R.I.P. Roger Moore: The 2017 James Bond Archives - Final Edition Trading Cards Are A Fitting Goodbye.

The Good: Archive box exclusives, Generally good collectibility, Some truly spectacular autograph card signers, Metal cards are neat, Cool relic cards
The Bad: Orientation issues,
The Basics: The 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards make a decent trading card set out of an unfortunately bad James Bond film!


Like many people, yesterday I awoke to the sad news that Sir Roger Moore had died. Roger Moore frequently was underrated and undervalued by James Bond fans, which is ironic because Moore had the most "canon" James Bond films under his belt (Never Say Never Again has licensing issues due to its distribution and its authenticity within the James Bond canon is frequently challenged and counting that film only makes a tie for Moore and Sean Connery having equal quantities of James Bond films). Sir Roger Moore was the James Bond whose films I grew up on and because it was the work I had seen him in the most (other Bond actors having effectively branched out from James Bond or came to Bond later in their careers), I most closely associated Roger Moore with James Bond. His death left me saddened and it seemed fitting that the day after he died, completely coincidentally Rittenhouse Archives released its 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards. As the name suggests, the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards are Rittenhouse Archives's last James Bond trading card set for the foreseeable future (unless they do some form of In Memoriam exclusive set for Roger Moore) and so James Bond fans are saying a lot of "goodbyes" over the last twenty-four hours.

The 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards are actually an incredibly fitting way for fans of the James Bond franchise to say goodbye to Sir Roger Moore, as the trading card set is very heavy in Roger Moore material - the set features four autographed trading cards by Roger Moore and bonus sets from three of Moore's James Bond films - Octopussy, For Your Eyes Only, and A View To A Kill.

The 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards allow James Bond fans to complete their Rittenhouse Archives James Bond trading card collection with a lot of flair and some truly impressive cards.

Basics/Set Composition

Fully assembled, the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading card set has 387 cards and is essentially four (or five) sets in one. As well, there is an oversized binder produced by Rittenhouse Archives that holds the entire set, with all of its associated chase cards, which has not always been the case for some of the bigger James Bond trading card sets! The set consists of 83 common cards and 304 bonus cards. The chase cards are mostly available in the packs of cards, though eight of them were incentive or promotional cards and could not be found in any of the packs. The 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards were released in boxes of twenty-four packs of five cards each.

Common Cards

The common card set for the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards consists of eighty-three modern-looking trading cards. The entire common set recaps the plot of Die Another Day (reviewed here!). Sadly, the common set for the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards are inconsistently oriented. While the backs of every card are portrait-oriented, the fronts of the cards vary between portrait and landscape orientation. That makes the cards something of a pain in the butt to place in the binder as there is no organic way to make the set look good from an orientation point-of-view.

That said, the photograph and writing for the Die Another Day common set in the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards is universally wonderful. The 2017 James Bond Archives cards have the traditional UV-resistant coating which is flawlessly applied. The 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards feature a great range of vibrant pictures that have not been overly-promoted (and are different from the shots from the Inkworks Die Another Day set from when the film was theatrically released). Interestingly, Rittenhouse Archives included the image from the promotional card within the common set, which is not a usual thing for their trading card sets. The cards have a fresh look to them that makes it a visually-interesting trading card set. The backs are well-written and the cards detail the plot of Die Another Day quite thoroughly. The writing for the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards common set is very entertaining and follows the plot of the film with a lot of detail.

Chase Cards

The 296 chase cards that can be found in packs and boxes of 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition essentially create three additional "common" sets and one bonus parallel set, in addition to more traditional James Bond chase cards. As is the habit in many of the newer trading card releases, there are no bonus card sets that can be completed with even a single case of trading cards; most require at least two cases with ideal collation to assemble the chase sets. The higher-end sets require three to six cases to complete.

The 2017 James Bond Archives trading card set features three extensive bonus sets that require multiple cases to complete. There are retro sets that retell the stories of For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy and A View To A Kill with 36, 32, and 30 cards each. The retro sets in the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards illustrate an overall problem with the way Rittenhouse Archives approached their throwback sets (as a holistic collecting issue). Prior retro Throwback sets had up to 102 cards and the detailing on the plot of each movie was as detailed as for the common sets, the films for which Rittenhouse Archives was able to yield less material made for smaller sets. The three retro throwback sets in the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards are well-written, though they have somewhat more condensed plotting than the common sets (the Octopussy set, for example, devotes a single card to the teaser mission whereas the Die Another Day common set has eight cards for the mission that came before the opening credits in that film!). Rittenhouse Archives did the best they could with the material they were able to cull from the three films in the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards, but James Bond trading card collectors are likely to feel like they are getting less for their money on the throwback sets in the Final Edition cards. If Rittenhouse Archives had produced all of the throwback sets at the same time and more evenly distributed them through the last six Archives releases, the throwback sets in the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards would not have been so anemic by the numbers.

That said, the photograph and the writing for the throwback sets maintains the high standards of quality that the other retro sets have embodied. The throwback sets, like many of the prior Throwback retro sets are inconsistently oriented and are more problematic to try to put into binder pages in any sensible way. All three of the Throwback sets in the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards are made of a more retro cardboard stock to make the cards from the older films seem like they were from the period in which the films were released. The For Your Eyes Only and A View To A Kill sets features black and white photography on some of the card backs, but this is nowhere near as problematic as the Throwback sets for the color films that have black and white images on the fronts.

Two per box there are gold parallel cards for the Die Another Day set. The gold parallel set was limited to only 250 of each of the cards. The gold parallel cards are a particularly boring parallel card; they are distinguished from the common versions of their cards by limited gold foil lettering for the title on the front of each card and an individual foil-stamped number on the back, at the bottom of the card. While they are substantively similar to prior James Bond parallel cards, the parallel cards lack any real flash quality to them.

As part of finishing the James Bond trading card line, the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards feature 24 SPECTRE and Skyfall Expansion cards. Found one per box, the twenty-four Expansion cards continue the common card sets from prior releases as bonus cards. The 9 SPECTRE cards for The Complete James Bond come together to form the movie poster for SPECTRE on the back, just like every nine-cards in the common set did. The other fifteen Expansion cards extend the Heroes & Villains, Bond Girls Are Forever, Bond Villains and James Bond Archives sets from prior releases with content from SPECTRE and Skyfall, perfectly continuing those sets and concluding them in a fashion consistent to the original releases.

The 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards concluded the 007 Double-Sided (Mirror Cards) card set that was begun early in 2016. The eight cards found in this subset in the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards work together with cards found in the two prior sets to create a 24-card bonus card set. These beautiful trading cards feature the incarnation of James Bond on one side and the primary villain on the obverse for each of the James Bond films. The eight cards in the 007 Double-Sided set found in the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards are every three Bond films starting with the third M3,M6, M9, etc. While this might create a weird ultimate collation the cards themselves are stunning and cleanly printed on a vibrant-looking mirror board that is very fresh looking.

Also found only two per case are two of the twelve Metal cards for the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards. Featuring the movie posters for each of the last twelve James Bond films, the Metal cards are individually numbered on the back and they concluded a very cool set that was begun in the 2016 James Bond 007 Archives - SPECTRE Edition trading cards. Rittenhouse Archives has recently gotten into metal card production and the metal cards in the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards reinforces the argument that Rittenhouse Archives knows exactly what it is doing with that technology!

The 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards feature fifteen Relic cards, split between fairly traditional costume cards (albeit in an uncommon portrait orientation) and relic cards of James Bond props. Rather cooly, the Relic card set features a dual relic card with prop materials from two different props from Quantum Of Solace. The costume cards are limited to 200 each and they are pretty typical costume pieces - James Bond suits, a top from a Bond girl and a supporting character or two's costume pieces. Unlike something like a Star Trek costume that has a variety of fabrics or colors, the James Bond costume cards with costume materials from Casino Royale, Quantum Of Solace and Skyfall have fabric swatches that are very consistent and unimaginative. Fortunately, the rarer relic cards are much more variable and intriguing for card collectors and James Bond fans.

As with most media-based trading card sets, the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards feature autographed trading cards. This set of trading cards features a whopping fifty-six autograph cards, which includes awesome autographed materials like autographed costume cards and a gold signature card. The bulk of the autograph cards in the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading card set are split between the familiar format of the 40th Anniversary set – which had very small pictures of the character’s head and were oriented in a landscape format – a single Women Of Bond autograph card and the vastly more popular full-bleed style which was portrait oriented with giant images of the characters and a minimal signing space at the bottom. The seven 40th Anniversary style autographs are highlighted by autographs by three different Roger Moore autographs and one extremely limited Daniel Craig autograph. I was pretty psyched that Ben Whishaw signed another card for this set.

In the full-bleed autographs, the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards Rittenhouse Archives included one of the most incredible autograph line ups of all Rittenhouse Archives James Bond card set releases. In addition to a full-bleed Roger Moore autograph, there is yet another George Lazenby signature card. Rittenhouse Archives included first-time signer Tula alongside highly-coveted celebrities like Judi Dench, Halle Berry, Dave Bautista, Michelle Yeoh, Berenice Marlohe, Lea Sedoux, and Jeffrey Wright. Rather impressively, Rittenhouse Archives had held an incredible autograph card from fan-favorite villain Jaws portrayed by Richard Kiel before he died, which they released in the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards. Most of the autograph cards in the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards are from recognizable actors and characters from the James Bond films. This is one of nicest-looking autograph card sets for James Bond trading cards that Rittenhouse Archives has ever produced.

Non-Box/Pack Cards

The 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading card set has eight cards not found in any of the boxes or packs. There are three promotional cards – the usual general release, an exclusive one that Rittenhouse Archives is distributing at conventions, and the binder-exclusive promotional card.

The casetopper for the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading card set is a pretty cool Die Another Day movie poster metal card. The Die Another Day variant movie poster cards are not individually numbered, but it is a metal card and it features artwork from the most recognizable movie poster for the film.

Then there are the incentive cards and they are split between the average and the incredible. For every six-cases ordered, collectors of the 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards received a Gold Signature Maud Adams as Octopussy autograph card. This card, predictably, looks amazing, though the value of it is not likely to be on part with prior 6-case incentive cards. The nine-case incentive card is an absolutely wonderful Christopher Lee full-bleed autograph card, posthumously released. This Scaramanga autograph card might well be the rarest Christopher Lee autograph card from Rittenhouse Archives and they look incredible!

The final two cards in the 2017 James Bond Archives set were exclusive to the Archive Box. Filling in one of the gaps in the Women Of Bond autograph card set is a Yvonne Shima autograph that was released as an exclusive. As well, Rittenhouse Archives released a true grail card in the form of a Sean Connery cut signature card, which could only be found in the Archive Box. The cut signature cards - the ones I've seen - look absolutely amazing with vibrant, clear signatures from Connery and they represent the only Sean Connery James Bond autograph card from Rittenhouse Archives.

Overall

The 2017 James Bond 007 Archives - Final Edition trading cards might not be flawless, but they are a fitting tribute to Roger Moore and the final James Bond films that Rittenhouse Archives had yet to make card sets for. Collectors will want to hunt down everything they can from this set as it closes the book on James Bond - at least for the time - with a very high level of quality.

This set culls images from the James bond films Die Another Day, Octopussy (reviewed here!), For Your Eyes Only (reviewed here!) and A View To A Kill (reviewed here!)!

These cards are available in my online store! Please check them out here: 2017 James Bond Archives - Final Edition Trading Card Current Inventory!

For other James Bond trading card reviews, please check out my reviews of:
2009 James Bond Archives
2015 James Bond Archives
2016 James Bond Classics
2016 James Bond Archives - SPECTRE Edition

8/10

For other card reviews, please visit my Card Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Aging Into (Almost) Parody: Never Say Never Again!

The Good: Decent concept, Good cast
The Bad: No stellar performances, Very predictable plot
The Basics: Sean Connery’s return to the James Bond franchise was Never Say Never Again, which is an erratic, not terribly exciting spy film.


One of two James Bond films released in 1983, Never Say Never Again takes a lot of hits for presenting an older James Bond. As Sean Connery was lured back into the role of James Bond for a film that used elements from the original script for Thunderball, Never Say Never Again went against Octopussy at the box office (they were released a few months apart) and it is derided by fans of the James Bond franchise because it was not produced by the same production company as the rest of the franchise. While there are problems with Never Say Never Again, the general concept of the film is actually one of the better ones.

Like similar films, Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan (reviewed here!) and The Dark Knight Rises (reviewed here!), Never Say Never Again focuses on an aging protagonist who has become disillusioned with his purpose and place in an organization that he once believed in. James Bond in Never Say Never Again is essentially working in retirement (he has been retasked from the field to teaching the next generation of spies for MI-6). The themes of aging are executed with tongue-in-cheek humor (as Bond is assigned to destroy free radicals in his body and go on a diet), so Bond is not portrayed with a brooding quality (in contrast to Admiral Kirk in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan or Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight Rises). This diminishes the chance to bring some real character development to 007, James Bond, by truly shaking up the character. Instead after several jokes about his change in status from active agent to teacher, Bond returns to form.

After a training exercise in which Bond finds himself stabbed by the woman he was tasked to rescue, an aging James Bond is called before M for evaluation. The new M is not a fan of the “00” spies and after spending most of his time teaching, James Bond is told to start living a healthier life. Meanwhile SPECTRE has regained much of its former power and it has a new plot brewing. Having made an Air Force officer into a heroin addict and replaced his eye so it has the same retinal pattern as the American President, SPECTRE infiltrates the same hospital/spa that James Bond is staying at. When Bond is attacked by a SPECTRE thug, SPECTRE Agent 12 gets away with the Air Force Agent. After Jack infiltrates an Air Force facility, he successfully steals two warheads before he is killed by Fatima (12).

Extorted by Blofeld and billionaire industrialist Maximilian Largo, the Brits decide to reactivate the “00” program and bring James Bond back into the field. In an attempt to find where Blofeld has moved the bombs, Bond hunts Maximilian Largo. He gets close to Domino Petachi (Jack’s sister), who is dominated (essentially held hostage with emotional manipulation and weapons) by Largo. Largo sets a psychopathic Fatima against Bond and after dispatching her, Bond infiltrates Largo’s boat. Aided by Domino (who no knows about how her brother was used and killed by Largo), Bond works to recover the nuclear bombs and stop Largo.

Never Say Never Again includes all of the familiar elements of the James Bond film and, unfortunately, it does so without any genuine flair or originality. There are the obligatory chase scenes and the soundtrack that telegraphs the scene’s emotion. Bond is suitably heroic and is aided with gadgets from Q (in this case a pen gun and a rocket-enhanced motorbike). He beds a number of women based on his alleged charisma (Connery does not use his twinkling eyes or energetic smile to get laid in the film, so his multiple encounters feel more forced than organic) and is up against an adversary who has virtually limitless power and a tragic flaw. While he is obsessed with Domino, Largo’s real flaw is that he is batshit crazy and executes a ridiculous plan for SPECTRE that, because they go along with it, only seems to undermine SPECTRE’s fearsome quality. They are not the anti-MI-6; they are just an international cartel of thugs who have attracted psychopaths and crazed billionaires to their ranks.

In true James Bond form, Never Say Never Again includes a villain who is stupid enough to divulge his plans to the hero before he leaves James Bond to die. Why Largo does not kill Bond after telling him the location of the bombs is something of a mystery. But what Never Say Never Again truly lacks is a ticking clock, a sense of tension. Sure, Bond is hunting for stolen nuclear weapons, but Largo is in no hurry to use them and the film lacks a dramatic edge that makes the viewer actually care about the ordeals Bond is going through. Until the very end of the film, Bond is not on a particularly tight timetable to accomplish his goals.

Also unremarkable in Never Say Never Again is the acting. Sean Connery wanders his way through the role of James Bond and Kim Basinger is stiff more often than not as Domino. Bernie Casey and Rowan Atkinson steal their scenes as Felix Leiter and Small-Fawcett, respectively, though their parts are essentially sidekick and comic relief. Klaus Maria Brandauer plays Largo without any flair and between his performance and the lines for the character, Largo never truly comes to life. The failure for the film to address the key question of why Largo (who is rich enough to have virtually anything in the world) would get mixed up in the convoluted SPECTRE plot at the same time he is expanding his business enterprises to dominate the oil industry severely undermines the character. Largo becomes just a generic billionaire industrialist villain in Never Say Never Again.

While there are moments that Never Say Never Again shows potential, much of the film is slow-moving and uninspired, making the viewer wonder why Connery bothered to return to the franchise at all . . . instead of being thrilled that he showed up for the film.

For other James Bond films, please check out my reviews of:
Dr. No
From Russia With Love
Goldfinger
Thunderball
You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Diamonds Are Forever
Live And Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun
The Spy Who Loved Me
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy
A View To A Kill
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum Of Solace
Skyfall

3/10

See how this film stacks up against every other movie I have reviewed by visiting my Movie Review Index Page for a relativistic listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Wildly Erratic, Sean Connery Returns In Diamonds Are Forever!

The Good: Decent pacing, Engaging reversals and plot development.
The Bad: Special effects/fight sequence editing, A particularly lame Bond girl in the form of Plenty O’Toole, Lack of character development, Dumb quips, Mediocre editing.
The Basics: Sean Connery comes back as James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever which pits Bond against Blofeld and a whole diamond smuggling conspiracy.


When I was young, I went through a James Bond phase. At that time, I watched all the Bond movies I could get my hands on via the local library system. It was the age of VHS and I was young and I don’t know how much attention I paid to them because watching them now, I find myself stymied. Was I ever so young that I might love those films?! My James Bond phase was truncated by my personal discovery of Star Trek and I guess I remained there afterward. Now, as a reviewer, I’ve been going through the James Bond library and today I watched Diamonds Are Forever. Diamonds Are Forever was one of the movies I missed when I was in my James Bond phase.

As an adult, I can safely say I wasn’t missing much. Diamonds Are Forever is not (by far) the worst Bond film in the series. However, it is one of the most inconsistent. It has a rocky beginning marred horribly by absolutely cheesy special effects (the blood is terrible) and it develops into one of the worst-performed Bond films (Lana Wood is terrible as Plenty O’Toole). But then, somewhere in the middle, Diamonds Are Forever actually gets good. The reversals are exciting and the movie becomes watchable and tense with a plot that develops and unfolds in a clever-enough way to actually engage the viewer. But then, late in the film, Diamonds Are Forever turns again with the addition of more absurd assassins and sequences and a female sidekick that is shamefully presented for a woman in a movie from 1971. Still, Diamonds Are Forever is a James Bond film that has a pretty typical Bond sense of progression on the plot front and the characteristic lack of character development for the protagonist.

Opening with James Bond hunting the world round for Ernst Stavro Blofeld. He corners and apparently kills him in a volcano lair. Bond is then brought back to headquarters where he is given a background on diamonds and South African diamond mining. The corrupt workers in South Africa smuggle diamonds out, but now two goons Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint are knocking off smugglers and stockpiling the diamonds. Bond is assigned to find out who is stockpiling the diamonds and thus secure the diamond market. Bond assumes the identity of Peter Franks and meets with Tiffany Case, who is smuggling diamonds and wants him to move a large shipment into the United States. When the real Peter Franks breaks out of prison, Bond must dispose of him to maintain his cover.

In exposing the diamond smuggling operation, Bond as Franks must enlist the aid of Felix Leiter to avoid cremation, bad puns and double crosses from a lousy comic who is in on the smuggling, Kidd and Wint. In tracing the diamond smugglers to the Las Vegas recluse Willard Whyte and his hotel/casino, Bond is reunited with Tiffany Case and the real power behind the smuggling ring. With Bond imperiled and the world’s nuclear arsenal being systematically destroyed from space, Felix, Bond and Case work to thwart the plans of an evil genius.

Diamonds Are Forever has Sean Connery returning to the role of James Bond with little fanfare and no acknowledgment of his return. On the character front, this works in that it allows Connery to take the role back from George Lazenby on the assumption (supported in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) that the code name James Bond is used on multiple MI-6 agents, without acknowledging or addressing at all that Bond’s wife (not from a mission) was killed at the climax of the last film. What the film leaves completely unanswered it the idea that even this version of Bond was recently married and there was no on-screen resolution to the relationship (yet). Diamonds Are Forever picks up as if there was no prior story to James Bond, save that he is obsessed with finding Blofeld and that obsession is never explained or elaborated upon.

The women in Diamonds Are Forever are almost universally presented as if they received their lines about five minutes before their scenes were filmed. For Tiffany Case and Plenty O’Toole, there is almost no resonance for the characters; they seem like actresses playing characters they are entirely unsure of. Despite how terrible their characters are, Bambi and Thumper at least seem to know what they are doing as they attack James Bond in Las Vegas. Rather horribly, though, they do not help the status of women in the movie as they are universally violent and one is unpleasantly masculine. Thumper and Bambi also serve to undermine the character of James Bond as he stands at a distance watching and waiting for the women to go through backflips and the like until they get into range to hit him. Given that, early in the movie, he strangles a woman with her own top and smacks around at least one other woman, there is nothing chivalric about him waiting around to be attacked by Thumper and Bambi.

Diamonds Are Forever actually has one of the better plots for a Bond film. While the fundamental villain reversal are entirely passé and the technique of having Blofeld duplicating his appearance is somewhat ridiculous, the film actually progresses well. Bond is given a chance to move forward after his vengeance against Blodfeld is satisfied (though there is no catharsis or reflection for Bond following him putting down his long-fought villain) and the mission in tracking the diamonds allows him to move forward in a substantive way. The simple diamond smuggling turns into a beautifully over-the-top scheme for world domination and that is more development than many of the Bond films (which start with an objective and end with the same thing).

Ultimately, Diamonds Are Forever is far too erratic in form and performance to be worth adding to one’s permanent collection, but it is a fair James Bond movie. On two-disc DVD or Blu-Ray, Diamonds Are Forever comes loaded with a commentary track and multiple featurettes on the movie, none of which improve the editing of the film to make the fight sequences less cheesy or the line deliveries better. Still, it’s a fun film, though objectively it has a lot working against it.

For other James Bond films, please check out my reviews of:
Dr. No
From Russia With Love
Goldfinger
Thunderball
You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum Of Solace
Skyfall

4.5/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing.

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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How Many Times Can Bond Be Killed In One Movie?! You Only Live Twice

The Good: Adequate acting, Generally good plot (from a conceptual standpoint)
The Bad: No character development whatsoever, Almost constant reversals get tiresome, Many of the special effects are cheesy, Craptastic editing.
The Basics: As part of a series of escalating reversals and assassinations, You Only Live Twice continues to raise the stakes in the James Bond universe into almost preposterous territory.


As I make my way through the James Bond films I am discovering that the franchise was faced with a problem that I did not recognize as a child. As a teenager, I loved the James Bond films and I recall You Only Live Twice being one of my favorites. Watching it now, though, I find myself catching so many of the problems with the movie – and not just the very clunky editing – that it is surprising I ever was impressed by it. The thing about You Only Live Twice is that it is the fifth cinematic outing in the James Bond franchise and by this point, in order to make the movie an interesting progression that goes beyond all that has come before, the story has to have more reversals and a plot that ups the ante beyond big business swindles, the attempt to destabilize currency and limited warfare through manipulations by secret organizations.

So, You Only Live Twice has a fundamentally absurd plot – an international comes out of nowhere with a fully refined and viable space program that effectively captures space vehicles from the United States and the Soviet Union – that has SPECTRE looking to start World War III for no particular reason. This was the last time Sean Connery played James Bond in a run of James Bond movies (he would return for two other movies between other actors playing Bond).

After the Jupiter 16 spacecraft is abducted in space by a mysterious craft, the Americans blame the Soviet Union while the cooler heads in Britain track the abducting craft to the Sea Of Japan. There, James Bond is working on finding which country launched the high tech ship when he is apparently killed in action. Sent to Japan after his funeral, James Bond meets with Henderson who is killed just before he can reveal who he thinks is behind the spacecraft abduction. Bond hops a ride in the assassin’s car which takes him to Osato Chemical where he steals from the company’s safe.

Delivered to Tanaka (The Tiger), he has the photograph he stole from the safe analyzed and when he returns to Osato, the head of the company tries to assassinate him. Trying to discover what Osato is up to, Bond arrives at the docks and is abducted by Osato’s ship the Ning-To. Escaping again, he is outfitted by Q with the most powerful mini-helicopter in the world and he goes to spy on a small island the Ning-To visited. When a Soviet spacecraft is abducted, Bond locates the villain’s secret lair and as the world moves closer to war, he works to expose and stop SPECTRE’s latest plot! In the process he disguises himself (poorly) as a Japanese man, marries, and essentially becomes a ninja while those around him die.

You Only Live Twice features James Bond taking on a Japanese persona that is utterly unconvincing in the make-up and the latter portion of the film is laughable for that conceit. In fact, given how it never becomes fundamentally important that Bond truly pose as a Japanese man, the effort to make him over is somewhat ridiculous. In fact, the only point to Bond’s deception in that regard seems to be to make it credible that he would become a ninja and be able to proficiently throw throwing stars.

That said, You Only Live Twice may contain one of the first references to the idea that the name James Bond is a code name for British intelligence agents (Bond’s new wife notes that he gave a false name in the marriage ceremony) and the fact that he gets married – even as part of a job – is an interesting twist. And Sean Connery does fine with the role, but the character does not evolve or develop beyond who he was in the past four films.

Unfortunately, director Lewis Gilbert is stuck in with a movie that relies on a preposterous number of reversals and sacrifices substance for extended action sequences. The first two-thirds of You Only Live Twice is pretty much a protracted sequence of murders, narrow escapes, captures, and chases in vehicles of various types. When the movie introduces the SPECTRE volcano base, there is an ironic slow down that takes the time to revel in the cleverness of the film’s villain, but by that point, it is hard not to find oneself laughing at the injection of piranha, a bicycle-like helicopter armed to the teeth and more women throwing themselves at James Bond than reason would suggest is possible for such an emotionally unavailable guy (one of his lovers is killed in one of the coolest and most imaginative ways and within days he is sleeping with another woman and flirting with her continually).

While Gilbert might get a pass on the lack of character development and the troublingly convoluted plot, but he should be held accountable for the terrible editing. Things like Bond’s fight with Hans are cut in such a way that are choppy and lack a sense of continuity to make the fight tense or even engaging.

In the final analysis, You Only Live Twice is not terrible, but it does illustrate that the James Bond franchise has to push toward the ridiculous in order to keep the franchise from feeling as stagnant as it actually is becoming.

For other James Bond films, please check out my reviews of:
Dr. No
From Russia With Love
Goldfinger
Thunderball
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum Of Solace
Skyfall

5.5/10

For other movies, check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the film reviews I have written!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Iconic, But Not Incredible, Goldfinger Is Still Fun!

The Good: Decent plot, Cool gadgets, Decent direction
The Bad: No real character development
The Basics: Arguably the most memorable James Bond film, Goldfinger has James Bond working to thwart a villain obsessed with acquiring gold and menacing the world economy!


There are any number of films that I saw when I was a child and now, as an adult, I am finally getting around to rewatch for my own enjoyment and review. Today, my wife and I took in Goldfinger and it has been over two decades since I saw it. For a change, my wife sat through a James Bond film, though I think it had more to do with her love of the song "Goldfinger," which she was familiar with from Frasier. In fact, she kept grimacing as Dame Shirley Bassey performed it at the outset of Goldfinger, saying, "I wish Kelsey was singing this!" I was amused to see her smiling and recalling references from Goldfinger in other things we have seen. In fact, Goldfinger might well be the most-alluded to James Bond film in the franchise.

And it's good . . . but not great.

Goldfinger is an entertaining film and one that is worth watching, but it suffers from many of the issues that came from later James Bond films (and the derivative action films that replicated the Bond films' successful patterns). Truth be told, this is probably the last James Bond film where they are establishing the patterns of the franchise and cannot be expected to defy those patterns yet. Goldfinger manages to use many of what would later become the patterns and conceits of the genre: Bond gets his gadgets, meets a villain who tells him his plans in such a way that allows Bond to ultimately defeat him, and multiple women, some who betray James Bond and at least two he has pretty passionless sex with.

After destroying a heroin shipment, James Bond escapes to Miami Beach where he meets with Felix and hooks up with Jill Masterson. Jill is working for the criminal that Felix sends Bond to disrupt, Auric Goldfinger. After forcing Goldfinger to lose in his crooked card game, Bond beds Jill and is knocked out by Goldfinger's henchman, Odd Job. He awakens to find Jill gruesomely murdered and he is recalled to MI-6 where he is assigned to track and professionally meet Goldfinger. In Europe, Bond meets Goldfinger for a leisurely game of golf, where Goldfinger and Odd Job try to cheat. Bond manages to entice Goldfinger with a brick of Nazi gold and he wins a bet against Goldfinger.

Tracking Goldfinger, Bond is menaced by Jill's sister, who soon ends up a victim of Odd Job herself. Captured by Odd Job and Goldfinger - and his pilot Pussy Galore (who has trained a whole flight team of her own) - James Bond bargains for his life and Goldfinger keeps him alive, against his better judgment. In Goldfinger's prison, Bond learns of Goldfinger's plan to break into Fort Knox. Determined to let the CIA know of Goldfinger's plans, Bond tries to contact Felix to save lives and stop Goldfinger from disrupting the world economy.

Goldfinger has, easily, the very coolest car in the history of cinema. In addition to the Spartacus-like device that takes out Tilly's tires, Bond's car is bulletproof, has machine guns under the lights, deploys a smoke screen, oil slick, and has an ejector seat! What is also cool in Goldfinger is how the villain also has some pretty cool gadgets. Goldfinger meets with his thugs and he uses some pretty (for the time) neat devices.

As well, Goldfinger has a pretty engaging plot. Goldfinger is an interesting villain who has a pretty cool plan. In fact, Gert Frobe plays Goldfinger with such an intelligence and conviction that it seems cheap when Connery's James Bond declares Goldfinger "mad." One of the most-parodied moments in Goldfinger, "I expect you to die!" is actually delivered by Frobe with a simple sincerity that is far more credible and grounded than one might expect.

Connery is good as Bond, though James Bond does not grow or develop at all in the film. Instead, like most James Bond films, Goldfinger suffers some because James Bond is concerned with staying alive and the villain's plot machinations than any sort of personal growth. Bond begins and ends as a resourceful - there's a good moment with a fan and a bathtub in the teaser -, clever, and strangely dispassionate wisecracking super-spy. Connery plays off Honor Blackman's Pussy Galore (who manages to say her character's name without cracking up) very well and Harold Sakata is cold and menacing in every frame as Odd Job.

On DVD and Blu-Ray, Goldfinger comes with two commentary tracks that are very informative and entertaining. There is also an entire disc of bonus featurettes on the making of the film, the gadgets and women of Goldfinger and the way Goldfinger fits into the larger James Bond franchise. Goldfinger is entertaining and well-developed for a film, but it does not make any larger statements on the human condition or develop characters in a way that is truly compelling. Still, it is worth watching and is quite possibly the essential James Bond film.

For other James Bond films, please check out my reviews of:
Dr. No
From Russia With Love
Thunderball
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum Of Solace
Skyfall

7.5/10

Check out how this movie stocks up against others I have reviewed by visiting my Movie Review Index Page where the reviews are organized from best to worst!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Establishing The Formula Well: From Russia With Love Is Engaging James Bond!

The Good: Decent plot development, Awesome DVD bonus features, Good pacing, Fairly good acting
The Bad: Absolutely no character development, Bond lacks charm, Weird musical effects
The Basics: In the second James Bond film, From Russia With Love establishes much of the formula that the rest of the franchise abides by.


As I have begun going through the James Bond films, I do so with the full knowledge that they become troublingly formulaic. I was pleasantly surprised with the first Bond film, Dr. No, did not seem nearly as formulaic as some of the later films. So, as I sat down for From Russia With Love, I actually allowed myself to delight in the process of watching all of the formulaic conceits fall into place.

From Russia With Love falls in line with exactly what one expects from a James Bond film. Bond has banter with Moneypenny, gets his assignment from M, equipment from Q branch, and goes out to face his mission. His male companion will get killed, he will use the gadgets to kill off an assassin and there will be a romantic interest who has more of a sexual fling with Bond than an emotional one. And, despite what the title might imply: Istanbul is largely the setting of From Russia With Love, not Soviet Russia!

After what appears to be an assassin killing James Bond in a training scenario, in Venice, a chess match is held to determine the world champion. Kronsteen wins and leaves abruptly to meet with leaders of SPECTRE. The head of SPECTRE, still outraged over the murder of Dr. No, is set on revenge upon James Bond. He plans to have Kronsteen and Rosa Klebb (Number 3) – and her agent Grant – frame and kill James Bond. To that end, they enlist the Russian agent Tatiana Romanova to pretend to defect to England to get Bond into the embassy in Istanbul where he will steal a Soviet decoding machine. After Bond is equipped by Q and given his assignment by M, he goes to Istanbul where he is assisted by Kerim Bey.

After getting the plans to the Russian Consulate, Bond meets Romanova and she describes the decoder that Bond is going to steal. After the Russian Consulate is bombed, Bond steals the decoder and he and Romanov escape on the Orient Express. There, they are hunted by Grant. In thwarting him, James Bond learns the truth and puts Grant down. To fulfill SPECTRE’s mission, Klebb goes after Bond, Romanova, and the decoder herself!

From Russia With Love is marred by a surprisingly unemotional James Bond. Bond seemed efficient in Dr. No: he seems cold and distant throughout most of From Russia With Love. In fact, his flirtatious scene with Moneypenny is a better example of chemistry and character than his “relationship” with Tatiana Romanova. Romanova is willingly a pawn for SPECTRE; she is a patriot for the Soviet Union and she thinks her attempt to entrap Bond is for her country, instead of a revenge plot ancillary to her country’s interest. It is an interesting historical note that at the height of the Cold War, James Bond does not illustrate any particular animosity toward or fear of the Soviet Union. Then again, he does not illustrate any powerful emotions, even when his friend is killed.

From Russia With Love has a James Bond who is not exciting doing exciting things. Despite the bland rendition of Bond, From Russia With Love moves along at an incredibly good clip. It is an exciting movie, though some of it is ridiculously forced by director Terence Young. So, for example, in one of the early scenes that is simply establishing character, the musical cue goes into an action beat that is melodramatic and does not match the emotion of the scene. At least during one of the key scenes in Istanbul as Bond and Romanova are hunted in a giant room, the musical accents are much more subtle (and even absent at points).

Daniela Bianchi steals From Russia With Love and Pedro Armendariz (Bey) plays the Turkish sidekick as one of the most memorable and competent James Bond characters in the pantheon. Bianchi gives an emotive performance and while her character is intentionally deceitful, Romanova is likable and incredibly human. She is a wonderful foil – both as an actress and as a character - for Sean Connery’s James Bond. While From Russia With Love has decent action and an engaging enough plot (despite the somewhat monolithic villains), but Sean Connery pretty much sleepwalks through the role.

For its issues, though, From Russia With Love is one of the best entertainment films and an engaging spy thriller that seems surprisingly undated. For those looking for a must-see James Bond movie, this is might well be the one worth hunting down!

For other James Bond films, please check out my reviews of:
Dr. No
Thunderball
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum Of Solace
Skyfall

7.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Dr. No: Or The Tale Of A Spy More Lucky Than Skilled!

The Good: Entertaining, Interesting character, Generally decent acting
The Bad: Terribly racist dialect, A number of technical issues, Serious character issue
The Basics: The first of the films based upon the novels of Ian Fleming with the protagonist James Bond, Dr. No is a (mostly) satisfying start to the franchise.


Last year, I made a new friend who has quite a bit in common with me. We got together a few times, talked comic books and she and I proofread a script of mine while spending the evening at Dunkin’ Donuts and Denny’s and it was a lot of fun. Before the release of Skyfall, the latest James Bond film, she and her boyfriend were determined to watch all of the James Bond films. I told her that doing so was utterly unnecessary; that there was almost no continuity between the various incarnations of James Bond and that she really only had to watch the two prior films with Daniel Craig in order to be ready for Skyfall. She did not take my advice (or my advice that she just get them out of the library) and made a marathon series of viewings prior to Skyfall’s release. Well, now that I have an exceptional library system at my disposal and have pretty much run out of any stockpile of genre film reviews, I figured it was time I actually review the entire James Bond franchise. So, I am going back, despite having reviewed some before now, and starting at the beginning, with Dr. No.

Dr. No is the first James Bond film and the first to star Sean Connery as the popular pulp novel series’ protagonist. I promised myself that I would not complain about any of the spy thriller conceits in reviewing Dr. No - after all, the franchise was one of the major ones to establish those conceits, so it is somewhat ridiculous to expect it to defy the standard reversals, betrayals, and action moves over sensibility in the first film or two. To its credit, Dr. No employs shockingly few reversals. It is, in fact, a remarkably straightforward film (though there is a damsel in distress who needs to be rescued in the last few moments of the film from what amounts to a high-tech equivalent of a railroad track) that illustrates a spy doing what a spy does. In this case, James Bond’s mission is, oddly enough for a British intelligence agent, to save the U.S. space program.

The franchise begins, innocuously enough, with three apparently blind men entering a country club where they kill an MI-6 operative and his communications specialist. They steal a file from her office on Dr. No. James Bond, called out of a card game, is informed of the assassination in Jamaica. Given a new gun against his wishes, he arrives in Jamaica where he realizes he has been set up to be killed and he turns the tables on his would-be killer. He is met soon thereafter by his American counterpart, Felix Leiter and a local informant, Quarrel.

In investigating the death of operative, Bond learns of an island nearby owned by Dr. No and quickly learns that the files local intelligence has kept on Dr. No have gone missing. Despite Quarrel’s insistence that the island Bond wants to investigate – after nearly being killed by a geologist and a tarantula given to him by Dr. No – is haunted by a dragon, Bond goes there and meets a shell (conch) hunter, Honey Ryder. Together, they approach the lair of Dr. No and his tank, before Ryder and Bond are taken captive and Dr. No’s sinister plan to disrupt a U.S. rocket launch is revealed.

Dr. No is a straightforward espionage mission. Honey Ryder and Quarrel are exactly who they appear to be and end up as sidekicks for James Bond without having incredibly distinct character of their own (though a passing attempt is made by giving Ryder a backstory that is surprisingly dark, especially for a PG film!). Honey Ryder is more than just a woman walking on the beach in a bikini with a giant knife on her belt; she is hardened and self-reliant and surprisingly cool.

It is hard to say the same for this incarnation of James Bond. When first introduced, Bond is playing cards and he just seems exceptionally lucky, although given how much money he is winning off his opponent when he leaves, his confidence seems justified. But more often than not in Dr. No, that is the story of the character; he shows up and sees what happens and gets surprisingly lucky. He survives the tarantula attack not through any real skill of his own; he merely waits it out and when it gets off him, he leaps away from it and kills the giant spider with a shoe. It’s not skill, he just was lucky it didn’t bite him while he watched the creature in abject terror. Similarly, he is drugged by the Sisters who house Bond and Ryder on Dr. No’s island and wakes up to have a good meal, as opposed to being drugged and killed. Lucky, not skilled.

He is also fortunate that the villain is kept somewhat vague. Dr. No has powered his whole island with atomic power, which has destroyed his hands (he appears to have super-strong bionic ones underneath the gloves he wears) and a backstory that involves fleeing China with ten million dollars in gold to establish his island fortress. But he is somewhat oblique about his motives in wanting to sabotage the U.S. rocket launch and mess with the space program.

Still, Dr. No is treated better than poor Quarrel. Quarrel is the Jar Jar Binks of Dr. No. He is a caricature of a Jamaican and actor John Kitzmiller is unfortunately forced to live down to almost all of the worst stereotypes about black islanders. The American insults him, he drinks copious amounts of rum, and his accent is ridiculous. And there is no excuse for a Jamaican to think that a tank is a dragon, even if it does shoot fire (they have automobiles on the island, even in the era of this film!).

That said, Sean Connery does a decent job of establishing James Bond. He is charismatic as Bond and while some of his advances seem awfully rapey now, it’s easy to see how men of 1962 wanted to be him.

Perhaps the worst aspect of Dr. No is the editing and some of the technical aspects (like obvious bluescreen shots) that have not been fixed, even on the two-disc ultimate DVD release. That release comes packed with a commentary track, behind-the-scenes featurettes and a whole disc of featurettes on the production and history of the film. Cinephiles will have plenty to gush over.

Still, the film is far from perfect, though it is a good, basic spy film and very satisfying as entertainment, even if not anything deeper.

For other James Bond films, please check out my reviews of:
Thunderball
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum Of Solace
Skyfall

7/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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An Average James Bond Film, Thunderball Is Surprisingly Sloppy Moviemaking.

The Good: Decent pacing, Engaging enough plot, Most of the acting is fine
The Bad: Some real shit editing, Utter lack of character development, Casting of main female characters.
The Basics: Outside being impressed by all that moviemakers could get away with in a PG film back in the 1960s, Thunderball is unremarkable.


I recognize that before one can defy the conceits of a genre, the standards have to be established. Even so, the spy thriller genre, which frequently hinges on reversals, still had some early flops. In fact, I was shocked in listening to the audio commentary track to Thunderball that it was the highest budgeted and highest-grossing of the early James Bond movies. Understanding that the spy thriller genre is not known for having films that are deep character studies, at least back in the day, and that frequent reversals are the norm, Thunderball is still an unfortunately poorly-constructed film.

The fourth film in the official James Bond franchise, Thunderball is plagued by some awkward casting (so many of the females look similar to one another!), terrible editing (the first fight sequence should be taught in film schools as how not to piece together a fight!), and irksome directing (did Terence Young pioneer the shaky handheld camera move to connote frenetic activity in Thunderball?). While the stakes in Thunderball are exceptionally high – both in menace to the world and potential financial damage to the United States and Great Britain – the film does not feel important or big. Instead, it meanders through reversals, women and obvious bluescreen shots until its obvious resolution that restores the status quo.

Appearing publicly at the funeral of SPECTRE agent Jacques Bouvar, James Bond quickly exposes the “widow” of Bouvar as the secret agent himself. Killing the SPECTRE agent and escaping via jetpack, James Bond leaves for a vacation in a spa. Elsewhere in Paris, Largo and the council of SPECTRE meets where an embezzling officer is killed in front of the others. Largo plans to extort the Caribbean governments of over $200 million. Recuperating at the spa, James Bond thwarts an assassination attempt by Count Lippe and then discovers that a French pilot has been killed. The killer, the SPECTRE agent Angelo, was surgically altered to match the French pilot’s appearance and he uses that access to steal a NATO plane with two nuclear warheads.

With Angelo betrayed by Largo, SPECTRE takes possession of the nuclear warheads and sends the Prime Minister an extortion message, demanding 100,000,000 pounds, sterling. Following a lead from a photograph, Bond heads to Nassau where he makes contact with Largo’s niece, Domino. Aided by Felix, Q, and Paula, James Bond works to recover the warheads and thwart Largo and his thugs.

The best I can say about Thunderball is that the acting is competent. The film moves along at a fairly decent clip, regardless of whether the viewer actually cares about what is going on or not, and the performers in it handle their roles well. The only real notable exception to the general quality of the acting comes from Claudine Auger. Auger, who plays Domino, learns of her beloved brother’s death and her guardian’s culpability in his murder and reacts in a ridiculously understated fashion, mortgaging any emotional realism her character had. Director Terence Young cast Auger too closely in appearance to Luciana Paluzzi, Largo’s primary villainesses, and it seems like the main difference in the two is their hair color (but, rather annoyingly, not their acting style).

The primary villain of Thunderball is Largo, who is played by Adolfo Celi. Celi is fine as the somewhat monolithic villain who enjoys fishing and has a collection of dangerous sharks. Truth be told, I actually enjoyed that the method of getting James Bond into the villain’s lair is remarkably simple in Thunderball; he walks up to the front gate and the servant lets him in for a veiled conversation between the hero and the villain that involves no violence between them, just a verbal chess match. Celi sells the feeling of menace in that scene without ever seeming over-the-top.

Sean Connery, who plays James Bond in Thunderball is stiflingly average in the movie. Some of his best lines, the ones laced with subtle humor, innuendo, or irony, are delivered stiffly or barely captured as the camera is moving off him. There is no time to savor his wit or appreciate that the guy is actually cool. Many of his lines are technobabble to service the plot.

What Thunderball truly lacks is any sense of reflection. James Bond is entirely devoted to his work. In fact, one of the women he has sex with he claims to have done only in the service of his work and derived no pleasure from it. As it is, he has no chemistry - either as a character or as an actor – with any of the women in this movie, making it a much less engaging film to watch for the delightful ‘60’s softcore feel of some of the other Bond flicks.

On DVD, Thunderball comes with two informative and entertaining commentary tracks. They describe the moviemaking experience in a compelling depth of detail and relate elements of the actor’s bios that are intriguing. The historical archives of the commentary tracks, though, are not enough to forgive the sloppy filmmaking and lack of genuine character development throughout most of the movie, though. Thunderball is easy to pass by.

For other James Bond films, please check out my reviews of:
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum Of Solace
Skyfall

4/10

Check out how this movie stacks up against others I have reviewed by visiting my Movie Review Index Page where the film reviews are organized from best to worst movie!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Nothing Extraordinary With These Gentlemen: The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen

The Good: Intriguing idea, Good acting
The Bad: Poor script, Lack of character exploration, Physical darkness, Plodding plot
The Basics: When the world is set on the verge of war in an alternate 1899, various fictional heroes come together to try to stop an uninspired villain in The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen.


I am always skeptical about movies that are based on comic books. There's a reason they are two different mediums. I suspended my skepticism sometimes and my viewing of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen was one of those times. It was also one of the times I was disappointed by an adaptation of a comic book to a movie. And it wasn't the adaptation that bothered me - I've never read the graphic novel on which this movie was based - it was the fact that this was a less than decent movie. This flick did not live up to the expectations I had for it.

When a rogue villain known only as the Phantom makes several independent attacks on important locations within Britain and Germany in 1899, adventurer Allan Quatermain is recruited by the mysterious M for a mission to stop him. Quatermain is not alone. He has been recruited to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a top-secret and apparently ancient order that has been quietly protecting Britain for many many years. Quatermain is joined by Captain Nemo (and his amazing Nautilus), Mina Harker (a vampire), Rodney Skinner (an invisible man), Dorian Gray (an indestructible man), and Tom Sawyer. They - for no reason that is clearly explained - capture Dr. Jekyll and compel him to join the League and then they set off for Venice to stop the Phantom. However, the League is plagued by a saboteur from within and the world seems destined for war.

First, the good, because it was that kind of movie. The characters are well-acted. Shane West, for example, earns his second billing by being more than simply a good-looking guy. He is confident in the role of Sawyer, making him distinctly different from his Once And Again character (Eli) and earning his paycheck. Similarly, Peta Wilson does a good job with what little she has to work with for Mena. It's disappointing that her role was not bigger or better, but she makes due with what she was given. That is admirable, if not extraordinary.

Even Stuart Townsend does a good job at creating Dorian Gray as a viable character. He is cold and ruthless in the role and he does his best to make the clothes fit. The real waste of talent here is in the form of Jason Flemyng. Flemyng was electrifying in The Red Violin and here he is relegated to the back of the group. Flemyng manages to keep his acting talents foremost through consideration the director had for him; his Mr. Hyde character is not completely CGed, allowing for Flemyng's expressiveness and emotional gravitas to be expressed.

But there the good ends.

The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen is plagued by a poor script. The first big problem is in the form of the saboteur within the League. The prime suspect is, naturally, the invisible man. Why? He has access. The moment accusations start flying in Skinner's direction, though, his character completely disappears from the movie. Zip. He's gone. It doesn't take much of a brain at all to realize that he is a red herring and one of the other members of the League is the real spy. The moment it is suggested, however, that Skinner is not the spy, the real villain is exposed. After all of the time spent building up that Skinner was it, the movie could have respected the audience's mood enough to indulge in the paranoia of the possibilities of the identity of the saboteur.

The reason it doesn't is that the spy is obvious from the very beginning. It's not a complex revelation and the moment the person reveals themselves, there is more of a "yeah, okay" feeling than "oh my! I didn't see THAT coming!"

And the big problem is that the characters are not delved into the way they deserve to be. Mena Harker, for instance, is a fascinating choice to include in the League. Why is she there? I don't know. Moreover, I'm not sure why she can walk around in sunlight; "Dracula"-style vampires (which is where her origins are) are unable to do so. Her relationship with Dorian Gray is fascinating and established in the movie, yet director Stephen Norrington insists on panning to Harker's surprise when Quatermain tells a story about their meeting.

Harker is not the only one; none of the characters truly come to life. They are all bound by serious limits and a complete failure to explore their personalities and potentials fully. Add to that, the movie is dark. I do not mean thematically (those who know my reviews know I enjoy thematically dark films), but rather physically. Photographically, much of the movie is too dark to appreciate the details created. A prime example is the underwater scenes of the Nautilus where the propellers and such are illustrated. The scene is so dark, it's hard to tell what it is the viewer is supposed to be seeing in the water. All of the detail of the ship (submarine) is lost.

In the end, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a good idea with a poor theatrical execution. A good idea cannot save a bad movie and this is a decent example of that theory. While it begins with enough intrigue, it does not maintain it and it is not nearly as clever or surprising as one would think it is trying to be.

For other films featuring Jason Flemyng, be sure to check out my reviews of:
X-Men: First Class
Clash Of The Titans
Kick-Ass
The Red Violin

3.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2003 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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A Less Disappointing Indiana Jones Makes An Argument For The Franchise To Close: Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade

The Good: Decent acting, Fun dialogue, Sense of adventure, Storyline/Concept
The Bad: Action sequences quickly become repetitive, Comedic relief attempts fall short
The Basics: In a very mediocre reprise of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Indiana Jones goes in search of the Holy Grail . . . and his father.


Following the mediocre blockbuster that was Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, a poor follow-up to Raiders Of The Lost Ark, the film franchise came back for one supposedly last outing that was hoped to put the franchise back on the right direction and set up for a television series. The film was Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade and it delivers much of what it promises, but not quite enough to enthusiastically welcome revisiting.

When adventurer and archaeologist Indiana Jones recovers a gold cross that inspired him to become the unearther of antiquities that he became, he returns to his University classes to rest. He is not given much of an opportunity, though, as he is soon employed by a collector of antiquities to recover the Holy Grail. Dr. Jones is interested in recovering the artifact - made possible by the rubbings of a newly discovered tablet - mostly because his father, Dr. Henry Jones, has been abducted by the Nazis who want him to find the Grail for them. Aided by Dr. Brody, Sallah, and Dr. Elsa Schneider, Indiana searches for his father and the Grail, while attempting to outrun the Nazis, though one is closer than he thinks . . .

Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade might have been fine on its own, as a standalone film, unhindered by the other episodes in the trilogy. Sure, we would not have understood Indiana's tongue-in-cheek line about the pictograph of the Ark of the Covenant without Raiders Of The Lost Ark, but for the sake of argument, Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade works best when considered with complete amnesia of the other episodes. The reason behind this is simple: on its own the film works as a decent hunt/chase movie, in context, the film is blandly repetitive, completely derivative of the episodes that came before. In many ways, Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade is a rewriting of Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

In context, it's hard to see why anyone who loved Raiders Of The Lost Ark would find anything truly to like about Last Crusade, especially on the plot front. As far as simple plots go, the action of the two movies is eerily parallel or utterly formulaic. The films go along with parallel narratives switching only details and the order of the fight sequences as both involve the following in this order: Artifact 1 is recovered, Indiana returns to University, The Government approaches Dr. Jones, Dr. Jones accepts the assignment and gets an artifact to find the main artifact, Indiana tries to rescue a kidnaped person, Indiana and his team advance to the main objective. The only real difference in plot structure between the two films is that when Indiana recovers his father, the two go on a side quest to recover Professor Jones's journal as well.

In short, the film does not have the originality of Raiders Of The Lost Ark and it basically mimics the first film (so much so that when Indiana is looking for a disguise while on the zeppelin, I half expected his shirt to not fit). There's a somewhat stale feeling to the film when it is viewed objectively. It's hard to say the film feels stale, though, because the action sequences are almost nonstop after a point, much like in Temple Of Doom. The latter half of the film is dominated by airplane fights, horses and car chases, and a runaway Nazi tank that causes a lot of movement on screen, but very little in the way of actual entertainment. The film becomes obsessed with keeping moving, escalating the chases away from the probable, interesting and entertaining into the mind-numbingly absurd. Indiana Jones becomes a Daffy Duck routine.

This leads to one of the film's other real faults. The comic relief is woefully misapplied. All great action-adventures usually have some ironic humor or tongue-in-cheek remarks that break up the adrenalin pounding pace to make the film something more than just a workout for the actors. That works wonderfully when judiciously applied; otherwise the work becomes a farce. In Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, the humor is telegraphed, overdone, and beaten to death for the viewer. So, for example, when the Joneses are captured by the Nazis, who want the journal that Dr. Brody has, Indiana cleverly tells them that they will never find Brody because of his genius at blending in. Director Steven Spielberg cuts to Brody in the middle of a Middle Eastern marketplace calling out for anyone who might speak English. It's funny. Spielberg cuts back to the Joneses where Indiana reveals he was lying and that Brody once got lost in his own museum. That line comes up again. We get it, we SAW it, it was funny, you don't have to keep telegraphing the joke. It's like telling a joke, saying, "That was a joke" and then moments later saying "Remember that time I told you that joke that went like . . . "

But beyond the derivative qualities, the film works well. The search for the Holy Grail has arguably not been this entertaining since Monty Python And The Search For The Holy Grail. In part, this is because the characters actually develop some. Professor Jones is not a monolithic patriarch and his presence in the film is enjoyable when he and Indiana share scenes. Indiana, for his part, does a great job of using rescuing his father to work on long-avoided issues between the two. That works exceptionally well and it's nice to see in a film that might otherwise be mindless action-adventure. Given the opportunity for quiet moments, The Last Crusade uses them for moments where the father and son might bond and address festering grievances between them.

But then, it's back to fighting Nazis!

Harrison Ford returns as Indiana Jones (as does River Phoenix for the opening sequence) and he's back in good form, though he adds nothing new to the part in this endeavor. No, here any acting challenge is in replicating the character in such a way as to make the viewer believe utterly in Indiana Jones and that no real time has passed since the prior episodes (despite the fact that the three movies were essentially filmed over the course of a decade). Ford does that well.

Where Ford earns his pay is in acting with Sean Connery and he earns it well, though the movie affords some opportunities for the pair to slapstick comedy and I'm not a fan of that. Connery's acting challenge is to not become the action hero. Professor Jones is no Indiana, nor a James Bond. He's a dignified scholar and Connery keeps him within the narrow confines of the characterization quite well. Never once do we suspect that Professor Jones is ready to, say, throw some Nazis into a pond of piranha.

Supporting performances are led by John Rhys-Davies reprising his role of Sallah from Raiders Of The Lost Ark and his presence is a welcome addition. He has great screen presence and charisma. Denholm Elliot is relegated to the role of the buffoon as Dr. Brody, but he plays it convincingly (unfortunately for the character and the film).

Ultimately, though, the acting is barely enough to overcome the derivative plot and the draw on the character development and action sequences. Honestly, this came down to a coin toss for the recommend and it ought to be considered a very weak recommendation. At best, it's a good way to kill a Sunday afternoon or feel like you're watching Raiders Of The Lost Ark when you don't want to watch that specific film.

For other action-adventure films, please check out my reviews of:
Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time
The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy
Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince

5.5/10

For other film reviews, please check out my index page by clicking here!

© 2010, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.




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