review
Review: Rock Of Ages
The Pitch: Cinderella / Rocker fella.
The Review: “Welcome to Hollywood! What’s your dream? Everybody comes here; this is Hollywood, land of dreams. Some dreams come true, some don’t; but keep on dreamin’ – this is Hollywood. Always time to dream, so keep on dreamin’.”
Recognise it? It’s the narration from Happy Man, the random black guy who wanders into shot like a Morgan Freeman tribute act in Pretty Woman at either end of the film. Pretty Woman has become an all time classic in many eyes, taking two unlikely bedfellows – big business and prostitution – which actually have distinct parallels. Somehow, those two feel an easier marriage than rock music and the musical, which in theory should work better together. Now, I’m an expert proponent of the air guitar, wielding an imaginary axe as well as the next man, but at the same time I’m also a fan of musical theatre (not, in this case, a euphemism), but while the two share musical notes and a tendency for the flamboyant, they feel like two magnets with the same magnetic pole, both with a strong attraction but unable to connect to each other. Can Rock Of Ages prove this theory wrong?
No. No it can’t. What Rock Of Ages actually consists of are a succession of rock standards sung in a musical style, stripping away the essence of what made them great in the first place. There’s a few, like Extreme’s “More Than Words” that have a softer rock style which make an easier transition, and a couple of performances on stage where the song can be played straight rather than musical-ised. The biggest success on that front comes from the biggest film star in the world playing the biggest rock star in the world: Tom Cruise lets his hair down and has an absolute blast as Stacee Jaxx, accompanied everywhere by a baboon and ending up face down in his own swimming pool with absolute grace, he does a fair job with the big songs and it’s impossible to take your eyes off him, especially in his interview with Malin Ackerman’s smitten journalist.
The rest of the cast, not so much. Diego Boneta and Julianne Hough are utterly forgettable as the star-crossed lovers, doing a moderate job with the songs and very little else. Catherine Zeta Jones attempts to take huge chunks out of the scenery at any opportunity, sharing almost no screen time with her husband Bryan Cranston while the movie attempts to work out which of them, or indeed Paul Giamatti’s manager, should be the antagonist. Most of the laughs, such as they are, are left to Russell Brand and Alec Baldwin as the rock promoters, and if you can get past Brand’s accent – attempting to do for Birmingham accents what Dick Van Dyke did for Cockernees – then he and Baldwin make a reasonable double act, especially in their unexpected duet.
The key difference between the likes of Pretty Woman, and indeed director Adam Shankman’s previous work on the Hairspray remake and the episodes of Glee he’s directed, are that there’s a sense of fun sorely lacking in places. Rock Of Ages has neither the true camp value of the best tongue-in-cheek musicals or the best rock performances, and there are long stretches where you long for something – anything – interesting or just plain different to happen. Overall it’s enjoyable, but it’s unlikely to be inspiring singalongs in London cinemas twenty years from now, and the plot is so simplistic that it struggles to justify the two hour run time. The key similarity between this and Pretty Woman are how dangerously easy it is to fall into the sex industry in Hollywood; apparently a few days working in a bar, hanging round on the Hollywood sign and some relationship difficulties are just about enough to push you over the edge. Take heed, any young girls – some dreams come true, some don’t, but keep on dreaming. Just make sure it’s a dull sex dream with Tom Cruise in it.
Why see it at the cinema: Russell Brand’s Woilver’ampton accent has to be heard to be believed, and there are a couple of good songs sung well (as well as several more good songs sung quite averagely). If you hoped never to hear Journey’s now ubiquitous Don’t Stop Believing again as long as you lived, then move right along, nothing to see here.
The Score: 6/10
Review: Prometheus 3D
The Pitch: At the foothills of the mountains of madness.
The Review: It’s been thirty-three years since Sir Ridley Scott first announced himself to the world at large with Alien. Inspired by the epic sweep of Star Wars and the potential that such images and ideas had in the cinema, he took a small crew into space, ripped them to shreds and terrified audiences everywhere. During that thirty-three years, we have come to find ourselves living in a world of sequels, where seemingly no story is ever truly concluded, and so the thought of Scott returning to that world, in which many others had played with different ideas but only James Cameron had received similar acclaim for, excited audiences the world over. The potential of another Alien film like Alien seemed too good to pass up, a chance for a further exploration of the world, and one which had many unanswered questions, not least what else was on LV-426 when the crew of the Nostromo set down on company orders. In the months preceding the release of Prometheus, excitement reached fever pitch, then rapidly turned to angst; the trailer seemed to deliver enough Alien related goodness, but when discussion even turned to the classification that the film would receive, with seemingly nothing less than a 15 / R rating satisfying the fans, all watching previous Alien movies in anticipation, could anything ever hope to live up to the high expectations set for it?
Except in the rush to proclaim this an Alien prequel, with the expectations of the same qualities as the original, everyone seemed to forget that no two other Alien movies have ever sat in the same genre. Alien was effectively a haunted house movie in space, for all its sci-fi trappings and unbearable tension; Aliens the classic war movie, the Dirty Dozen sent to pick off the enemy in black; Alien³ was a nihilistic prison movie, despairing at the nature of life and death; and Alien Resurrection had mutant DNA running through its core, the darkly comic contrasting with the horror of the cloned creations. It should come as no surprise to anyone willing to give it a moment’s thought that Prometheus is keenly ploughing its own furrow, looking to explore not only how the aliens may have come about, but also how we came about as well, and Prometheus could well be the first pure sci-fi of the series.
Consequently, it stands alone as a film that can be watched without pre-knowledge of the series, but one that also calls on the themes of each of the earlier (or is that later?) films, even if the key call out to Alien Resurrection initially appears to be incredible basketball skills. The core motifs of the series – other than a giant black alien with two mouths and acid for blood – are all present and correct. There’s the strong female lead in Noomi Rapace, a different twist on the gradually empowered Ellen Ripley who’s looking for answers she may not want to find; the corporate tool, in more than one sense of the word, as Charlize Theron lays down the law and takes matters into her own hands in equal measure; the friendly grunt (Idris Elba) who’s unshakably on the side of good, and the absolute standout here, David the android (Michael Fassbender), who’s working to his own agenda but avoids the more Pinocchio-like clichés of other obvious robots. This sense of familiarity in the characters, coupled with Prometheus telling a new story using many of the story beats of the other films, gives Prometheus an oppressive sense of familiarity, and for anyone familiar with the series a gut-wrenching sense of inevitability sets in as whatever’s still on the planet starts to reveal itself.
Prometheus then becomes a fascinating mix of the old and the new; grappling with new ideas that extend well beyond the claustrophobic scope of any of the films with Alien in the title, but at the same time having some fun with the old ideas and investing new life into them. The one thing guaranteed to disappoint those most hoping for another film cut from exactly the same cloth as Alien, rather than just cut into a similar style, is that this is more sci-fi than horror, looking to engage your mind rather than send it screaming. On the ideas front, the only failing is the insistence to have to explain some events in total and absolute detail, especially given that this leaves as much open to speculation as Alien did; to attempt to leave much unexplained, and then practically shout explanations in your face for the remainder, is both disconcerting and ultimately disappointing. For anyone else who’s ever contemplated either the nature of existence, or even what that blue fluff collecting in their belly button is, there should be a decent amount to enjoy. When Scott does turn his hand, in a few brief moments, to horror it’s the equal of anything in the series, queasily uncomfortable scenes that could leave you clasping your belly, Ripley-like, in sympathy. Prometheus is about two minutes too long (and those are absolutely the last two minutes – if you’ve any sense you’ll leave when you see the duffel bag, and you’ll enjoy it more on its own terms if you do), but the marriage of big, unexplained ideas and gorgeous cinematography and production design mean that there’s life gestating in the warm body of this franchise yet. Fancy another go, Cameron?
Why see it at the cinema: Visually stunning, which almost goes without saying being a Ridley Scott film, and there are just a couple of sequences that you’ll want to see so you can chat with your mates in the pub afterwards.
Why see it in 3D: Ridley Scott does about as well as anyone has with 3D in terms of creating a depth of field, and the crisp images and bold shots work pretty well with the extra dimension. Despite the dark sets and gloomy images, the image has been sufficiently brightened that you can still watch indoors with sunglasses on and make out everything that’s happening. If you’re a fan of stereoscopy, then do make the effort for Prometheus.
The Score: 8/10
Review: Men In Black III
The Pitch: Special Ks.
The Review: When I was growing up, the likes of Tomorrow’s World on TV always fascinated with their unlikely and outlandish gadgets, like machines that could print on the outside of an egg without breaking it, shiny discs that contained a whole album’s worth of music, or small flashing pens that could erase your memory. Well, I can’t actually remember seeing neuralisers on there, but they must be real, as surely nothing else can explain how I can’t remember anything that happened in Men In Black 2? I definitely saw it, and I vaguely remember Rosario Dawson being in it, but other than that one of the most downright disappointing sequels of all time seems to have been forever expunged from my grey cells. Is the only solid argument for another sequel, so long after the second in the series, that it’s being produced in the hope people might remember it this time?
The one immutable of the series has always been the presence and the star power of Big Willie. Since rapping out the theme for the first movie, one of the world’s biggest stars has become synonymous with the MIB brand and he’s front and centre in MIB 3, so much so that this rapidly becomes his journey, his narrative and emotional arc, not least because the universe manages to forget his partner about ten minutes in. While Smith is as reliable as ever, the movie does take something of a risk by shuffling Tommy Lee Jones out early on and replacing him with Josh Brolin, but it’s a brave call and one that pays off well, Brolin’s uncanny version of an unfeasibly young K never causing you to doubt for a second that he is the pre-incarnation of the curmudgeonly Jones, and Smith and Brolin thankfully manage to capture just about the same odd couple chemistry that Smith and Jones did previously.
The reason for the body swap is time travel, an old fallback of the sci-fi genre and one that can work very well, but that can also become catastrophically confused in the wrong hands. Other than the opportunity to interact with a few historical scenarios, such as a well thought-out Andy Warhol sequence, and to see Brolin do his thing, the time travel never feels fully exploited, and also isn’t applied entirely consistently throughout the film. Men In Black also stood out for its freakish bad guy as well as its coterie of unusual aliens, and this also feels another partial success, Jermaine Clement’s bad guy generating moderate amounts of menace but feeling oddly bland at times. Emma Thompson and Alice Eve also leave little impression as the replacement for Rip Torn’s Z, written out no doubt to Torn’s real life exploits. The rest of the quality of the original, from the background alien design of Rick Baker to the jaunty Danny Elfman theme, is present, correct and reassuringly familiar.
What Men In Black 3 does lack most is big laughs. The series has never been laugh out loud funny, but there’s never more than mild chuckles raised here. But what it does lack in laughs it makes up for with an emotional core, driven out of J’s relationship with both generations of K and the plot’s success in giving their partnership a real sense of meaning lacking in both of the earlier sequels. The most enjoyment will be derived from slightly resetting your expectations, as director Barry Sonnenfeld and writer Etan Cohen focus on the relationship and the characters, and most unexpectedly those not entirely hard of heart may even shed a little tear at the end, and even with time travel you’d have done well to see that coming. For all the rumours that the script arrived half-finished, the plot is maybe the most satisfying of the series and while you might not be longing for a fourth trip to the alien well, it might at least take you a little longer to forget this one.
Why see it at the cinema: The opening prison escape and the final Apollo 11 set-piece are both well designed and justify their place on the inside of a multiplex this summer. The cinema screen also gives you the best chance of capturing all of the tiny background details first time, including all of the celebs-who-are-really-aliens on the screens at the back.
The Score: 7/10
Review: The Raid (Serbuan maut)
The Pitch: Attack the block.
The Review: Once in a generation, a film comes along that defines everything that follows, and few films have been as influential in terms of concept as Die Hard. Rapidly becoming a shorthand for the succession of action movies that followed, everything from Die Hard On A Bus (Speed) to On A Boat (Under Siege) was given a convenient high concept to relate to the audience. It seems we’ve gradually come full circle; earlier this year we had Die Hard On A Ledge and now The Raid presents a riff that takes a lot from the original concept: tall building, police officers, master criminal, high stakes… It should come as no surprise to the cynical, based on that description, that The Raid is actually nothing like Die Hard at all.
If I were to pick a more recent comparison, I’d liken The Raid more to Scott Pilgrim vs The World. A series of fights, highly choreographed, with a videogame-like level structure and regular boss-style battles. A dilapidated Indonesian tower block might seem an unlikely setting for an action movie; even more so once you consider that the very Welsh named Gareth Evans is in the director’s chair. Gareth’s actual style is almost the polar opposite of Edgar Wright, for although they might share an active camera Wright relies on the medium he’s paying homage to, be it fast cuts or videogame framing, to get his effect. Evans sweeps around the building more serenely, but when the fights come the camera locks in and fights of increasing length are captured in single takes to impressive effect.
The action is undeniably impressive to watch – it’s the first 18 rated action movie I can recall in a while that justifies that rating – and should set even the most action movie-hardened of hearts racing, but The Raid falls down in two key areas. When compared to classic action movies, The Raid has ramped up the excitement and pared down the dialogue and story to the bare minimum. What’s left is a little too threadbare, not quite providing enough to invest in the characters or why they continue to beat seven shades of crap out of each other. The actors are generally better fighters and stuntmen than they are actors, which is not to say they’re bad actors, rather that they probably won’t be troubling the main acting categories come awards season. The one standout is Ray Sahetapy as the big boss Tama, oozing menace and not being afraid to get his hands dirty, but the remainder are serviceable and nothing more.
All of these might be unfair criticisms of an action movie, but the best examples of the genre manage to balance explosions, fighting and talking, and in this case it is possible to have too much of a good thing. It’s also possible to say that of individual sequences, and while the Indonesian martial arts on display are fierce, every punch landed carries with it the weight of repetition. One of the final fights runs for over six minutes, and becomes a war of attrition as the characters involved wear each other down, leaving the audience at risk of knowing exactly what that feels like. The Raid will satisfy anyone with a craving for a rush of pure cinematic adrenaline, but it might just be a single hit rather than a repeat visit, as The Raid isn’t quite the classic that the hype would have you believe.
Why see it at the cinema: No doubt in my mind that the visceral impact of the fights will lose something at home, so best to immerse yourself in the building, and by that I don’t just mean 15 storeys of criminals.
The Score: 8/10
Bond Legacy: Goldeneye
So ended the world’s greatest game of pass the parcel. After much to-ing and fro-ing between them, and with the various shenanigans and machinations of the past six years behind them, the baton finally passed from Timothy Dalton – who was first considered as early as 1969 – to someone who’d been in the frame since the early Eighties, and whose chance looked resolutely to have gone when he had to drop out before The Living Daylights. Maybe that sense of relief is what explains the shit-eating grin that Bond wears at random moments in Goldeneye…
Yes, Pierce Brosnan was the fifth man to inherit the on screen mantle of Britain, nay the world’s, greatest not-that-good-at-being-secret secret agent. His performance in Goldeneye, in the best Bond Legacy tradition, seemed to call on something from each of his predecessors in the role; he had the stern insistence of a man with an English accent who wasn’t actually British (Lazenby), the effortless sophistication and grace that make him look good in a dinner jacket, but also the belief he could handle himself in a fight (Connery), the hard-edged distance of a man that’s seen a lot of suffering (Dalton) and a louche theatricality with a one-liner that made him seem almost dangerously cheesy (Moore, although that maybe does a little disservice to old Rog).
For some reason, when attempting to capture what made the quintessential Bond film, Martin Campbell and the Broccolis made what everyone thought the stereotype of a Bond film was, rather than replicating an actual Bond film. Consequently the style and the stunts are all there, but so are the worst extremes of Seventies Bond, and there’s a moment with Bond and Wade in Cuba when their aside to camera feels closer to the music hall than it does to a classic Bond film. However, audiences lapped it up and this new Bond, serious one minute and leering the next, would largely provide the template for the Brosnan era, for better and for worse.
Goldeneye is without doubt the best of that era, thanks to a number of key elements. Sean Bean’s creepy smoothness as Trevelyan gave this new, modern Bond the ideal mirror in which to view himself, and their fight late on has a crunching physicality to it, a no-holds-barred approach that would also come to categorise the Bonds that followed. Isabella Scorupco might have been a Polish model turned singer turned actress, but she was still able to act rings around many Bond girls that had gone before her, and Famke Janssen’s Xenia Onatopp (also a former model) camped it up delightfully; if you don’t enjoy her delivery of the line “He’s going to derail the train!” then you maybe need a little more joy in your life. But the key elements were the revitalisation of Martin Campbell’s direction and the knowing script that just about managed to avoid tipping over into self-parody. Just.
Thankfully, just like the sixteen films that preceded it, Goldeneye still has something to offer in dictating the path of what is to come.
1. No relic of the Cold War after all
The one doubt in everyone’s mind was whether, in a world without Russian enemies and with high-powered American action movies, Bond was still really needed. The relative failure of Licence To Kill in America and a few other territories had, somewhat unjustly, caused speculation as to if Bond could still cut it. In terms of box office and adjusting for inflation, Goldeneye took nearly twice the total of its predecessor and more than any Bond film since Moonraker, and Goldeneye really showed, for the first time, that Bond could move with the times. Sure, the franchise had often made reference to the latest fad or fashion and tried to hang on the coat-tails of the other big movies of the time, but the Nineties showed how Bond could still thrive in a world without the Iron Curtain. (We’ll gloss over the fact that half of the film is still set in
2. Campbell’s soup-er when it comes to reboots
Martin Campbell had made his name with the TV adaptation of Edge Of Darkness, and he proved key in bringing Bond back to the big screen. So key, in fact, that when Bond returned after another four year hiatus and producers were again looking to put a fresh spin on proceedings, Campbell returned and once again proved his ability to keep enough familiar elements while injecting a shot of individuality and freshness. He’s now in his early sixties, so he should still have enough good years left in him when Michael Fassbender, Andrew Garfield and Will Poulter line up for their reboots in the next twenty years. (Especially when everyone says how much the Poulter years are a return to form after that Garfield fiasco.)
3. Kleinman’s the man, but Serra’s an error
I’ve wrapped the last two lessons together, but they are both salient warnings to anyone attempting to make a Bond film in the future. Daniel Kleinman takes the work of the likes of Robert Brownjohn and Maurice Binder and makes it fresh and exciting, capturing the feeling of its predecessors but still managing to take the opening titles forward. Consequently he continued to get the gig right up until Quantum of Solace. Eric Serra was also hired to write the score, and has produced some fantastic work for Luc Besson’s movies, especially the prior year’s Leon. His work on Goldeneye is similarly great, with the sweeping string accompaniments for Bond’s Caribbean detour evoking just the right mood. Trouble is, the score as a whole is categorically wrong for a Bond film; so wrong that the producers had to bring in John Altman – who, fact fans, also arranged Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life for Life Of Brian – to Bond up the tank chase in St. Petersburg. Consequently David Arnold, to the relief of everyone everywhere, got the gig for the next five films. The moral of the story is, feel free to have a little play with the key elements, but if Bond Legacy has taught us anything, it’s that you can’t mess with the fundamentals.
Next time: The irony of a film about a media mogul gone mad whose title is based on a misprint. It’s Tomorrow Never Lies Dies.
For more Bond related japes and in-depth analysis, visit BlogalongaBond.
Bond Legacy: Licence To Kill
It’s over, before it had barely begun. One of the greatest tragedies of the whole of the Bond series is Timothy Dalton’s restricted contribution, cut off as he was in his prime after just two films. There were a number of factors that conspired to put paid to Tim and his time drinking martinis, not least the failure of Licence to Kill to find an audience. Marketing wrangles and rights issues put paid to a new film with anyone for the best part of four years, and by the time that was sorted the legacy of Mr Dalton amounted to just two films. Licence To Kill may have had the most significant impact of any Bond film from what has followed, but in terms of the revolution it so craved it can best be described as a work in progress.
Licence To Kill is a film caught almost fatally between two stools. Sat proudly on one is the Daltmeister, pushing his Bond closer to Ian Fleming’s creation than anyone on screen before him, and probably since. Dalton’s Bond ranges closer to anti-hero than ever, set on his personal quest of vengeance and so driven by loyalty he’s prepared to abandon his employers and some of his peripheral principles to get the means to deliver the required end. On the other stoll, with wobbly legs and an unfortunate case of woodworm, is the film’s reluctance to let go of some of the hoarier staples of the series. The most obvious case in point is Q’s arrival, which does its best to derail all the good work done earlier and the number of times that Bond insists Q go home, only for Q to promptly ignore him and then stand conspicuously on the road side before slinging expensive gadgets into a hedge becomes a great embarrassment.
It doesn’t help that Licence To Kill comes over as the most overtly American Bond ever made; it may just be a coincidence that Bond’s only made one further brief trip to the US in Casino Royale since. With a selection of North American locations, a soundtrack from Die Hard / Lethal Weapon composer Michael Kamen and even the brief scene with M moved outdoors, the feeling is of an American action movie, with too much of the distinctiveness to the Bond films lost in the mix. It served to render Tim’s performance an interesting footnote in the annals of Bond, rather than the more overt game changer it could have been, and one which could have seen Dalton truly making the role his own.
It didn’t help that some of the casting choices weren’t great; while Davi and Del Toro do great work on the bad guy side, much of the rest leaves a little to be desired and in keeping with much of the rest of the series, neither Bond girl is an especially great actress. There’s also some rough editing in the action sequences – such as the tanker chase, which leaves the henchman with the bazooka looking particularly inept after Bond takes several seconds to put the tanker on two wheels before he promptly and skillfully shoots underneath it -which if tightened up could have elevated them to true greatness.
All that said, this hard edged Bond still had an influence, not least in starting the debate each time a new film in the series opens about how close to Fleming’s written creation the screen incarnation is, and should be. Without Licence To Kill showing how much it was possible to shake up the formula – even if audiences didn’t warm to it at first – and the legacy on Dalton’s own career has included a selection of deliciously evil bad guys in everything from Hot Fuzz to Doctor Who. So while Licence To Kill isn’t one of my own favourite movies in the series personally, its lasting impact isn’t to be underestimated. Here’s five more reasons that Licence To Kill continues to leave its mark.
1. Licence to come up with brand new titles
There were still others available, from The Hildebrand Rarity to 007 In New York, but having long dispensed with the actual content of Fleming’s novels, it’s mildly ironic that the most noted attempt to return to the character on the page dispensed with a title on the front cover that Fleming himself had created. A brief flirtation with the titles reared up again in the Craig era, but thankfully Quantum Of Solace soon put paid to that. It’s just a shame that Licence Revoked, the original title of choice, got ditched at the last minute, as that would have made more sense in the context of the story.
2. Licence to admit people over 15 only
Bond films, not to mention movies in general, were on the cusp of a new era in the UK, with the new 12 rating just around the corner. Initially, Licence To Kill could barely even dream of that as the first cut submitted to the BBFC would have picked up an 18 rating uncut. The new, colder approach ran the risk of being box office poison, and a number of repeat visits over the next few months, coupled with a realisation that they couldn’t wait for the new rating if they wanted people to actually see the film, left Licence as the first Bond film to pick up anything higher than a PG. The Living Daylights is still to date the last film to pick up that rating, thanks to that 12 / 12A category and a general softening of attitudes in twenty years, and the Bond that followed has become synonymous with the category of mild peril, bloodless violence and a single strong swear word. At least this one was there to show them the way.
3. Licence to release Bond films in winter
It’s a shame that so much was lost in attempting to crack the American market, once in love with Bond in his early days but starting to become an irrelevance. This was the last Bond film to get a summer release in the US, and the crowded marketplace that summer, with Lethal Weapon 2 and When Harry Met Sally opening around the same time and Batman, Honey I Shrunk The Kids and Ghostbusters 2 still monopolising the multiplexes, saw Licence To Kill finish 36th on the US box office list for the year. Since moving to the autumn, no Bond film has finished lower than 14th in a given year and four out six, the first two for both Brosnan and Craig, have been in the top 10 at year end.
4. Licence to have an action scene on a bridge
True Lies? 2 Fast 2 Furious? Mission: Impossible 3? All had an action scene set on Seven Mile Bridge in Florida, and two of them also featured big armoured trucks transporting captives. Bond, as always, showed the way.
5. Licence to grab a plane in mid-air
I’ve already commented previously on Christopher Nolan, and how the finest director working today (who really should do a Bond himself one day, at which point I would probably suffer a fatal geekgasm) has been influenced by his love for Bond films. Anyone who saw The Dark Knight Rises prequel in cinemas late last year won’t have to wonder too hard where Nolan got the idea for a mid-air plane grab from, although anyone’s who’s not seen that yet is in for a treat as Nolan has taken it to another level. Seriously Chris, do make time in the diary for Bond 24 if you can.
Next time: It’s the sexist, misogynist dinosaur, or misogosaurus sex to give him his correct genus. It’s Goldeneye.
For more Bond related japes and in-depth analysis, visit BlogalongaBond.
Bond Legacy: The Living Daylights
When BlogalongaBond first started, there were two certainties as far as Bond was concerned; that Sean Connery would be held up as the gold standard to which all others would be compared, and that pretty much everyone would have a different favourite Bond. My mother won’t actually watch Bond films any more, so convinced is she that Connery is unimpeachable in the Bond stakes and that anyone else would pale so much by comparison that they wouldn’t even be worth her time. For pretty much everyone else, the grimness of the later Moore years is over, and we come into the modern Bonds. For me and for many others of my generation, Timothy Dalton was the first new Bond in my lifetime. He was also the first new Bond in the sense that my house got its first VCR in 1985, so the Dalton Bonds were the first that I was able to watch in the comfort of my own home about the time that they were released. Thus Timothy will always be the tiniest Bond in my overly literal mind.
But it takes a big man to impose himself in a series that was becoming so stale you could practically see the fetid bacterial cultures forming up there on screen. That man, a long time candidate who now seemed in prime position, was Pierce Brosnan. Sadly for Pierce, some scheduling shenanigans at NBC kept him tied to his Remington Steele role for six more episodes, just long enough to rule him out of the Bond timeframe and instead to let someone who’d been thought of even longer as a possible Bond sneak in. Step forward one Timothy Dalton.
Both Dalton and The Living Daylights get a lot of things right that the series had been getting badly wrong. Dalton is belivably stern and occasionally patronising, but in a very satisfying manner, where Moore had lost that sense of quiet authority as age overtook him, and where Dalton’s quips are frothy and entertaining, Moore had become dangerously lecherous and positively leering. The action scenes are also ratcheted up by several levels of intensity, and the set pieces are some of the best in the series since the Seventies. The overall tone is more even and some of the wilder excesses are reined in, making The Living Daylights the most satisfying Bond film since The Spy Who Loved Me.
But enough of that, what we’re concerned with in Bond Legacy is the lasting impact that these films have had on each other and the world at large, and there’s still mean on them bones even fifteen films in.
1. Putting the (re-)boot in
With a new Bond came a change in tone and a leading man as different to his predecessor as Lazenby was to Connery. But this time that change drove a shift in the tone, and it wouldn’t be the first time in the next couple of decades that a change in personnel would drive a change in ethos in the Bond films. The Living Daylights was almost conceived as a prequel, intented as a full reboot of the franchise, but that fresh slate was another twenty years away, and even then it still had Dame Judi Dench sprawled all over it.
But the coming of Dalton, Brosnan and Craig has seen a rethink in style and tone each time, and The Living Daylights was the first to really show that the mould really can be broken, or even thrown away and started with afresh, as long as you keep enough of these legacy elements to ground the audience.
2. Double trouble
There was one change afoot on the musical front as well, as while John Barry was still providing excellent music (and even gets an onscreen cameo this time around), the main public focus as far as music in Bond is concerned has always been the title track. Duran Duran had hit number 1 in the US with A View To A Kill, a first for the series, and that in trun reinforced the need in the producer’s minds to have a big name act to write the theme tune, and indeed sing the theme tune.
So Chrissie Hynde got shuffled to the end credits, and A-ha burbled out The Living Daylights once John Barry had sufficiently Bonded up the backing track. (Hynde can also be heard on the evil milkman’s Walkman, so she didn’t do badly.) But this started a trend of different tracks on the opening and closing credits, with often the composer’s first choice – and consequently the better tune – getting shunted to the end credits, rather than being an accompaniment to the usual parade of scantily clad ladies in fantasy settings that kicks off proceedings.
3. The name’s Aston. Martin Aston. No, wait…
The other notable feature about The Living Daylights is the return of the Aston Martin. James Bond’s vehicle of choice had been a prominent feature in the Sixties, but apart from a blink and you’ll miss it showing in Diamonds Are Forever had been largely absent. Dalton’s debut might have seen a V8 Vantage Volante rather than the earlier DB5 or DBS, but The Living Daylights sees the return of the classic car maker with some tooling about on the ice that was ripped off homaged in Die Another Day. Only two of the Bond films made since this one haven’t featured an Aston of some variety, and for many men, myself included, an Aston Martin would be near the top of the shopping list if our numbers ever came up on the lottery. Ideally one with giant rockets and an ejector seat. (Well, if money’s no object…)
Next time: Somehow I have to break the news gently, that I’m not a huge fan of License To Kill. Gulp.
For more Bond related japes and in-depth analysis, visit BlogalongaBond.
Bond Legacy: A View To A Kill
Finally, the end of the road, a Bond film for which even Roger Moore thought he was too old. He was, of course, quite right. Let’s not beat about the bush, A View To A Kill is awful.
What? You want more? Where to start. There are very few moments that A View To A Kill actually feels like a proper Bond film, except when it’s ticking off the occasional past legacy. But Rog is absolutely going through the motions at this point, and he’s going through them slowly and with some difficulty because he’s quite clearly past it. The rest of the cast resembles a freak show that would put Britain’s Got Talent to shame; Christopher Walken is in full on weird mode, but fails at any point to come over as threatening; whoever thought Grace Jones could act needs to be taken out and shot; and poor old Patrick Macnee looks like he’s stumbled in off the set of an entirely different film and is now being kept as Rog’s slave.
(A note on those old legacies, though: while I didn’t list it out originally, pretty much any Bond film with either a large set of henchmen or international investors gets them together and sits them round a table, and the cunning twist here is that the table has been set up in – an airship! What larks. It is the most Bond-like moment in the whole film, so thanks to whichever film did it first. [hurriedly scrambles back to start watching Sean Connery Bonds again])
If any of the action scenes redeemed it, it mightn’t be so bad, but there’s some Paris-based rumblings that are faintly ludicrous at best, and a chase on a fire engine that feels like a deleted scene from Herbie Rides Again rather than a main set piece in a Bond film. Almost no-one involved with the production has fond memories, and we should just be thankful that this finally convinced everyone it was time to put The Amazing Eyebrow out to pasture and get someone younger and better in. Given that much of the talent behind the camera, including the screenwriter and director, came back again next time, quite how they got it so badly wrong here all round when that can’t all be blamed on the practically octogenarian star is a matter that’s probably not worth expending much time contemplating, but is still somewhat strange.
Anyway, despite being as ripe as a six month old pear at the bottom of the fruit bowl, A View To A Kill still managed to show the power of the Bond brand by having a further legacy or four on the rest of the series.
1. It’s all in the game
A View To A Kill holds the distinction of being the first Bond film to be represented by a computer game. The likes of Goldeneye on the N64 were but ten years away at this point, but the fact that the Bond franchise has produced some high quality games and that one all time classic probably couldn’t have been guessed from the amazingly shoddy graphical adventure unfolding on the C64 and other comparable platforms. Still, we’ve all got to start somewhere. There was almost a game for Octopussy, but it was never actually released; the mind can barely grasp what 8-bit innuendos we’ve been denied by that decision.
2. It’s all in the family
Speaking of talent in front of and behind the camera, one of the most regular names to appear on Bond films is that of Michael G. Wilson. Having had a hand in writing every Eighties Bond, he’d also acted as an executive producer since Moonraker, but AVTAK marks the first time that Cubby’s stepson stepped up to join the big man as a fellow producer. When Barbara Broccoli then joined him on producing duties from Goldeneye, the family template was set and Wilson and Broccoli continue to steer the direction of the Bond series to this day. He’s also had cameos in a remarkable fourteen films of the series, making him the Stan Lee of the Bond movies. (Is it too late to get Stan? He’s ace. Oh, okay.)
3. Board of Bond?
Despite the stunts being mainly ropey, one of them turned out to become iconic after all, and it’s probably a moment that will send shudders down the spines of most Bond aficionados. Snowboarding, despite having been done for around 20 years, was still a niche sport, attracting no attention outside the hardcore skiing world until an old man’s unconvincing stunt double slid down a hill on a converted ironing board to the accompaniment of The Beach Boys. Thirteen years later, it was an Olympic sport. See, even the worst Bond films can be a force for good.
4. The name’s the thing
And just a final note on a legacy first mentioned in From Russia With Love. The tradition of naming the next Bond film in the end credits went slightly askew last time, when Octopussy predicted the next in the series would be called “From A View To A Kill”. Maybe in a sense of embarrassment at getting the title so shamefully wrong, A View To A Kill simply stated that “James Bond Will Return” and left it at that. Without even realising, the Broccolis had given an early indicator of the uncertain future the Bond films were about to start facing…
Next time: Come on, Tim! It’s The Living Daylights.
For more Bond related japes and in-depth analysis, visit BlogalongaBond.
Alan Hansen’s Birthday Reviews
Astonishingly, against all the odds and defying all expectations, The Movie Evangelist turned two yesterday. Yes, you’ve been reading my ramblings, my rantings and my awful addiction to alliteration for two whole years now, and as with any exercise it’s good to get a progress report. Somehow it didn’t feel that anyone in the world of film was sufficiently impartial to be able to give an honest appraisal, so I thought I’d ask someone who was more of an idol from my childhood to cast an opinion on what I’ve been up to this year.
Sadly, most of my childhood idols were both unavailable and fictional characters, and much as I’d have liked Chorlton (from Chorlton and the Wheelies) or KITT (from Knight Rider, obvs) to pass judgement on the current state of my blogging, I felt it was better to have someone real to give a view on my personal witterings. As a Liverpool FC fan, the footballer I admired most was Ian Rush, and had I actually been any good at sport of any kind I would’ve loved to follow in his footsteps. But in terms of critical analysis, the benchmark these days is Alan Hansen, doyen of the Match Of The Day commentary team and bringing the same kind of no-nonsense approach to analysis as he did to central defence for Partick Thistle, Liverpool and Scotland for nearly twenty years. So Alan has had his image stolen by me and used without his permission so I hope he doesn’t sue me kindly given his forthright opinions on some of the highlights and lowlights of the past year of The Movie Evangelist.
BlogalongaMuppets The highlight of the past year was my shameless rip-off of BlogalongaBond, where I cajoled and inspired four other valiant and faithful bloggers to watch all seven of the theatrically released Muppet films. As far as I am aware, no one watched any Muppet Babies. Probably for the best.
Alan Hansen says: Poor, poor effort from the big man. He’s played a flat back five but there’s an obvious flaw in his defence, that most of them didn’t actually like half of the Muppet films. Not only that, but he’s got way behind on BlogalongaBond in the process, he’s not managed to get involved in BlogalongaPotter and his plans for BlogalongaTrek later in the year looked doomed to failure. You can’t win anything with Muppets.
Festival coverage I’ve managed to put myself about a bit in the past year, with a trip to London for the Sci-Fi London film festival last May to see Super, racking up twenty seven films at the Cambridge Film Festival last year and an extended weekend at Empire Presents: BIG SCREEN at the O2 in August.
Alan Hansen says: Shocking, absolutely shocking. He’s ended up with a serious neck injury at BIG SCREEN and he’s over-extended himself in Cambridge, not getting reviews up for half his films. Not only that, but he’s missed out the London Film Festival completely, and you’ve got to be up there playing the big boys if you expect to be top of the table at the end of the season. He’s going to have to have a better passing game if he’s going to make it work.
Wreckers Before The Movie Evangelist came to be there was a film made in the village where I live, which turned out to have Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy in it. Fancy that.
Alan Hansen says: Frankly diabolical, he’s living and breathing films yet he’s played up and let Cumberbatch beat the offside trap, not even realising he was in the film until after it had finished filming. He’s tried to make a recovery with a review and an article about the film, but then he’s actually grabbed an interview with the director and it’s taken four months to get the interview written down. He’s got to step up his game the next time he’s given that kind of opportunity.
Review Of The Year As well as a regular supply of reviews, Christmas and the New Year saw a selection of top lists of 2011, including Scenes, Performances and even Gingers, and the traditional (two years is a tradition, right?) Top 40 of the year.
Alan Hansen says: Unbelievable, he’s pulled out the big guns in an effort to cover up the fact that he’s already seen 40 films this year and he’s only managed to review 14 of them. He’s also popped up at an Ultra Culture Cinema event and his review was very niche. I don’t think anyone enjoyed it, apart from the people who read it. I’ve seen non-league teams in their pyjamas who’ve put in more effort.
General posts And in addition to all of the above, I’ve done everything from write some spectacularly awful poetry to trying to encourage other people to watching 100 films in the cinema in a year.
Alan Hansen says: Outstanding, frankly inspirational. Reminded me of the great Liverpool sides of the Seventies, but I’m not talking about the big ginger one here, rather Martin Chorley. Martin’s stepped up and accepted the challenge to see 100 films this year, and he’s even put in some graphs. If the Movie Evangelist is going to be thought of alongside the great Brazilians of years gone by, he could learn a thing or two from Martin.
Well, thanks for that Alan, I can only hope that the third year of The Movie Evangelist lives up to your high expectations. Sick as a parrot.
Review: The Avengers 3D
I am NOT calling it Marvel Avengers Assemble, which is just insulting to our collective intelligence. Humph.
The Pitch: The long-haired god and his immovable object meet the irresistible force, the irascible scientist, the irresponsible robot, the irritable Russian, the invincible soldier, some guy with a bow and arrow and Samuel L. M***********’ Jackson.
The Review: For so many years, Marvel comic adaptations were the poorer cousins of their DC counterparts. While Batman and Superman films have dominated the blockbuster scene for thirty years and more, Marvel had to contend themselves with The Punisher, Howard The Duck and repeated failed attempts at a Captain America film. Then the last decade has seen a revolution, with the X-Men and Spider-Man being given successful treatment by filmmakers who actually knew what they were doing. But these were outsourced properties, and if Marvel was going to put its own stamp on the movies, what better way to do it with the biggest of all their properties, the Avengers? Over the last five years they’ve been testing the water with individual adaptations of Iron Man, Thor, Hulk and Captain America, but it became clear that this was not only a strong array of characters but a massive collection of egos. Would it even be possible to get all of these massive Marvels onto the same screen? And who could do justice to them if they did?
Step forward one Joss Whedon, master of small screen and comic book culture, but a man who’s had a somewhat less than impressive record himself when it comes to big screen adaptations. Put simply, from Alien: Resurrection to Serenity Whedon has at best a cult following, but there may have been no-one better suited to bringing this clash of the titans together. No matter what the medium, Joss has a track record of marshaling large rosters of characters, and there’s a huge list lined up here from the best of Marvel’s own brand adaptations. This does create two problems up front: to actually assemble the Avengers takes an inordinate amount of time, as they’re rounded up one by one, and there’s then a significant imbalance in the back story afforded, with Thor and Captain America getting further exploration of their methods and motivations while poor old Hawkeye still gets little more than a name and an prior affiliation with a SHIELD colleague. If Basil Exposition had been a comic book character, he would’ve fit right into the Avengers.
That’s not to say there’s not a lot of nice moments or sharp dialogue, but that’s all they are, never quite gelling together or giving the plot the forward momentum it needs. Sure, it’s great to have an excuse to get them all together, but motivations in some cases are a little weak and throwaway in a way that comic books can often get away with but which seem more exposed on screen. Many of the best throwaway moments are given to Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man, the potential star of the ensemble right from his first appearance in the shiny red suit four years ago, but the other major success story is Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk, with a much better balance between Banner and beast than either of the previous attempts, playing well on Ruffalo’s natural charm but also managing a brooding menace. The rest of the Avengers themselves all get moments to shine but rarely steal the screen. Of the Avengers themselves, Hawkeye is the most underused, and while both Nick Fury and Agent “Phil” Coulson have some zingers to hand out, but Cobie Smulders’ Maria Hill feels like she’s just being set up for future installments. As for the bad guys, Loki is even better here, Tom Hiddleston commanding the screen – no mean feat against such a roster of hero talent – but he’s poorly served by a supporting army who prove nothing more than Avenger fodder for the final battle.
Ah, the final battle. Once all of the Avengers are assembled, and something has finally been worked out for them to be Avenging, Whedon and co finally let rip. Everything that you’d possibly hoped this could be and more comes to pass, with scores of moments to please both the general crowd and the fanboys and an epic sweep to the action, which comes in wave after wave of that Avenger fodder mentioned earlier, that does finally give each of its leads stand out, iconic moments. The third act of The Avengers, taken on its own, has to be one of the best summer blockbusters ever, there’s just a risk that when you get the Blu-ray that may be the stretch which gets worn out first, as everything of the highest quality is weighted into that final third. Producer Kevin Feige somewhat bizarrely compared The Avengers to the most recent Transformers sequel in interviews, and he’s actually right in the sense that the film increases in quality over the course of time, but thankfully even the dullest moments here are better than the heights that the giant fighty robots managed last time out. The better comparison here is the first Spider-Man and X-Men movies, for despite what amounts to five prequels The Avengers turns out to be an origin movie, as good as its Marvel brethren but sadly suffering from the same flaws as almost every origin film in its genre. When you consider how well the second entries in each series turned out, and how high the heights reached are here, you’ll be salivating at the thought of Avengers 2. Let’s just hope that Iron Man 3, Captain America 2 and all of the other required interquels can keep us entertained in the mean time.
Why see it at the cinema: For the first of the main summer blockbusters of the years it’s oddly uncinematic, shot in 1.85:1 (the widescreen TV ratio, rather than the normal cinema widescreen of 2.35:1), but the combination of the sweeping visuals and the gut-aching humour of the last third mean this is best seen with company.
Why see it in 3D: Don’t, if you can help it. The first third is swathed in darkness and becomes almost unwatchable with the polarising filter reducing the light levels, and when the film does move into daylight some of the 3D in-your-face moments have a disappointing feeling of fakery. You’re absolutely better off not paying the premium.
Should I wait for the obligatory end credits sequence? Only if you’re a hardcore fanboy. I’m not, so I had to come home and Google what happened. This one’s also in the middle of the credits, so only sit through all the names if you have a genuine appreciation for the craft involved or Alan Silvestri’s bombastic score.
The Score: 8/10
Previous reviews in the series: Iron Man 2 and Thor 3D.
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