GoldenEye

Super cool, super confident, super-spy: GoldenEye (yes, apparently I have to type it like that) is the bravura return that had audiences cheering all around the world and brought the franchise back from the dead. Full of the fun and panache that had been missing during the Dalton era, Brosnan's début boldly dispelled any doubts and hushed the haters. Bond was back.

That's the official line anyway. But I can see the cracks in this production; I can smell the fear. There was an awful lot riding on this film and it's far from a nerveless resurrection. GoldenEye has some marvellous set-pieces, but the script is clunky and its premise is thin. More than anything else though, this is a film which is straining everything to impress and to justify its own existence. And it shows.

This is not the first time James Bond has returned after a long absence. At the beginning of The Man With the Golden Gun, Bond travels back to London, having been captured and brainwashed for a year by the KGB. His handler, the delightful Colonel Boris, tells him to take a room at the Ritz and to buy himself a Burberry raincoat. As far as the Russians are concerned, this is who James Bond is.

After the disastrous reception to LTK and an unexpected six year hiatus, the Bond who resurfaces in GoldenEye is similarly unsure of his identity. Lucky for him then that everybody he meets is in possession of a pithy character-summary. They take it in turns to fling a label at him, eager to define, for him and for us, who James Bond is these days. The new M calls him a "sexist, misogynist dinosaur". To CIA scruffbum Jack Wade he's a "stiff-assed Brit". Valentin Zukovsky mocks him for being a "charming, sophisticated secret-agent", whereas Janus himself, former 006 and nutjob, Alec Trevelyan, plumps for "Her Majesty's loyal terrier."

If all this runs against the old writers' adage of "show, don't tell" then bear in mind that these are our preconceptions that we're hearing. These criticisms (and they are criticisms, even Zukovsky's) are reasons why people won't watch; for EON and their financial backers they are the cause of nagging doubts. By putting them into the script, a strategy is being adopted. Like a scandal-hit politician, Bond is showing that he listens to us, he understands why we have been disappointed in the past. And, also like a politician, Bond doesn't answer any of these charges - by the end of the film we are simply supposed to have forgotten all about them.

To a large extent the audience did exactly that and GoldenEye was massively successful even if you do allow for the the fact that I went to see it five times. Yes, I, a beery-eyed undergraduate, was completely bowled over, dazzled by the shiny newness, giddy with rebirth. It's fair to say that I am rather less excited by GoldenEye now, seventeen years later - but that doesn't mean there isn't anything here to admire. In fact there are four key sequences which raised the bar for the series - or at least inched the bar back towards a previous all time high.

With both LTK and OHMSS taking a bit of a kicking, it is hardly surprising that GoldenEye resembles that paragon of 'fun' Bond films, TSWLM. There are a number of similarities but none is quite so obvious as the sight of 007 plunging over a precipice during the PCS. You'll also remember that Bond manages to do this twice during the PCS of GoldenEye - the stakes are being desperately upped. The initial bungee jump certainly sets out the stall for the new Bond. Unfortunately, it's another of those stunts that is more impressive than it looks: although the actual mechanics of diving off of a dam like that are truly terrifying, the end result is merely graceful, lacking the cocksure showmanship of TSWLM's parachute. Still, it got our attention. The rest of the PCS is good, full of action, story and character, and the tense stand-off between Bond and Orumov is excellent. But then 007 plummets again, this time free-falling after a pilot-less aeroplane, catching up with it and then flying it away. I think it's fair to say this stunt has proved divisive (I remember hearing both cheers and scoffing during those original screenings). Is it possible to fall faster than an aeroplane? I don't know and I'm not going to spend any time trying to find out, but the answer doesn't matter because the stunt feels wrong. Even in 1995, though I wouldn't have admitted it at the time, it felt like it was too much. Still for all that, the PCS is a strong introduction to Brosnan's Bond and a key part of GoldenEye's success.

The second important scene is Bond's briefing from Q. The effort, planning and determination behind this scene's execution is clear for all to see: it's a full-on comedy sketch, packed with sight-gags, stunts and puns, and it even climaxes with a clever, funny punchline. It's a great scene, excellently directed by Martin Campbell who does his best to mask the fact that Desmond Llewellyn is reading everything off idiot-boards. Nevertheless it is obvious to me that this burst of jokes is a reaction to the criticisms levelled against the Dalton films: the fear, the desperate doubts are there. The other reason that this is such a key scene is that Llewellyn is now the grand old man of the franchise: the new Bond, like a Holy Roman Emperor seeking the approval of the Pope, must make his pilgrimage to Q Branch. .

Thirdly, the major action sequence in the movie. It's a belter. Bond, imprisoned inside a barracks in St Petersburg, escapes from his cell, shoots a load of soldiers and crashes through a window only to find that Natalya has been driven off in a car by the unravelling Orumov. Bond promptly commandeers a vehicle and sets off in pursuit. So far, so TMWTGG - except that the vehicle Bond takes is a T-55 tank. Once again it is Bond's capacity for improvisation that delights: in a crisis he trusts his instincts and uses what's available. It almost doesn't matter what the resulting chase is like but, even better, it is wonderful. One of its strengths is the music, proving again that the best thing you can do with a cool stunt, chase or fight is to smother it with the James Bond theme. If it stands out from the rest of the score that's because it was not written by Eric Serra who composed everything else in GoldenEye - John Altman put this together, thank goodness.

The fourth great sequence is the fight between 007 and 006, the production team taking their inspiration from the Bond/Grant Orient Express dust-up from FRWL. Yes, it is really good - savage, well choreographed and edited, with a neat reversal. It's the best fight in the series since, blimey, OHMSS, I expect. But, hell's teeth, if you're pitting two Double-Ohs against each other, in an homage to FRWL, surely 'good' is the very least you can manage? Perhaps I'm being unfair, but should this not have been astonishing rather than merely good?

There are other little glints of brilliance too. The production overall is very good with excellent model work, set-design and visual effects. Samantha Bond's Moneypenny is excellent, showing that it is possible for there to be chemistry between her and 007 without her being feeble or subjugated. But casting Dame Judi of Dench as M was a stroke of genius. She is easily the best thing about the whole Brosnan era (with the possible exception of GoldenEye 007 on the N64) and adds so much, utterly remoulding not just the M/Bond relationship, but the whole perception of women in the franchise. In truth, she's not at her best here, playing it a little too straight. But even so, she brings so much credibility and quality to Bond's world. Of all the villains, it is only Orumov, played by Gottfried John, who is remotely interesting. He gets several lovely moments and subtly acts everyone else off of the screen. Watch when he executes one of his own men in the PCS and promptly turns to catch his breath, wracked with tension. And he pulls a brilliant face later on when he looks delightfully askance at Onatopp as she trills and kills during the Severnaya massacre. Then there's the bare-faced lying to Mishkin's committee and the brilliant, deranged way he barges into Bond's interrogation.

Okay, those are the highs. What are the lows? Well, as I hinted earlier, Eric Serra's score is awful, easily the worst ever. There are moments when it fits what's happening on screen but it's just not Bondy. That his attempt at scoring the tank chase got dumped tells you all you need to know.

The concept of a rogue Double-Oh agent is great one, harking back to anti-Bond characters like Red Grant in FRWL. But GoldenEye largely wastes the idea. Sean Bean does what is required of him but really Trevelyan is a boring baddy: petty, embittered and childish - he's supposed to be stylish and sophisticated, like Bond, but he never gets the chance to show us. Onatopp is entirely one-dimensional, despite some excellent smirking, pouting and even the occasional smoulder from Famke Jansen. Boris is slightly more rounded, Alan Cummings doing well to make the most of the programmer's emotional range, but is still little more than a caricature. Natalya is tough, brave and reliable but all her best bits are in Severnaya - once Bond turns up, she stops being interesting. Although there is some conflict with Bond it is all minor bickering - going through the gears of a bog-standard action movie romance. Zukovsky is far from being the lovable rogue he'll end up as in TWINE and Jack Wade is not even an one-dimensional character - it is merely hinted that he likes gardening, hence the 'tick' of him naming a plant he can smell whenever he turns up. Good God, Richard Kiel was playing Hamlet in comparison with this.

And then there's Pierce Brosnan. I know he's still a very popular Bond and I think it might be that, for many, he is the One That Brings Balance: tougher than Moore, funnier than Dalton, nicer than Connery, a better actor than Lazenby. All those things are probably true - but for me, these days anyway, he's not quite right. Partly this is because DAD soured everything and because I'm still shocked by how good Daniel Craig is. But looking back at Brosnan, there are two sides to his Bond and they're both flawed.

1) He's charming and twinkly, he smiles and he laughs. He quips (my God, how he quips), he smirks, he straightens his tie at inappropriate moments. Watch him fiddling with Q's laptop, grinning to himself. Watch the exaggerated look he gives the waiter when Onatopp orders her Martini "straight up, with a twist". Firstly, and irrelevantly, that's not even an innuendo. Secondly, yes, he's looking at the waiter but the glance is meant for us. He might as well mug straight down the lens like Miranda or Eric Morecombe. This is all the fun, funny stuff that was demanded after LTK. It is the Roger Moore Bond being channelled into the Nineties. The difference is, Moore never oversold a gag. He had excellent timing and he played all the jokes dead straight. Even terrible, awful lines like "When one is in Egypt, one should delve deeply into its treasures," from TSWLM, even that sort of works because Moore's delivery is utterly deadpan. Brosnan tries to ease us through with a little twinkle: "I love a woman who enjoys pulling rank," and "She always did enjoy a good squeeze," and it's always just a little too much. Yes, we know they are jokes. We will laugh even if you don't blatantly demonstrate that you find yourself funny. The only line he does manage to deadpan is "No, no, no. No more foreplay." And even then it's as if he is forcibly repressing a chuckle behind the eyes at his own brilliant hilarity.

Right at the top I mentioned that GoldenEye is full of Bond getting character notes from others - all people that we've never met before. Is there no-one we know and trust in the film to judge the new Bond for us? A wise old man perhaps? Sure enough, when Brosnan is pushed into the presence of the indomitable Desmond Llewellyn,  the man who's run Q Branch since 1963, four Bonds earlier, the verdict comes through loud, clear and, quite possibly, laser-guided: "Oh, do grow up, 007!"

2) The flip-side. Sensibly, not everything from the Dalton era is jettisoned. Bond must have some kind of emotional dimension. There must, in short, be some acting to do. It starts off here with the "It's what keeps me alive," line on the beach and progresses throughout Brosnan's tenure: the death of Paris, sympathy for Elektra King and finally North Korean interrogation. It doesn't work. Even here, this Bond can't carry the (slender) emotional weight applied to him. We are supposed to think, I'm guessing, that the smirking school-boy persona is a façade, thrown up around his damaged and serious real self - but unfortunately the former is rather more convincing than the latter and the real impression is of someone pulling a series of sulky sad, faces in the belief that it will make them more interesting.

Maybe the problem is that Brosnan is too likeable. I know I complained that Connery was too much of a bastard but there must be a balance. This Bond is very charismatic; he is also a lover of life, an admirer of women and their beauty. That means there is something very important missing, something essential to the character of James Bond that is being overlooked: there is no callousness, no pragmatic disregard for others. Maybe that is my nagging dissatisfaction with GoldenEye too - here we have both a film and a Bond which are just trying too hard to get us to like them.

*   *   *

Pre-Credits Sequence: I pooh-poohed it earlier, a bit, but it is good. The second dive is controversial but there comes a point when you have to accept that James Bond can just do stuff that would be impossible for other people - of course the trick is to make his impossibility credible and I'm not sure that is achieved here. Still, the stand-off with Orumov, and its resolution, is fantastic.

Theme: Tina Turner is wheeled out to sing something rather dull cooked up by half of U2 (the wrong half, perhaps, given the success that Lary Mullen and Adam Clayton had with the Mission: Impossible theme a year later). Much more exciting are the opening visuals. Daniel Kleinman takes over from (the dead) Maurice Binder, having been in charge of the music video for Licence to Kill. He does an excellent job too. Okay, he has a freer hand, thanks to new computer techniques, but what he produces always has a strong concept and even, sometimes, a narrative. Here he manages to bridge the gap in time between the PCS and the rest of the film by depicting the collapse of communism. Admittedly he achieves this by having models smash hammers against icons and statues of Soviet Russia, but it's no mean feat and a big leap forwards.

Deaths:62 is pretty high - mind you, everyone seems to be using automatic weapons these days so that may have something to do with it.

Memorable Deaths: Boris gets frozen solid. Onatopp gets squished against a tree. Trevelyan gets dropped off a dish that then collapses on top of him.

Licence to Kill: 32. That's high. Amazingly, Bond fails to kill anyone during the tank chase, mainly thanks to improbable cut-aways that show dizzy policemen pulling themselves, unharmed, from utterly crushed cars. 

Exploding Helicopters: Two! The Eurocopter is hit by its own missiles and Bond takes out another with an AK47. Happy days.

Shags: Two - the blithering MI6 pyschologist, Caroline, and Natalya. Surprisingly, Brosnan doesn't let Xenia get a look in (Connery would have been all over her). 

Crimes Against Women: Sexism in the work place: Tanner calls M the "evil queen of numbers" - that's sexist because he would never refer to a male boss as an "evil king" (conceivably he might refer to a male boss as an "evil queen", but that's a different kind of prejudice) and is therefore implying, albeit unconsciously, that M's gender is relevant to her job performance. Not cool. True, having a female M makes a massive difference to the way the franchise views women, but here M only really gains 007's respect when she explains how she "has the balls" to send "a man" on a dangerous mission. Meanwhile Boris is making no bones about eyeing up Natalya's assets. He also comments on the size of her breasts (they are the kind of "knockers" that "can open very large doors") and draws NSFW pictures of her that he then uploads onto office software. Only Moneypenny manages to provide any pushback. But although she is firm and unyielding with Bond when he tries to flirt with her, she can't quite resist flirting back just a little: the penalty for sexual harassment in the work place is, she says, that "one day you have to make good on your innuendo". If that's not a come-on, I don't know what is. If I were I her, I'd kick him in the goolies whenever he walked in the room, just to be on the safe side. Things aren't a lot better for women out in the field either. Bond's evaluator, Caroline, is first portrayed as being ditzy and feeble before being later derided by M for succumbing to his charms. Natalya is shown to be determined, capable, brave and intelligent. So to make up for that there is a long lingering look (from both Bond and us) at her crotch as she walks towards him on the beach. That'll serve her right. She also has to endure Trevelyan's unwanted advances. And then there's Xenia Onatopp. She's the first properly bad Bond woman since the (wonderful) Fiona Volpe (as long as you don't count Rosie Carver or Helga Brandt and why would you?) but she's nowhere near as interesting. Her chief characteristic is the, er, delight she takes in killing people which means she is basically nothing more than a murderous fembot. 

Casual Racism: None, apart from the fact that there are no black characters in the film whatsoever. 

Out of Time: There's much made of this new-fangled contraption called the Internet, which (bless) was at a very primitive stage in 1995. They also talk about Guantanamo which, at the time, meant NOTHING at all. Natalya's wardobe is all very of its time (micro skirt and tights) whilst Brosnan's hair is perhaps the most luxuriant coiffure of any Bond ever.  

Fashion Disasters: Bond's having a casual wear crisis again. He sports a cravat of some kind in the DB5, and a double-breasted blazer whilst skulking about in Monte Carlo. Xenia has a piss-poor line in crazy hats, as does the Russian army - Orumov's in the PCS is very silly. Jack Wade is all scruffed up and Tanner hasn't even managed to do up his tie! Boris, of course, dresses like a mid-nineties programmer (i.e. badly). Luckily the French naval officers are very dashing in their sharply-cut suits and Natalya magically ends up with an utterly gorgeous coat when she is poking about St Petersburg. 

Most Shameless Advertising: A new category! Yes, the series had always prominently featured products in return for help with production costs (look at the cars Bond drives in DAF and TMWTGG for example) but in the Nineties this became much more obvious. What does GoldenEye offer up? Well, there's Zukovsky's carefully placed bottle of Smirnoff (Black Label, of course), but this is rather subtle compared with the film's use of the BMW Z3 - it gets its own mini-advert that has almost no bearing on the rest of the film whatsoever. Best of all though is the casual deployment of a lorry full of a famous brand of mineral water during the tank chase. See if you can spot it here:

Eh?: Alec Trevelyan doesn't make any sense. As the child of Lienz Cossacks, he hates the UK, but seems to have no animus against the USSR or the Russians he employs. Strange. Also, when does he swap sides and what happens in Arkhangelsk? If he has a deal with Orumov before the mission then why not just hand Bond over to the Russians straight away? If he hasn't got a deal then how does Orumov not kill him by shooting him in the head at point blank range? Either way, his main gripe against Bond is that 007 changed the countdown on the explosives from 6 to 3 minutes. He treats this a terrible betrayal, which assumes that a) Bond was supposed to know that Trevelyan wasn't dead (so it wasn't a trick and Orumov's just insanely incompetent?) and b) that altering the countdown was incontrovertibly against mission protocol (in which case, why is it a one-click function on the limpet mines?). Anyway somehow he survives the MASSIVE explosion inside a chemical weapons factory and doesn't get executed as a spy by the USSR. The man leads a charmed life, why is he so bitter?  >> The Janus crime syndicate is so rich that they are able to build an exact replica of the Severnaya facility. In Cuba. Under a lake. And it can rise out of the lake. And still work, even though it has all been underwater. And they have their own private army. Presumably they need to rob the Bank of England because they are massively in debt. You know, if it was Carl Stromberg doing this, or even Elliot Carver, I'd believe it. >> If Jack Wade is the CIA's man in St Petersburg, why does he turn up in Florida? (I'm guessing it's Florida? They can't sneak into Cuba from Cuba can they?) >> Who is pretending to be the Canadian admiral aboard the French frigate? We never find out, but it must be Orumov or Trevelyan. However, because the same actor is playing both real and fake admirals, it looks like it can be neither of them: they are both too tall! Whoever it is, we don't see his face, but any disguise must be good enough to work with the real admiral's photo id. >> Where does Boris go during the attack on Severnaya? He pops outside for a smoke and the next we see him, he's on Trevelyan's train. If he is part of the conspiracy (and he must be surely) then it would seem likely for Orumov and Onatopp to give him a lift in the helicopter. Except that the Eurocopter only has two seats! >> Natalya commandeers (steals) a dog-sledge to get away - where is the owner that we saw a few minutes earlier? And where does she get that coat from? >> Onatopp appears to orgasm when she fires at the (empty) ventilation shaft - but there's no sign that she has killed anyone, so can she climax just by assuming she's killed someone? Why doesn't she just play a FPS instead? She'd never need to leave the house. >> Again, Q Branch supplies Bond with explosives covered in attention-grabbing LEDs, which is just perfect for keeping them hidden and secret on a dark night. Well done Q Branch. >> How exactly does Bond's scam work for Zukovsky? If Bond has bribed an official to get it to work (why else would it work?) then why not just pay-off Zukovsky? >> Trevelyan keeps talking about 'England' as if it were a country when really he means 'Great Britain', 'the United Kingdom' or, even better, 'the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. Any one of those is fine. >> Bond apprehends Onatopp in the hotel sauna. Fine. Next shot they are in a car, Bond still pointing a gun at her. How exactly did they both get dressed if she is his prisoner? Did he let her hold the gun whilst he knotted his tie? And why did they both feel the need to get so dressed up? He's wearing a suit and tie, and he's allowed her to do her hair and make up, and even match her earrings to her lipstick. >> Okay, last one. The pen. The exploding ballpoint pen. "Three clicks arms the four-second fuse," says Q, "and three more disarm it". No they don't. I'm sad enough that I sat in the cinema counting clicks (on the third or fourth viewing) but that was seventeen years ago. So, yes, I watched these few minutes three times for this post so I could be sure. I make it 19 click-clunks so there's no way that Q's three-three briefing is accurate. If, however, it is three to arm it and one to disarm it, then 19 is fine: !!!*!!!*!!!*!!!*!!! - but still, Q got it worryingly wrong, as did the writers, editor, director and foley artists.

Worst Line: Oh dear. Lots. Lots of awfulness. Most of it comes from people talking about James Bond to his face. Take this bit of codliest pyschology from Trevelyan: "I might as well ask you if all those vodka martinis ever silence the screams of all the men you've killed... or if you find forgiveness in the arms of all those willing women for all the dead ones you failed to protect." Or this: "We're both orphans, James. But while your parents had the luxury of dying in a climbing accident..." actually Alec, I'm going to stop you there. This is ham-fisted script writing, desperately trying to explain Bond without having to show his behaviour - just compare it with Casino Royale or QOS where Craig acts instead, there's no contest. There are others too, lots of dud puns or clumsy phrases instead of the sorts of things people actually say. 006 mulls over the GoldenEye activation device: "The world's greatest cash card. It had better not be rejected...". "I had to ventilate someone," smirks Onatopp, presumably because she believes she's a character in a cheesy action movie.

Best Line: M hints at future badassery: "Unlike the American government, we prefer not to get our bad news from CNN." Also: "...if I want sarcasm, Mr Tanner, I'll talk to my children, thank you very much." Trevelyan momentarily stumbles into something approaching eloquence: "What's true is that in 48 hours you and I will have more money than God. And Mr. Bond here will have a small memorial service with only Moneypenny and a few tearful restauranteurs in attendance." Oh and that punchline to the Q Branch sketch: "Don't touch that! That's my lunch!"

Worst Bond Moment: There are no major embarrassments here. Brosnan is a bit of a gurner. In any fight or, indeed, any emotional scene, he has a habit of stretching his mouth wide, grinding his jaw, bulging his eyes and so forth. Look at him when he is held back as the Eurocopter is stolen - is he about to transform into the Incredible Hulk? He is also much more shouty than any of the other Bonds, (listeners to Adam & Joe can think their own thoughts here) and this is something else which makes me think he is just trying too hard. 

Best Bond Moment: Many will say the bungee jump but, as I suggested earlier, I find it a bit obvious - it's a daring feat, sure, but where's the ingenuity, the flashy improvisation? But GoldenEye does have one of the great Bond moments as 007 steals a tank, drives it through a wall and then ploughs through St Petersburg. Inspired, unstoppable and too cocky by half - that's our James.

Overall: I've been hard on GoldenEye but I do like it - I'm just not convinced it's as good as everyone thinks it is. The series needed a strong revitalising film and this is it: rightly lauded and very successful. But look too closely and it begins to seem very insubstantial fare, and Brosnan, caught trying to play Roger Moore in a Dalton script, is already a dangerously superficial 007.  

James Bond Will Return: No hints, no hostages to fortune these days. And besides, Bond titles are so difficult to manufacture. What is certain, after GoldenEye, is that Bond will return, and that he will always return in the future. For no matter what the geo-political context, you can always rely on one man...

Fair play, that is a damn good trailer.

Licence to Kill

And here, apparently, is where it all went wrong. Too dark and too violent, with a tawdry, ordinary villain and an unlikeable, unconvincing 007, Licence To Kill, we are told, scrapes the bottom out of the barrel of what is, effectively, a dying franchise.

What a load of nonsense. LTK is the best Bond film since FYEO, since OHMSS perhaps, and occupies the same emotional landscape of curtailed love, betrayal and revenge. Watching this again, what strikes me is how tightly it is plotted, specifically the way that Bond encounters the various gang members in such a way that it is only at the climax that he risks being identified. Throughout, though, each plot point has repercussions that build and feed back into the story, and the characters are all developed with clear motivation for their actions.

Sanchez, the drug baron, is a ruthless businessman whose stock is the loyalty of those around him. Robert Davi does a great job here and, like all the best Bond villains, Sanchez possesses a cool and almost charming persona that masks a terrifying sadism and an extremely violent temper. Anthony Zerbe is disgustingly slimy and horrible as the lecherous Krest and, yes, that is a very young Benicio del Toro as henchman Dario. The women are good too. Lupe (Talisa Soto) is a kept woman who has to trade on her beauty to get by - but she seems to understand that Bond's mission offers a chance for escape and, gradually, begins to help him. Carey Lovell plays Pam Bouvier with a slightly whiny sense of indignation - this is definitely a capable woman who feels that she is required to prove her efficacy to men over and over again. Of course she does prove herself throughout the film despite being somewhat held at arm's length by Bond. M, Q and Moneypenny all have their brief moments shoehorned in, but they're all nicely done. Caroline Bliss has had very little to do as Moneypenny but she did it very well, even if she has turned out to be the least steely incarnation. It's Robert Brown's last gig as M too. He took over from Bernard Lee for Octopussy but he has been very good - a little less gruff but no less reassuring.

LTK is presented as an aberration, a reckless departure from the Bond formula, but it is surely the most Fleming-esque of all the films. Far from being an ersatz Bond story, cooked up in the vats at EON Productions, the story mechanics here should be very familiar to anyone who's read Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever, or The Man With the Golden Gun: through cunning, deception and ruthless opportunism, Bond infiltrates a criminal gang and destroys their operation. Other recurring Flemingisms pop up too: the villains' ingenious business model is revealed and explained, as if Bond were an undercover reporter; 007 offering himself up as a gun-for-hire, a dissatisfied ex-employee of Her Majesty's Secret Service; the tense moment when Bond realises he is about to be exposed and can only wait for the single instant of opportunity that will allow him to try and turn the tables. 

Although in the novels Bond makes a habit of convincing hoodlums that his services are for hire, he never really seems to fit in amongst the gangsters. Partly this is because we, the reader, never doubt his loyalty to Queen and country and partly because Bond's Fifties upper-middle-class background suggests an awkward gulf between him and his foreign criminal chums. But here, what's amazing is how Dalton's Bond does belong amongst Sanchez' men. Operating without M's sanction, Bond has no political cover for his actions in this film - he is, like Sanchez, just a killer, motivated purely by revenge. Having pushed his way into Sanchez's office at the casino, Bond introduces himself as "a problem-eliminator"; it's hardly a joke, but all the men in the room, including Bond, fall into a long, dark chuckle. Bond is not acting a part here - it is a genuinely shared moment where both he and Sanchez are revealed as men who have made themselves comfortable with the fact that they are killers.

There's something of the Conquistador about Bond's mission, in that it is a ruthless one-man war that brings down a latin-american empire. But unlike Cortes, Bond's religion is vengeance and he has no thirst for gold. In fact, throughout the film, Bond repeatedly proves that he, just like Sanchez, values loyalty more than money. He runs away from his job to avenge Leiter and Della, throws away two million dollars to make his point to Killifer, and hands over nearly five million to turn Sanchez against Krest. The money he does use is merely a means to a very bloody end.

But whilst LTK clears the decks to accommodate Fleming (incidentally, I know you know this, but: Leiter's ordeal by shark is lifted wholesale from Live and Let Die), does it completely do away with our suave super-spy? The all-capable secret agent that audiences love? Well no, he's still there, particularly in the action sequences. The bar brawl feels like it's from a Moore movie anyway, but the tremendous truck chase at the end is a wonderful chance for Bond to pull stunts, throw punches and generally be improbably amazing.

There is one other sequence though, which is even better. In fact it's so good that I would rate it alongside the PCS from Goldfinger. It's pure, skiing-off-a-cliff Bond but LTK incorporates it brilliantly in to its grittier reality. Milton Krest's ship, the Wavekrest, is anchored at sea so that a sea plane can land to conduct a drugs deal. Bond, having destroyed the drugs, is spotted in the water and set upon by divers who trap him and cut his air pipe. Bond grabs a spear-gun, takes a second to smash the butt into the mask of one diver, and then fires. The spear sticks into one of the floats of the sea plane and Bond is yanked to the surface where he water-skis behind the plane before climbing aboard as it takes off. He gets inside, kills the pilots and flies off with all the money from the drug deal. It's fantastic - all the more so because of Michael Kamen's score which liberally drapes the Bond theme over such antics. But the best thing, the BEST thing, is that later in the movie, Sanchez, suspicious that he has been ripped-off, asks Krest what happened. Krest explains what Bond did and, of course, Sanchez doesn't believe him. Our super-duper 007 has wandered off into another movie genre to do battle, and these guys don't understand, like we do, that Bond has brought with him his own set of rules.

* * *

Pre-Credits Sequence: It's flashy, with its helicopters and Florida Keys setting but it's not up to much really. It's a good little vignette and it ties into the story. There's also the parachutes-as-wedding-train which is a nice idea. Presumably the capture of the plane is a lot more impressive than it looks.

Theme: Gladys Knight, sans Pips, sings an American-flavoured track that's a bit R&B, a bit rock ballad and is very James Bond. Powered by some hefty horn work (based on Goldfinger) it is one of the better themes, although it has no connection to the score. (Kamen's contribution is good and heavily based upon the Bond theme - which shows up a lot - but it does get overly sentimental in the quiet bits.) For his last set of Bond credits, Maurice Binder does well. Although still reliant on jiggling women, there are thematic elements (gambling chips, a spinning roulette wheel, underwater photography) that relate to the content of the film.

Deaths: It's a not very high 23 but for once they nearly all mean something.

Memorable Deaths: Krest gets de-pressurised. Killifer gets dropped on a shark. One guard gets fed to the maggots, another gets shocked by eels. Lupe's boyfriend has his heart cut out.

Licence to Kill: 10. And every one of them a cold-blooded murder committed without the sanction of Her Majesty's government. I'm assuming the guy who gets thrown into the tray of maggots dies.

Exploding Helicopters: Plenty of helicopters but none of them explode. :(

Shags: 2, although it's difficult to see why either of them occur. Having just met him, Ms Bouvier jumps on Bond for some unknown reason. And Lupe inexplicably decides to pull Bond into bed despite what happened to her last boyfriend.

Crimes Against Women: Moneypenny pines after her AWOL 007 to the extent that she becomes incapable of doing her job. Lupe is on the receiving end, getting whipped by Sanchez and harassed by Krest. Pam gets heavily patronised by Bond (she's his 'executive secretary', "we're south of the border, it's a man's world," he tells her) and leered at by Professor Joe. They're all still better off than Della who, it is strongly hinted, is gang-raped and murdered on her wedding night.

Casual Racism: There's nothing overt, but there is a pervasive stink of stereo-typical latin american corruption: Bond's dollars elicit unctuous smiles from bank managers, bell-boys and casino staff; the President is bought and paid for by Sanchez. Of course there is, and has been, corruption in latin america but it would be nice if there was a character who obviously wasn't on the take. (On the other hand, there are plenty of US citizens who are shown to be corrupt.) Putting all that to one side, there is no excuse for Q's Mexican disguise (including Zapata moustache).

Out of Time: 1989 was the year the US invaded Panama to bring down the government of Manuel Noriega, but the General's regime was clearly an inspiration for Sanchez's fictional Isthmus City. The violence, swearing and revenge/drugs plot are all reminiscent of recent films (1987 saw the release of both Lethal Weapon and Beverly Hills Cop). Bond's (untaken) flight with Pan-Am is historically sandwiched between the Lockerbie bombing (1988) and Pan-Am's collapse (1991).

Fashion Disasters: No major howlers from Bond, in fact he's pretty natty throughout - but his hair does change alarmingly. Heller wears one of those silly ties that isn't a tie (right). Professor Joe has a (bleurgh) nice line in white suits. Krest is afflicted by those terrible pastels that blighted the late Eighties. Pam's wig is pretty awful (before she gets her hair cut). And I don't know where else to put this so I'm going to say it here: Sanchez's palace is hideously decorated. Really disgusting.

Eh?: I find it difficult enough to believe that Felix finds the time to arrest Sanchez and get married, but he apparently also is able to do a load of case-work on it and meet Pam Bouvier. Even more incredibly, Sanchez is able to instantly corrupt a police officer and conspiratorially design, arrange and execute a complex escape plan, all within hours of his arrest. But after all that, he is even able to coolly plot and carry out his revenge attack before bedtime. That's a busy day. >> It's not clear why Bond decides to look in the tray of maggots, let alone plunge his arms in up to the elbow. But lo and behold he finds drugs down there! Some kind of dowsing perhaps? >> M once again jumps half-way around the world to meet 007, rather than pick up the phone. But why is Hemingway's house his base of operations? >> Hang on, this drug deal: the plane is delivering drugs to Krest, and Krest is paying them money - but Sanchez is the drug baron, so who is he buying drugs from and why? Shouldn't this deal be going in the opposite direction? >> I'm not an expert on shot-guns, but I'm not sure they blow suspiciously neat round holes in things. >> What is the point of the 'signature gun'? (Obviously the point is so that a ninja can try - and fail - to shoot Bond with it in the next fight, but really...) >> Why does the ninja try and kill Bond with his own gun? Surely the ninjas have gunless ways to kill him? And why are they trying to kill him when they are hell bent on interrogating the bejesus out of him two minutes later?  >> Both Bond's 'signature gun' and the fag-packet detonator are covered in green LEDs, which is just perfect for keeping them hidden and secret on a dark night. Well done Q Branch. >> Why is Pam, a known informant who Sanchez wishes to kill, chosen to be the emissary who goes to Heller with the deal about the Stingers? And who is she working for? The Attorney General? >> Where has Dario been? We see him in the bar brawl and then he magically pops up at the end with no explanation. I suppose the likeliest answer is that he was on Krest's boat, but that doesn't make a lot of sense either. >> I can't shake the feeling that only three of the Stingers get fired during the final chase. Have I missed one?

Worst Line: I need to say, for the record, that this film is laden with expletives. Within a few seconds of the gun-barrel intro we hear our first 'bastard' and then it's 'shit', 'ass', 'piss off', 'bullshit', 'bastard, 'bastard, 'bastard', all the way. Still - not exactly bad dialogue. No, bad dialogue is something like this, a shameless and clumsy piece of exposition from Killifer: "Even one of your famous one million dollar bribes won't get you out of this one, Sanchez!" And, pow! - suddenly everyone's on the same page.

Best Line: Looking back at the Sixties films, there's no denying that the scripts have lost a lot of their wit and cleverness during the intervening years. So it's nice to get some real gems here. When Bond offers his resignation, M snorts "We're not a country club, 007!" Having burst Krest all over his money, Sanchez orders his men to "launder it." The note pinned to Leiter's maimed body is an actual piece of dark and brilliant Fleming prose: "He disagreed with something that ate him." And there's more nifty recycling when Bond, having sent Pam away to get him a drink, silences her whiny complaint with a savage growl: "Shaken. Not stirred." Q executes a lovely eye-roll when Lupe announces to Pam that she too has slept with Bond.

Worst Bond Moment: Dalton is great in LTK, but there are some odd moments. During the bar-brawl there's one shot where he just stands and takes his punches- it's either badly staged or under-rehearsed but it's certainly very unconvincing. Then there are the strange noises he makes (the strangled cry "Della!" when he finds her body and a wobbly "aaahah!" when he's being pushed out of the aeroplane being two examples); they make him sound rather feeble and well, unBondlike. Worst of all, and possibly the worst Bond moment ever, is the sight of 007 being hoisted down out of the DEA helicopter. In full morning suit, his hair plastered into a bowl-cut by the down-force of the rotors, Bond  dangles and gently flaps his arms like some sort of ugly flightless bird. It's not a good look.

Best Bond Moment: They are several great Bond moments here. The way Bond infiltrates the catering staff in the casino is nice, instantly and effortlessly blending into the background. The truck chase is full of them, not the least of which is pulling the petrol lorry onto eight of its sixteen wheels. But the best bit, of course, is the water-ski escape from the Wavekrest that I outlined earlier.

Overall: Okay, this is not family viewing - but who says James Bond can't be for grown-ups? And, over the course of a long series, it is right to mix up the formula from time to time. This is an excellent Bond movie that is faithful to the original books and shows that Timothy Dalton was a brilliant 007. And if Dalton had made another one, or two films, I think LTK would be much more highly regarded.

James Bond Will Return: ... it says. And at the time there was no reason to expect that he wouldn't. But there were distant rumblings in the innards of the film studios that would soon throw all this in to chaos. And while, despite the confusion, planning went ahead for a new Bond movie (set in Japan perhaps, with killer robots), beyond Hollywood, the world suddenly and irrevocably changed.

The Living Daylights

I was looking forward to this one. It should be a stone-cold classic: Dalton's 'proper' Bond movie, with some good chases, a real spy story and an authentically Flemingish 007 to boot. But something just isn't right - I'm not entirely sure what yet - and it renders The Living Daylights just a little flat.

This has surprised me because the film has long been a favourite of mine. Although I had seen both Never Say Never Again and AVTAK at the cinema, going to see TLD was the first time I felt and understood the electric tingle of anticipation as the gun barrel rolled across the screen in front of me. I've had the same feeling with every subsequent Bond film, despite the disparagement I  have had for many elements of the franchise in these posts, I know that makes me a incurable fan. Every time, sat there in the dark of the movie theatre, I am on the edge of something new - unlike the other Bond films, endlessly repeated on television, and then bought and re-bought on VHS, DVD and BluRay, what's about to happen is utterly unknown.

When we're faced with the prospect of a new 007, these feelings are exacerbated and, perhaps, also tinged with apprehension. This seems to have been on the minds of the makers of TLD, who not only keep us waiting for Dalton as the PCS unfolds, but give us three faceless Double-O agents who might be him, as if they are auditioning for the part before us. Cleverly, they are revealed in ascending order of Bondness. Number One is floppy-haired and rubbish, and gets caught in his own parachute before being paint-balled by a squaddie as part of the war games. Number Two looks more like Bond, a bit more rugged, darker, and at least has the dignity to be properly killed by a real baddy, but it's still a fail. Which leaves us with Number Three, who promptly dives onto a speeding Land Rover, kills the assassin, escapes stylishly and does sex with a lady on a boat. Yeah, we'll have him then, okay Cubby?

This introduction is a departure because it is very particular version of Bond that we are getting. There's no casino, or gadgets, or bow tie - the traditional Sixties accoutrements. This is the 'Special Ops' Bond, dressed to kill in commando black and, up to this point, we've barely seen him at all apart from the superlative PCS of Goldfinger. The reason, of course, that we haven't seen much of him is that Sir Roger of Moore has been so terribly old lately - so it's entirely logical that this new Bond should be drawn in sharp contrast to his immediate predecessor.

This is our first (and impressive) impression of the new 007, but as soon as we've logged it we're being offered a different - and more interesting - version. Once the film has properly begun we are back in the Cold War world of defections, checkpoints and proper old school secret agents. In short, we are back to something that rather resembles FRWL, but in the middle of all this is none other than the literary James Bond himself, extracted, by some odd Q-Branch alchemy, from the very ribbons of Ian Fleming's gold typewriter. For twenty minutes or so, the film is happy and able to run with Dalton's desire to get Bond back in character and it is absolutely the strongest section of the film. In fact we get the original short story, The Living Daylights, rendered with only the most careful and judicious updating.

The Daniel Craig movies have, so far at least, made much hay out of the dramatic opportunities offered by a version of Bond that more closely matches Fleming's creation, but here, momentarily, we get a delicious glimpse of what is yet to come. We see Bond as the 'blunt instrument', the killer sent to do a job, as he stands in the seedy apartment holding an enormous sniper rifle. But even has he stares coldly down the sights, 007 experiences an instinctive revulsion at his profession - partly because his hackles have been raised by his officious fellow agent, Saunders, and partly because his head has been turned by a pretty blonde - that causes him to spare his target. This is where Bond starts to become interesting. Arrogantly, he backs his instincts against his orders. Forgoing the easy kill, he employs his astonishing skill to shoot the gun from his target's hands instead. And then, accused of insubordination, he snarls his retort, unrepentant.

This is James Bond: a man of improbable abilities; a loner, distrustful of ideologies and communities, repeatedly forced to rely upon his own instincts; a man consumed with self-disgust at what he does; who is nonetheless addicted to the dangers of his profession; and who dulls the awareness of his own fragile mortality with voracious and unhealthy appetites.

This is the man that is sketched over the course of Fleming's stories and it is recognisably the same character that only Craig and Dalton have brought to the screen to any degree. But perhaps the reason why TLD feels a little insubstantial these days is because of Daniel Craig. He sells the powerful masculinity of Bond with his incredible physical performance: huffing, sweating, snorting, crashing - or even just rising out of the sea. Dalton nails the accidie in the opening section of TLD but, as the film leaves its source material behind, his Bond begins to look a little delicate in comparison.

More shockingly, Dalton's Bond is also undermined by his predecessor. Yes, good old Sir Roger. Love him or hate him, it cannot be denied that Moore has a wonderful way of gently selling a joke. Dalton is taking the character in a different direction here, but that doesn't mean he isn't required to try and emulate Moore's lightness of touch. He categorically fails. Specifically there are three egregious attempts at a 'comedy' double-take (for the record the lines are: 'We have a pipeline to the West', 'I've had a few optional extras installed' and 'We have a saying too, and you're full of it!') and they are painful to watch. If I remember correctly there's at least one more coming up in LTK (swordfish through the chair during the bar-brawl?) so that's something to look forward to, isn't it? Or if you'd rather reflect on past glories, two great Moore double-takes: TSWLM, Bond, driving the Lotus, notices the glamorous helicopter pilot who is trying to kill him; FYEO, running for his life, Bond realises that Melina's car is battered yellow 2CV. That, Timothy, is how you do it.

It doesn't help that the whole film begins to lose its bearings once Fleming's source material is out of the way. There are some impressive set pieces (Necros's attack on the MI6 safe house; the escape down a mountain in a cello case) but the story trying to thread these all together isn't good enough, being simultaneously too weak and too complicated. In the past we've been used to films where the plot centred on one thing: gold, diamonds, drugs or weapons for example. TLD throws all these in on top of each other like a game of 'one potato, two potato' and then compounds things by having a multitude of different factions fight over it all as well.

It is laudable that a Bond film would want to reference a real situation like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, although it's fair to say, I think, that recent events have rendered TLD more than a little quaint: the good old days, as it were, when the Russians were the baddies and James Bond could join forces with a radicalised Muslim Oxford graduate. But this film, following on from Octopussy, feels the need to try and reflect the deeper complexity of its times. So, we have bad Russians and good Russians once more. Very interestingly, the good Russians are loyal servants of the state - Pushkin - and the bad Russians are crypto-capitalists, in it for personal wealth. What the hell? We also have good and bad Americans - arguably for the first time: Whitaker, weapons-monger, is bad, and he too is a capitalist. In fact he's a rampant egoist, a brazenly conceited and self-serving individual, almost capitalism personified. The good Americans opposing him are the blank and featureless operatives of the Federal Government - almost literally actually, seeing as John Terry (no really) is a sure-fire winner of the 'Blandest Felix Leiter' competition. Admit it, you'd forgotten Felix was in TLD, hadn't you? He needn't have been. Leiter here is so flavourless, he makes Dalton zing. (There are, of course, no bad Brits. Even Saunders, our sniffy MI6 man in Bratislava, is shown to be a good egg in the end.) Add in the Mujahideen and Kara (an independent faction in her own right) and, well, things become really quite unnecessarily complicated.

Ah yes, Kara Milovy, the one with the cello. She's a bit of a step backwards really. The premise, that 007 is stringing her along to get to her boyfriend, is a strong one and has real opportunities for drama. The downside is that, as a result, Kara becomes a naive and, let's face it, wet character with rather too much in common with the likes of Domino from Thunderball. Worse though are the bumbling, 'hanging-on-the-gun-arm' tendencies she has (mucking about with the plane controls for example) which put her firmly in the vicinity of the hapless Mary Goodnight (TMWTGG).

Still, despite all my carping there's much to like about TLD. M, Q and new Moneypenny, Caroline Bliss, all get nice character moments and Dalton, even if he can't manage the brutal hunger of say Connery or Craig, works hard to rediscover Bond as a paid assassin with distasteful duties. John Rhys-Davies is winningly likeable as Pushkin and there's some proper cinematography going on too (specifically the shots of sunrise over a camel train in the Afghan desert). John Barry turns in his last soundtrack. It's tidy, with the elements of  a strong theme worked throughout, but the most notable thing about it is the synth drums that are laid over the action scenes. I wonder if that was him?

* * *

Pre-Credits Sequence: I've discussed this higher up, but this is obviously a carefully constructed PCS designed to introduce the new Bond. It's a good one too: a nice little mini adventure that still manages to set up the plot for the rest of the film.

Theme: Norwegian pop-rockers a-ha (I believe that's how you type it?) turn in a good effort, full of '80s synths, drums and no small amount of dark and rainy atmospherics. Binder's even able to manage a few images that reinforce this ambience, but mainly it is the usual girl-based nonsense and finishes, for no good reason whatsoever, with a woman killing time stood inside a giant champagne flute. But of course.

Deaths: Ooh, controversy. I made it 28 but I'm am forced to revise this down to 26. I counted four deaths during the attack on the safe house but in the next scene M gruffs "Two dead, two injured," so that's me told. Perhaps I should halve all my tallies on this basis?

Memorable Deaths: Saunders gets mashed up by a door. A Double-O falls off the Rock of Gibraltar. Necros falls off a Hercules clutching Bond's boot. Whitaker gets head-butted by the Duke of Wellington. Most memorable perhaps is Pushkin's faked assasination, which does involve a lot of blood and one comedy eye bulge.

Licence to Kill: 6. Not very high but then Bond does sit out the main Afghan/Russian battle behind the wheel of a taxiing plane.

Exploding Helicopters: 0. Another dry spell.

Shags: Technically, 2 (there's the odd-looking woman on the yacht in the PCS), but really only one and this feels like a deliberate de-tox for 007. Co-incidentally, TLD was the first Bond film to be made after the HIV/AIDS public information campaigns began. Go figure.

Crimes Against Women: As discussed, Kara is not the most empowered of Eighties women. She does get to call Bond the back end of a horse, but this is, perhaps, scant consolation. When she does assert herself, Kamran Shan hisses "Women!" and rolls his eyes in a manner we are presumably intended to find humorous. Bond cynically uses Pushkin's half-naked girlfriend to distract a KGB bodyguard and pats Moneypenny on the backside. Really! 007's eventual sexual harassment tribunal is going to make the Leveson inquiry look like peanuts.

Casual Racism: No particularly terrible examples but Bond does suggest to Kara that the Mujahideen will "save you for the harem". And there is, of course, the usual undeniable background racism of the series which boils down to this: foreigners are a rum lot.

Out of Time: James Bond smokes and that was controversial even in 1987. Q has produced something called a 'ghetto-blaster'. The Soviets are in Afghanistan, but we're exhorted to trust Gorbachev's reforming government: Puskin is absolutely a goody; Gogol, over drinks with M again, coughs up a visa for Kara.

Fashion Disasters: Dalton is the first Bond to make the smart-casual look work at all. Even so, he has an ugly plaid jacket during the safe house briefing. And Q gives him a pair of gizmo sunglasses that are even more shockingly obvious and ridiculous than the ones Roger Moore had.

Eh?: Maybe I stopped caring but I didn't spot very many odd things during this. It's possible that the convoluted double-crossing trade-up swap-shop of a plot does make sense, but I felt very little motivation to sit there and pay attention to it. Likewise the over-complicated instructions to Bond's key-fob/stun-gas/grenade: I'm sure it doesn't quite add up (which whistle does what when again?) but I can't care enough about it to meticulously check (remind of this when we get to the ballpoint pen clicking in GoldenEye).  >> All right, there is this: if the Army in Gibraltar are alert enough to pick off a Double-O agent, why don't they spot the 'KGB' assassin, eh?  >> Clearly still with money to burn, MI6 recreate M's office, complete with desk and phone, in the back of an RAF Hercules for one flight.  >> Is a cello still concert-worthy if it has a bullet hole in it? Presumably it is actually two holes too, unless the bullet is still rattling around inside? Either way, surely this would affect the resonance?  >>  According to Wikipedia there's some controversy about whether Bond's car is an Aston Martin Volante V8 or a non-Volante V8 saloon with Volante badges (it appears to flit between the two states, depending on whether it is is in the studio or on location) but really, Jesus, life's too short to care, surely?

Worst Line: See all the double-takes, above. Bond finishes off by surprising Kara in her dressing room after her concert. "You didn't think I'd miss this performance, did you?" It's funny/clever because he means a SEX performance. Ugh.

Best Line: There's a lovely moment when M blithely introduces General Gogol to Kamran Shah of the Mujahideen. I look forward to Judi Dench having drinks with Donald Rumsfeld and Ayman al-Zawahiri in Skyfall.

Worst Bond Moment: Those double-takes, sorry. And pulling a gun on a little kid and his mother. Awkward!

Best Bond Moment: Bond effortlessly hitting bulls-eyes at the fairground is a nice touch. The PCS is great and all the Eastern European bits are good for Bond. But really, TLD lacks any cast-iron brilliant bit of 007 magic.

Overall: Bond goes back to basics. It's a good, solid Bond film with some proper espionage, a Flemingy 007 and comparatively little sex or violence - in short it would be a good one to show to the kids if it wasn't for the stupidly over-complicated story. Excitingly, Dalton shows that he understands the character of Bond, even if he hasn't got the physical presence of other 007s. Never mind,  Moore didn't have it either and he made seven films so, on the basis of TLD, the franchise will be in safe hands for many years to come! Um...

James Bond Will Return: ... I expect! It doesn't say any more than that. Maybe they've not thought of a title for the next one, seeing as they've all but exhausted the Fleming ones? How about Licence Revoked! What? What do you mean nobody will know what 'revoked' means? Oh well. What? Licence to Kill? Are you kidding me? Why not just call it James Bond is A Spy? Or Martinis, Guns and Girls?  Yes, I am done now, sorry.

Actually, I'm not because I have...

TWO BONUS FACTS:  

1) TLD is the first Bond film to feature opera. Whilst they're in Vienna, James takes Kara to see The Marriage of Figaro and we get a sneak peek of the end of Act II. It's not the Staatsoper though - according to my sources they're at the "Schönbrunn Palace Theatre, occasional home of Vienna's third opera company, the Kammeroper", so now you know.

2) Yes, well spotted. That parrot taking up space in the MI6 safe house really is Max from FYEO. Presumably Bond brought it back lest it blab 'ATAC to Saint Cyrils!' to any passers by.

Saint George

St. George by Raphael

I grew up in a little town in a little country. Nothing ever happened in Salisbury whilst I was a child and it never appeared on the local news, let alone the national headlines. It had no minor football team to stage an improbable fairy-tale cup run. It never featured in TV dramas. Neither Antiques Roadshow nor Songs of Praise ever seemed to call. In short I had no way to tell if the rest of the country knew we existed at all. It might even have been that we didn't exist, and just received programming from a real world that carried on happily without us. Finally, when I was twelve or thirteen, a boy in my class won a Blue Peter badge. He went to London, to BBC Television Centre, and we could actually see him on the screen. Here at last was corroboration: I did live in the same dimension as all those other places on the television. Salisbury was real after all.

But even to this day I am completely thrown when I meet people who have heard of Salisbury. And if they say that they've been there it's all I can do not to scoff out loud, as if they're claiming to have somehow inveigled their way through the magic forcefield that shields us from the mortal realm.

All of which is a silly way of raising two ideas: 1) that one's home always looks different from the outside; 2) that we don't give any thought to what it looks like from the outside until we are forced to. Realisation can dawn in an instant or take years to seep in. And it can happen to a species as easily as it can to an individual, as the Apollo 8 mission proved in 1968 (left).

I've been looking at England from the outside now for many years - in fact, rather like a NASA probe, I seem to be moving further away - and an exterior picture has been gradually forming, as if the data were being beamed in from the depths of space, pixel by pixel.

But alongside the slow drip-feed of first Welsh and then American views on England, there have been sudden instances of insight. I've mentioned living in Wales before, but I must reiterate that I barely considered myself English before I moved there: I was British, of course, as was - I thought - everyone else. This was a long time ago - before Devolution - but I was left in no doubt, even by loving friends, that I was English and different, that in the past I had been the oppressor and that even in the present, on match day at least, I was still the enemy.

The English have no cultural memory of being oppressed. In a pinch, we might huff about the Norman Yoke but that is merely to clutch at the flimsiest of straws. And if ever we do wish to empathise with our downtrodden Saxon forebears, there's no way we'd be willing to give up all that we gained from the Conquest. No, we've never been oppressed but we still relish the way that the Plantagenet kings laid about them with sword and fire, crushing Welsh, Scots, Irish, French and even Saracens. It is these kings that we emulate when we send out our footballers wearing the three lions of Richard I; and when we fly the flag of St. George it is because of Edward III, who venerated courtly ideas of chivalry whilst he was cementing an English empire.

In England if we do admit to any of this then we are aren't prepared to see ourselves as the villains of the piece. We see Medieval battles, bashing the Scots or Welsh, as a bit of fun, like beating them at rugby perhaps. 'And look, they still have their own languages, don't they?' we might say, as if this mitigated against the centuries when children would be beaten, or worse, for letting slip a word of their mother tongue. The English were never required to face up to what we had done - there were never any recriminations. As Wales, Ireland and even Scotland were absorbed into this new United Kingdom of Britain, past grievances were swept under the carpet as we set about being beastly to the rest of the world.

It's an important distinction because I think we are much more aware of, upset by, and feel more guilty about what the British Empire did. The implications are still unwinding, all around the world, and we are involved in an ongoing series of complicated calculations, trying to see if our legacy can't be worked to be morally neutral. Yes, slavery, we think: terrible. But on the other hand, you know, Wilberforce and all that! We cling to the idea that we ended slavery thirty years before the USA because it makes us feel superior and less racist. Yes, India, we hmmm. Some bad things happened, but look we left peacefully and India's now a burgeoning superpower, the largest democracy in the world! Okay, we invented concentration camps, but we're not as bad as the Nazis!

The Second World War is seen as a huge make-weight when we're trying to get the scales to balance. Whatever terrible evil things we did, we think, the war against Nazism was a fire that scourged us of our empire and left Britain diminished but redeemed. As an historical narrative it is neat and tidy, but it is something we tell ourselves. I don't think it's how we're viewed in Kenya, or India, or America.

The view from the US is naturally shaped by the War of Independence. Britain, and especially England, is seen as a rump. Quaint, sure, but redundant. And it doesn't help that there's so much confusion about what exactly constitutes the UK, Great Britain, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland or the British Isles. In terms of political power, 'English' and 'England' are used for everything. As a result, 'English' and 'British' are used pretty much synonymously: to be English is to be British, and vice versa.

But culturally, as soon as one identifies oneself as Irish or Scottish, or even Welsh, one is distinct, not English and therefore not British. Tartan, Loch Ness and Braveheart are not British, they are Scottish. Tom Jones and male voice choirs are Welsh. St. Patrick despite being Romano-British and growing up in Wales, is the most Irishy thing ever.

I'm not complaining. Celtic Britain has its own distinct flavour and has excelled at marketing itself and its culture to the outside world. The English, happy to wave the Union Flag, have never felt the need to cultivate their own individual character.

We need to think about how we're seen from the outside. Even more so because of the looming possibility of Scottish independence. If it were to happen, the divorce would be messy and protracted; everything we share would be carved up over many years. But one thing England would certainly retain is the negative association with British imperialism. As far as the rest of the world would be concerned, Scotland would be left floaty-light, new and shiny and free from centuries of subjugation. And England, that old bully, would be merely more shrivelled, more decrepit, with its blood red cross and its fondness for chain mail armour.

This has turned in to a long rant but, as I say, we need to start thinking about how we're seen from the outside. Last week I read this excellent article by Greg Jenner - it passionately puts the case that St. George is a pretty useless rallying figure for a modern England. I think it is the case that our Englishness, because of Britain, because of empire, has long been a internal matter, something that we only thought about in terms of looking inwards. That won't do.

Brilliantly, St. Patrick's Day has been turned into a rolling global party. It may be, for most people, nothing more than an excuse for a beer but it is undeniably a world-wide phenomenon, a massive celebration and a big win for Irishness. In fact, its promotion has been a deliberate policy of the Irish government for twenty years with (thanks Wikipedia) four specific aims:

• To offer a national festival that ranks amongst all of the greatest celebration in the world
• To create energy and excitement throughout Ireland via innovation, creativity, grassroots involvement, and marketing activity
• To provide the opportunity and motivation for people of Irish descent (and those who sometimes wish they were Irish) to attend and join in the imaginative and expressive celebrations
• To project, internationally, an accurate image of Ireland as a creative, professional and sophisticated country with wide appeal.

I love that, especially 'those who sometimes wish they were Irish'. As an Englishman I look at those words with envy - who would ever aspire to being English? For a start, we're never going to be able to compete with the Irish when it comes to getting the world drunk with us. But if we possibly could, we should take those aims and try to emulate them. After all, we must have something special, something uniquely English, that the world would be happy to cherish with us? And of course, we do. As Mr Jenner and a great many other people have pointed out through the years, we have Shakespeare.

We needn't do much more than rename St. George's Day, (April 23rd, non-English people) as Shakepeare's Birthday. It's so convenient! (No, there's no evidence that he was actually born on that day but it is very likely and we are a lot less fussy about the 'Englishness' of a Palestinian Christian martyr who we currently share with Georgia, Portugal and host of other places.) But we can keep the flag, sure, why not. George can stay patron saint if you like because that's entirely meaningless anyway. But we should start celebrating Shakespeare on April 23rd. It's distinct. It's marketable. His works are glorious and rich and almost endlessly open to interpretation and exploration. Funny, sad, exciting; English history or universal human drama - it's all there. And best of all, it wouldn't just be happening on village greens and in Norman churches. It could be everywhere; English is spoken by over a billion people, more than any other language. Wheel out the ambassadors and the High Commissioners! Unleash the heralds and their fanfares! Put on a show and celebrate our most significant contribution to world culture.

If nothing else it would be chance to future-proof England. Scotland might go its own way. Anglicanism and monarchy, which we have set such store by for so long, might not last. Symbols lose their usefulness or become sullied. Too often English patriotism is an ugly, intolerant beast, mired in ignorance and the born from the fear that we are no longer the power we once were. To hell with that. Shakespeare offers us an England for all ages, for all the world, and something to look back at fondly, proudly, when we are far from home.

The Bear With No Claws

Before I crack on with Timothy Dalton, there's just time for a quick look back. Going through film-by-film is all very well, but some things only become apparent with an overview.

Love it or hate it, the Roger Moore era is all over the place. A mess of low budget thrillers, blaxploitation and kung-fu action fllicks, massive budget space epics and Cold War espionage movies, with a dash of Carry On. The tone seems to change with every film. What's more there are clear tensions running throughout this period. Should the films be small scale dramas or big screen blockbusters? Funny or cold? How violent should they be? How sexist should they be? How fantastic? How realistic?

Different directors tackle these issues in their own way. Guy Hamilton doesn't have any money to play with and tries to follow DAF with plenty of jokes. Lewis Gilbert is given loads of money and turns in two massive, escapist films that, perhaps, don't actually make a lot of sense. Finally John Glen gets his hands on the series, tries to go back to basics, recants and goes for humour and then ends up with a sort of a blend of everything. And throughout, Roger Moore keeps doing his thing, steady and reliable, a single eyebrow raised against all affrontery.

Here are the numbers.

Bond	007 Kills (Av)	Deaths (Av)	Shags (Av)	Helicopters (Av)
Connery	57 (9.5)	384 (64)	13 (2.16)	8 (1.33)
Lazenby	5 (5)	28 (28)	3 (3)	0 (0)
Moore	183 (26.14)	404 (57.71)	19 (2.74)	3 (0.43)
TOTAL	245 (17.5)	816 (58.29)	35 (2.5)	11 (0.79)

HTML Tables

They don't tell the whole truth though which is, again, that the Moore era is very erratic. For example, Bond kills just one person in TMWTGG, but in the very next film, TSWLM, offs over one hundred. Although Bond is killing more people during this time, less is made of it. Moore's Bond tends to dispatch baddies from a distance and very often their demise consists purely of an A-Team-style stunt jump in front of an explosion. And unlike Connery, Moore doesn't kill anyone with his bare hands - he's oddly distanced from even his most cold-blooded murders: both Fekkesh and Locque fall to their deaths, and in both cases Bond doesn't touch them, insulated from the crime by, respectively, his tie and a car door. When he shoots Stromberg, there's a twelve feet long dining table to act as intercessor.

The fractured nature of this period makes it hard to identify themes and track developments - especially in comparison to the Connery era which is very cohesive and has a strong narrative connection from film to film. Instead, the films of the Seventies and early Eighties are more individual adventures than they are episodes in a saga, and the franchise is easily distracted by passing fashions. But there is a slight storyline that progresses through these movies and it is revealing.

It's not there immediately. LALD and TMWTGG represent a false start for Moore's Bond as Guy Hamilton tries to find a contemporary niche for 007 to occupy. Both films explore western anxieties but it's all very domesticated: problems of drugs, race and energy are social ones, hardly within the remit of a governmental assassin. But starting with TSWLM the Moore movies reintroduce characters and plots that, at least, entertain the idea that the Cold War is an ongoing concern for audiences.

What's interesting is how the threat from the Soviet Union is downplayed and how right-wing foreign policy is gently affirmed. Over the course of these films the USSR is entirely co-opted, to the point where General Gogol will sip tea with M in Whitehall and even (in TLD) offer 007 the Order of Lenin.

It happens gradually. In TSWLM, the KGB is a credible and competent agency and Major Amasova repeatedly outwits Bond for our amusement. But the very idea of Anglo-Soviet co-operation, although novel at the time, begins the process of de-fanging the Russians. Their (and our) hideous nuclear weapons represent a threat to both sides, wielded explicitly, as they are, by a neutral third party. The idea that East and West must work together to prevent a nuclear disaster is hardly the subtlest of sub-texts, but we're already a long way from YOLT, where Britain is the voice of sanity whilst US and USSR get the wool pulled over their eyes by SPECTRE.

Moonraker avoids mentioning Russians altogether, but what's interesting is how it presents a much frostier than usual UK/US relationship. If we take Drax's poison plot as a metaphor for nuclear armageddon then Moonraker is almost a re-run of TSWLM, but with the CIA replacing the KGB. The rather extraordinary implication would appear to be that Britain isn't picking sides in the Cold War!

FYEO returns us to the nitty-gritty of a Cold War being fought on the ground, and presents the Russians as distinctly unfriendly once more. But they aren't the villains. The antagonists are gangsters from across Europe (Spanish, Belgian, East German, Greek) seeking to profit by selling British secrets to the USSR. Whilst it's not impossible that this is an attack on closer European cooperation, it's more likely that it is an unconscious attempt to show that Britain is in a league above these pettier nations - a major power that fashions a victory once Bond gets to deal directly with his Soviet opposite number.

As East/West tensions climb dramatically in the early Eighties, the Bond franchise finally gives us 'bad' Russians. General Orlov from Octopussy is the sort of villain one might have expected to come along sooner: an angry Soviet uniform, itching to let his tanks roll across Europe. But again, look at how the USSR is presented. Orlov is clearly a solitary maniac, frustrated by the reasonableness of the Politburo and watched over by 'good' Russians like Gogol, head of the KGB, who finally has the rogue General shot. He doesn't quite turn to Bond and say "Orlov's views and opinions are his own and are not representative of the USSR," but this is certainly supposed to be self-evident. Furthermore, it is Orlov's tanks that we are told to be afraid of, not his nuclear arsenal. Yes, his plan is to detonate a nuke on a USAF base, but his intention is to trick the West into nuclear disarmament so that a conventional war can be waged. The lesson we are supposed to draw from this is that 'our' nukes are good because they protect us, that unilateral disarmament would be a terrible mistake and that we must 'stay the course'.

These were, of course, the prevailing government policies of the day, both in London and in Washington, and perhaps it should come as no surprise that Bond's world should align so closely with them. But I do find it interesting that the nuclear threat is consistently ignored, underplayed or given a neutral context. Despite featuring in nearly all of these films, the Russians are, we are told in no uncertain terms, nothing to worry about.

In AVTAK they are almost entirely toothless, included it seems exclusively for their comedy value. In the PCS, Bond eludes their guards with all the blissed-out nonchalance of a Californian surfer dude. Although nurtured by the USSR, Max Zorin had escaped their doddery clutches in order to fly solo. Gogol and Ivonova get tricked very easily by 007 swapping their cassette. And KGB heavy Dolph Lundgren (yes, it is him) gets picked up and twirled about by Grace flippin' Jones.

This isn't the last we'll see of them - the KGB have one last hurrah to come in The Living Daylights (next) and a flashback flourish in GoldenEye - but throughout these films they and the wider Soviet threat have been thoroughly diminished on screen, as well as in the minds of the audience. It's pretty blatant propaganda, and overlaps only slightly with the realities of the Cold War in the Seventies and Eighties, but with every Martini, every quip, every raised eyebrow, Roger Moore's James Bond has gently pulled another claw from the paws of the Russian bear.