It is not Safin who kills Bond. Bond himself decides to sacrifice himself to protect the ones he loves.
And Safin‘s monologue about people‘s need for a god to decide their fate… is that really a lame villain who says that or the most dangerous one because he really nails what is going on in today’s world.
My adult daughter rented and watched NTTD with her husband last week; they loved it. No child of mine grows up in this household without Bond being a serious point of discussion and of keen interest. She is the mother of my 3 grandchildren, a girl aged 5, and boys aged 3, and 6 months.
She said that she found Safin to be the single scariest villain of the entire Bond franchise and that he terrified her primarily due to his cold, methodical, manners and actions, contrasted with his faux caring attitude towards children. She also pointed out his being the only villain who ever shot Bond, and repeatedly at that.
One of Largo’s men shot him in the leg in Thunderball. Not sure if you can count Patrice in Skyfall (since it was a ricochet not a direct hit).
10. He wouldn’t care (Quantum of Solace, 2008)
Spies are well aware death can come at any moment and sentimentality can be a weakness. The death of Mathis shows this when Bond gives him a makeshift burial on top of a dumpster. Before moving on Bond takes the contents of Mathis’ wallet. To the casual onlooker this is a cruel sign of disrespect, but to others it is the stark reality of life in the field.
9. Going down with the ship (No Time To Die, 2020)
Betrayed by Logan Ash, Felix Leiter is shot and bleeding badly. After a charge placed on the hull explodes, the ship quickly fills with water and begins to sink. After one last goodbye, Bond swims to the safety of a life raft, left to ruminate on the passing of a brother. A moment of significance in Jeffrey Wright’s third and final film.
8. Square escape (No Time To Die, 2020)
Surrounded by machine-gunning assailants, a heartbroken Bond sits motionless inside his battered Aston Martin DB5 as Madeleine implores him to take action. As the glass threatens to be overcome by the hail of bullets, Bond summons a set of mini guns behind the headlights, dispatching his foes while leaving the scene in a cloud of smoke. An impressive ending to the film’s opening sequence.
7. Train fight (SPECTRE, 2015)
Grit has become synonymous with Daniel Craig’s 007, and up until this moment he had not yet met his physical superior. That all changed when he met Hinx on board a train through the Sahara. Using his surroundings to try and keep his foe at bay, Bond is eventually overpowered and set to be thrown outside. Intervention from Madeleine allows Bond to dispatch his foe with the help of drums and rope, this time giving the victory to brains and not brawn.
6. African rundown (Casino Royale, 2006)
Chasing bomb maker and free runner Mollaka through a Madagascan construction site, Bond must think fast and use his ingenuity in order to keep up. During this part of the chase, he charges through a drywall like an angry bull, demonstrating what a force of nature the newly minted 007 is. The whole sequence is charged with electricity and was instantly memorable when it first appeared back in 2006.
Just one more to go after this and my list is complete.
Yes, but those were mere henchmen.
Smashing; a lot of happy memories here. These were good films, weren’t they?
They were !
I like it too, but I believe the scene has been a victim of the writers’ strike. My problem is that there is no operational point in putting Mathis’s body in a dumpster. Bond cannot be hoping to hide the body that way. It would be so much better if we could understand why he needed to do that.
I took that to mean it was part of Bond staging the scene to look like Mathis was the victim of typical street crime so authorities would quickly close the books on it and not dive any deeper. That’s why Bond also took Mathis’ cash then threw the empty wallet in with him.
Agreed, I also took it to mean that any other Quantum operatives or the chief of police following up to see that the job had been done, might not see Mathis but would see 2 dead cops, and wonder if Mathis survived and got away with Bond, which might send Quantum in another direction.
I gather Safin saw the silo doors opening, quickly closed them and then lay in wait for his coward shots. Safin’s death is simple in that he’s just shot at close range. But honestly it’s one of my favourites. Especially how Bond doesn’t even look at him, and fires the shots like an afterthought. He gets the ‘victory’ but at that point it doesn’t matter because he’ll be joining Safin shortly too.
Yes, exactly. I found the breaking of Safin’s arm and then his subsequent point blank indiscriminate death very satisfying and well-earned.
I would rephrase, and say that Bond becomes the threat–he becomes the “X” that he is sworn to defeat/stop. The villain is the one who transforms Bond into that threat.
Most definitely yes. Safin is the only self-cancelling villain in the franchise. As Gertrude Stein said: “there is no there there.”
A man being scarred for life, physically and psychologically, wishing to be the god he knows people want someone to be for them, devilishly infecting Bond with something that will hurt him at the deepest level of his being… there is more than Blofeld ever offered.
Absolutely, a highlight scene! Craig plays this so well. You can see the cogs turn as Bond tries to comprehend what coming into contact with herecles means, and what his options are. Everything else pales in comparison, including dispatching with Safin, which he treats almost like swatting away an annoying fly.
This is entirely a semantic argument. He’s the one that puts Bond in the position where he has no choice but to stay on the island and face down his own death. Between being shot several times and then poisoned with the nano-virus, it really takes a lot of the choice out of Bond’s hands as to whether or not he gets off the island. However, if Safin and Bond’s paths don’t cross again in those final moments, Bond gets off the island.
But it is all presentational/theoretical in the movie. Malek’s performance is so thin that his portrayal of Safin never transcends abstraction. It becomes fleshed out only if a viewer makes a huge investment in the abstractions Malek presents. Safin is a cardboard character who acts villainy without embodying it. One cannot be sure if Safin suffered childhood trauma or the waiter got his entree wrong at Applebee’s. The performance is all pique and no substance.
Liked this. Hilarious.
But isn’t that a semantic argument?
I don’t see it like that at all.
But as you both know, tdalton and MrKiddWint, I appreciate and value your comments.
And I appreciate yours.
In fact, if the Safin you write about were the Movie Safin I experienced, I would be very happy. I saw a sketch of the Safin you present, but feel that in our discussion, you present a SAF-fleshed-out Safin superior to the one actually on screen.