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Re: Best Bond film does set a low bar

I don't agree with your premise entirely. Yes bad genre films seem to bend their own rules as a matter of convenience. Good ones don't. They set the rules. ask for certain suspensions of disbelief and then stay true to the alternate universe they create to tell their story. More importantly they either don't do stupid things or they do them for a reason that goes well beyond a lack of enginuity in story telling. If you want to see an example of just such a movie check out Deja Vu.


My recollection of previous Bond films, both likable ones and not, were that they were at the very least stylistically coherent, That is simply not the case with this one. The film makers apperently didn't know what sort of film they were trying to make. Nor did they know how to tell a story with any sense of flow. The segmentation of this film is just awful. These are not things that any decent film can have. Genre films are not granted licences to be plainly stupid just because they ask us to suspend certain disbeliefs.


I don't have a problem with the bad guy trying to kill Bond during the poker game. I have many problems with how it was executed and why it was done. In terms of story telling it was a tangent that made no sense and ultimately went nowhere. It was treated like such an isolated event that it simply became stupid. It ignores all the circumstances surounding the situation and it forgets itself within seconds of it's passing. If you think it through it is ridiculous. She dumps poison right in front of everyone and he drinks freely knowing the risk. He is poisoned and knows he is about to dies yet he decides to deal with the situation without the aid of anyone there in his support team. Why does Bond need to be discete about being poinsoned? Heck, logically they could have literally achieved their goal right then and there. I'm pretty sure that poisoning your opponents is a form of cheating and grounds for disqualification. The point of that poker game was simply to beat the bad guy at poker no? Jeez at the very least they could have had the game postponed which would have achieved their goal as well. The bad guy needed the money right away. So any way....Then we see the real purpose of this whole folly, to force the use of a "Bond gadget" to make the Bond fans happy. It was in and of itself ridiculous. Thank goodness the Bond girl timed her casual walk in the parking lot as well as she did and thank goodness she was familiar with the gadget and knew precisely what was going on and what to do at the momnent. Then the game procedes as though nothing happened. Sorry but if you are going to set up a major story telling point, the poker game, in a public place that would logically be crawling with CIA and her majesties secret service you have to come up with less ridiculous story lines that rely on no one observing what is going on or acting upon it. Thwere's no way Bond gets poisoned, dies in private in his car, gets revived, and then goes on as if nothing happened.It is stupid on every level. If the setting doesn't support the action in *any* logical way then the writers have to come up with action that does. They failed at every turn to do so. Again this is just one point that was the rule of stupidity through out this movie rather than the exception.


Now take a movie like Deja Vu. You will not find any such holes in it. Every action has a logical motivation. All the rules of make believe are followed to the T. The story is tight.It is interesting. The set ups have payoffs etc etc. That is good genre movie making. Not the drivel that was Casino Royale.

If Bond was never supposed to be over the top or tongue in cheeck how do you for one moment forgive that first over the top tongue in cheeck Jackie Chan style chase in the opening segment? Again, stylistically this movie is a mess, never knowing what it wants to be, all over the place and with no purpose other than expose. Bad film making at it's most obvious.

I disagree with you about a film needing a style. It most certainly does. If Tender Mercies turns into Godzilla vs. the smog monster in mid movie and then into singing in the rain for the last twenty minutes there are fundimental problems with it. A cohesive style sets a tone that will allow the audience to suspend their disbelief and follow the eb and flow of story telling without disruption. For me it is pure lack of diciplin that this moie would go from Jackie Chan, to Marathon man in it's stylings. You may as well have a banjo solo at the ned of an aria. Yes great artists can expand the gamut of stylistic fusions. but clearly this isn't what happened in Casino Royale.

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