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

HTML Tables

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.

Neil Armstrong

I don't tend to get too sad or reflective when old people die - it's not as if it should come as a surprise. But some people are so important, or represent something so fundamental, that it would be wrong not to give some serious thought to their passing.

This isn't that serious thought, that'll come later, slowly. But shooting from the hip, I'm slightly overawed by what the name of Neil Armstrong means to me. The Moon landings are, suddenly, a long time ago now and it is becoming hard not to think of them as the zenith for our civilisation: an achievement that has not been and, worryingly, might not be surpassed.

We shouldn't ever be blasé about the fact that, in the late 1960s, we fired men into space to leave their footprints on the dusty surface of another world before bringing them back safely to Earth.

It wasn't just Neil Armstrong's achievement, of course. Hundreds of thousands of men and women worked directly on the project, or contributed towards it. Millions more worked to fund it. And the rest of the world watched on their TVs and held their breath in hope and wonder.

But alone out of all those involved and all those astronauts who came after, Neil Armstrong took those first steps and thus, despite his death today, his name will be remembered. Thousands, tens of thousands of years into the future, possibly for as long as our species survives, he will be remembered.

It's very rare, but some people do achieve such immortality. The real events become contested or forgotten, but we hold onto their names and retell their stories, forever. And having been at the centre of the most extraordinary story, Neil Armstrong has passed from our mortal world and become the stuff of legend.
 

Die Another Day

I haven't met anyone yet who likes Die Another Day. Ten years on, my brother-in-law still can't bring himself to call it anything other than 'The Film That Shall Not Be Named' or, perhaps, 'The Shit One'. Long-time Bond fans I know refuse to watch it. Some refuse to have a copy in the house. Before watching it for this, I think I had sat through it only once since its theatrical release.

And the reason is that I have such clear memories of watching it that first time at the cinema. My friend and I exchanged nervous glances as we experienced a series of disquieting lurches, each one more worrying than the last. The excitement and anticipation of a new Bond film became bewilderment and we finally reeled outside and went for a beer, forced to admit that the latest James Bond film was a complete load of rubbish.

That didn't stop it making a huge amount of money and garnering some good reviews. But obviously some other people were worried about the end product. Casino Royale would still have been a savage change of direction even if the entire franchise hadn't been rebooted at the same time. Something, clearly, went very badly wrong with DAD, so wrong that EON threw their hands up in the air and started again from scratch.

So, faced with watching it again, the question has to be: is it as bad as I think it is? And is there anything to like about it at all?

The answers to those questions are, sadly, yes and almost nothing.

Let's get the good bits out of the way first shall we? The PCS is not terribly exciting, but it is an effective action set piece, ably directed by 2nd Unit Director Vic Armstrong. Daniel Kleinman gives the opening credits a fresh twist, making the most out of 007's incarceration. Bond's diversion to Hong Kong has some amusing lines. And there's something satisfying about the Cuba sequence (apart from Jinx) - it's reminiscent of the travelogue section of a Fleming novel, complete with local colour and a 'firm, dry handshake' from sleeper Raoul. Bond even engages in a spot of improvisation to inveigle his way into the clinic, which is nice.

And that's it. Everything else is terrible.

It's interesting that all these bright spots turn up inside the first half-hour, because this is a film that definitely gets worse as it goes along. And watching it again now is a depressingly similar experience to seeing it on the big screen ten years ago. Each new piece of stupidity, crass dialogue, or WTF? moment drives me closer and closer to despair.

I won't list every flaming thing that's wrong with DAD (see the Eh? section, if you must, but I've not been exhaustive there either to be honest), but I did once threaten that I could list twenty for you. I'm not going to do that. I can't face it. But I do have to make some effort to record the awfulness so here are the worst moments.

The 'Magic' Bullet. During the gun barrel sequence, Bond turns and fires as usual - but this time with such skill and accuracy that his bullet whooshes towards us out of the middle of the screen, SOMEHOW fitting perfectly down the barrel of the unknown assailant's gun that we are looking through. Why is it so bad? Throughout DAD we are given surprises and fresh takes on Bond staples - presumably in an attempt to prove that the franchise isn't old, dusty and predictable. Someone obviously thought this was a nifty idea and a cool surprise for the audience. All it proves is that nobody was giving any thought to what we had actually been looking at since DRNO. The spirally outline around Bond is, always has been, the rifling of a gun barrel and our POV is as if we were the bullet ready to be fired down it towards 007. Nobody thought or cared about that and so we end up with this flashy, stupid nonsense on screen that removes all meaning from forty years of Bond iconography.

The Sword Fight at 'Blades'. Whilst on the run from MI6, Bond hangs about a gentlemens fencing club in central London and becomes embroiled in a sword fight with über-arsehole Gustav Graves. Why is it so bad? For many reasons. Firstly it's stupid (actually properly stupid, like something out of Austin Powers) and, like nearly all the other fights and chases in DAD, does nothing to advance the plot. It's a runaround where all the characters end up back where they started. Secondly because of Madonna. Thirdly because of the mis-appropriation of Blades from the novels. And fourthly, and most importantly, because it defines the relationship between Graves and Bond. Graves, played by so-so Radio 4 Bond Toby Stephens, is a terribly annoying villain, with his endless awful quips and his suits and his gadgets and his Union Jack parachute... remind you of anyone? Yes, Graves is modelled on James Bond (he'll admit so himself later on in the film) but rather than evoke the hard-as-nails bastardishness of Sean Bean's anti-Bond 006, Graves is wet, sneering and arrogant. Here, at 'Blades', Graves and Bond bring out the worst in each other and the upshot is that, rather than wanting to cheer 007 on against his antagonist, the audience is invited (by Madonna, no less, albeit strangely monotonously) to hate the bloody pair of them.

The CGI Kite Surfing. Forgive me for reminding you, but this sequence sees Bond escape from an orbital space laser weapon and a collapsing glacier by jury-rigging a parachute/surf board. Why is it so bad? The execution is awful. It looks awful now. It looked awful then. But even if the CGI was excellent, it would still be terrible because one of the great strengths of the Bond franchise has been the way in which it strived to make things look real. Even silly YOLT and Moonraker had the decency to try and look convincing and the extraordinary stunts in TMWTGG, TSWLM and GoldenEye were done for real. But everything in DAD is faked. Korea is Aldershot, Hong Kong is a backdrop, Cuba is Cadiz and Iceland is Cornwall: there's no sense, as there was in the '60s, '70s and '80s that the location is an important part of the story. The crappy green-screen here is just the icing on the cake.

The 'Spy Car' Chase. Bond and Zao have at each other in their super-duper motors. Why is it so bad? Because it is sound and fury, signifying nothing. The chase starts at the Ice Hotel and ends, er, back at the Ice Hotel. They literally drive around in circles, shooting and swerving, with no consequences whatsoever. What's worse is that it all takes place on the blank expanse of the glacier: Iceland maybe beautiful but the featureless landscape offers no context for this chase. Without landmarks Bond and Zao are merely fighting in a meaningless void, their actions rendered pointless.

In truth the whole film is a blasted wasteland. Nothing matters here and we care nothing for the people who inhabit it. Bond, Graves, Jinx and Frost - they are all flat, uninteresting copies of human beings. The script has potential but the execution is all wrong. So often the tenor of DAD is badly off, painfully disconnected from the world the audience inhabits. Bond films had always seemed to be set 'five minutes into the future' but this superficial pantomime is firmly stuck in the '90s, unable to absorb developments in the real world. The 'kisses to the past' are overdone and clunky. The 'surprises' (terrorists in M's office! Bond and Moneypenny are shagging!) are the crassest of gimmicks and utterly beneath my contempt.  

The whole thing is irredeemable. Vacuous, smug and rotten. We shall not speak of it again.

* * *

Pre-Credits Sequence: It's sadly lacking TWINE's panache or GoldenEye's bravado, but this PCS is a competent enough affair that, for better or worse, sets up much of the plot for the rest of the film.

Theme: Apparently Madonna's effort is very popular with Bond fans under the age of 25. It's not a bad piece of music, particularly - it just jars with everything else we've heard before and barely fits with what's happening on screen.

Deaths: I make it 28 which feels a little low. There's a lot more knocking people unconscious than in recent outings.

Memorable Deaths: Mr Kil (really?) gets lasered through the back of his head. I say memorable - I didn't remember it either.

Licence to Kill: 12 - very low for Brosnan.

Exploding Helicopters: One, in the PCS.

Shags: 2. For the first time we get to see Bond properly 'at it'. It's a bit of a disappointment.

Crimes Against Women: M sits down one of her agents, Miranda Frost, and berates her for not having shagged her way around MI6. There was more I had to say here but I can't get over that first one. Unbelievable.

Casual Racism: There's a very boorish and unpleasant South African chap at Los Organos. The Americans here are bastards rather than allies. You might not be surprised to learn that the Koreans don't do too well out of this either.

Out of Time: Blah, conflict diamonds, blah, Sierra Leone. DAD happily bandies around such terms but never wants to engage with a world in which these words actually mean something.

Fashion Disasters: Bond more or less gets away with the vest and open shirt in Cuba, but that black turtle-neck sweater makes Brosnan look really rather elderly. The less said about the beard and pyjamas the better.

Most Shameless Advertising: All those three-movie deals have expired so no Smirnoff or BMW. Instead we have Aston Martin, British Airways and, most gratuitously, a razor. The scene where Bond shaves was recorded twice, once each for the US and Europe, because the razor was being marketed under different names in each place (as the Philishave HQ8894 XL Sensotec in Europe and as the Norelco Spectra 8894XL in the USA, if you're interested). No, really.

Eh?: You can tell my heart's not really in it this time round can't you. Oh well, here we go. In the PCS Bond brings diamonds to Moon - what are they for? Surely Moon is buying weapons with diamonds? If Bond is pretending to be Moon's diamonds supplier, how is Moon paying for the diamonds? If Moon has lots of diamonds (enough to buy weapons with, or to fake a diamond mine) then why does he need a supplier? >> Zao is wounded in the explosion in the PCS and gets a face full of diamonds. Fourteen months later, he still has a face full of diamonds. He's been a prisoner of the USA or UK for some of that time; he has also been on the run - did nobody think it was worth their while to remove the VALUABLE PRECIOUS STONES from the terrorist's face? Did the terrorist with DIAMONDS ALL OVER HIS FACE not think to tweezer them out in order to look less conspicuous? >> M says information was leaking from Bond's prison (in North Korea), but later on it is revealed that Frost was the leak (in London). Is she a special ventriloquist mole? >> Bond escapes from MI6 by slowing down his heart rate to the point where a crash team is required. Now, I could spend ages researching this to see if it is actually medically possible, but really, you and I both know this is bollocks. >> And so is all the DNA replacement therapy, of course. Why not just call it plastic surgery? >>  Having found Zao in the clinic, Bond hurts him by clutching at his IV bag. Now, I have checked this out with a medical professional and they assured me this was also bollocks. >> If Jinx is at the clinic to kill the doctor, why allow him to explain his operation first? Why wait until after she has handed over a cheque and left other evidence (like a photo of herself!) at the scene? Why don't the guards shoot Jinx as she dives? Why does Bond just stand there and watch? >> World renowned chemist, James Bond, quickly discovers that Graves' diamonds are "chemically identical" to conflict diamonds. But NOBODY ELSE HAS NOTICED. >> Speaking of which, how do you FAKE a DIAMOND MINE? Is there a verification process? Is it like Twitter and one day a blue tick just appears over your sparkly hole in the ground? >> Where is Bond going when he jumps into the drag ski racer thing? >> Jinx is trapped in a room inside the melting Ice Hotel. The room fills with water. The ice doors don't melt. The ice windows don't melt. The walls or floor or ceiling don't melt. Why not? And where does the water come from then? (Presumably from the all the furniture, seeing as she doesn't smash her way out of the MELTING ICE with a chair leg or anything.) >> M expresses regret that she didn't know that Frost was on Moon's fencing team at Harvard. Sheesh. What with this and Mitchell in QOS, it's clear that Dame Judi is not running a particularly tight ship. Bernard Lee is spinning in his grave I expect. What's she going to do next? Upload the identities of all British agents to YouTube? >> Why does Graves have a stupid suit if the controls are either in a box or on his wrist? Why does said stupid suit have a stupid button that electrocutes the wearer?

Worst Line: "I am Zao. You are late." "Saved by the bell!" Not strictly dialogue, but Madonna gasps "Sigmund Freud!" during her theme song for no obvious reason. She also mutters "I see you handle your weapon well," to Bond at Blades but, bless her, she didn't really want to be there, did she.

Best Line: John Cleese (is he R or Q now?) snaps at Bond when he moans about the VR goggles. "It's called the future, so get used to it." There's another one too, but I'm saving it for Best Bond Moment.

Worst Bond Moment: Bond's heart-rate lowering escape. 'London Calling'. The Blades fight. The kite-surfing. The VR scenes. And many more.

Best Bond Moment: Bashed-up, unloved and abandoned by MI6 and with no gadgets or back up, Bond runs into the Chinese secret service in Hong Kong. "Don't worry," he growls. "I'm not here to take it back." And we still believe he could.

Overall: The very worst. At last the Bond series becomes what its detractors have always claimed it was: a stupid action cartoon, devoid of wit, heart or any sympathetic characters.

James Bond Will Return: ...to the beginning.