Film Review: On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

I hadn't watched this Bond film since it turned up on TV sometime in the late 1970s, and I remember it as being the worst Bond film ever and that George Lazenby richly deserved the meagre B-movie career (kung fu films, Emmanuelle sequels) he moved onto after his one shot at playing 007. Over the last year or so, however, I've been noticing that various critics and bloggers have been saying that OHMSS isn't really all that bad; in fact, some of them go so far as to say it's one of the best of the 007 films. And then I came across this recent blogpost by director Steven Soderbergh who unflinchingly describes it as the best Bond film, bar none. That did it. I rushed right out (metaphorically speaking) and downloaded OHMSS. Holy crap, Miss Moneypenny! This isn't just a bad Bond film, it's bad filmmaking by any definition, and I can only assume that its defenders are being willfully contrary.

Let's begin the dissection with Lazenby. The pro-OHMSS forces can talk all they want about his physicality, but the fact remains that he can't act, period. Another actor had to dub vast chunks of his dialogue, for God's sake! Lazenby is simply a stiff, awkward (watch him try, and fail, to walk across a room convincingly), wooden black hole at the centre of the film. It's actually a wonder that all his lines didn't end up being dubbed because his readings of even the simplest bits of dialogue are gratingly tone deaf. The legendary Bond quips escape from his lips and simply fall to the floor with a quiet thud, gasping for life. Considering that Lazenby was a male model and had never acted, an infomercial-quality thesping job was pretty much inevitable.

Soderbergh hedges his bets in his praise of OHMSS by saying that "cinematically" it's the best Bond film. I don't think he and I watched the same film. With one exception the editing is shockingly clumsy, creating glaring continuity errors and turning the fight sequences into something resembling the saloon brawls from bad westerns. And many of the action scenes are marred by the use of fast motion, which is used to speed up the action to the detriment of verisimilitude; it's really a kind of cheat, a means to liven up an otherwise flat action scene. On the plus side, the location photography is often spectacular, particularly the shots of the Alps. The final assault on Blofeld's mountaintop H.Q. is actually an excellent combination of action choreography, editing, and cinematography, but this 5-7 minute section hardly makes up for all the wonky filmmaking that surrounds it. I have a feeling that it's this short sequence that moved Soderbergh to call OHMSS "cinematically" the best of the Bonds.

I think even Soderbergh would have to admit that OHMSS's script is a clunker. There isn't one memorable line, and even Diana Rigg (playing Tracy Draco) can't bring things to life until she gets to show off her RADA training by reciting some lines of poetry by James Elroy Flecker, a relatively obscure Victorian poet. I suspect Rigg begged for this scene so she could briefly escape from the tedium of scriptwriter Richard Maibaum's words. Bond films are always sexist, but this one adds an extra level of creepiness with Draco, the father of Rigg's character, urging Bond have sex with her often so that she'll fall in love with him. Thanks, dad, you pervy bastard! Oh, and Tracy gets slapped upside her head by both Bond and her father. Charming. The script is so bland and witless I doubt even Connery could have rescued it, and I'm certain he would never have agreed to be part of the syrupy romantic montage that's used to establish Bond and Tracy's love affair.

So if you haven't seen OHMSS yet, save yourself from the pain and watch the spoof Casino Royale (1967) instead. It's not a lot better, but even Woody Allen makes a better James Bond than Lazenby.

Film Review: Skyfall (2012)

I don't get it. From the reviews Skyfall's been getting I'd expected something pretty damn special, a new standard in Bond films. What were the critics seeing? It's not bad, not at all, and it's better than Quantum of Solace, but it's not as good as Casino Royale. This is an OK film, but by a narrow margin there's more that's wrong with it than right with it.

Plot has never been the strong suit of Bond films. The high point in that regard was From Russia With Love and it's been downhill ever since. But even by the weak standards of this franchise, Skyfall gets demerit points. In a nutshell, an ex-agent played by Javier Bardem feels he was betrayed by M (Judi Dench) and decides to humiliate and kill her. And to accomplish this he sets up a vast criminal organization that's entirely devoted to offing her. It really doesn't get much more complicated than that. The plot is simplistic, but it also becomes annoying because various key plot points revolve around the villain's genius at hacking computers. This has got to stop. Filmmakers have to stop using hacking and hackers as plot devices to explain away the success or failure of complex schemes. They might just as well  hand one of the characters a magic wand and have them solve problems with that. What's worse is that the audience's intelligence is usually being insulted at the same time. Most people are intimately familiar with computers, but filmmakers seem to think they can getaway with showing computers doing all kinds of unlikely things, and this film features a giant computer display that even the most computer-illiterate person is going to find fatuous.

The other problem with Skyfall is that it neglects Daniel Craig. Craig is the best actor to have held the 007 license, but in this outing he seems to have been shorted in the dialogue department. What a waste of talent. Bardem and Dench get the longish speeches while Craig is left with nothing but quipy or stoic one-liners. Admittedly, Bond and one-liners go together like bacon and eggs, but this isn't Roger Moore we're dealing with.

On the plus side, the action elements are up to snuff, and the finale in the Scottish Highlands has a moodiness that's a first for a Bond film .Although when Bond and M head into the Highlands for the showdown with the villain, for a brief moment the scenery made me think they were heading to Hogwarts. Bardem is a good villain, far better than that anonymous, weaselly-looking French baddie in Quantum, and the overall look of the film is pleasingly sleek: just what we expect from a Bond film. The massive success Skyfall is enjoying is probably due to it being an action movie for grownups. The screening I attended was a sea of silver hair (mine included) and everyone seemed to be enjoying a movie devoid of superheroes, cartoon characters and Adam Sandler.

Finally, I have to mention that this has to be the most English of the Bond films. In fact, it seems to make a point of wrapping itself in the Union Jack. There's a shot of M standing in front of a row of coffins convered in Union Jacks; a poem by Tennyson is quoted that has a very patriotic tone; M has a china bulldog on her desk that's emblazoned with the flag; and, most interestingly, one of the last shots of the film shows Bond, looking very stalwart, standing on a rooftop staring out over the rooftops of Whitehall. A number of flags are waving from the rooftops in the background, and their positioning against the sky is meant, I think, to bring back memories of barrage balloons flying over London during the Blitz. In sum, this is the most Rule Britannia of the Bond films. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's certainly worth noting.