Joyce, nice to see you back. Best wishes.
I remember the innocent days of 2006 - 2008 as well where everything looked rosy for Bond, shaky cameras and snap edits or not. I wrote a detailed review, but you sum up my similar feelings about Craig’s era quite neatly.
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What’s really interesting in that scene is the fact that they’re almost exclusively shooting at Madeleine, especially Primo. He grabs the gun and fires straight at her, and also keeps shooting at her side window again and again, as if they were trying to kill her first, before she can prove that she didn’t betray Bond (in the event he manages to escape).
That’s the point when our oh-so-clever-ex-secret-agent should have noticed that something rather fishy is going on.
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Bond still very much in his own head at that point. It’s the theme of the film isn’t it? Getting over yourself and taking responsibility?
“You made me do this!”
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I’m in two minds there. It’s played (and written) as if Bond seriously doubts Madeleine. But from any professional standpoint, or even just plain common sense, it’s obvious she’s got nothing to do with it.
So my suspicion would be Bond knows she’s innocent and just gets rid of her before he can fall even deeper in love with her.
Shorter version: absolutely satisfactory. I liked it.
Longer version:
“Then he slept, and with the warmth and humour of his eyes extinguished, his features relapsed into a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal, and cold.”
There’s more than one bereaved, tormented and tragic man in a mask here, and there’s more than one mask shattering.
Leiter’s homily about villains and heroes being mixed up, never a lucky aphorism to use (chap rotting in a Bolivian bin would agree), is played out with a brutalising lack of subtlety over however many hours it is that this film lasts. The emotionally scarred Bond and the potentially sympathetic physically scarred Safin (both appearing to wear the same coat at one point); most interestingly, M in deed.
At the start, Dr Swann burns the memory of one masked man; at the end, keeps the flame of the other going. No more the indestructible Teflon ponce of Octopussy or GoldenEye, we now have a lead character who can die. Wherever this now goes, potentially there are raised stakes to any future peril. Pull the trick too often and we will tire, no doubt, but it’s there now, in the repertoire. Can be used.
It may be that we invest too much in the potential repercussions of this, given that the first thing the film tells us is to burn the past and let it go. In due course, for those only fleetingly interested in such matters – the bulk of the paying audience – this may simply be “Isn’t that the one where he dies?” alongside the “Isn’t that the one where he fights Jaws on The Moon?”, “Isn’t that the one with the helicopter car?” and “Isn’t that the one with Anthony Hopkins?”.
It may matter not.
It seems to matter at the moment. I feel it.
Albeit no cliff-hanger, more a cliff-obliterator, it does feel like an achievement after all this time that one can have an emotional reaction beyond “that was the 25th one, then”. You can see why they want to push it around a bit; these things must be terribly boring to think up and make. Granted, it’s not the first of the Craig Bonds to pull at one’s innards, but Spectre did so in such a literal way that No Time to Die retrospectively improving it is another of its successes. That makes me happier. The payoff of the first fifteen minutes - Bond prepared to die and abandoning Dr Swann out of anger – in the final fifteen – Bond prepared to die and abandoning Dr Swann out of love – is satisfying but heavily telegraphed, albeit reasonably well-masked itself by leaving one wondering what exactly it is Bond actually sees in her.
However, as that’s Tracy as (under-)written by Fleming, it might be that it’s absolutely on note. Huge Fleming-stuff in here; tweaked, but there.
Even before the doom-laded opening credits rumble along, twice Madeleine’s life is saved by a scarred, masked man relenting from his rage for a moment. By the end, neither can have her, physically or emotionally. It’s not massively deep but there’s a chime of an idea, for sure. No time for her to die, it appears.
There are questions, and questions that mean I deserve having a Land Rover dropped on me, just like the film’s Bond fan gets (it really isn’t holding back on fan-baiting (good, we need the exercise)):
Is Vesper really only meant to have only been 22 or 23?
How does Bond acquire the Dalton Aston Martin given that it self-destructed?
What actually happens to Dr Swann in the five years in between?
Why does she never come asking for deadbeat-Dad payments (Bond’s evidently loaded)?
Is it funny/deliberate that Mr White, poisoned in the last film, was a poisoner himself?
Why should one worry about the end of this film given that Bond survives Casino Royale only by absolute fluke of timing?
Is Mr White saving him then a fifteen-year lead in to his daughter (and grand-daughter) doing the same? (no – it really isn’t)
Why isn’t M hauled off to Belmarsh himself?
Why is the scientist man appearing in a completely different film? Also, what must his colonic tract be ike given that he keeps swallowing flash-drives? You have no idea what it went through to get here…
What happened after Safin saved Madeleine as a child?
How old is Safin meant to be?
Why is the stuff with Madeleine’s mother so (gratifyingly) grim?
Why is everyone really damaged?
Why am I irrationally satisfied that the word “enormity” is used for its proper meaning, for once?
Why’s there actual acting going on? The Bond / M confrontation is particularly noteworthy. Ooh.
Why is Bond and Moneypenny just helping themselves to Q’s wine by far the funniest thing in this five-film-bubble?
How much did making Ralph Feinnes use the phrase “Blofeld’s bionic eye” with a straight face evidently gratify someone?
What’s with the eye-trauma generally, in the CraigBondBubble? LeChiffre, the man with a nail through his, the big doomy opera eye, Bloberhauser etc?
Why is Bond dying with a stuffed toy in his belt rather than a PPK or Martini or some such other Bond-crap both funny and terribly sad?
When will anyone accept that “We Have All the Time in the World” is not a love song, it’s a song about love that hasn’t yet happened… oh, they did…
Why is the child’s final reaction to being promised further stories of James Bond, my reaction?
No time to why; don’t think, just let it happen.
Ultimately obvious from the first ten minutes in where it would get to, but still very, very satisfying. 00s have a very short life-expectancy but that was 15 years of the goods, concluded more coherently than the last film promised, and than this ramble demonstrates.
Mathis opened the door and stopped on the threshold.
‘Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles.’
He laughed. ‘But don’t let me down and become human yourself. We would lose such a wonderful machine.’
I think we’ve gained.
I liked it.
Next!
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I know the film never used the code name theory, if the did nomi would have been jane bond.
What I mean is, the code name theory could be used to explain a non white actor taking over
Or it’s based on a book series, pigment was never stated, so who cares? Do bear in mind Robinson was a black guy called Collin.
Earlier on, Dustin, you suggested this scene prefigures Bond’s death. I didn’t understand what you meant then, as my suspicion was exactly the same as yours: he was deciding whether she was innocent or not. He knows the car is virtually bomb proof, after all. Having made a decision, I questioned why he put her on the train - and not ideally explained later on when he says it was his biggest regret. BTW Bond isn’t expecting to die at this point. He’s searching for answers. Unlike his Shakespearian counterparts, he doesn’t go searching for five years. I know you interpret it differently, but I don’t see the inevitability in his demise at all.
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Bond himself might not seem to know it’s that time, the film definitely does. It’s stated multiple times.
Nomi, Blofeld, M, Safin, Q…
But that’s my point about a tragic hero: they know they will die and expect it to happen from a long way out in the narrative - the story leads them to that point and we identify with it. Bond’s NTTD journey doesn’t.
I think it does. The character himself, despite not saying it aloud in this film, knew the inevitability of his ending (he himself noted it 15 years ago)
Him spending his life railing against it doesn’t change the heroic inevitability of his final fate.
“I die for what I love”, was always were he was headed. M (Judi Dench) may have twisted that to love of country for a while, but when he had a child, there was only one way this ended.
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I think his personal motive for revenge against Spectre was spot on. Clever way of weaving the garden of death in by having his dad as Spectre chief poisoner. I guess he inherited everything from his dad, hence the silo being fairly run down. I don’t think his organisation needed to be that big as his genius was to piggyback onto and steal the Spectre plan. My main question mark agains Safin is why he goes from wanting to eliminate Spectre to wanting to wipe out a chunk of humanity… other than to clean up because he’s a villain. Still don’t get the facial scarring though.
Power. Eliminating those who might become dangerous to him, just like he became dangerous to Blofeld.
God complex.
Not every tragic hero knows they will die. They just fear that they will suffer the consequences of their fate.
Still haven’t seen this yet (it’ll be a while). Is it ever explained how Safin could threaten young Madeleine and later grown-up Madeleine and not age in between?
Well, his scars make it difficult to see a huge age process…
And he, um, probably dyes his hair?
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Also we didn’t see what he looked like when he was shot.
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James bond is half Scottish ,half swiss, is white,dark haired and had a scar on his face.
A description only added after Connery was cast so that it would match Connery
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To me there’s resignation in Bond’s attitude when they are cornered. He may know his car is bulletproof - but only to some extent. After all, he’s seen it blown to pieces before. Sitting there doing nothing while the gang sprays his car is not going to solve the problem. They are eventually going to break in and Bond cannot say with any certainty which projectile will penetrate the car; every shot could be the last.
I’d argue if he was alone there he might not have bothered at that point. He’s just keeping on because Madeleine is by his side. Dropping her at the train station is hardly what he’d do with somebody he really suspects.
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