevent the making of a rival Bond film which they believed would damage the box office prospects of their own Bond films. They had Octopussy scheduled for release in 1983 so their concern was understandable. The upshot of the court battles was that Never Say Never Again could be made quite legally, but only under certain conditions. It had to be based directly on the Nobel and could not utilise any ideas from the 1965 Thunderball movie. That caused lots of problems when it came to writing a screenplay and many different writers worked on that screenplay. Eventually a workable script was prepared and shooting began.

The script is not the problem with Never Say Never Again, but it’s a movie that does have a lot of problems.

First off, the music by Michel Legrand is awful and the title song is instantly forgettable. The second problem is Connery. Connery was far and away the best screen Bond because he brought a real edge to his performances that no other actor has even come close to achieving and combined this with a subtly tongue-in-cheek approach. Unfortunately in Never Say Never Again that edge is missing. Connery’s performance, surprisingly, is rather lifeless. He also looks too old. He was actually slightly younger than Roger Moore but he looks older. Connery was 52 but at times he looks 62.

The third problem was studio cost-cutting. Director Irvin Kershner had a couple of very cool gadgets planned for the movie, most notably the flying motorcycle. The studio decided that was too expensive. That’s unfortunate because we get this huge buildup to the unveiling of the secret weapon Bond has stored in a crate but when it’s uncrated it’s basically just an ordinary common and garden motorcycle. The flying rocket platforms are a major letdown as well. The gadgets in this movie are truly lame.

It would have been better to do what was done in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and dispense with gadgets altogether and rely on spectacular stunts. That worked in OHMSS because the action scenes in that movie were superb. The action scenes in Never Say Never Again are rather feeble. OK, the underwater sequence with the sharks is pretty good.

Irvin Kershner claimed that he wanted to focus on the characters rather than action. That’s a valid approach for a spy movie, but in order for it to work you need some interesting divided loyalties and some potential betrayals. There’s none of that here.

The one real plus is Barbara Carrera. She’s sexy and deadly and sadistic and huge amounts of fun.

Kim Basinger looks very pretty. Klaus Maria Brandauer is an OK villain. Edward Fox is amusing as M. Rowan Atkinson adds comic relief as a bumbling Foreign Office flunkey.

Overall Never Say Never Again just never catches fire. It’s not a terrible movie but it’s no more than a very average spy thriller and people expect a lot more from a Bond movie. Maybe worth a look if you’re a Bond completist.

Dr No (1962), Blu-Ray review

Dr No, the first of the Bond films, was released in 1962 and the spy movie would never be the same again.

Spy movies had been popular for years of course. North by Northwest had been a huge hit for Alfred Hitchcock just three years earlier. The differences in style and approach between North by Northwest and Dr No really are startling. North by Northwest is full of implied sexuality but the sexual elements in Dr No are more overt. Bond bedding one of Dr No’s female agents is simply taken for granted - such casual sexual encounters treated quite openly were something new. The violence in Dr No might be tame by later standards but it’s much more overt than anything in Hitchcock’s film.

And Bond was a whole new type of movie spy. Prior to this villains were allowed to be ruthless but a ruthless killer as hero was something quite new. There’s a scene in which one of the bad guys is quite defenceless. His gun is out of ammo and Bond knows this, but Bond casually shoots him anyway, and then shoots him again to finish him off. Movie spy heroes simply didn’t do such things before Dr No.

There’s also the sense of outrageousness (which is present in the Bond novels) which was something new to the spy movie. Previous movie spies were usually tying to get their hands on secret documents or secret formulae but Dr No adds a new ingredient - an outlandish plot for world domination. Ian Fleming had been heavily influenced by Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu novels, which invariably involve a threat to Civilisation As We Know It, but spy movies hadn’t dealt very much with such ideas prior to the Bond movies.

And of course there’s the subtly tongue-in-cheek feel, which was another innovation in a spy movie.

There are a few changes from the novel but they’re mostly fairly minor. In the book Dr No’s fortune is based on guano harvesting - there’s a surprising amount of money in bird poo. In the film it’s bauxite mining. Dr No’s master plan is revealed earlier in the film, which is understandable because it immediately establishes that the movie is dealing with space-age technology. CIA agent Felix Leiter (Jack Lord) is added to the story for no obvious reason other than perhaps to give the movie a more transatlantic feel. Honey’s bizarre backstory from the novel is dropped in favour of something more conventional.

The action finale is different. Fleming’s version is perhaps more fun but it would not have been sufficiently cinematic. The movie needed something more spectacular.

Overall however the plot is fairly close to that of the novel. Bond is sent to Jamaica to investigate the disappearance of MI6’s Head of Station there. Bond has reason to think there’s a connection with odd happenings connected with the island of Crab Key, just to the north of Jamaica. And to the mysterious and secretive Dr No, the owner of that island.

With a Cayman Islander named Quarrel (who works for Felix Leiter) Bond sets off for Crab Key. Maybe he’ll get to see with Dr No’s dragon which has terrified all the locals so that they won’t go near the island.

And of course we have the celebrated iconic scene of Ursula Andress as Honey Rider, emerging from the sea. Not naked, as she is in the book, but definitely memorable in a bikini.

Bond and Honey do encounter the dragon, and they end up in Dr No’s vast secret headquarters. Dr No has plans for dealing with these interlopers. And Bond awaits his chance to turn the tables on Dr No, if he lives long enough.

Fleming’s Bond novels had changed the face of spy fiction, adding (by early 1950s standards) a lot more sex violence but also adding a hint of cruelty, and a great deal more glamour. It was fairly obvious to the producers that the movie adaptation of Dr No would have to do the same thing for the spy movie. It would have to redefine the genre. That process starts with Maurice Binder’s opening titles sequence (the first of many he would do for the Bond films) which immediately lets us know that this movie is going to be something new and exciting.

Terence Young’s approach as director, Peter Hunt’s approach to the editing and Ken Adam’s production design all reinforce the impression that this is a new kind of spy movie, faster and more viscerally exciting and more outrageous than anything seen before. And with a whole new type of spy hero, one who has no compunction about killing people in cold blood.

Sean Connery was an almost unknown and very raw actor but his rawness helps. It gives his performance a real edge. Bond can be smooth and sophisticated but he can be brutal and ruthless and Connery conveys both sides of Bond’s character with total conviction.

Dr No also established several precedents that would be followed not only by subsequent Bond movies but by countless imitations - the spectacular finale with lots of explosions and the elaborate secret headquarters of the Bond Villain. Interestingly in this film Bond doesn’t make use of any gadgets but Dr No’s headquarters has enough high technology to make up for this.

The budget was quite low but the movie looks like it cost four or five times as much as it did - it’s not how much money you have to spend, what matters is having the right people with the necessary talent and imagination. Later Bond movies would have much bigger budgets but they would still rely on talent and imagination.

Dr No was of course a major success. It was not just a terrific movie, it was a movie that was perfectly in tune with the zeitgeist of the 60s. In fact it helped to define that zeitgeist. You could argue that Dr No was the first truly 1960s movie.

It looks great on Blu-Ray. My copy is from the Blu-Ray boxed set which includes all the Bond movies up to and including Spectre. It cost me a hundred bucks, which for 24 Bond movies on Blu-Ray is pretty impressive value.

Dr No isn’t just a great spy movie, it’s one of the most influential spy movies of all time and it’s highly recommended.

I recently reviewed Fleming's Dr No novel on Vintage Pop Fictions.

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), Blu-Ray review

The Man with the Golden Gun was released in 1974 and it’s not one of the more admired Bond movies. Following a discussion on a recent post here (my review of A View to a Kill) I’ve decided it’s time to revisit this one. The fact that I now own the Blu-Ray release was another reason to do so.

This is the fourth and last of director Guy Hamilton’s four Bond movies, which include Goldfinger, the somewhat underrated Diamonds Are Forever and Live and Let Die.

Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) is a legendary assassin who charges a cool million dollars a hit. His trademark (apart from the fact that he’s the very best in his business) is that he always uses golden bullets. Now it appears that his next target is to be James Bond. He admires Bond and killing him will be the ultimate challenge.

Trying to avoid Scaramanga would be futile. He’s simply too good. Bond’s only hope is to find Scaramanga before Scaramanga finds him. He has almost nothing to go on. No photograph of Scaramanga exists. His present whereabouts are unknown. There is no way of knowing the identity of the client who has hired him to kill Bond.

The one hope is a belly dancer in Beirut. She was with 002 when he was killed by Scaramanga. At least it is assumed that Scaramanga was the assassin. Since the bullet was not recovered this supposition was never confirmed. Perhaps that belly dancer knows what happened to the bullet.

Bond’s search takes him to Macau and Hong Kong, then to Thailand and eventually to Scaramanga’s island. With of course plenty of action on the way - a boat chase, a car chase and a pretty decent fight scene pitting Bond against some martial arts experts who are very good, but not quite good enough.

This time Bond has two assistants, a Hong Kong police detective named Hip (Soon-Tek Oh) and a Miss Mary Goodnight, a charming young lady from the British Secret Service. Miss Goodnight manages to get herself captured but she also manages to plant a homing device that will lead Bond to her, and she manages to get hold of the device that is the key to the whole adventure so on the whole she’s not wholly incompetent.

My first impression of this movie is that it’s trying to be a bit more risqué and a little bit more harder-edged than previous Bond movies. There’s an early nude scene with Maud Adams, obscured by a shower door but she’s clearly naked. And Bond then proceeds to slap her around. Interestingly enough this is getting much closer to the Bond of Ian Fleming’s novels than you normally expect in a Bond movie. There are definite touches of sadomasochism in Fleming’s novels (which may have reflected the author’s own sexual tastes). What’s even more interesting is that Roger Moore (a much better actor than he was ever given credit for) is quite convincing as this tougher crueler Bond.

Of course there’s more than a hint of sadism in Scaramanga’s character, especially in the scene where he uses his gun in some sex play with Maud Adams.

While there are of course many comic moments (some provided by the return of Sheriff J.W. Popper from Live and Let Die) this is overall a darker Bond film, with Roger Moore mostly playing things pretty straight. And Scaramanga is not just a Bond villain, he is a brutal and ruthless killer who enjoys killing very much indeed.

One weakness is the lame solar energy plot. You want a Bond villain to be aiming at world domination, not cornering the market on better solar hot water heaters. In fact that’s the major flaw to the movie - it’s just not ambitious enough or outrageous enough or on a big enough scale for a Bond movie. The final duel between 007 and Scaramanga also seems rather abbreviated (although it is a nice echo of the pre-credits sequence).

There are some gadgets (there’s a flying car and there’s the solar energy gun) but mostly the focus is on the duel between Bond and Scaramanga and that’s going to be settled by their respective skills as killers. This is is a movie in which 007’s skills in that department are absolutely central.

Scaramanga’s island hideaway is pretty cool but it’s the only really spectacular set and it’s not on the scale of some of the more outlandish sets in previous movies in the cycle. On the other hand the tilted sets in the capsized Queen Elizabeth (where M has his Hong Kong headquarters) and Scaramanga’s funhouse are clever and imaginative.

There’s certainly no shortage of glamourous ladies in this movie. We get both Maud Adams (as Scaramanga’s girlfriend) and Britt Ekland as British agent Mary Goodnight. Miss Ekland is actually very good, she shows a flair for light comedy and it’s amusing to have a Bond girl who just never seems to actually end up in Bond’s bed. Her generally light-hearted personality contrasts well with Maud Adams’ very serious approach.

If you judge it simply as a spy thriller it’s quite decent, but The Man with the Golden Gun is a bit low-key for a Bond film. This probably explains its relatively poor box office and certainly explains why the producers decided that the next Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me, was going to be a much bigger film. It also undoubtedly explains why Roger Moore’s performances in the next couple of films were more extravagant and light-hearted.

What is noticeable about the Roger Moore Bond films is that they’re not only variable in quality but also quite varied in tone and approach. They seem to veer between delirious comic-book extravagance and camp outrageousness on the one hand and attempts to capture the more realistic and slightly dark spy thriller feel of the novels.

Still, you can’t dislike a movie in which Britt Ekland’s bottom plays a crucial part in the plot (almost getting her killed and Bond along with her). The Man with the Golden Gun is enjoyable enough. Recommended.

A View to a Kill (1985)

A View to a Kill is the Bond movie everybody hates. There are plenty of people who will tell you it’s the worst of all the Bond films. It does have its problems but actually it’s nowhere near as bad as its reputation would suggest.

It’s true that Roger Moore was, in his own words, about 400 years too old to be playing the part once again, for the seventh and last time. But he’s still Roger Moore. He still has the charm.

The plot is a stock standard Bond plot. MI6 have discovered that there’s this super-villain planning something really big but they’re not sure exactly what it is. Bond has to find out. To do that he has to get close to the villain by insinuating himself into the villain’s inner circle. Then Bond will conduct a low-level psychological guerrilla war against the villain, getting him angry enough to make a few mistake. Then Bond destroys him and saves the world.

In this case the super villain is (as in so many Bond movies) a crazed industrialist. Max Zorin (Christopher Walken) is obsessed with horse racing, oil wells, computer chips and world domination. He’s the result of a Nazi science experiment intended to produce geniuses. He is a genius but he’s totally unhinged and psychopathic. Bond gets close to him by posing as a possible purchaser of one of Zorin’s super horses (also the result of an experiment by a crazy Nazi scientist).

On this case, unusually, Bond is given a sidekick. The fun part is that the sidekick is played by Patrick Macnee, posing as Bond’s chauffeur/valet. Macnee was even older than Moore but they make an amusing and effective team.

The biggest problem with this movie is that at 131 minutes it’s much too long. There’s nothing particularly wrong with the first half of the movie except that there’s too much of it and it’s too slow. At about the halfway point the pacing picks up dramatically, the plot starts to become more interesting and we get some pretty decent action sequences. The fire engine chase is particularly good and the action climax with the blimp is justly famous. The taxi chase early on is also terrific.

Peter Lamont was art director or production designer on most of the Bond movies from the early 70s up to the first decade of the 21st century. He could always be relied upon and does his usual fine job here. So A View to a Kill looks good.

Christopher Walken is an interesting Bond villain. He’s definitely creepy although perhaps he needed to make Zorin a bit more larger-than-life. Tanya Roberts as the Bond girl has been much criticised. I don’t know why. She’s not much of an actress but she does what she needs to do, which mainly consists of looking terrific (which she does extremely well) and getting rescued by Bond. As far as the cast is concerned the standout is Grace Jones as May Day, Zorin’s girlfriend and chief henchwoman. She looks bizarre, crazy and scary which is obviously why she was picked for the rôle. She’s actually much scarier and more sinister than Zorin.

The pre-credits action scene with the infamous snowboarding to the sounds of a cover version of California Girls has been accused of excessive silliness. It is silly, but silliness and campiness were things that you just have to accept in Bond films of this era. What’s interesting (and very pleasing) is that once that sequence is out of the way the silliness and campiness disappear and the rest of the movie has a slightly serious if mildly tongue-in-cheek tone that is closer to classic Bond.

Mention should be made of Duran Duran’s pretty good title song which also hits the right tone for a proper Bond movie.

If you compare it to another much-disliked Bond movie, the lamentable Die Another Day, which I reviewed here recently then A View to a Kill doesn’t seem too bad. At least, unlike Die Another Day, it feels like a proper Bond movie.

With a bit of tightening up in the first half and with a bit more energy and enthusiasm from Moore and Walken this could have been a very good Bond movie.

Die Another Day (2002)

Die Another Day was the last of the Pierce Brosnan Bond movies and the first 21st century Bond movie. You might think it would be impossible to make a Bond movie in the 21st century. Watching this movie would strongly suggest that you’re right.

Interestingly enough in this movie the pre-credits sequence in which Bond is causing mayhem in North Korea is actually part of the main plot, or at least it is an important prologue to the main plot. Bond is captured and spends fourteen months in a North Korean prison. When he is released he finds that MI6 no longer trusts him and no longer wants him. He isn’t pleased about this and he goes rogue. He is convinced that he was betrayed by a mole inside MI6 and he wants revenge. The trail initially leads him to Havana, to a secret medical clinic. He encounters Kickass Action Heroine Jinx (Halle Berry). But to track down the mole he will have to go to to London. There he runs into the villain of the piece, supercilious upper-class business tycoon Gustave Grimes, and he will follow him to his ice palace in Iceland. Lots of action ensues.

It’s probably fair to deal with the film’s strengths first. The action scenes are spectacular. Some are a bit silly but a touch of self-parody in the action scenes has been par for the course in Bond movies since the 70s so that’s no great problem. The highlight of the movie is the sword-fighting scene between Bond and the villain. Sword-fights are the oldest of all action movie clichés but this one has an extraordinary intensity and physicality that makes the cliché seem fresh. The hovercraft battle is original and exciting.

There are enough explosions and gun battles to satisfy any reasonable person.

Some of the gadgets are also on the slightly silly side, like the camouflaged Aston Martin, but again it’s no problem since this is expected in a Bond film.

The sets, by Peter Lamont, are generally superb. Any Bond Villain worth his salt has to have a cool secret headquarters and the ice palace qualifies nicely (and it’s used to excellent effect). The mysterious clinic and the secret MI6 headquarters are terrific as well.

Gustav Grimes is a very serviceable Bond Villain. Toby Stephens plays him as an arrogant public school bully and he puts plenty of enthusiasm into his performance. John Cleese is fun as Q.

They’re the good things in Die Another Day.

Now we come to the problems. Firstly, the CGI effects are not good. The scenes on the aircraft at the end could have been fun but they look very very fake. The space scenes look cheap and fake. The disappearing Aston Martin provokes laughter rather than wonder.

Not one but two Kickass Action Heroines have been added to assist Bond, champion fencer and MI6 agent Miranda Frost and Jinx. Jinx threatens to take over the film. Now the essence of the Bond character is that he’s a loner. He works alone because nobody can work with him. He’s not a team player. He’s a loose cannon. MI6 tolerates him, reluctantly, because he gets results.

There is a standard Bond formula. We know who the villain is right from the start. MI6 knows as well. Bond’s invariable approach is to get close to the villain (whether the villain likes it or not) and get right up his nose. Put as much pressure on the villain as possible and sooner or later he’ll make a mistake and Bond will destroy him. To do all this Bond neither needs nor wants a sidekick. All the Jinx character manages to do is distract us from the plot, slow things down (and it’s a movie that is already way too long) and shift the focus away from Bond. She’s a completely unnecessary character and she serves no plot purpose whatsoever.

It doesn’t help that Halle Berry and Rosamund Pike (as Miranda) are rather dull and their characters are uninteresting. Actually that’s probably just as well since Pierce Brosnan’s performance is bland and colourless. His Bond seems old and tired. Brosnan was nearly 50 when he made this movie. Of course Roger Moore was much older (and fatter) when he was still playing Bond but Moore had style and charisma and an unparalleled ability to make dialogue sparkle. Brosnan sadly lacks these qualities.

One thing that’s amusing is that this is a movie that is trying desperately hard to be feminist but it’s actually the most sexist Bond movie I’ve ever seen. There’s not a single female character in the film. The ostensible female characters (Miranda, Jinx and M) are simply male characters who happen to be played by actresses. If you replaced Halle Berry, Rosamund Pike and Judi Dench with male actors you wouldn’t need to make any changes to the dialogue or the plot or the characterisations. All you’d have to do is eliminate the very unconvincing love scenes that seem out of place anyway. The message of the film seems to be that women are awesome as long as they behave exactly like men.

The movie’s political stance is interesting. The Chinese and the Cubans are the good guys. The American contempt for the British is startling. It’s made very clear that M takes her orders from Washington, not London. In fact from watching this movie you wouldn’t know that Britain had a government. MI6 is a provincial branch office of the CIA. Of course even in Ian Fleming’s 1950s Bond novels there’s a good deal of resentment towards the Americans and bitterness at Britain’s irrelevance in the postwar world but you don’t expect quite so much anti-Americanism in a 2002 Bond movie.

The big problem is that in this movie James Bond is no longer James Bond. The character has been watered down to the point where there’s nothing left. He’s been made safe and innocuous and inoffensive. He could be an accountant enjoying a holiday in exotic climes, or be working behind the counter at a chemist’s shop in the High Street. He doesn’t seem the least bit dangerous. You could take him home to meet your Mum. This is Bond made politically correct. And a politically correct Bond is not Bond.

Die Another Day is not in any way, shape or form a Bond movie.

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

For Your Eyes Only, released in 1981, was the fifth of the Roger Moore Bond movies and marked something of a change in direction.

There are two schools of thought on the correct approach to making a Bond movie. One school holds that it is desirable to keep as close as possible to the spirit of Ian Fleming’s novels. This requires a fairly realistic approach and it requires Bond to be a fairly hard-edged character.

The second school holds that Bond movies are pure escapist fun and the sillier and campier they are the better.

I’ve always preferred the second approach, although it has to be said that the first approach has something to be said for it.

The Roger Moore Bond films tended to stick to the second approach  which reached a climax with the gleefully outrageous Moonraker in 1979. When it came to the next movie in the series for some reason it seemed to have been decided to go for the first option. For Your Eyes Only is the most serious of the Roger Moore films. There are spectacular stunts but there aren’t the outrageous gadgets and most of the action sequences are reasonably plausible.

To my way of thinking it suffers a little from the lack of a larger-than-life villain. Bond is not up against a diabolical criminal mastermind. He’s up against criminals and KGB agents. I feel that a hero of Bond’s stature really needs to be measured against a villain on an epic scale.

A British spy ship is sunk, and to the embarrassment and consternation of Her Majesty’s government a piece of very vital equipment was not destroyed before the ship sank. If it falls into the hands of the Russians it will render Britain’s main line of defence, her Polaris missile submarines, powerless. An attempt by a British archaeologist to retrieve the device fails and the archaeologist is killed. His daughter, Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet) survives and vows vengeance. Melina is half-Greek and vengeance is something she takes very seriously. She will be a useful ally for 007.

Rival bands of smugglers are also interested in finding the device and one of these smugglers intends to sell it to the KGB.

The plot allows for the sorts of underwater sequences that were always a highlight of Bond films. The duel between the two midget submarines is particularly impressive. There are also some exciting action sequences set in a Greek monastery high on a rocky summit. These scenes require some rather energetic for Bond. At 53 Roger Moore was getting a bit old for this sort of thing but he does better than you might expect.

Moore accepts the challenge of playing a more serious Bond and is surprisingly convincing. He restrains his more camp impulses and plays things very straight. That’s not the way I like to see Bond played but Moore is much more successful at this than anyone would have suspected.

Carole Bouquet is a slightly bland Bond girl. Fortunately Lynn-Holly Johnson is on hand to add some spice as Bibi Dahl. She was a former champion figure skater and she plays a young skater in training for the Winter Olympics. Bibi think the best place to train is in the bedroom and she thinks Bond would make an excellent training partner. She’s funny and sexy and likeable and adds some much-needed lightness to an otherwise rather gritty movie.

Topol and Julian Glover are solid enough as the rival Greek smuggling chiefs. Bernard Lee  had passed away in early 1981 so M doesn’t make an appearance this time, his place being taken (very capably) by Geoffrey Keen as the Minister of Defence. Q is still there however, as is Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny.

Director John Glen was making his first Bond movie and he handles the job extremely well. The rather long running time never drags. The action sequences are very good. A car chase in a Bond movie has to be witty as well as exciting and the one in this movie, with Bond fleeing from the bad guys in a little 2CV Citroen, qualifies on both counts.

I you like your Bond movies to be realistic spy thrillers you should love For Your Eyes Only. If like me you prefer them to be more in the mould of outrageous campy fun then you might find that one a bit of a disappointment after the glorious excessiveness of The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker but it’s still fine entertainment.

You Only Live Twice (1967)

You Only Live Twice was the fifth James Bond movie, and marked the (temporary) departure of Sean Connery from the leading role. Not everyone likes this 1967 movie but it works for me.

Ironically much of the criticism of this film centres on its silliness. If you want a taut coherent plot, in-depth characterisation and an intelligent commentary on Cold War politics then perhaps Bond movies are not for you. In some ways this movie establishes the template that made the later Roger Moore outings so much fun - increasingly outrageous and unlikely gadgets, spectacular action set-pieces and a generally high camp atmosphere. All those elements were there from the start of the franchise of course, but this one really kicks into tongue-in-cheek mode. Roald Dahl wrote the screenplay and throws everything into it.

The franchise would return to a more conventional and serious spy movie ambience with the next movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. That movie did well at the box-office, but not as well as the previous three films, suggesting that the formula established in You Only Live Twice was in fact the correct one.

Someone is stealing US and Russian manned spacecraft. Both sides blame the other and war seems a distinct possibility. Right from the start Bond suspects that SPECTRE is involved and of course he’s right. SPECTRE is working for an unnamed power (clearly Communist China) but as usual SPECTRE is really working for itself. The idea is that a war between the US and the Soviet Union will leave a power vacuum which they can then exploit, becoming the world’s sole superpower.

The stealing of the spacecraft is done by another spacecraft which swallows them up. Whether it makes sense or not doesn’t matter - it looks cool.

The unknown spacecraft appears to have come down in the vicinity of the Sea of Japan so Bond is despatched to Tokyo. There he meets the first of the movie’s three Bond girls, the beautiful Aki. He meets M’s man in Tokyo, who famously offers him a vodka martini, stirred not shaken. And true Bond aficionado knows that Bond has his vodka martinis shaken, not stirred. Is it a mistake? Or some subtle (perhaps over-subtle) joke?

Bond is to receive assistance from Tiger Tanaka, the head of Japanese intelligence. The meeting comes about in classic Bond style as Bond is literally dropped into Tanaka’s headquarters. Bond suspects that Osato Chemicals is involved and breaks into their corporate headquarters. This sets the stage for one of the cleverest fights in a Bond movie, with sofas used as weapons! And it sets the stage for an attempt to kill Bond, an attempt that is foiled even more cleverly by a helicopter (I won’t spoil this great moment by giving any further details).

Bond then gets to use a very cool gadget indeed, a gunship gyrocopter, which leads to a fine aerial fight sequence. He discovers SPECTRE’s headquarters in an extinct volcano, which leads us to a set that is spectacular even by Bond movie standards. It was in fact the largest movie set ever built, designed by the great Ken Adam. And it’s the stage for one of the most exciting finales in any Bond movie with hundreds of ninjas assaulting the volcano.

Undoubtedly the biggest problem with You Only Live Twice is that the arch-villain Blofeld isn’t revealed until much too late and when he is revealed he doesn’t get enough to do. That’s a pity since Donald Pleasence certainly had the potential to be a great Bond villain. The idea of letting the audience hear but not see Blofeld at first is a good one but it’s taken too far.

Another minor problem is Sean Connery stopping while trying to look Japanese. He just looks like Sean Connery with a stoop! But these are minor quibbles.

On the plus side Mention must be made of the excellent theme song (sung by Nancy Sinatra), John Barry’s superb score, and the rather sexy Toyota 2000GT sports car that Aki drives.

Ken Adam’s sets and the Japanese locations are major highlights. Even the sets that only appear briefly (just as the operating theatre) are superb.

Connery was very comfortable in the role by this time and he’s terrific. The three Bond girls are Helga (played by Karin Dor, a major cult movie favourite for her performances in many of the German Edgar Wallace krimis), the beautiful Mie Hama as Kissy Suzuki and the equally gorgeous Akiko Wakabayashi as Aki. Tsai Chin, another cult movie legend best known for the 1960s Fu Manchu movies, makes a brief appearance.

The Region 4 DVD looks great and features an excellent audio commentay.

Any movie that features deadly armed gyrocopters, killer spaceships and hordes of ninjas has got to be worth seeing. You Only Live Twice is great entertainment. Highly recommended.

GoldenEye (1995)

GoldenEye in 1995 marked the return of James Bond to the big screen after a hiatus of several years, and it also marked the first appearance of Pierce Brosnan in the role of 007. Both Bond’s return and Brosnan’s debut proved to be surprisingly successful.

Brosnan had been considered for the role before. It’s probably just as well he didn’t get the part earlier. By 1995 Brosnan was in his early 40s - the right age to play Bond. Bond is after all a man with a past. This is also the first Bond film for director Martin Campbell and introduces a new and very different M.

By 1995 with the Cold War over Bond may have seemed a bit of a dinosaur (and that’s exactly the way M describes him) but the film makes that work in its favour. M might not entirely approve of him but for this mission he’s the man for the job and his Cold War background will be very useful. He’ll find himself back in Russia, in the new post-communist Russia, but he’ll be up against some old enemies. And the threats are as real as ever.

The traditional pre-credits intro is a flashback. In the Cold War days Bond and 006 had destroyed a Russian chemical warfare plant and Bond had found himself witnessing the execution of 006, but all was not as it appeared to be.

Seven years later and satellite pictures show the destruction of a secret Russian facility at Severnaya by an experimental space weapon. The Golden Eye satellite uses a nuclear explosion in space to project an electro-magnetic pulse that destroys anything electronic. British intelligence had believed that the new cash-strapped Russia had neither the money nor the expertise to develop such a weapon but it does indeed exist although it is not the Russian government that has used the weapon. Satellite images show a helicopter landing after the destruction of the facility, the same new experimental Franco-German attack helicopter that was stolen shortly earlier (a theft Bond had just failed to prevent).

The assumption is that a Russian organised crime syndicate is the culprit, a syndicate controlled by a man about whom nobody seems to know anything. Their plans for the use of Golden Eye are unclear but whatever they are 007 has to stop them.

It goes without saying that Bond will find himself dealing with several beautiful women, including the deadly Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen) with whom Bond has already had an encounter in the casino at Monte Carlo. She will be the femme fatale of this movie while Bond will find an ally in the person of one of the two survivors of the attack on Severnaya, the equally beautiful Natalya Simonova (Izabella Scorupco). His enemies will include several people from his past, one of them very unexpected.

Pierce Brosnan is an excellent Bond, in my opinion rather more successful in the role than Timothy Dalton. Brosnan has the right mix of charm and humour. The new M is a woman, played by Judi Dench, and the movie establishes the basis for an interesting if tense relationship between her and Bond. Sean Bean is reasonably good while the two Bond girls, the good one and the bad one, are both excellent. Famke Janssen is especially good - her orgasmic reactions to killing people are certainly memorable!

Despite the major changes represented by both the new Bond and by the very different style of Judi Dench as M the movie works hard to maintain the classic Bond movie flavour. The casino scene is pure Bond and is a very obvious nod to the traditions of the Bond film. And we not only see Bond driving an Aston Martin - it’s the real Bond Aston Martin, the early 60s DB5 as seen in Goldfinger!

There are the usual gadgets and there’s as much action and stunt work as any Bond aficionado could wish for. Derek Meddings’ model work is, as always, superb. Sadly this was to be his last film as he died soon afterwards.

GoldenEye manages to be both a 90s film and a classic James Bond movie and it’s terrific fun.

The Living Daylights (1987)

The Living Daylights introduced Timothy Dalton to the James Bond series. I’d previously seen the second Timothy Dalton Bond movie, the very disappointing Licence To Kill. Happily The Living Daylights is a much better movie.

It appears that the Russians have re-activated the dreaded SMERSH (Death To Spies) section of the KGB (Bond’s nemesis in movies like From Russia With Love) and British agents are being assassinated. Including one from the elite Double O section.

A high-level KGB defector named Georgi Koskov (Jeroen Krabbé) whom Bond has helped to escape to the West claims it is a plot by General Leonid Pushkin. He claim Pushkin is a madman who wants to start a nuclear war (the idea of a desperate Soviet Union facing collapse and hoping to stake everything on a nuclear war appears in at least one other 80s Bond movie). Bond is sceptical. He knows Pushkin and thinks he’s far too sensible but Koskov is convincing and M is inclined to believe him.

Bond’s mission is to kill Pushkin but he does a bit of digging around on his own account, starting with the mysterious KGB sniper who tried to assassinate Koskov when he escaped. The sniper is Kara Milovy (Maryam d’Abo), who combines playing the ’cello with sniping, only Bond soon discovers she’s no sniper and no KGB agent. She’s Koskov’s girlfriend. Koskov bought a Stradivarius ’cello for her - now where would a KGB officer get $150,000 from to buy a Stradivarius ’cello?

The trail leads Bond to crazy American arms dealer Brad Whitaker (Joe Don Baker) and to Vienna, then Tangiers and then Afghanistan where he and Kara are rescued by mujahadeen (remarkably civilised and friendly mujahadeen). Maybe Koskov’s defection was phony? Or is Koskov playing a double game, or even a triple game?

As explained by director John Glen the idea was to make this a much harder-edged Bond film than the preceding Roger Moore entries in the series. That was a fairly sound idea - no-one was going to be able to do the Roger Moore thing the way Roger Moore did it and a change of pace was probably due, and Timothy Dalton’s much more serious interpretation of the role made it a logical decision.

What impresses me is the way the movie does represent a real break in the series, but at the same time it still feels like a Bond movie. It looks to the future, but also draws upon the past. It even gets Bond back behind the wheel of an Aston-Martin, a very definite nod to Bond history. And it has the gadgets that Bond fans love so much. It also has lots of spectacular stunts. Most importantly, it feels like a Bond movie.

Maryam d’Abo is a different kind of Bond girl, strikingly beautiful but looking less like a glamorous supermodel. In fact she looks like a lady cellist! Joe Don Baker chews the scenery to great effect, Jeroen Krabbé is a likeable villain who might be a hero (or a hero who might be a villain), while John Rhys-Davies is surprisingly subdued but very effective as Pushkin.

As for Timothy Dalton, he’s a long way from being my favourite Bond but he’s reasonably good. He takes things seriously but there’s still the occasional twinkle in his eye (something that is sadly missing in Daniel Craig’s recent wooden performance). He knows he’s making a Bond movie and that it’s supposed to be fun. His performance is definitely harder edged than Moore’s or even Connery’s, much less tongue-in-cheek, but there’s still enough charm to make the characterisation convincing. I imagine he was trying to get closer to Ian Fleming’s original conception of Bond, with some success.

Pierce Brosnan was apparently the producers’ first choice for this movie but he had other commitments. Brosnan eventually became a better Bond than Dalton but Dalton is more than passable in this movie.

Not one of the great Bond flicks by any means, but still a highly entertaining movie.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Diamonds Are Forever was the seventh Bond film, and the last official Bond film to star Sean Connery. It marked a definite move towards the camp sensibility that would come to dominate the series in the Roger Moore era.

Connery had very little interest in doing Bond movies by this time, but with George Lazenby unwilling to go on with the series after On Her Majesty’s Secret Service the producers offered Connery a great deal of money and he reluctantly agreed to return to the role. They had apparently been considering John Gavin, which would have been a spectacularly bad casting decision.

Diamonds Are Forever is based very very loosely on the fourth of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels. The movie opens with Bond killing Blofeld, but of course nobody is going to believe that such a splendid villain is really going to be killed off. With the threat from SPECTRE apparently neutralised Bond finds himself assigned to what seems to be a fairly routine case, involving diamond smuggling on a large scale.

Bond assumes he’s going to be sent to South Africa but in fact he ends up in Las Vegas where he has to make contact with the appropriately named Tiffany Case (Jill St John). He uncovers a mystery involving the disappearance of billionaire casino owner Willard Whyte and it soon becomes obvious that more than diamond smuggling is at stake.

Charles Gray makes an adequate Blofeld but he lacks the genuine menace that Telly Savalas brought to the role in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Jill St John and Lana Wood (as the wonderfully named Plenty O’Toole) provide the requisite glamour. Putter Smith and Bruce Glover are fun as the sinister gay assassins Mr Kidd and Mr Wint.

Connery may not have been enthusiastic about taking the role but there are no problems with his performance.

The action sequences are an odd mix of engaging silliness (the moon buggy chase) and high-powered excitement (with Bond and Tiffany being chased through the streets of Las Vegas in a bright-red Ford Mustang). The special effects in the climactic scenes have been much criticised but the main problem is that an oil rig is not really an exciting enough locale for the climax to a Bond movie.

The movie’s strengths generally outweigh its weaknesses, with production designer Ken Adam providing some memorable sets (especially the fish tank bed), and director Guy Hamilton and cinematographer Ted Moore both know exactly what they’re doing when making a Bond film.

The real star of the film is Las Vegas which provides a perfect setting with its mix of glamour, sleaze, excess and surreal extravagance. The circus in a casino is a definite highlight. The desperate fight in a tiny elevator cage is equally memorable, one of two very impressive fight scenes (the other being Bond’s fight with the two female gymnasts)

I have a soft spot for Diamonds Are Forever since it was the first Bond movie I ever saw. It still holds up rather well. Highly entertaining if occasionally silly fun.