November 1, 2008

The Bond Countdown #16

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Licence to Kill (1989)
John Glen
Bond, James Bond: Timothy Dalton
Arch Rival: Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi)
Bond Girl: Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell)

Licence to Kill (1989)

Licence to Kill (1989)

Timothy Dalton takes up the role of James Bond for one more time in the sixteenth offering in the series. In this one, Bond must avenge the murder of Della, wife of Bond’s CIA friend Felix Leiter and that takes him on the trail of a Mexican drug lord Sanchez, who has established a huge scientific base for the production of narcotic material and has planned to expand his control to as far as East Asia. Bond, with the help of CIA friend Pam Bouvier, flies across the country and infiltrates Sanchez’s loyal group, virtually becoming one of them. He is also helped by Sanchez’s beautiful mistress Lupe Lamora, who seems to have fallen for Bond. He starts his double crossing game and puts down his rivals using Sanchez himself. But Sanchez isn’t as big a sucker as he seems.

Timothy Dalton gives a one-two punch with Licence to Kill after immensely impressing with The Living Daylights. It is a pity that Dalton didn’t play in more Bond films, for he is the best Bond after Connery. The film brings back Bond’s off-the-cuff humour back and it usually helps. Action scenes are all top-notch and make the Roger Moore flicks seem like cartoons. Sanchez makes a great villain and just his stare seems enough to tell that he means business. Look out for a young Benicio Del Toro as Sanchez’s personal assistant. A worthy Bond.

 

October 31, 2008

The Bond Countdown #15

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The Living Daylights (1987)
John Glen
Bond, James Bond: Timothy Dalton
Arch Rival: Georgi Koskov (Jeroen Krabbé)
Bond Girl: Kara Milovy (Maryam d’Abo)

The Living Daylights (1987)

The Living Daylights (1987)

After an excruciating seven film streak as the English spy, Roger Moore steps down to make way for Timothy Dalton to step into Bond’s shoes – and how! The Living Daylights is a real thriller that has Bond defending a Russian general Koskov who has defected and is under threat from the KGB. Bond succeeds at that but soon finds that he has been tricked and the defection was but an excuse to turn the MI6 organization against the KGB head Pushkin who, as per Koskov’s statement, has started a mission to put down prominent American and British secret agents. Koskov, meanwhile, is allied with the American arms seller Whitaker who is an admirer of tyrants and warlords. Bond along with Kara Milovy, Koskov’s girlfriend, also tricked by him, and a group of Mujahedins try to stop Koskov from getting a huge amount of Opium out of Afghanistan and in turn get ammunition into the country.

Timothy Dalton is one of the most underrated and least spoken about Bond. Even the one hit wonder Lazenby is praised often. Though not as handsome as Connery or Brosnan, he sure can play the part effectively. The film, by the way, is one of the best Bond flicks and the stunts top all the earlier Bond films. The cracker of a climax where Bond fights in mid air is breathtaking even by today’s standards and thank god, no bad puns. The Afghan connection may raise a brow or two today.

 

October 30, 2008

The Bond Countdown #14

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A View To A Kill (1985)
John Glen
Bond, James Bond: Roger Moore
Arch Rival: Max Zorin (Christopher Walken)
Bond Girl: Stacey Sutton (Tanya Roberts)

A View To A Kill (1985)

A View To A Kill (1985)

Final part in the tiring seven part act by Roger Moore is one of his most sober and decent films. In this episode, Bond investigates a dubious racing circuit, where one particular horse seems to get better with more laps. He decides to track the owner of this horse which takes him to Max Zorin, a semiconductor giant who plans to use his might to blow down the silicon valley in the US so that the European companies gain monopoly in the industry. Bond also finds that he was a result of a biological experiment conducted by Nazis on the pregnant women in the concentration camps. He also meets geologist Stacey Sutton, who helps him discover Zorin’s plants and stop Zorin from blowing up his pipelines to flood the semiconductor cradle.

Last of the seven ventures for Roger Moore takes him back to the good old days of espionage rather than mindless shooting and reckless driving. Deliberately paced and developed, the film surprisingly succeeds partly because of the mellow yet charming performance of Christopher Walken as the semiconductor tycoon. The films final half hour turns as Psychopathic as Zorin himself and breaks the finely crafted film abruptly. Another wimpy girlfriend makes you wish for one tight slap.

 

October 29, 2008

The Bond Countdown #13

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Octopussy (1983)
John Glen
Bond, James Bond: Roger Moore
Arch Rival: Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan)
Bond Girl: Octopussy (Maud Adams)

Octopussy (1983)

Octopussy (1983)

The follow up to the phenomenal debacle For Your Eyes Only (1981) makes up for it to an extent as it takes the famous English spy to India. Bond is behind a wealthy Indian named Kamal Khan who buys the expensive Russian artifact called Faberge Egg. As Bond follows him to his home country, he finds out that he works with a woman who calls herself Octopussy and trains women of various countries to smuggle jewels. Khan, on the other hand, has his own plans and is hand in hand with a insubordinate Russian general Orlov. Orlov seeks to use the circus Octopussy has in Germany to bomb the US airbase so that it is disarmed and is vulnerable to Russian attack. Bond must now race against time to diffuse the bomb, save Octopussy and stop Kamal Khan.

The film could have easily avoided the last quarter hour but it still makes a great watch. Kabir Bedi as Gobinda makes a good impression as the deadpan thug who stops at nothing. The quality of production is visibly great and the stunts remain as stunning as the best Bond films. Indian cuisine is still ridiculed and mystified to the extreme. Moore’s disguise as the clown at the circus is the funniest he gets as his puns keep falling flat. Brace yourself for some high flying stunts by the ever lovable Q!

 

October 28, 2008

The Bond Countdown #12

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For Your Eyes Only (1981)
John Glen
Bond, James Bond: Roger Moore
Arch Rival: Aristotle Kristatos (Julian Glover)
Bond Girl: Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet)

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

The next offering in the long series is For Your Eyes Only. In this section Bond is hired to hunt down a man who was hired to hunt down a man who was hired to hunt down a lost British device! This takes him back to Eastern Europe where he meets the beautiful Melina with her hunter bow, the daughter of the man who was hired to hunt down the device and who is determined to hunt down the man who hunted down her parents.  After warding off a bunch of loonies hired to hunt him down, Bond continues hunting down what he has been hunting for, As Bond is hunting about, he is confronted by Columbo, a gold-smuggler who reveals to Bond that he has been hunting down the wrong person and he is the one being hunted. With the help of Columbo and Melina, Bond finally decides what he has to hunt down and but finds that he has to climb a risky cliff. So do the people whom he is trying to hunt down.

Hands down winner of the worst performance by a Bond girl beating even Jane Seymour of Live And Let Die (1973). Not that the other performances are any good! The plot seems to have been a bit more importance, but the routine is so predictable that nobody cares. Couple of great sequences and a fantastic title song. Technically inferior than its predecessors, For Your Eyes Only seems to be caught between the elegance of the Connery films and the jaw-dropping action scenes of the later films.  As a result, it does not engage your mind or your heart. For your eyes only!