Skyfall

There is a problem with watching a brand new Bond film. It's a slight one and, to be honest, it surely only affects people planning on writing up the final entry of a 23 film retrospective. But a problem, nonetheless: Skyfall is so shiny new, so fresh out of the box that, even having now seen it (twice), I haven't yet fully absorbed it. I grew up learning my 007 by rote, thanks mainly to endless TV repeats that forced fights and chases, quips and kisses inside my squashy formative brain. All those viewings accrete over the years; layer upon layer of familiarity and understanding build up and become a sturdy platform. I don't have that yet for Skyfall and the fact that it's not just sat on the shelf with the other DVDs rankles me. Suddenly, my many years experience are gone, my gun hand shakes; yet here I am pushed into the field, too soon.

To be honest after a single viewing, I was a little underwhelmed. Perhaps this was only to be expected. Hype and expectations were at an all time high and I was caught off guard I think by Skyfall's sombre tone. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it, because there is plenty to love. The photography is beautiful, the direction is thoughtful. Craig's Bond is a thing of wonder: vulnerable yet also granite hard, brutal yet charming. Great performances from Dench and Bardem and brilliantly likeable turns from Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw and Naomie Harris to usher in the new regime. Poor Bérénice Marlohe doesn't get much screen time, but in her scene with Bond in the casino she is absolutely excellent - not many Bond women get such good treatment. 

The fight with Patrice is very good indeed, shot in profile, silhouetted against a mesmerising jellyfish light effect, it suddenly, breathtakingly, pivots as the hitman slips out of the window. Silva's introduction is possibly the greatest of any villain: an incredible single shot where the terrorist simply walks the length of the room, recounting his rat story. His 'lair', an abandoned city, is fantastic - surreal and dream-like whilst still utterly credible.

Best of all is the way Bond's character is explored. "Sometimes the old ways are the best," he says when Eve queries his use of the cut-throat razor - but it's only much later that Kincade says the same thing (about another blade) and we realise the old man is the source of Bond's sentiment. Similarly the riddle of Skyfall is dangled before us with the word-association game before being slyly answered by a tracking shot up the drive of a remote house in the Highlands. The retreat to Scotland reveals so much but without being obvious or crass. Unable to defeat Silva, Bond escapes into his own past to find what he needs, recovering his aim and - briefly - even the ghosts of his parents, recast as M and Kincade. The loss of her, his mother figure, leaves Bond renewed as an orphan, ready for adoption by MI6 once more. The final moments of the film are a delicious treat as the original tableau of M's office from DRNO is reconstructed before our eyes. But for all that, I was missing something as I left the cinema - it needed to enjoy itself a little more, needed (I thought) an injection of cock-sure swagger.

I had assumed that Skyfall would mean a return to business as usual for Bond. Casino Royale and QOS demolished the franchise and rebuilt it from scratch, eschewing familiar (and exhausted) elements whilst necessary repairs were performed. After DAD these two films almost had a self-punishing quality, as if the franchise were flagellating itself for past sins. I liked and admired that - it was cathartic; the Bond series was bravely taking its medicine and getting better. But the return of the gun-barrel sequence at the end of QOS seemed to signify that this process had been completed and penance served. Perhaps inspired by Bond's appearance at the London Olympics I fully expected Skyfall to throttle down on the self-doubt, both for the franchise and for Bond himself. Although the film is full of confidence, it is at pains to show in those last few moments that things are only now getting back to normal and a lot of effort is spent shuffling the new personnel into position.

So I went and I watched it again and I realised that the biggest problem was me. I had been too wound up to enjoy it properly, too eager to analyse it. I have enjoyed looking at these movies again, finding new things and having fresh thoughts, but along the way I had ruined myself for a new Bond film. I had trained myself to scrutinise instead of just enjoying it for what it is: a stylish couple of hours of fun and thrills.

I did better the second time, helped along by my fellow audience members. It was a daytime screening, and the theatre was maybe a third full: a mixture of retired people and students, roughly half men, half women, and each of them had paid just six bucks to get in. A casual audience it seemed to me, killing a few hours in a not very busy day; probably not obsessive fanboys who had agonised during the gap between UK and US release dates. It seemed a safe bet that these laid-back Texans weren't watching riddled with homesickness, desperately over-invested and hoping that they weren't about to be let down or shown up. I wanted to know what Bond meant to them, how much they thought he represented tiny distant rain-sodden Britain.

I got my answer watching Skyfall with them. They loved it. They laughed throughout, at almost everything, giggling like school girls in fact during Javier Bardem's first scene. They cheered when the DB5 turned up and whooped when it opened fire. It delighted me that people who were just passing by could enjoy Bond so much. I was swept along and it was wonderful; Skyfall was wonderful. The lights came up and they shuffled off, smiles on their faces. I didn't linger in the shadows. I went with them, out into the bright November sun.

*   *   *

Pre-Credits Sequence: Wonderful first shot of Bond, great bike chase, and a nifty train-top fight, complete with a YOLT style denouement - all rather wasted by making up most of the trailer.  

Theme: Adele's theme is what we might call 'retro' Bond now but that's not a problem. The Bondian chords are all present and correct and the lyric is well above average - but the song itself never takes off. Or rather, it circles round and round but never lands. Pick whichever plane metaphor you prefer, the fact is the song doesn't ever get where it seems to be heading: a roaring triumphant Barry/Bassey-esque crescendo. Having said that, it has an addictive quality: it crawls into your brain and lingers there. And once it has been paired with the opening titles it simply becomes marvellous. Klienmen returns to take charge of the visuals and the result is unusually macabre, with blood, skulls, grave stones and deer heads all featuring. It looks absolutely gorgeous and, although we don't get the pleasing linear narrative of Klienmen's earlier titles, there is something much more complex and ultimately satisfying. The hypnotic song shares a fevered dream-like quality with the images and the combined effect makes these the best Bond titles ever. Yielding new meanings with repeated viewings, they reach back into the past (showing Silva enduring his horrific injuries) and finally present us with looming portents of the future as the lyrics and images combine thunderously 'at Skyfall'.  

Deaths: Absolutely no idea. I wasn't even counting. Maybe when the blu-ray comes out I'll sit down and work it out, but I hope I don't. 

Licence to Kill: Okay, I can't actually resist. Just tallying it up in my head it might be around... loads. Twenty plus maybe. 

Helicopters: 1. So, there should be a direct correlation between the craziness of a Bond film and the number of exploding helicopters it features. But there isn't. Whacko Moonraker has none, whilst dour old-school FRWL does. But generally it holds. Brosnan racks up 7 in four films, whilst Lazenby, Dalton and Craig can only muster 1 between them. It's this one. 

Shags: Two. Neither of them, thankfully, Moneypenny or M. It is entirely possible that Bond and Eve did do some sex whilst in Macau, but it is explicitly not referenced at all, so we can decide for ourselves. A much cleverer 'have-you-cake-and-eat-it' solution than the one they thought up for DAD. 

Crimes Against Women: Poor old Séverine does not have a good time but, apart from her backstory, nothing happens to her just because she's a woman. Moneypenny is shown to be effective and resourceful, even if she does get teased for shooting Bond. Dench's M, possibly the greatest Bond woman of them all, gets a wonderful farewell.

Casual Racism: Insidiously, all the goodies are British and all the baddies are foreign, whilst ambiguously good/bad Severine is played by French/Chinese/Cambodian Bérénice Marlohe. 

Out of Time: Non-Brits might not be aware, but in 2012 the UK has been basically governed by public inquiries and committees like the one that grills M here. But 2012 is also the year we all stayed home and enjoyed/endured the Queen's Jubilee, the London Olympics, Andy Murray's Wimbledon final and so on - in short, for many Brits there was more than the usual amount of running around on the Underground or staycationing in Scotland. Throw in Silva's not so subtle nods to Wikileaks/Julian Assange and this couldn't be any more contemporary if it had this week's lottery numbers in it. 

Fashion Disasters: Silva's beige prison outfit is a crime in itself. Craig pulls of a beardy Bond (just about). But more often than not I found myself wowed by the outfits. Bond's suits match the immaculate levels of Goldfinger. The dresses, particularly the gold one Eve wears in the casino are beautiful. And say and what you like about IMAX but it really showed off the weave on some sumptuous knitted-silk ties.  

Most Shameless Advertising: There was a great deal fuss made about Bond drinking Heineken but for heaven's sake, beer is hardly the most unlikely product endorsement 007 could make is it? After all, it is alcoholic. And it is very a much a tiny beery drop in an ocean of booze, as this wonderfully comprehensive guide explains. The green bottles are blatantly brandished by Bond and Tanner, but there's something more shameless about an advert that masquerades as justifiable dialogue: chasing after the train in Turkey Eve swerves to avoid a sudden obstacle and M asks her what it was. "VW Beetles I think," she replies unnecessarily. 

Eh?: It hardly matters, but most of the story is nonsense. Why does Silva plan to get captured and escape? If he has the resources to blow up MI6 and everything else, surely he can fly to the UK himself and kill M with ease whenever he likes? We're told that Silva has planned his revenge so meticulously that he has anticipated his capture, but how can he organise things like tube trains turning up on schedule, or dictate the time and place that a Select Committee will meet? How on Earth does he get so far out of his cell that he can take out the guard before he's shot? Who are the men who assist him in London? How does he communicate with them or plan with them so efficiently that they are walking along carrying a police disguise at exactly the right moment? >> How does the Shanghai assassination work? Patrice shoots him dead from across the street, but nobody reacts when it happens. If they are all in on the hit then why pay Patrice millions of euros to do it?The target is already alone in a room with Séverine and her heavies - if she wants this guy dead she could do it herself. >> The committee that calls M before it would appear to be the Intelligence and Security Committee - but in real life this is a parliamentary body, i.e. all those involved are either MPs or Lords. Clair Dowar is definitely an MP, but what is Mallory? Surely no sitting member of either House could be made head of MI6?  >> Not really something that doesn't make sense, but the thought of Bond and M stopping off at a Little Chef on the A9 is as unavoidable as it is bizarre. 

Worst Line: "I always hated this place," says Bond aloud to nobody as his childhood home goes up in flames, as if he were a character in some cheesy action movie. Similarly, his, "It just occurs to me that we haven't been properly introduced," to Moneypenny at the end feels very leaden.

Best Line: Difficult to remember any stone cold one-liners despite lots of good dialogue. Kudos to Dame Judi for immaculately dropping the series' first F-bomb. 

Worst Bond Moment: The death of his parents - astonishing that we've only now stopped to consider it.  

Best Bond Moment: Adjusting his cuffs; kicking the gun off the floor and catching it; taking out Silva's goons on the island. Then we get wonderful images: Bond stood beside his DB5 with glinting musical sting or, even better, standing in the boat on his way to the casino. Craig's been working on the standing and has developed a signature pose that is repeated all through the film: legs planted firmly apart, shoulders back (of course), left hand thrust into his trouser pocket, the right arm loose but ready. Once you notice it though he seems to be doing it all the time. The dazzling, amazing quality of his Bond is how he comes alive when he speaks to women. Normally blunt, brusque and cold he transforms in to a creature of charm and twinkle. Remember the receptionists in Casino Royale and QOS? We get the same here when he talks to Séverine in the Casino and it's wonderful to watch. 

Overall: A very good Bond film that manages to be about the loss of his parents without hitting us over the head with it. My favourite moment is the shot of the house that finally reveals the significance of 'Skyfall' - understated but so important and everything clicks into place. Nods to the franchise's past are subtle and pleasing, and a lot of the story has an authentically Fleming-esque flavour. I suspect that, rather like the Macallan, Skyfall will get better and better with age.    

James Bond Will Return: with pleasure.

Whilst You Were Sleeping

Barack Obama has been re-elected as President of the United States. Oddly it seemed to happen rather suddenly, seemingly at the behest of the US networks. One moment, everything was up for grabs; the next, Ohio had been called and it was all irrevocably over.

A long pause was eventually followed by Romney's concession speech. It was a gracious and generous address, but badly gabbled as if the poor man couldn't wait to get off the stage. Understandable, but hardly presidential. It's a stunning victory for Obama: even with unemployment at 7.9% he might yet even win Florida and top 330 electoral college votes.

We still wait the President's victory address, but goodness, doesn't this country need to fix some serious issues? A house divided against itself can not stand. Will America ever come together over race, religion, and gender? If any consensus can be formed, I doubt it can be forged by a single President. It has to come from ordinary people, reaching out to each other. Americans are divided, segmented by states, by demographics, by this or that pigeon hole.

Washington warned against partisan politics. Lincoln demanded that government should be of the people, for the people. FDR told us the only thing we had to fear was fear itself.

When are we going to listen to them?

Election Day

America, this morning. (Not my flag).

It's Baked Alaska time here in Texas. Not a reference to our November weather, in which crisp chill Autumn mornings melt into warm Summer afternoons, but to the Presidential election and my relationship with it: simultaneously hot and cold, up and down, engaged and disengaged. At one and the same time I am both on the inside looking out and on the outside looking in, like the bluebottle that has inexplicably found its way between panes of double-glazing.

The weirdness is mainly to do with the fact that I can't vote but I am affected by the result. This is nothing new, of course, as non-US citizens around the world will attest. I grew up in Britain following American politics, becoming increasingly partisan and yet unable to voice my preference. I cheered on Clinton from the sidelines in '92 and '96. In 2000 I stayed up until Florida was called for Gore and I went to bed happy that Americans had saved themselves, and us, from an idiot.

But now there is at least strong meteorological evidence that I do live in the United States (I'm still sceptical). I am even more directly affected by the outcome of this election: the quality and affordability of healthcare for my family, to pick one example. And the irony is not lost upon me that I suffer taxation without representation. Of course I do get a vote, just not here. And I can't not vote in Britain - it's my country, it needs me, wherever I am in the world! America is just where I live (allegedly - remember there's no consensus on that).

There's another slice to this Baked Alaska. Even if I could vote here, it wouldn't count. This is not a battleground state: the real election is taking place many hundreds of miles away. Despite Houston's bluish-leanings, Texas is red like its steaks and its thirty-four electoral college votes are guaranteed for Mitt Romney. The fight is in Ohio and Florida (amongst other places) and I have seen no motorcades down here, nor heard any rallies.

Lawn signs for Romney popped up overnight across the neighbourhood about a month ago, put out by friends and neighbours who would never discuss politics openly but obviously felt passionate enough about the Republican candidate to pin his colours to their, er, grass. Rather oddly, the colour in question is predominately white. Not a comment on race, I hasten to add (heaven forfend!), but on design: there's so much blank space on these signs that I cynically wondered if it was so his supporters could fill in for themselves what they thought Romney might be standing for. For a fortnight they ran unopposed but eventually the Obama signs did appear - nowhere near so many of them, of course, and often in pairs, as if consecutive homeowners had felt the need to circle the wagons. But it is irrelevant which side put theirs up first: both Republicans and Democrats feel surrounded and threatened by the others; for right or left, it is almost an act of defiance to publicly declare oneself.

Such seemingly irreconcilable differences, such polarised debate, suggests that American democracy is in poor health. Are elections decided by big-money donors instead of individual voters? Do lawyers and judges get to say whose vote counts and whose doesn't? Sadly, these questions will be asked again today. At best, there certainly isn't enough transparency in the system. At worst, it might be that one side is hell-bent on actively disenfranchising its opposition's voters in key areas.

But an hour or so ago, as I dropped my kids off at school, I walked past a line of Americans, waiting patiently to cast their ballot. Anywhere in the world, it is an inspiring sight.

Tonight I will sit down in front of as many screens as I can find and I'll watch the results come in. I'll bite my nails and drink large amounts of alcohol. I'll swear, both vituperatively and with joy. I'll scour graphs and count votes and generally cling on for dear life, utterly powerless, swept towards the result like a man in a barrel towards Niagara.

I shall be in the hands of all the people queuing today across America.

Which is, of course, just as it should be.

A New Hope?

Well, who saw that coming? Earlier today the news broke that Disney is buying Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion, setting fire to Twitter, sending the forums into apoplexy and generally melting the internet. I know it's trivial and silly, but to people born after, say, 1965 this is staggering news. The original Star Wars trilogy is such a bedrock of our collective childhoods (not to mention adolescence and, hell let's face it, adult lives) that the sudden, unexpected prospect of a seventh episode (let alone an eighth or ninth!) quickly distracted minds that might have been preoccupied by post-tropical storm Sandy, the Presidential election or even the general shitty state of the world.

After the announcement, the immediate shock gave way to an air of suspicion and disquiet. Although the original films are still almost universally loved, successive 'special' editions, tweaked releases and prequels have left generations of fans largely dubious and predisposed to disappointment. The knee-jerk reaction was that Lucas was 'selling out' and that Disney could only make things worse: many people, it seemed, had a very bad feeling about this.

Well, phooey. This is surely the most exciting thing to happen to Star Wars since Lando flew the Millennium Falcon out of the Death Star. Everyone knows that the best Star Wars film is The Empire Strikes Back: the only one that Lucas neither scripted nor directed, just as everyone knows that it was Lucas's control-freakery that strangled the promise of the prequels. Why not let a new creative team get their hands on that galaxy far, far away - it's not as if they can ruin it, is it? That already happened and we're all completely over it and ready to move on, yes we are.

And if you're not, well, tough. I ran and found my kids and told them the news. Aged nine and seven, it blew their tiny minds, their delight and excitement only tempered slightly when I explained they would have to wait until 2015 to see it. But they wanted the chance, like the children of 1999 and 1984 before them to go and see their own Star Wars movie at the cinema. Above all, that's who this film is for: the next generation, both viewers and film-makers.

Nor does it bother me that Disney will be in charge. Yes, as corporations go, it's a little scary - show me one which isn't? But I think they can handle Star Wars. If nothing else, the Star Tours ride is fabulous proof that they know their Alderaan from their Endor and goodness knows how the amount of Star Wars wonderfulness at their theme parks is going to shoot up over the next ten years.

So, nerds of a certain age, be not afraid. And non-nerds needn't fret either. This is a sign of the times. Just this week, Random House and Penguin announced they are planning to merge to create the largest publisher in the world. Everywhere, matter is coalescing. Individuals like Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs build tiny idiosyncratic companies that swell into world-conquering behemoths. Others create killer ideas that become franchises and are eventually swallowed up by the biggest of fish: the product of Ian Fleming's typewriter is now the juggernaut 23 movie property of MGM/Sony; Joanne Rowling's scribbling in an Edinburgh cafe became the Harry Potter movies that saved Warner Bros.; Disney already own Pixar, Marvel and even those lovable non-conformists the Muppets. And now young arthouse director George Lucas's unexpected movie smash of 1977 joins them.

All those different companies and creations started as insignificant little rebellions, given little hope of success against the dreadful galaxy-spanning status quo that they dared to question. But somehow they bulls-eyed their womp rats, navigated the asteroid fields and toppled the opposition. Now they are in charge.

The question we are all suddenly dying to have answered is - what will they do next?

Quantum of Solace

I really wanted to love Quantum of Solace. And, in fact, in 2008, I did love it and it felt like nobody else really got it. Having just watched it again I can see it is a fractured movie with a shifting, restless pulse. Whilst accelerated, whiplash-inducing edits prompted complaints from cinema-goers who weren't sure what was going on, at other times the film's rhythm is almost hypnotically slow, resulting in odd longueurs as the camera lingers on vanishing buses or dripping taps.

It's a little too short (thanks to the 2007/08 Writers' Strike that forced work on the script to shut down prematurely) and this, combined with the idiosyncrasies of auteur director Marc Forster, leaves QOS with an unusual atmosphere. It's more low-key, brittle in places and somehow lacking authenticity: lots of little things (like the freeze-frame, the unusually graphic captions, the ersatz opening titles, the grey, sodden London, the new MI6 staff and futuristic offices) all combine to leave a slightly odd taste in the mouth. Perhaps it is unsurprising that audiences didn't warm to it in the same way they had to Casino Royale. 

For all that though I still think it's brilliant: make no mistake, QOS is a good Bond film. Although the running time is shorter than usual, the plot is not fatally underdeveloped and the story we get is taut, and emotionally satisfying. It's full of sophisticated ideas (the murky, realpolitik of US/UK relations; CIA dealings with Greene; the intersection of corporate and governmental self-interest), great stunts (the Sienna chase and fight are excellent, tense and kinetically charged) and - hooray! - continued character development for Daniel Craig's wonderful portrayal of 007. 

There is a clear division in the film. Bond, Camille and Leiter (the latter played fantastically cool and wily by Jeffrey Wright) all possess a clear morality, a sense of 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. At the other extreme, both Medrano and Greene are unambiguously amoral. Other characters occupy the confused middle ground: some, like M, are conflicted; others, like the Chief of Police and the man who owns the plane Bond borrows, are venal; both Gregory Beam and the Foreign Secretary, representing American and British governments, claim that they can't chose with whom they do business. Mathis meanwhile is relativism made flesh - a traitor then, but a now loyal friend, offering his perspective-altering pills that make you 'taller' or 'forget, or anything else. He sides with Bond, but he certainly does not share 007's black and white morality:

"I guess when one's young, it seems very easy to distinguish between right and wrong. But as one gets older, it becomes more difficult. The villains and the heroes get all mixed up."

This Bond can't work like that. One film on from Casino Royale, he is still too young, it is still too early in his career, for him not to be susceptible to something approaching naivety. He has no interest in Special Advisors, politics, diplomacy - he sees only the target.

In 2008 I saw QOS very much as Casino Royale II, exploring the aftermath of Bond's relationship with Vesper. And whilst today it feels like more of a distinct installment in its own right, with a very different tone, and different concerns, the emotional core of the film is still the matter of the quantum of solace - the smallest crumb of comfort that would allow someone to move on with their life. For what it's worth I don't believe that Bond does actively search for such comfort - but I do think that he achieves catharsis by the end, even if it is not immediately clear to the audience what shape his solace takes.

The confusion stems, I think, from the audiences' natural assumption that Bond is intent on revenge for Vesper's death. He steals the Algerian boyfriend's photo from M early on and then proceeds to disobey orders, fight his colleagues and go on the run and so forth. When, during the course of the story, he doesn't seem to be getting any closer to the Algerian it seems as if the story must be confusing or badly constructed, and the final confrontation feels anti-climactic.

But this misses the point entirely: when Bond takes the photograph he might well be plotting a personal revenge - although he denies it ("I'm not going to go chasing him, he's not important.") and he doesn't lie to M anywhere else in the film - but just moments later any such plans are pushed from his mind by the attempt on M's life. The relationship between Bond and his boss is worth looking at in full another time, but for now we need only recognise that Craig's 007 is by far the most devoted and that M is, essentially, his mother. Just as in Fleming's Casino Royale, Bond's reaction to Vesper's love and betrayal is to retreat to the bolt-hole of his job. M, regal and motherly, is the physical embodiment of his duty, and Bond has personal loyalty to her as well as to Queen and country. Throughout the rest of the film, his single-minded obsession is to find the men who tried to kill her.

Perhaps it's a form of self-punishment, but Bond seems to be denying himself the satisfaction, the solace, that vengeance would provide him. One could argue that Bond is merely channeling his personal grief and anger through his work, transferring his emotional pain over Vesper to his concern for M, but either way it makes little difference: for Bond there is now nothing left except the job.

Is there then a quantum of solace for Bond by the end of the film? I think so. Camille certainly finds her own, but she is not exactly the 'mirror' to Bond as some have claimed. Unlike Bond, she is on a personal revenge mission. In fact she has done something which, for this 007 at least, at this time, would be unthinkable: shorn her ties with the Bolivian secret service to pursue Medrano. She shows us, perhaps, what Bond should be doing, what he might secretly want to be doing, but for whatever reason can't or wont. Although there is no physical connection between them, they do share an intimacy of experience and Bond is happy to help her achieve her revenge. Surely he takes vicarious comfort, even pleasure, when she is able to complete her mission? At the same time he takes care of Greene, fulfilling his own self-stated objective to find the man who tried to kill M, and this does seem to be enough. By the time he catches up with the Algerian, Bond appears to have shaken off the demons that were hovering on his shoulder on the flight to Bolivia; although we don't see what happens, Bond doesn't need to kill him, just as he no longer needs to carry Vesper's necklace. He is already in possession, it seems, of that smallest crumb of comfort.

"It'd be a pretty cold bastard who didn't want revenge for the death of someone he loved," said M at the beginning, and it's almost as if she was giving Bond permission to feel. She underestimates him throughout QOS, misinterpreting his motives, questioning his judgement. By the end though he has proved himself to her. "He's my agent and I trust him," she says. And then, of course, at the end, she calls after him: "Bond, I need you back."

"I never left," he replies, and the implication is that he never intended to go after his personal revenge. Duty, to her, to the mission, was all he needed.

There is one final quantum of solace - for the audience. The film ends with the traditional, familiar gunbarrel sequence, bold and vital, red on white on black. It is there to reassure those that might have been alienated by the experiment of the reboot, but it is also there to excite us all about what is to come next. Switched to the end of the movie, it still feels like a beginning and becomes the most glorious piece of cinematic punctuation - not a full stop, but a colon:

James Bond will return.

*   *   *

Pre-Credits Sequence: This exciting car chase is a brilliant opener - once you've seen it two or three times and have worked out what's happening. But on a first viewing it seemed designed to perplex a casual audience, so savagely is it edited. And then it suddenly stops dead on that irritating freeze-frame, which is rather like someone knocking over your pint and then shouting "Ta-da!".

Theme: 'Another Way to Die' by Jack White and Alicia Keys is certainly not a bad theme song. But it's not a great one either. The single version is better than the edit used in the titles here, but somehow manages to end up both shouty and a tiny bit bland. Forster, apparently, wanted design studio MK12 (who had worked on previous films of his) to produce the titles, so Danny Kleinman stepped aside. The result is rather odd. Despite the inclusion of many familiar elements (bullets, Bond, dots, women) it doesn't feel like the genuine article and I can't put my finger on what went wrong. All I can say is that, if Never Say Never Again had been made in 2008, this is what its titles would have looked like. Luckily Kleinman is back for Skyfall.  

Deaths: 24, possibly. Unfortunately, because of the editing, it's impossible to tell - often we see bullets fired without being shown where they land, whilst the inter-cutting of the Bregenz fight with the on-stage violence of Tosca is as close to a piece of deliberate obfuscation as we ever see in a Bond film. We never find out if that women at the Palio was killed or not either. Tsk!

Memorable Deaths: Fields' oily send off is obviously designed to be memorable but is a little too desperate for our attention. Mathis' death veers towards bathos.   

Licence to Kill: 11 - again it's impossible to be certain. Bond certainly gets credited with a lot of murders but even we can't be sure sometimes. Take those two Bolivian coppers - Bond certainly takes them out, and there's even a gunshot, but (and God help me I did watch this several times on slow-mo) I can't see him do anything that would kill them instantly. It seems to me that he merely knocks them out and that they are later killed to frame him, but that's pure supposition. It doesn't seem like he is responsible for Greene's death either, despite leaving him in the desert: I don't think Quantum are the sort to waste bullets on corpses.  

Exploding Helicopters: 0. A plane does blow up, but that DOESN'T COUNT.

Shags: Again, just one, except that it's not even Camille but sub-plot filler [Strawberry!] Fields. She seems resigned to it beforehand and regretful afterwards, bringing a much needed dose of realism to Bond's sexual antics.  

Crimes Against Women: Times have changed since Goldfinger and the rapists are now very much the baddies. Camille is probably the most progressive Bond woman we've ever had, despite being a victim. Crucially, her attractiveness is entirely disconnected from her abilities, and her relationship with Bond is based on mutal professional respect and shared experiences.

Casual Racism: Latin America is wall-to-wall corruption. 

Out of Time: Bond's trip to already troubled Haiti appears to take place just before Tropical Storm Fay and Hurricanes Gustav, Hanna and Ike smashed the place to bits during the summer and early autumn of 2008 (but see Eh?). A devastating earthquake followed in 2010, killing over 300,000 people. Meanwhile, water shortages were already happening across South America as this 2008 article shows. 

Fashion Disasters: Anatole Taubman's hair. Fields' raincoat, which seems to unecessarily suggest she is not wearing anything underneath. Craig's Bond seems to be able to wear anything and make it look good, but time will tell.

Most Shameless Advertising: Boringly, we have the same lot as last time: another Sony Ericsson phone, another Aston Martin and another high-profile Ford (an electric Ka!). Most desperate for our attention again is Virgin Airways, who make the bald claim that you can get six super-strong Vesper Martinis (upwards of 25 units of alcohol by my count) on any of their (non-existent) flights. Go on, try it: you will end up in jail.

Eh?: Ah yes, those flights. I apologise in advance for some hardcore pedantry. Whilst global travel has long been part of the Bond franchise, he really does flit about in this one. Annoyingly, his journeys as depicted here are flagrantly at odds with reality. Firstly though, what's going on in the PCS? It seems as though QOS picks up almost exactly where Casino Royale left off, but if so why has Bond changed his clothes? Furthermore, the journey from the Veneto (if that's where White's house is) to Sienna is around three hours (probably much shorter given the way Bond drives) but M has found the time to drop everything and fly to Italy. And the Palio di Sienna happens in both July and August - pushing Bond's Haiti trip unpleasantly into the 2008 hurricane season. >> Let's get this one out of the way: you can't fly Virgin to La Paz, Bolivia. Nor can you fly  with them from Italy. They'll happily book you on another carrier and make you change in Madrid, and Lima. But I doubt you get to knock back Martinis at the bar en route. And surely, any kind of connection or stop over would mean an MI6 or CIA agent meeting Bond and trying to arrest him. >> This one really irritates me. Greene has an appointment at the opera in Bregenz, Austria. He is in Haiti. He takes off no earlier than late morning and arrives in plenty of time. Total rubbish. Next season, the opera on the lake production at Bregenz starts at 9:15 in the evening. It's nearly an eleven hour flight from Port-au-Prince to Austria and, even assuming Greene can land closer than Vienna, he presumably has to leave an hour for delays, to do the passport thing and drive to the opera - it is an important meeting after all. All this means that Greene should be taking off around nine in the morning Austrian time which makes it 3:00 AM in Haiti. To make it all the more ludicrous Bond has to make the same journey and arrive at the same time, even though he hasn't yet chartered a plane when Greene takes off. And on top of all that Tosca is much longer than The Magic Flute (next years show), so the performance would start probably as much as two hours earlier. >> Speaking of opera, surely the great and the good of Quantum know that nothing is more likely to attract attention than to ostentatiously leave in the middle of the act? Sneaking out at the interval is obvious enough, but if a Guy Haines equivalent (say Peter Mandelson or Steve Hilton?) got up and walked out mid-aria, it'd be on the front page of the Telegraph the next day. Possibly even more astonishingly, Mr White comments on the walk-out to the stranger next to him. Goodness me! Leave if you must, but talking is verboten! (She, quite rightly, ignores him.) >> One more operatic observation, which is that various bits of Tosca are mixed together during the already confusing chase/fight through the opera house. We have the music from the end of Act I played over staging from all three acts, resulting in the disorientating notion that Bond's set-to with Quantum's thugs might be happening over several hours. >> Then there are people dining in the restaurant during the gun-fight. I've not been to Bregenz, but I'd be surprised if opera-goers decide to have dinner during the show? Never mind the fact that presumably the performance would be cancelled if people started shooting at each other in the foyer? >> Why doesn't Haines' bodyguard tell Bond he's Special Branch? Is it a secret? >> And how do the Quantum earpieces work? Where are the microphones? Do they cancel out the BLARING music? Hmmm... >> How does Greene get all that oil into the hotel room? Do they take a barrel up in the lift? >> And I would ask what the existing Bolivian water utility company has been playing at, not noticing that water has been squirreled away - but of course they are already real shortages, because of inadequate infrastructure and not, presumably, because of a shadowy international criminal conspiracy.  

Worst Line: Bond somehow finds time to say "You and I had a mutual friend!" to the Chief of Police before he shoots him. It feels rather forced and Brosnanish.   

Best Line: Quite a few. M moans that the CIA only got Le Chiffre's body. "If they'd wanted his soul, they should have made a deal with a priest," Bond replies. M on Quantum: "When someone says we got people everywhere, you expect it to be hyperbole. Lots of people say that. Florists use that expression!" Greene gets a few. "Don't talk to me like I'm stupid!" he shouts. "It's unattractive." Then: "There's nothing that makes me more uncomfortable than friends talking behind my back. It feels like ants under my skin."

Worst Bond Moment: Nothing horrible from our point of view. Bond's personal nadir is obviously being stuck on the flight to Bolivia, where he tries to drown his sorrows. Don't give the man time to think!     

Best Bond Moment: One of the great things about Craig's Bond is the way he moves: a purposeful, fluid stride, full of a strength that is being held in reserve. The moment when he eludes his MI6 guards in the lift and then prowls back to M, like a cat, is superb. There's some good vaulting too: he hurdles the bar after meeting Leiter and he also impressively jumps across the bonnet of a car under La Perlas de las Dunas. One tiny thing, but it's a favourite of mine: on entering the suite at the posh hotel in La Paz, Bond flings the keys across the room, utterly careless. The grand moment however is a tableau: Bond stands, indomitable, and stares down Greene at Bregenz whilst Puccini's Act I finale to Tosca lets rip underneath. Marvellous.     

Overall: Massively underrated, with fantastic performances by Craig, Dench and Mathieu Amalric. It is hampered though by some odd choices, often coming across as oblique and distant. Just as Bond doesn't go out of his way to explain his intentions, perhaps it is no coincidence that QOS itself is a film that knows what is doing, but makes surprisingly little effort to explain itself.    

James Bond Will Return: on the 26th of October! Or if, like me, you are in the US, November 9th. So that won't be an excruciating two weeks at all, oh no. Anyway, roll on Skyfall.

Casino Royale

James Bond, with two double bourbons inside him, sat in the final departure lounge of Miami Airport and thought about life and death.

It was part of his profession to kill people. He had never liked doing it and when he had to kill he did it as well as he knew how and forgot about it. As a secret agent who held the rare double-O prefix - the licence to kill in the Secret Service - it was his duty to be as cool about death as a surgeon. If it happened, it happened. Regret was unprofessional - worse, it was death watch beetle in the soul. 

And yet there had been something curiously impressive about the death of the Mexican. It wasn't that he hadn't deserved to die. He was an evil man, a man they call in Mexico a capungo. A capungo is a bandit who will kill for as little as forty pesos, which is about twenty-five shillings - though probably he had been paid more to attempt the killing of Bond - and, from the look of him, he had been an instrument of pain and misery all his life. Yes, it had certainly been time for him to die; but when Bond had killed him, less than twenty-four hours before, life had gone out of the body so quickly, so utterly, that Bond had almost seen it come out of his mouth as it does, in the shape of a bird, in Haitian primitives. 

What an extraordinary difference there was between a body full of person and a body that was empty! Now there is someone, now there is no one. This had been a Mexican with a name and an address, an employment card and perhaps a driving licence. Then something had gone out of him, out of the envelope of flesh and cheap clothes, and had left him an empty paper bag waiting for the dustcart. And the difference, the thing that had gone out of the stinking Mexican bandit, was greater than all of Mexico.

That's the opening from Goldfinger (1959, hence the stuff about 'primitives'). Apologies for quoting it at length but it's important. This stinking bandit is important. And here's why:

Run through the intricate sausage-machine of film-adaptation, Fleming's reflective passage ended up on screen as that clip. Whilst the literary Bond Pooh-ishly ponders the capungo's death and sees something astonishing, Connery simply struts out the door, amused with himself. It is the moment ink and screen versions of 007 diverge.

I know, I like that bit in Goldfinger too. I certainly enjoyed it almost a year ago when I watched it for this blog; I called this the 'first and superlative quip' and lauded the PCS to the rafters. But then I spent the rest of the last year watching all the other Bond films and something happened: I saw where this would lead, twenty years later.

Mainly I got sick of the quips. Pretty quickly. Probably by the middle of Thunderball, in fact. Of course, if you only watch a Bond film every now and again it's not too annoying. But if you're watching them in order, regularly - like, say, society does - the quips get worse and increasingly callous. The ghastly nadir comes in TND where, having just casually pulverised a random security guard by throwing him into the threshing mechanism of an industrial printing press, Brosnan's 007 breezes "They'll print anything these days!". Lines like that work to deliberately dehumanise the victim, to mock them and dismiss them. The cumulative result, after so many films, is to render such deaths dramatically and emotionally meaningless. To kill that man costs Bond nothing. It costs the audience even less to watch him do it. 

If both your leading man and your audience are so desensitised as to be almost incapable of feeling then there are limits to the sort of stories you can tell. How can you make a film where Bond must fall in love? How can you show him to be affected by death? In short, how can you make Casino Royale?

The answer is that they ripped everything out (apart from Judi Dench) and they started again. Along the way they managed to recombine Fleming's Bond of the books with the on-screen 007. The result is the best film so far in the series.

There is so little wrong with it. It can be difficult, when something works so satisfyingly, to identify all the bits that make it so good. It's brilliantly written, well acted and the music is superb (David Arnold's best score). The action looks terrific and feels exciting. Everything we have grown to love and associate with Bond - the martinis, the women, the car chases, the casinos, the fighting - is there. But everything is there for a reason. Best of all the ingredients are mercilessly stitched together to form a convincing and realistic world.

Two things make this the best Bond film. Two little, inconsequential things, that this film absolutely gets right: Love, and Death.

The relationship between Bond and Vesper is excellently portrayed. In the book it is nearly all squeezed in the last few chapters, but here it is cleverly pushed into the the very centre of the story. As soon as Bond and Vesper meet on the train, the air between them is fizzing with wit and chemistry, and throughout the hotel and poker scenes they continue to dance about each other in a way that lifts everything else. That their affair is convincing as well as entrancing is due to wonderful writing and to great performances from Craig and Green.

Daniel Craig is stunning as Bond, turning a flat cartoon into a living man. He has the unique advantage (well, apart from Lazenby) of being the only actor asked to develop the character over the course of a film; he does it beautifully. For the first time since the books themselves we get a real sense of Bond as a broken, damaged man: an orphan, and then a killer, who has had to construct an invulnerable exterior around his frailties. What was, for most Bonds, smug sang-froid, is with Craig clearly a coping mechanism - a mask that tries to disguise his real emotions.

Over the course of Casino Royale we see him change. The parkour chase at the beginning shows Bond to be, literally, a 'blunt instrument' as he runs in straight, relentless lines, bulldozing fences and crashing through walls, utterly direct and lacking in much guile or sophistication. He is also reckless and impulsive, a natural gambler who can't stop himself throwing away his cover at the hotel, and who desperately decides to go after Le Chiffre with a knife when he runs out of money. Slowly, the Bond we know emerges. He performs real detective work to track down Dimitrios and brilliantly improvises to gain access to him in the Bahamas. He even gets to follow someone, like an actual spy. We see him acquire the icons of his own identity: the tuxedo, the vodka martini, the Aston Martin DB5. Tempered by the advice of friends and allies, tested by the cruelty of his enemies, he grows stronger and cooler. This development continues into the very final seconds of the film and crucially allows both him and the audience a cathartic climax that transcends the sadness of Vesper's death.

Craig sells the idea of Bond completely, convincingly wrapping all the brutality, charm, coldness, humour, passion, savagery and wit around a fearsome engine. We know, we see, that this is a Bond that won't stop. Nevertheless Vesper is capable of driving thought of duty from his mind.

Eva Green's Vesper is beguiling, waspish, strong yet vulnerable, completely fascinating and utterly real. She's unlike any other female character in the series and, of course, this has to be the case in order for the audience to fall for her as well. She is the Best Bond Woman. I know I said that about Fiona Volpe (who is still sexier, more flamboyant and more dangerous) but Vesper is a complex, three-dimensional character, capable of transfixing and ruining Bond in a way that no other could.

At the centre of their badinage is a telling little exchange where Bond announces that he will call his new vodka martini recipe 'Vesper' after her.

"Why, because of the bitter aftertaste?" she snaps back, disbelievingly.

"No," replies Bond, surprisingly earnest. "Because once you've tasted it, it's all you want to drink."

Vesper laughs and they agree to dismiss the moment as 'a good line', but we, with twenty films of retconned hindsight, know Bond meant it. We know that he didn't, won't, drink anything else ever again.

The new approach to death is signaled in the first few minutes.

"How did he die?" Dryden asks.

"Your contact?" replies Bond. "Not well."

Nobody is easily disposed of in this film. The refreshing authenticity of Casino Royale lies in the fact that all the violence and killing is conducted by people who are fighting for their lives. The struggle with the bomber in Miami matters. When Bond tussles with Dimitrios, the men lock eyes, knife clenched in their grappling hands, each willing the other to submit. Le Chiffre's torturing of Bond is driven by the very real fear that people are coming to kill him. The fight with Obanno, the African war lord, in the stairwell of the hotel is the most savage and unrelenting we have seen in a Bond film since the one on the Orient Express. Protracted and exhausting, the audience is given nowhere to hide from the violence, forced to watch a man die in tight close up. There is no quip to let us laugh it away and we are made to feel complicit as Bond hides the body and washes the blood from his hands, like a murderer. When he reappears moments later, immaculate, we understand that his suave exterior has been reassembled - but we have seen the wild look in his eyes in the mirror, the large glass of scotch he had to throw down his throat. We know what it cost him.

This James Bond will remember the Ugandan he killed in the stairwell of the Hotel Splendide. He certainly won't be able to forget the wide-eyed silent screaming of Vesper as she gulped down lagoon water into her lungs. He'll pretend to others, to himself, that he is detached, unaffected, cold. He will even take satisfaction in the deaths of cruel or evil men. But then, stuck in an airport, or on an overnight flight to Bolivia, with too much time on his hands, he will sit and knock back the drink he named after Her and see in his mind the invisible bird that flew from their mouths, greater than all the world.

*   *   *

Pre-Credits Sequence: Shot in black and white with some Dutch angles, this little scene seems to hark back to Bond's cinematic Sixties roots, but really it's more evocative of something like The Ipcress File. It's a clever and careful introduction to Craig's Bond. He's at his most suave and polished here - the killer line 'Considerably!' is clipped so hard that he could pass for Trevor Howard - whilst the lighting makes Craig's controversially blond hair look very dark indeed. It's a very managed, traditional version of Bond and it is violently juxtaposed with the flashback to the ragged fight in the bathroom. With economy and style it establishes that these are Bond's first kills, cleverly underlining all this by showing us Craig through the gunbarrel, as if for the first time. The message is clear: this is where it all started.

Theme: I didn't warm to it initially, but the more I watch this film the more I like it, to the point that I would now rate it as one of the very best. Unusually muscular, it suits the new Bond very well and (most rarely for a Bond tune) has some good lyrics. I particularly like 'Arm yourself because no one else here will save you' - it perfectly captures the grim self-reliance of a lone agent like Bond. Meanwhile Kleinman turns in his best ever work on the visuals: clever story-telling with imagery ripped from the film's plot and setting. It's so good, you should go and have another look at it here, okay?  

Deaths: 21. But they all matter. For the record that's very low - only DRNO, LALD and TMWTGG can beat it. 

Memorable Deaths: Just about all of them. Even Solange, who dies off screen, gets a vivid corpse scene. But the murder of Obanno in the stairwell is especially visceral. Vesper's horrifically realised death is specifically designed to be unforgettable.  

Licence to Kill: 10. Not so very low, given the film's overall body count. The most important thing here is that all of these deaths become personally significant struggles. Some are mental contests, like the one in the PCS, others are tests of strength, like the stairwell battle. But always the sense is that Bond is pitting his whole self, his wits and his will into the fight. 

Exploding Helicopters: 0. I'm developing a theory about these you know.   

Shags: Just the one - except, of course, that it's not a shag, but a love affair. Bond and Solange remain conspicuously dressed for the duration of their unconsummated assignation.  

Crimes Against Women: For the first time in ages it feels like it is just the characters in the film who are sexist, rather than the film itself. And even then this is the least sexist Bond film I can think of. Solange and Valenka both seem to be trophy girlfriends but they prove themselves to be more than that. Solange is happy to get back at Dimitrios by shagging Bond, having observed the latter emerging from the sea. And Valenka shows tremendous strength of character, not to mention loyalty to Le Chiffre, when Obanno threatens to chop off her arm. For once there's no Moneypenny to file a harassment claim against 007 so Bond has to make do with teasing Vesper. It's mild stuff, although sexually charged, and she's more than a match for him.   

Casual Racism: Very little. Small town policemen in Montenegro are corrupt. Mendel, the Swiss banker, is the campest German speaker in fiction since Lieutenant Gruber. Actual Germans, like the gentlemen at the club in the Bahamas, are oafish and fat. Otherwise we're back to the most casual of Bond stereotypes: all the baddies are foreign (and even Vesper, thanks to the casting of Eva Green, has the odd tell-tale non-English inflection).    

Out of Time: Ubiquitous CCTV combines with the internet to splash Bond's embassy raid across the online headlines and show that the franchise has moved into the 21st century. Airport security concerns haven't gone away since 2001, whilst Le Chiffre's plan of using the stock market to profit from terrorism is directly connected on screen to 9/11. 

Fashion Disasters: Time will tell, but I couldn't see any. This Bond seems to be able to wear anything and make it look good. 

Most Shameless Advertising: Sony is heavily involved. The Vaio laptop is everywhere, as is Bond's Sony Ericsson phone. Aston Martin is very visible too, Bond driving the DB5 and (ostensibly) the DBS v12. Our winner would be the Ford Motor Company (who managed to get a scene included where Bond drives a Mondeo) if it weren't for Richard Branson popping up at Miami Airport. 

Eh?: Goodness this film hangs together well. I suppose it's the benefit of sticking so closely to the novel. There is a slight oddness though. When does Vesper turn traitor? And how involved is Mathis? M says that Vesper had obviously made a deal to hand over the money to Le Chiffre in order to save Bond. That sort of implies that this happened during her kidnap, but we know that she was compromised already, because of her Algerian 'boyfriend'. That would suggest that Vesper is a 'back-up plan' of Le Chiffre's, just in case Bond won the game. But the earlier in the plot that Vesper is leaned on, the less likely it is that she gives up the money for Bond's sake, rather than to save her boyfriend. Perhaps it isn't Le Chiffre she deals with at all, but Mr White, in which case that would have to happen after Bond's torture. Most probably, she deals with Le Chiffre and then Mr White - she has to have contact with the latter or else she would not have his mobile number, or recognise Gettler in Venice. >> But hang on. In the dinner scene directly before the kidnap Vesper appears to be unsettled, suggesting perhaps that she has made contact with Le Chiffre and is complicit in the kidnapping (as she is in the book). If this is the case then she uses Mathis' name as an excuse to leave. What if she doesn't know about the kidnapping? (Remember the villains leave her lying in the road for Bond to run over - yes, I know it's to try and force him off the road, but then why take the risk with her life unless they don't mind killing her? They also place her behind a blind summit to maximise the danger of her being hit.) That means either the villains are using Mathis as a lure, or that Mathis himself is involved. Bond certainly thinks so (he mutters "Mathis!" before he jumps up, as if he has just realised something important - we never find out what exactly) and later has the man tasered away as a traitor. Le Chiffre implicates Mathis too: "I'm afraid your friend Mathis, is really my friend Mathis," he tells Bond. What reason does he have to lie? Having just dumped Vesper in the road and seeing that he is about to torture Bond to death, he can't be too bothered with protecting Vesper's cover? It's all very murky and never really explained. By QOS Mathis has been declared innocent of all charges, but who knows? >> The sudden introduction of Gettler, the man in Venice with tape across half his glasses, feels last minute and false. But it's taken precisely from Fleming's novel: the same character (same name, with an eye patch instead) stalks Vesper in the last few chapters for similar reasons. >> One other tiny thing. When Vesper enters her account number into the banker's magic suitcase, we only hear three button beeps. I'm guessing the Treasury are a bit grown up for three digit account numbers.  

Worst Line: Hardly any. There are no cringe-worthy quips and the exposition is neatly and naturally woven through the film. The only line that sticks out a little is Bond's "The bitch is dead", which is taken straight from the novel.  

Best Line: Over dinner Vesper asks, "It doesn't bother you? Killing all those people?" Bond raises his Martini. "Well I wouldn't be very good at my job if it did." Bond sullenly orders a drink and the barman asks him if he'd prefer it shaken or stirred. "Do I look like I give a damn?" It's the best script probably ever and certainly the funniest since, oh, Thunderball? Lots of brilliant lines and every single conversation between Bond and Vesper crackles superbly. The exchange on the Pendolino is perhaps the very best. 

Worst Bond Moment: Bond flouts diplomatic neutrality to murder Mollaka the bomb-maker. Bond drives a Mondeo. Take your pick.    

Best Bond Moment: Let's just pick a few of the best ones, shall we? Bond crashing through walls, chasing Mollaka, getting up and carrying on. Bond pranging the oaf's Range Rover in the club car park. Bond turning on the charm to melt the club's receptionist. Bond's DB5 seduction of Solange. "I love you too, M." Bond examining himself in the mirror in his new dinner jacket. Bond haring after the kidnapped Vesper in his DBS. Bond's composure when M calls him to ask where the money is. The best bit, of course, is Bond stepping forward over the fallen Mr White and answering his question.    

Overall: After a twenty film franchise in which everything had become locked down with suffocating familiarity, EON throw off the shackles and give us the original James Bond story. Despite being skilfully updated for post-9/11 sensibilities Casino Royale is a remarkably faithful adaptation that restores Fleming's credible, thinking, wounded 007 to the screen. This is as good as it gets.    

James Bond Will Return: to wrap up some enticing loose ends in Quantum of Solace.

Bookends

Before we launch into the bright new dawn that is Casino Royale there's just time to glance back at two distinct versions of Bond that got wedged side-by-side.

007	Kills	(avg)	Deaths	(avg)	Shags	(avg)	Helicopters	(avg)
Dalton	16	8	49	24.5	4	2	0	0
Brosnan	92	23	406	101.5	9	2.25	7	1.75

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For once, these silly numbers actually do shed some light on what was going on. There is a clear disparity between the sober story-telling of Dalton's two outings and the whizz-bang exploderama that is the Brosnan era. The very fact that LTK has a reputation for being violent (and that, say, TND does not) tells you everything you need to know. Pierce kills more, shags more and more people and helicopters come to harm around him, but very little of it matters enough for the audience to made to feel uncomfortable. Pity poor Timothy, who somehow managed to alienate that same audience by committing the cardinal sin of acting as if he cared.

There's much though that connects these Bonds. Despite the six year hiatus, these films belong together historically, occupying the strange period between the end of the Cold War and the September 11th terrorist attacks. Seen together, these films show how the franchise was trying to adapt, not only to changing times, but to the changing mood of its audience. We can also see the writers and producers fishing for antagonists, constantly trying to identify global villains with which to justify Bond's existence.

The two Dalton films are self-consciously Flemingesque and set Bond squarely against spies and gangsters, just as Fleming himself did. TLD, one of only a few espionage stories in the series, seems like a deliberate attempt to depict the crumbling decline of the USSR. We see the great power to be vast and complicated; riven by hypocrisy; undermined by the lure of capitalist greed and by the earnest struggle of freedom-fighters. Indeed Bond ends up in Afghanistan, the very underbelly of Soviet imperialism, fighting with the Mujahideen. However 007 must join forces with the 'good' Russian, Pushkin, in order to defeat the real villains of the piece: men who are ripping up this world for their own profit. Both Jorgy and Whittaker are soulless, self-aggrandising egotists who pay lip-service to ideologies in order to pursue their own self-interest.

In LTK Bond gets invited to the USA's private backyard conflict: the War on Drugs in Latin America. Taking on the drugs barons may seem like an uncontroversial choice of villain, but the apolitical nature of the threat means that Bond must actually resign from MI6 before he can exact his vengeance on Sanchez. For once, Bond isn't being employed as a metaphor for British influence - in every sense this mission is an entirely personal one.

When the series returned with GoldenEye EON seemed determined to have their cake and eat it: the Brosnan movies represent an attempt to maintain the sense of the personal from LTK, but blended with the showmanship and superficiality of (most of) the Moore era. It was a necessary experiment I suppose to try and square the circle but it is clear that superficiality won out. However, in GoldenEye and TWINE, it almost comes off.

And the search for new villains continues. GoldenEye offers up a twisted version of Bond himself - Sean Bean's renegade 006 - mixed up with those rogue elements of the former USSR. It was surely essential for the series to address the fallout from the Cold War, but too often the film seems to showing Bond in the middle of a post-modern existential crisis, the series serving up these baddies as a manifestation of its own perceived failings.

But Britain was having too good a time in the late Nineties to put up with any angst. Economically prosperous and safely insulated from the unfolding horrors in the Balkans or Rwanda, Britain wanted and got fun and emotionally uncomplicated Bond movies. With no geopolitical threat to speak of (and with heavyweight issues off the table) Bond instead is sent up against multinational corporations - Carver's media empire in TND and Electra King's petroleum company in TWINE - whilst the UK even gets the dubious thrill of rattling the sabre with China for old times sake.

Fascinatingly and frustratingly, real issues do lurk in the corners of Brosnan's scripts but never get explored properly. Manipulation of news and governments by media organisations is, we now know, a real and serious threat to British democracy and justice. TWINE juggles post-Soviet nuclear proliferation with western reliance on Middle Eastern supplies of energy. DAD even coughs up references to the illegal trade in diamonds from war-torn African nations.

Even before September 11th these were flippant, superficial films. But when DAD was released, a clear fourteen months later, it felt like both Bond and his franchise were still knocking back Martinis and laughing at their own quips, unaware that the party was long over.

Inevitably, the reaction from EON was to go back to Fleming and to try and regain the lost sense of authenticity. These films don't just bookend an historical period, they also chart a complete cycle in the relationship between the films and the novels. TLD was the last movie to show anything of Fleming's stories, and DAD was the last not to, until Casino Royale.