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dangermousieOK, this is going to be looooong.
First off, a little background. I don’t like Bond movies or Bond books (though I like the books better than the movies). The first Bond movie I saw was Sean Connery’s ‘Never Say Never Again,’ all the way back in 1991. At the tender age I was then, I thought it was great fun but even then I thought it was cheesy (I later read the book and liked it much better).
Years went by with me Bondless and I didn’t feel the lack. Then I ended up seeing the Brosnan Bond movie with my family in the theater (I am blanking on the name but it’s with the woman who kills men with her thighs :P) and thought it was atrocious. I knew I was going to hate it from the moment Bond jumped out of airplane and broke the laws of physics catching someone in mid-flight.
After that, I ended up watching most of the other Bond movies at random intervals due to those interminable Bond-fests on TV. I never had any interest, but I’d be with a group of people who thought it fun. I thought they were atrocious: cheesy, poorly scripted and worse-acted, chauvinist, and having the same relation to emotional and physical reality as do cartoons drawn by three year olds. Oh, and I saw ‘Never Say Never Again’ again and yup, it was that way as well. The only strong feeling those movies evoked in me was the desire to switch the channel. And maybe to punch Bond in his smug face.
Fast-forward and I hear that they are desperately looking for new Bond. ‘Good,’ think I. ‘Maybe the franchise will finally die.’ I kept hoping they wouldn’t pick any actors I like, actually, and when they picked Daniel Craig I was a bit disappointed because I really liked him in ‘Layer Cake’ (and years before that in BBC’s ‘Moll Flanders.’) And then ff to 2006. I had no intention of seeing this in a movie theater. Or on DVD. Or, in fact, ever. And then someone mentioned that ‘Casino Royale’ was fresh at RT. And I checked and it was 96%! My mind was boggled and I developed a small desire to see a Bond movie that could score that high. It was like some sort of fearsome prodigy :P And then Best Friend, whose taste is freakishly similar to mine (she’s got me started on Battlestar, Farscape, and Firefly) went to see it and became a raving loony about the film. So my desire became quite strong. And then I saw the trailer and was gooooone.
So I went to see it yesterday, full of curiosity but not necessarily expecting anything much. It was Bond, after all, how good could it be?
Oh boy.
Damn.
So very very very very good. I am now obsessed and drooling and must see it again soon.
I knew I was in for something different from the black-and-white intro scene, with the nasty, unpretty ‘first kill.’
Do you know what? This Bond feels real. This world feels real. It’s darker and grittier and nastier. There aren’t flashy gadgets and men who kill with their hats and women who strangle with their thighs. This is more John LeCarre than 70s loungewear. It’s brutal and dangerous and horrible and it fucks you up.
Yes, that’s the key (for me). This Bond is fucked up (and he’s only started on his career). This movie finally, finally, gets it right. Any person who does this for a living: who spies, manipulates, kills, is not a suave charmer at heart (whatever his manner is), he is a fucked up, broken individual, borderline psycho, with something deeply wrong and broken in him. And the movie admits he is fucked up. A bit of an adrenalin junkie and a hell of a lot of mess. Vesper calls him another broken boy from the SAS and she is right and the movie lets her be right.
And oh God, Daniel Craig gets it so right. This Bond is dangerous. For the first time in…ever. He is dangerous and scary and cold and something in him revels in the killing and the mayhem even as the small sane part of him hates himself for it. Looking at him, I want to take a step back. And there is no playing around with women, no gallivanting around. This Bond is about the mission and any woman is a distraction, an information source, not something he has too much time for. He uses bimbette for info and leaves her with a notable lack of interest. And with Vesper it’s not pro forma ‘I like sleeping around’ vibe but he actually falls for her. He won’t waste time getting involved past a one-night stand until he falls in love. There is no easy gallantry in this movie.
What a difference having someone who can act makes! This is the first time that’s happened (Sean Connery was playing Sean Connery. Roger Moore was playing Roger Moore. Pierce Brosnan’s acting skills were as lacking as his looks were not and all I can say for Timothy Dalton is that I liked him as Mr. Rochester).
This Bond is mesmerizing. He has a certain controlled rageful glee. When he crashes that car in the club, sure, it’s part of his diversion to get into security camera room, but it’s also his enjoyment of getting back at the guy who was condescending for a moment. He is funny, and sharply clever without being glib or smug. Amazing.
He is dysfunctional yet he still has a soul. For now. And not for too long. It’s being chipped away bit by bit by his job, and he knows that, and the amazing thing is, Daniel Craig manages to portray that brilliantly. This is the first time Bond is a real person, who gets tired, and mad, and freaked-out, and who bleeds, and feels. He’s got quite an ego which makes sense, as one needs to be sure and not second guess and trust one’s judgment, in order to stay at this line of work. But he is also someone who is bitter and full of knowledge about his life expectancy not being high. This Bond feels real, not a collection of mannerisms, a damaged soul, both scary and heart-breaking.
He has to stay detached in order to stay sane, but even the level of detachment he has in the start and middle of the movie is not enough. He needs more. His mask is not yet firmly in place and it doesn’t fit as well as it should: when the bimbette is found dead, you can tell he feels tremendously guilty (and just as instantly suppresses it). There is a cost to his actions, a cost to others and to himself and somehow the movie manages to portray it without descending into silly emoness or what not.
Just as at the end, when he talks to M on the phone and he refers to Vesper as a bitch, but it comes out all crooked, it doesn’t fit, and he is overcompensating and trying to put the detachment back on and not succeeding and even M can tell. (OMG! His voice! His face!) and even though minutes before he was desperately trying to revive her and holding her, all curled up around her (I so want an icon of that scene!)
And yeah, I was going to talk about this later, because after all, it’s one of the last scenes in the movie, but I think I want to talk about that now.
That whole scene, where he tracks her, and there is the battle with the bad guys and then he desperately tries to rescue her from the locked, going-into-water elevator? Whoa.
This just sums up why I love the new movie while never caring for any of the rest. Yes, he is fighting, but it’s brutal and gritty and desperate and it takes a toll. And yet he is also trying to protect Vesper and save her, and not because she is a busty damsel and that is what he does but because she is the woman he loves (yes, loves *gasp* Bond actually says ‘I love you’ and means it and what is even more impressive, makes ME believe he means it, every bit) and there is no cheerful detachment, just desperation.
And she, she locks herself in, knowing she is going to die, and throws away the key (I am going to blab about Vesper and how is she actually not a Bond Girl but a first female character in a Bond movie. Because M is sexless, regardless of the gender, but that will have to wait until a bit later). And I love how he dives in, and he hopelessly tries to wrench at the bars and they just stare at each other. And then it hit me! At this point, he knows she’s betrayed him (and he doesn’t yet know that she had no choice about the money and she saved him and she didn’t betray him after all) but he is still desperately trying to rescue her, and he is still falling apart.
And of course, he manages to get the door broken too late and he brings her up and tries to give her CPR but he cannot bring her back to life (unlike her actions earlier where she literally did) and that whole scene is probably my favorite scene in the movie (but then I am an angst junkie), because he really has lost the detachment he had (though he never had enough of it) and he can’t be rational in her being beyond help.
And then the CPR just turns into hopeless kissing on his part and it’s just…amazing amazing scene. And then you see the look on his face, and he looks broken, and he just scoops her up and holds her.
FUCK.
Who would have thought that a Bond movie (a Bond movie!) would have one of the best movie love stories this year!
Because it does. I loved the thought of Vesper and Bond together from the totally great first scene between them on the train, where they spar with verbal barbs sharp enough to draw blood (and no tiresome double-entendres) and the chemistry is psycho enough to burn down a small town. They are equals with banter and passion and that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dangermousie catnip, hurt/comfort (OMG, how much do I love the scene in the shower! Or in the wheelchair!). And he feels. And he fails. And she brings him back from the brink of soullessness and he crashes the car to avoid hurting her and it's all so hopelessly doomed! OMG.
How much do I love the hurt/comfort scene in the shower? I need an icon of that so badly! She’s fallen apart because this is the first time she’s seen someone killed (and actually helped) and she is sitting in the shower as if to wash away the (nonexistent) blood and I love that he just comes in, quietly, and she tells him about the blood, and he just sits next to her in the shower and they are both getting soaked, fully dressed, and he asks her is she is cold and turns up the hot water. And she tells him the blood won’t wash off, so he takes her fingers and puts them in his mouth (WHOA MAMA. HOT!) and it’s actually manages not to be a cheesy pick-up or even a sexual suggestion but a very primitive gesture of comfort and solidarity. And they just sit like that.
I am dead.
And I think in a way, he sympathizes because he’s been there himself at some point of his life (if he was in the SAS, I assuming the first person he killed for MI6 wasn’t his first kill ever), and he’s lost most of that shock value himself but he can still remember it. And he actually has faint echoes of it himself. That scene where he drinks Scotch and washes his bloody hands and then just stares at himself in the mirror (earlier), you can tell that this bothers him, still, and you want to tell him to run far far away and save what’s left of his humanity, but you know he won’t.
And of course, as a h/c junkie, I also love the scene of her with him when he is recuperating and he is in a wheelchair and she tells him she can’t resist waking him up because every time he looks at her as if he hasn’t seen her in a very long time and it makes her feel reborn. Meeeep. And I have to say, the way he looks at her? She is right. I’d probably be a puddle of goo on the floor.
And I totally love Vesper. She is a character, not a piece of meat with amazing assets to be the receiving end of boring innuendo. No, she is a person, and I get why Bond falls for her. She is clever and cool and vulnerable without being weak, and she is someone who’s made the best of a very bad bargain.
Btw, if I understand it correctly, this is what happened:
1. She works for the treasury and has an Algerian bf.
2. Her Algerian bf is kidnapped by Le Chifre so she would help him in poker game/get money.
3. She tells Le Chifre about Bond figuring out his tell (or maybe Mathis did, we don’t know. I do think Mathis was working for Le Chifre. Le Chifre had no reason to conceal truth from Bond as he was going to kill him and it was going to hurt him more. )
4. Bond wins anyway and she is freaked out that Le Chifre will kill him so she makes a deal with Le Chifre’s bosses that she will give them all the money if they will take out Le Chifre/protect Bond (and hopefully get her now-ex out :P).
5. She gets taken (no idea if for real or not. I think so, as Le Chifre would be PISSED at her for not helping him win).
6. Le Chifre’s bosses come through on their part of the bargain and off him, saving Bond.
7. Vesper knows that the bargain she made will leave her dead. Even if she gives the bosses the money, they will kill her because she can ID them.
8. But she wants the bf freed, Bond alive blah blah so she takes the bargain and enjoys her weeks of happiness and then goes to keep her part of the bargain but in such a way as to let Bond know so he will follow her and take out the bad guys so the money won’t be going to the bad guys (before we found that out, I thought if she was evil, she was stupid because she left her blackberry there etc etc).
9. She throws the key away because she thinks death in the best option for her (not too far off. MI6 would probably rub her out despite the duress she was under and the fact that she thwarted the evil plans.)
10. And in addition to coordinates of the drop, she SMSes Bond the name and phone of the Big Cahuna in charge of Le Chifre’s bosses so he can take him out.
Gosh, she was AWESOME. (And here is where having a great script helps because all the acting in the world isn’t enough if there isn’t anything to go on).
But to get back to Bond.
You know what I thought was brilliant? We see him human near the end, happy and distraught with Vesper. Which is why at the end, with the new Bond mask fully in place now, unbreakable, that scene with Mr. White and ‘Bond. James Bond’ the scene is both really cool and yet hurts, because you know that even though this is cool, a human Bond has been destroyed for it.
Because I can see why he is going to lock himself away completely behind walls. He got emotionally involved and he lost her and it reinforced not only ‘cannot trust’ motto (because ultimately, she was a good person, but there were still things going on he didn’t realize), but more importantly, he doesn’t want to hurt like that again, with the loss.
Oh, and one last, unrelated comment. It’s about the torture scene (btw, Daniel Craig’s body? Whoa. Be still my heart.) It’s all gritty and nasty and kinda made me peer through my fingers and I kept wondering why that particular type of torture? And I think maybe, it ties in with this being the most vulnerable, human Bond in…ever. And so the torture is that way too: no SuperEvil ridiculous contraptions, just something very viscerally intimate and real and personal and even uncomfortable to watch. And this Bond takes forever to recuperate.
I also love Le Chifre pointing out the realpolitik to Bond about even if he killed both him and Vesper, MI6 would welcome him with open arms because of info he has. True and I love that the movie points the amoral nastiness of the ‘spy game’ out. And Bond knows it’s the truth, you can see it in his face. Oh, and I also love that he doesn’t give the password even when Le Chifre promises Vesper’s life. Because…I don’t know, that just fits. There is something scarily hard-core about Bond and so…yeah.
Also, Blond Girlfriend of Evil? For the win. Her bf might be evil AND ugly, but she clearly believes in standing by her man :)
OK, now link me to your thoughts? Icons? Fics? Please?
First off, a little background. I don’t like Bond movies or Bond books (though I like the books better than the movies). The first Bond movie I saw was Sean Connery’s ‘Never Say Never Again,’ all the way back in 1991. At the tender age I was then, I thought it was great fun but even then I thought it was cheesy (I later read the book and liked it much better).
Years went by with me Bondless and I didn’t feel the lack. Then I ended up seeing the Brosnan Bond movie with my family in the theater (I am blanking on the name but it’s with the woman who kills men with her thighs :P) and thought it was atrocious. I knew I was going to hate it from the moment Bond jumped out of airplane and broke the laws of physics catching someone in mid-flight.
After that, I ended up watching most of the other Bond movies at random intervals due to those interminable Bond-fests on TV. I never had any interest, but I’d be with a group of people who thought it fun. I thought they were atrocious: cheesy, poorly scripted and worse-acted, chauvinist, and having the same relation to emotional and physical reality as do cartoons drawn by three year olds. Oh, and I saw ‘Never Say Never Again’ again and yup, it was that way as well. The only strong feeling those movies evoked in me was the desire to switch the channel. And maybe to punch Bond in his smug face.
Fast-forward and I hear that they are desperately looking for new Bond. ‘Good,’ think I. ‘Maybe the franchise will finally die.’ I kept hoping they wouldn’t pick any actors I like, actually, and when they picked Daniel Craig I was a bit disappointed because I really liked him in ‘Layer Cake’ (and years before that in BBC’s ‘Moll Flanders.’) And then ff to 2006. I had no intention of seeing this in a movie theater. Or on DVD. Or, in fact, ever. And then someone mentioned that ‘Casino Royale’ was fresh at RT. And I checked and it was 96%! My mind was boggled and I developed a small desire to see a Bond movie that could score that high. It was like some sort of fearsome prodigy :P And then Best Friend, whose taste is freakishly similar to mine (she’s got me started on Battlestar, Farscape, and Firefly) went to see it and became a raving loony about the film. So my desire became quite strong. And then I saw the trailer and was gooooone.
So I went to see it yesterday, full of curiosity but not necessarily expecting anything much. It was Bond, after all, how good could it be?
Oh boy.
Damn.
So very very very very good. I am now obsessed and drooling and must see it again soon.
I knew I was in for something different from the black-and-white intro scene, with the nasty, unpretty ‘first kill.’
Do you know what? This Bond feels real. This world feels real. It’s darker and grittier and nastier. There aren’t flashy gadgets and men who kill with their hats and women who strangle with their thighs. This is more John LeCarre than 70s loungewear. It’s brutal and dangerous and horrible and it fucks you up.
Yes, that’s the key (for me). This Bond is fucked up (and he’s only started on his career). This movie finally, finally, gets it right. Any person who does this for a living: who spies, manipulates, kills, is not a suave charmer at heart (whatever his manner is), he is a fucked up, broken individual, borderline psycho, with something deeply wrong and broken in him. And the movie admits he is fucked up. A bit of an adrenalin junkie and a hell of a lot of mess. Vesper calls him another broken boy from the SAS and she is right and the movie lets her be right.
And oh God, Daniel Craig gets it so right. This Bond is dangerous. For the first time in…ever. He is dangerous and scary and cold and something in him revels in the killing and the mayhem even as the small sane part of him hates himself for it. Looking at him, I want to take a step back. And there is no playing around with women, no gallivanting around. This Bond is about the mission and any woman is a distraction, an information source, not something he has too much time for. He uses bimbette for info and leaves her with a notable lack of interest. And with Vesper it’s not pro forma ‘I like sleeping around’ vibe but he actually falls for her. He won’t waste time getting involved past a one-night stand until he falls in love. There is no easy gallantry in this movie.
What a difference having someone who can act makes! This is the first time that’s happened (Sean Connery was playing Sean Connery. Roger Moore was playing Roger Moore. Pierce Brosnan’s acting skills were as lacking as his looks were not and all I can say for Timothy Dalton is that I liked him as Mr. Rochester).
This Bond is mesmerizing. He has a certain controlled rageful glee. When he crashes that car in the club, sure, it’s part of his diversion to get into security camera room, but it’s also his enjoyment of getting back at the guy who was condescending for a moment. He is funny, and sharply clever without being glib or smug. Amazing.
He is dysfunctional yet he still has a soul. For now. And not for too long. It’s being chipped away bit by bit by his job, and he knows that, and the amazing thing is, Daniel Craig manages to portray that brilliantly. This is the first time Bond is a real person, who gets tired, and mad, and freaked-out, and who bleeds, and feels. He’s got quite an ego which makes sense, as one needs to be sure and not second guess and trust one’s judgment, in order to stay at this line of work. But he is also someone who is bitter and full of knowledge about his life expectancy not being high. This Bond feels real, not a collection of mannerisms, a damaged soul, both scary and heart-breaking.
He has to stay detached in order to stay sane, but even the level of detachment he has in the start and middle of the movie is not enough. He needs more. His mask is not yet firmly in place and it doesn’t fit as well as it should: when the bimbette is found dead, you can tell he feels tremendously guilty (and just as instantly suppresses it). There is a cost to his actions, a cost to others and to himself and somehow the movie manages to portray it without descending into silly emoness or what not.
Just as at the end, when he talks to M on the phone and he refers to Vesper as a bitch, but it comes out all crooked, it doesn’t fit, and he is overcompensating and trying to put the detachment back on and not succeeding and even M can tell. (OMG! His voice! His face!) and even though minutes before he was desperately trying to revive her and holding her, all curled up around her (I so want an icon of that scene!)
And yeah, I was going to talk about this later, because after all, it’s one of the last scenes in the movie, but I think I want to talk about that now.
That whole scene, where he tracks her, and there is the battle with the bad guys and then he desperately tries to rescue her from the locked, going-into-water elevator? Whoa.
This just sums up why I love the new movie while never caring for any of the rest. Yes, he is fighting, but it’s brutal and gritty and desperate and it takes a toll. And yet he is also trying to protect Vesper and save her, and not because she is a busty damsel and that is what he does but because she is the woman he loves (yes, loves *gasp* Bond actually says ‘I love you’ and means it and what is even more impressive, makes ME believe he means it, every bit) and there is no cheerful detachment, just desperation.
And she, she locks herself in, knowing she is going to die, and throws away the key (I am going to blab about Vesper and how is she actually not a Bond Girl but a first female character in a Bond movie. Because M is sexless, regardless of the gender, but that will have to wait until a bit later). And I love how he dives in, and he hopelessly tries to wrench at the bars and they just stare at each other. And then it hit me! At this point, he knows she’s betrayed him (and he doesn’t yet know that she had no choice about the money and she saved him and she didn’t betray him after all) but he is still desperately trying to rescue her, and he is still falling apart.
And of course, he manages to get the door broken too late and he brings her up and tries to give her CPR but he cannot bring her back to life (unlike her actions earlier where she literally did) and that whole scene is probably my favorite scene in the movie (but then I am an angst junkie), because he really has lost the detachment he had (though he never had enough of it) and he can’t be rational in her being beyond help.
And then the CPR just turns into hopeless kissing on his part and it’s just…amazing amazing scene. And then you see the look on his face, and he looks broken, and he just scoops her up and holds her.
FUCK.
Who would have thought that a Bond movie (a Bond movie!) would have one of the best movie love stories this year!
Because it does. I loved the thought of Vesper and Bond together from the totally great first scene between them on the train, where they spar with verbal barbs sharp enough to draw blood (and no tiresome double-entendres) and the chemistry is psycho enough to burn down a small town. They are equals with banter and passion and that
dangermousie catnip, hurt/comfort (OMG, how much do I love the scene in the shower! Or in the wheelchair!). And he feels. And he fails. And she brings him back from the brink of soullessness and he crashes the car to avoid hurting her and it's all so hopelessly doomed! OMG.How much do I love the hurt/comfort scene in the shower? I need an icon of that so badly! She’s fallen apart because this is the first time she’s seen someone killed (and actually helped) and she is sitting in the shower as if to wash away the (nonexistent) blood and I love that he just comes in, quietly, and she tells him about the blood, and he just sits next to her in the shower and they are both getting soaked, fully dressed, and he asks her is she is cold and turns up the hot water. And she tells him the blood won’t wash off, so he takes her fingers and puts them in his mouth (WHOA MAMA. HOT!) and it’s actually manages not to be a cheesy pick-up or even a sexual suggestion but a very primitive gesture of comfort and solidarity. And they just sit like that.
I am dead.
And I think in a way, he sympathizes because he’s been there himself at some point of his life (if he was in the SAS, I assuming the first person he killed for MI6 wasn’t his first kill ever), and he’s lost most of that shock value himself but he can still remember it. And he actually has faint echoes of it himself. That scene where he drinks Scotch and washes his bloody hands and then just stares at himself in the mirror (earlier), you can tell that this bothers him, still, and you want to tell him to run far far away and save what’s left of his humanity, but you know he won’t.
And of course, as a h/c junkie, I also love the scene of her with him when he is recuperating and he is in a wheelchair and she tells him she can’t resist waking him up because every time he looks at her as if he hasn’t seen her in a very long time and it makes her feel reborn. Meeeep. And I have to say, the way he looks at her? She is right. I’d probably be a puddle of goo on the floor.
And I totally love Vesper. She is a character, not a piece of meat with amazing assets to be the receiving end of boring innuendo. No, she is a person, and I get why Bond falls for her. She is clever and cool and vulnerable without being weak, and she is someone who’s made the best of a very bad bargain.
Btw, if I understand it correctly, this is what happened:
1. She works for the treasury and has an Algerian bf.
2. Her Algerian bf is kidnapped by Le Chifre so she would help him in poker game/get money.
3. She tells Le Chifre about Bond figuring out his tell (or maybe Mathis did, we don’t know. I do think Mathis was working for Le Chifre. Le Chifre had no reason to conceal truth from Bond as he was going to kill him and it was going to hurt him more. )
4. Bond wins anyway and she is freaked out that Le Chifre will kill him so she makes a deal with Le Chifre’s bosses that she will give them all the money if they will take out Le Chifre/protect Bond (and hopefully get her now-ex out :P).
5. She gets taken (no idea if for real or not. I think so, as Le Chifre would be PISSED at her for not helping him win).
6. Le Chifre’s bosses come through on their part of the bargain and off him, saving Bond.
7. Vesper knows that the bargain she made will leave her dead. Even if she gives the bosses the money, they will kill her because she can ID them.
8. But she wants the bf freed, Bond alive blah blah so she takes the bargain and enjoys her weeks of happiness and then goes to keep her part of the bargain but in such a way as to let Bond know so he will follow her and take out the bad guys so the money won’t be going to the bad guys (before we found that out, I thought if she was evil, she was stupid because she left her blackberry there etc etc).
9. She throws the key away because she thinks death in the best option for her (not too far off. MI6 would probably rub her out despite the duress she was under and the fact that she thwarted the evil plans.)
10. And in addition to coordinates of the drop, she SMSes Bond the name and phone of the Big Cahuna in charge of Le Chifre’s bosses so he can take him out.
Gosh, she was AWESOME. (And here is where having a great script helps because all the acting in the world isn’t enough if there isn’t anything to go on).
But to get back to Bond.
You know what I thought was brilliant? We see him human near the end, happy and distraught with Vesper. Which is why at the end, with the new Bond mask fully in place now, unbreakable, that scene with Mr. White and ‘Bond. James Bond’ the scene is both really cool and yet hurts, because you know that even though this is cool, a human Bond has been destroyed for it.
Because I can see why he is going to lock himself away completely behind walls. He got emotionally involved and he lost her and it reinforced not only ‘cannot trust’ motto (because ultimately, she was a good person, but there were still things going on he didn’t realize), but more importantly, he doesn’t want to hurt like that again, with the loss.
Oh, and one last, unrelated comment. It’s about the torture scene (btw, Daniel Craig’s body? Whoa. Be still my heart.) It’s all gritty and nasty and kinda made me peer through my fingers and I kept wondering why that particular type of torture? And I think maybe, it ties in with this being the most vulnerable, human Bond in…ever. And so the torture is that way too: no SuperEvil ridiculous contraptions, just something very viscerally intimate and real and personal and even uncomfortable to watch. And this Bond takes forever to recuperate.
I also love Le Chifre pointing out the realpolitik to Bond about even if he killed both him and Vesper, MI6 would welcome him with open arms because of info he has. True and I love that the movie points the amoral nastiness of the ‘spy game’ out. And Bond knows it’s the truth, you can see it in his face. Oh, and I also love that he doesn’t give the password even when Le Chifre promises Vesper’s life. Because…I don’t know, that just fits. There is something scarily hard-core about Bond and so…yeah.
Also, Blond Girlfriend of Evil? For the win. Her bf might be evil AND ugly, but she clearly believes in standing by her man :)
OK, now link me to your thoughts? Icons? Fics? Please?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-11-22 06:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-22 10:03 pm (UTC)I do think this is the most realistic Bond (insofar as any thriller can be realistic). He is extra-heroic, but not super-heroic. He does extraordinary things but they cost him and are not without an effort and there are no easy choices and there is always a price.
This Bond feels like a person. An extraordinary one and a screwed-up one, yes. But nontheless real and not some cartoonish male fantasy figure.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-22 06:08 pm (UTC)Grew up watching them(parents are big fans) but he never felt "right"(though, if they'd hired Pierce Brosnan for a reason other than Remington Steele, it'd be different...mind you, I am obsessed with Remington Steele-the show-and it has my biggest TV OTP EVER...but Bond and Steele are and should be nothing alike, and they wanted him to play Bond like he played Steele, had he chosen a different path)
This Bond, however, sounds like what Bond should be like.
Also, for Daniel Craig...watch the first Tomb Raider movie...
Would still like to see what it would have been had Clive Owen got the part(see: Gosford Park)
no subject
Date: 2006-11-22 10:04 pm (UTC)I refuse to watch Tomb Raider for anyone :P
I like Clive Owen. I think he would have been a different kind of cold. Less passionately raw, more controlledly hidden.
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Date: 2006-11-22 10:12 pm (UTC)Actually, I rather liked the movie. Not so much the second, mostly because they changed guys.
Clive Owen, I suspect, weould have been closest to the original Bond(books) but Craig's sounds good.
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Date: 2006-11-22 06:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-22 10:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-22 07:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-22 10:01 pm (UTC)I despise the previous Bond movies on many levels, so if this is not like the Bond movies before, I think, yay!
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Date: 2006-11-22 07:36 pm (UTC)But I cried. In a f*cking Bond movie! The elevator scene... repeat viewings just kill me. She takes the key out and he tries to save her but he can't. Seeing it now, it is just as well that she dies. I was actually a little worried about what Bond would do to her if he got her out. He was so pissed at the beginning of that sequence... But at the end of it, he's broken, there's this hint of animal anger as he staggers back and looks at her lying there dead but, oh his eyes (http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/3552/vlcsnap8446rj8.png). God. And the bit where she pushes herself back into the the elevator and tells him to "go" before inhaling and drowning... heartbreaking; I was already choking up after this (http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/3705/vlcsnap10440bd3.png), but I was a complete goner after that.
I'm not a iconator, but here's a screencap of him hugging her. Voila (http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/5926/vlcsnap61096vz0.png).
Of everyone I know only one person has disliked this ("too little action" - a girl speaking!) everyone else raves about it. I'm not sure how the next one is going to pan-out, because I'll admit that what made me love this one was the deep relationship between Bond and Vesper; now he's lost her and been betrayed by the only person he truly thought he could trust... we might be back to Pussy Galore's et al. But we'll see. All I can say is... bring. it. on.
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Date: 2006-11-22 09:55 pm (UTC)I confess that this is what made the movie for me, too. I liked it exceptionally well until the moment we met Vesper, but it's once they met and were off in their attraction-dislike-chemistry thing, that it really took off for me. Being with her, made him come across as even more human.
I was actually a little worried about what Bond would do to her if he got her out.
I doubt he would have killed her. He is not the shoot-first-ask-questions-later type (and here even though this is off-balanced by his being hurt, there is the fact that he loves her to offset that). But even if she explained what was going on, was he going to believe her?
he tries to save her but he can't.
And I love that. Bond is not infallible. He doesn't get to ride off into the sunset. He cannot save the woman he loves.
But at the end of it, he's broken, there's this hint of animal anger as he staggers back and looks at her lying there dead but, oh his eyes. God.
I know. I was sort of tearing up. In a Bond movie!
And when he holds her, he is so oblivious to everything. That line of his about her stripping his armor off him came heart-breakingly true because he is not controlled at all at that time, not reserved or anything but human.
For a moment I thought he would cry (and the fact that I even thought that...about Bond, is something!) and he looks like something really necessary in him has been permanently snuffed out.
His eyes!
The thing is, losing her is more than losing someone he loved, it's his losing his last chance at anything resembling sanity and normalcy. Because I love how this Bond is deeply aware of what this job is doing to him: he tells her he should get out before he doesn't have any soul left. And it's just heart-breaking in retrospect to see him do that, to tell her they'll have to get honest jobs (because neither of them have it, at the moment, of course) and just to see him be...a person, not a role, not an instrument.
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Date: 2006-11-22 08:58 pm (UTC)and you said everything about this film, in a year that had POTC, V for vendetta, the departed, the last movie I imagined could make me this obsessed with HW was a Bond film...A BOND FILM!!!
I haven't seen Die another day ( and I don't intend to) because I was put off by the gimmicks( Halle berry casting, Madonna, the crappy music, the even crappier trailer)... I decided that the Bond's franchise has lost me forever...then I saw the RT ratings and I was intrigued, the films was getting better reviews than The Departed..and Then I saw the trailer and Daniel Craig getting out of the water in the tiny baby blue bathing suit and I gasped...and I went and saw last Sun , and the only thing I can say is thatthis movie has been on my mind ever since...I will say it now...Best movie of the year, and DC is Bond ( Fuck all those who wanted the typical pretty boy Bond) he is Blond...cry me a river !! he is an actor!! and damn he is so good...and hot!!
the shower scene, the last scene, the whole Poker game parts, the magnificent dialoges with awesome lines, the awesome villain...
what a film!!
P.S damn you Jhana for those caps...I am crying again!!
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Date: 2006-11-22 09:59 pm (UTC)Exactly.
I've seen the ones you mentioned and liked them all quite a lot, but this is the first Hollywood movie this year I actually loved. It had this visceral emotional reality that is alien to most movies, let alone Bond ones.
It's not effortless any more. Everything has a price, including Bond doing what he does, and it costs him anything and everything any sane person would want: humanity, love, a life.
Blond...cry me a river !! he is an actor!! and damn he is so good...and hot!!
Oh yes. Daniel Craig simply blew this thing out of the water. He is someone who comes across as tough as steel and yet desperately messed-up at the same time. He is scary and sad and in a way, this movie is a tragedy, because you are seeing his descent into the automaton that is 007, as opposed to a person he was. You want to stop him. And the thing is, he is clever and funny and strong and with a yet unkilled capacity for love and so has the makings of a really amazing person, but it gets shut down by events and his chosen job and the fact that he really is too messed-up, by choice and by events to get out of this, the human being inside of him intact.
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Date: 2006-11-24 04:18 am (UTC)I think we've actually had the "I hate James Bond" "Oh, so do I!" conversation on lj before, so I know we both had this mutual loathing for it.
I saw Casino Royale the second time this morning, and I'm seeing it again on Sunday. I am absolutely in love with it. First of all, I always get annoyed at how James Bond movies objectify women. Here, James Bond shows way more skin than any of the females, so I can't complain.
Also, I completely agree about Vesper being the first real female character. One of my favorite scenes was when they were in the car going to the hotel, and he told her that her last name was going to be "Broadchest", because they were just kind of adorable. Also, the shower scene KILLED ME. Even if it wasn't (weren't? It's too late for grammar) such an awesome scene, I have this huge kink for getting evening wear wet in movies.
During the movie, I was thinking that I really wanted him to say "Bond, James Bond", but that he didn't seem smooth enough to pull it off yet.
So anyway, I'm absolutely in love with this movie and I don't know if I can wait until Sunday to see it again.
Plus, I just read online that Daniel Craig and Eva Green are both going to be in the movie of "The Golden Compass", so yay!
Daniel Craig owns my immortal soul.
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Date: 2006-11-25 06:22 am (UTC)that her last name was going to be "Broadchest", because they were just kind of adorable. Also, the shower scene KILLED ME. Even if it wasn't (weren't? It's too late for grammar) such an awesome scene, I have this huge kink for getting evening wear wet in movies.
The Broadchest scene was HILARIOUS. And the shower scene really is my favorite. Such a mix of tender and screwed up and just...he's a man who just gruesomely killed two men and he can sit with Vesper and understand her falling apart, he hasn't been turned into a monster yet, and he just knows how to comfort her and...guuuuuh.
Plus, I just read online that Daniel Craig and Eva Green are both going to be in the movie of "The Golden Compass", so yay!
Oh no :) I just have to watch it then! (Don't like Pullman as want to strangle annoying Lyra).
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Date: 2006-11-26 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-27 07:24 pm (UTC)Icon!
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Date: 2006-12-03 04:44 am (UTC)when he talks to M on the phone and he refers to Vesper as a bitch, but it comes out all crooked, it doesn’t fit, and he is overcompensating and trying to put the detachment back on
And the look that comes over his face when M tells him that Vesper did everything for him in the end kills me. I wouldn't want to be Mr. White. Bond legitimately loved Vesper and I think there will be more than a little revenge getting there.
And then the CPR just turns into hopeless kissing on his part and it’s just…amazing amazing scene. And then you see the look on his face, and he looks broken, and he just scoops her up and holds her.
It's the most emotional I've ever seen a Bond be. When he stops the CPR and starts kissing her and then just sits back and is looking around with that lost expression, it just killed me. Also the fact that you know no other Bond girl seems as suited for him as Vesper was. She saw all sides of him, good, bad and ugly and still loved him for it, not because he was some slick charmer, because he certainly wasn't towards her, but because he was him. There was no facade to the romance. He loves Vesper because he CAN'T figure her out, something that's so easy for him to do with everyone else, yet she CAN read him. She knows that he's himself, which is why everything works how she wanted in the end.
I even liked the sex scene. Bond love scenes always conjure up smarm in my mind, but I liked this one as it was almost comical with them accidentally knocking over the hospital equipment and just not caring in the joy of the moment.
And it's obvious that Bond himself enjoys the violence. He's so extremely human and impulsive and reckless. While the killing still bothers him, a great deal of him enjoys the chase and the action and chaos. It isn't until he gets around Vesper that some of that drains off of him as he finally has something worth sticking around for.
What a team the two of them would have made. I wish Vesper had stuck around longer.
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Date: 2006-12-05 05:22 pm (UTC)Exactly. Of course, Craig is the first really good actor they had in the role (IMO).
When he stops the CPR and starts kissing her and then just sits back and is looking around with that lost expression, it just killed me.
Oh yes. It killed me. I never thought I'd see Bond lost, but he really was, completely unmoored.
I even liked the sex scene. Bond love scenes always conjure up smarm in my mind, but I liked this one as it was almost comical with them accidentally knocking over the hospital equipment and just not caring in the joy of the moment.
Oh yes. This one way joyful and sweet. Maybe because for the first time in a Bond movie, love was involved.
What a team the two of them would have made. I wish Vesper had stuck around longer.
Oh, me too. I wish these weren't the Bond movies but an entirely different franchise and we could have gotten that.