THE NAME IS BOND . . . JAMES BOND

And then there was Bond. Originating in print, springing forth from the mind of Ian Fleming, British spy James Bond has become the ultimate expression of a particular form of masculinity: sophisticated, lusty, ruthlessly competent, often at odds with titular superiors. The popularity of Fleming’s novels inevitably led to their being adapted into movies, and as of 2006—with the “straight” adaptation of Casino Royale, previously spoofed in 1967—all of them have now been done, with Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig all playing the iconic lead (with David Niven, Fleming’s original first choice, playing him in the spoof Casino Royale).

With so many different actors, all of them quite distinct from each other, playing Bond, the canon is a difficult study. Some prefer a holistic approach: Bond is Bond, regardless of his portrayer. Some others, like me, are more selective, and simplify our study of the Bond universe by deciding, in a manner that may seem arbitrary to an outside observer, that certain entries in the series simply do not exist.

In conducting one’s study in such a manner, it certainly helps to be an asshole. Fortunately the fine philosophy of Assholism is not only subjective, but enables the practitioners thereof to happily ignore all dissent, or at the very best react to dissent with dismissive condescension. I personally take it as a point of philosophical pride to engage with a subject on its own terms, and James Bond—contain your gasps and accusations of blasphemy—is kind of an asshole. He drives way too fast, kills people, is constantly giving his bosses hypertension with his blithe disregard for proper procedure, and just about every woman who sleeps with him ends up dead within fifteen minutes. (And he never fucks poor Moneypenny . . .) However, and without any contradiction whatsoever, these are among the many reasons why Bond is so cool. He can do all this blatantly irresponsible shit because he’s fictional, and an avatar for our transgressive desires. This iconic status enables him to be the exception to the rule that the protagonist needs to be someone the audience can relate to. No one can relate to James Bond, except maybe Zeus.

Lest it appear that I’m being negative or overly PC in deconstructing Bond, I want to make one thing clear: I think James Bond is fucking awesome. There’s a very particular mood in which none other than Bond hits the spot for me, and I rewatch favorite Bond movies with high frequency. I don’t subscribe to the philosophy that heroes need to be flawless, and I have a nuanced enough intellect to compartmentalize negatives, because the human mind is never entirely one thing ever.

However, before we begin our trip through the cinema of Bond, let’s return for a second to the idea of selective existence. Some—quite a few, actually—Bond movies don’t really exist. These will, naturally, be skipped. Or, if a thing doesn’t exist, can it really be skipped? Scratch your beard to that one for a moment, why don’t you.

Dr. No (1962)—Exists

In which Bond investigates the murder of an intelligence official, discovers malfeasance perpetrated by the reclusive title villain, and ravishes the almost supernaturally gorgeous Honey Ryder. We don’t see Sean Connery earn his double-0 or in any way portray Bond as anything other than a fully-formed, complete entity, an invincible force of nature. In spite of this complete absence of character development, Connery pulls it off, because he’s Sean Connery. And he is James Bond. You best believe.

From Russia With Love (1963)—Exists

Bond does a bit more globe-hopping here, hitting up Turkey, Croatia, and Italy. The fascinating idea of a near-equal is introduced, in Robert Shaw (just about the only guy alive who could pull off something so apparently ridiculous). Bond and Robert Shaw beat the living shit out of each other in a train compartment in a really well-filmed—and long—fight scene a ways into the picture; Robert Shaw is so cool in this that you’re almost not certain Bond will win, which is particularly impressive. Lotte Lenya (hey, don’t look at me) shows up as a particularly nasty villain with knives in her shoes, and who furthermore puts moves on half-ass KGB mole Daniela Bianchi (who, while very hot, looks about as Russian as a Ferrari). Bond’s ability to turn women from evil to good through his fierce Scottish sexuality is introduced, enabling Daniela Bianchi to resist Lotte Lenya and embrace the West. Also, since 1991, has been funny because the big gadget Bond has to make sure the Commies (or SPECTRE or SMERSH who whoever the fuck they are) don’t get their hands on is called the Lektor. You know, because of Silence of the Lambs. Okay, my sense of humor is retarded sometimes. Moving on.

Goldfinger (1964)—Hell yes it exists

My personal favorite of the bunch, for a lot of occasionally idiosyncratic reasons:

--The hottest Bond girls. The tragically short-lived Masterson sisters are both stunners, and I’ve always had a thing for Pussy Galore (“My name is Pussy Galore.” “I musht be dreaming . . .”) in no small part because of her initial arctic, repressed, pantsuited impression, to which Bond naturally lays waste and pulls off the evil-to-good sex maneuver once again, even more impressively this time because Pussy Galore was more enthusiastically aligned with the bad guys than the wishy-washy KGB girl the last time around.

--Goldfinger’s motive? “There has been a masterpiece in every human endeavor . . . EXCEPT CRIME!” Fuckin-a right, Auric, do your thing, baby.

--“Do you expect me to talk, Goldfinger?”
“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.”

--Goldfinger cheats at golf and Bond still kicks his ass. Golf is fucking ridiculous, and I would bulldoze every golf course in the world and put up a nature preserve or low-cost housing if given half a chance, but it’s important that Bond is good at golf, not just because Connery Bond is Scottish, but the kind of guy Bond is has to be good at golf.

--Oddjob is to henchmen what Bond is to cocksmen.

--The guy from the Gold Office or wherever who offers Bond that “rather disappointing brandy” has the coolest English accent ever. Well, until Michael Fassbender said, “Well, if this is it, old boy, I for one am going to go out speaking the King’s” in Inglourious Basterds, but records are meant to be broken.

--A very limited group of people can get away with the shit Bond talks about the Beatles right after he fucks Jill Masterson. Bond can because he’s Bond, and Sean Connery. My parents can because they liked the Stones, Kinks, Animals, and Dylan more, and it must have been mildly annoying having the Beatles on the radio all the time back then.

This whole movie has enormous balls. Goldfinger wants to rip off Fort Knox, for fuck’s sake. He’s playing in the majors. And it’s very important that at the end, Bond disarms the bomb just as the readout says “007.” Not because it’s a stupid joke and prefigures some of the more unfortunate detours into campy humor that the Bond movies would later make, but because Bond doesn’t break a sweat. What kind of cut-rate second-rater is lame enough that he has to leave it until the last second? People perspire that way. Bond has things so well in hand that he can save the day completely on his own terms. And bad jokes aren’t bad jokes when cool and/or sexy people tell them. That’s just the way it is.


Thunderball (1965)—Exists, conditionally

A lot of people love Thunderball, and Connery even remade it in 1983 as Never Say Never Again (which, although not an official Bond movie, also conditionally exists), but I find it kind of boring. I have a hard time keeping track of which Bond girl is Domino and which is the other one, and Emilio Largo is kind of cool, but not really. After Auric Goldfinger wanted to wreck the world economy basically for aesthetic reasons (god I love that guy), here’s this eye-patch wearing douchebag saying, “Hey, give me some money or I’ll totally nuke you. Seriously, I'm not kidding!” A real villain would have at least nuked Paris and then said, “Pay me or London’s next, bitch.”

It still conditionally exists, because when I’m able to compartmentalize and not compare Emilio Largo to Goldfinger, it is good. The opening sequence with the transvesto-villain was massive cool. And even though I can never sort out Domino and the other one, they are sisters, so that’s understandable, and they’re both hot.


You Only Live Twice (1967)—Exists

In which Bond goes to Japan, prevents World War III, fucks the girl from What’s Up Tiger Lily?, and first meets Blofeld. Written by Roald Dahl, which I always find funny, and is the reason I was once almost slapped for calling this “James and the Giant Budget.”

A source of great personal frustration to me for a really long time, when I was buying up all the Connery Bonds on VHS, because they weren’t selling any of them as standalones, they were all parts of six-tape sets which always included a couple of the shitty Roger Moore ones and one of the Timothy Dalton ones. Finally, after surrendering my desire and submitting to the void, I found it in a bargain bin for $5 and happily took it home. Fortunately it is pretty good, even though the series was getting overblown and borderline full of shit by this point. The action sequences are top-notch.


Casino Royale (1967)—Exists, is cool, but belongs in a different discussion entirely


On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)—Kind of exists

I mean, it’s a serviceable action picture. But it’s not Bond. George Lazenby’s good in the lead . . . but he’s not Bond. He even breaks the fourth wall and admits he’s not Sean Connery. Bond concedes alpha status to no one! Diana Rigg, on her own merits, is easily a top-three Bond Girl . . . but she marries Bond, and Bond doesn’t get married! Sure, she gets killed, but come on, man.

George Lazenby seems like a nice guy, but he doesn’t get to exist out of pity, he gets to exist because this is a pretty good movie if you can elbow the 800 lb gorilla out of the way—the one wearing the “this isn’t a real Bond movie” t-shirt—and enjoy it on its own merits. Also, Telly Savalas as Blofeld is a funny enough idea to carry one through the non-Bondness.


Diamonds are Forever (1971)—Exists, but shouldn’t push its luck

A lot of being able to enjoy this one hinges on one’s tolerance for Tiffany Case (Jill St. John) being kind of a hoi polloi Bond Girl. First of all, she’s American. Sure, she’s got attitude, and she’s got pulchritude, but still. We don’t home-grow exotic in the land of the free and the home of the brave, we import it. So, she’s got a major handicap. But there’s something about her line reading when she says, “Holy smokes, you just killed James Bond!” to James Bond that makes me unable to keep picking nits. Maybe she's not exotic, but she's got something.

There’s a lot of goofy shit in Diamonds are Forever. Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd are great. It’s got the best car chase in the Bond oeuvre (Sean Connery popping double wheelies in Vegas, as pure and good as any concept yet hatched in Western thought). Plenty O’Toole is plenty o’hot. Blofeld has hench-beauties named Bambi and Thumper, which is really stupid, but they manage to transcend the faulty nomenclature.

The climax is big, loud, and a little protracted, but ultimately exciting. Much like the movie, which in the end is worth it, but really stretches patience.


Live and Let Die (1973)—Just barely exists

Now we get to Roger Moore. Apropos of his debut, which cynically capitalizes on the then-fashionable genre of blaxploitation, I turn you over to Avon Barksdale: “You only do two days [in prison], the day you get in, and the day you get out.” Which is why the only two Roger Moore Bond movies that exist are his first, and his last.

There’s nothing empirically wrong with Roger Moore. As Roger Moore, he’s pretty cool (see Cannonball Run), and has a unique sense of style, in a square-ass kinda way. But the direction the Roger Moore Bond pictures took was sickening: Bond became a comedian under Roger Moore’s watch, which is unacceptable in itself. But Bond becoming a brutal misogynist is the last straw, and the reason why most of the Roger Moore movies don’t exist. There’s a big difference between a guy who gets laid a lot and a guy who has contempt for his conquests, and smacks them around, and basically carries on like a fucking pig. Sure, Connery smacked a couple women, but they were trying to kill him (the one by the pool in Goldfinger whose ass he playfully smacked and to whom he said, “Run along, man talk,” doesn’t count; although not the high point in the history of progressive gender relations, he was just messing around). Roger Moore’s Bond was a bloated, sybaritic gargoyle. Again, I don’t blame him. He didn’t write the scripts. He didn’t direct the movies. Then again, he didn’t seem to resist much either.

Anyway, Live and Let Die gets to exist conditionally because otherwise, Yaphet Kotto never would have gotten to be a Bond villain, and Yaphet Kotto goddamn deserves to be a Bond villain (which is probably what sustained him through putting up with Robert De Niro’s character’s bullshit in Midnight Run).


The Man With the Golden Gun (1974)—Doesn’t exist (which is a shame, because it’d have been nice to see Christopher Lee as a Bond villain in a real Bond movie)

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)—Doesn’t exist (though, oddly, its theme song does)

Moonraker (1979)—Doesn’t exist, even though the “Ben Affleck is THE MOONRAPER” joke in Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back does.

For Your Eyes Only (1981)—Almost exists, they did try, but ultimately sunk by Roger Moore.

Octopussy (1983)—Can go fuck itself. Actually, it can’t go fuck itself, it doesn’t exist.

A View To A Kill (1985)—Exists, but not entirely on its merits.

Has the distinction of being the first Bond movie I actually saw. The Duran Duran theme song is stellar (though the video is fucking obnoxious even by their “good-looking broads on a yacht with cocaine and ennui bleeding out the eyeballs” standards). The only thing wrong with Christopher Walken being a Bond villain is that he was a little too young here. Frank White would have been a great Bond villain, even though Walken only had five more years of grizzle and idiosyncrasy on him at that point. Grace Jones fascinated the six-year-old me, and may be personally responsible for me being so warped sexually today; in spite of this movie being three-quarters a piece of shit, she ranks with the great Villainous Bond Girls.
Although it’s waaaaaaaay too long and really boring whenever Walken and/or Grace Jones is absent, the climactic Golden Gate bridge sequence is fairly kick-ass. Also, since this is the last Roger Moore one, it gets to exist so we can tell him not to let the door hit his ass on the way out of the series.

The Living Daylights (1987)—Doesn’t exist; the Timothy Dalton experiment, while conducted for the noble reason of washing the cyanide Roger Moore taste out of the audience’s mouth, chose the wrong antidote

License to Kill (1989)—Doesn’t exist, for the same reason.

GoldenEye (1995)—Exists!

Of all the people to restore faith in Bond . . . Pierce Brosnan? He wasn’t Connery, because no one is, but not being Roger Moore or Timothy Dalton was a big part of it. Brosnan was plausible with the ladies, acquitted himself nicely in the action scenes, and had a sense of humor that definitely held the vermouth. Interestingly, Brosnan had been the first choice of the producers when they ended up going with Timothy Dalton, but hemmed and hawed and didn’t really want to go with a damaged-goods franchise (the toxicity of Roger Moore’s impact cannot be overstated) but ultimately appeared to decide that enough time had past and the contract had enough zeroes following an appropriately high numeral that he could give it a shot this time around.

GoldenEye was the result of a couple very smart choices by the producers. The first being, get a suitable Bond, which they did, but the second was the clincher: actually make a kick-ass action movie. Don’t take it for granted that a modern audience that has forgotten how to take Bond (kind of) seriously will just go to a Bond movie unless it holds up on its own merits. At the same time, though, making an action movie where the hero just happens to be named James Bond won’t do either. We’re going to need a few things, each of which simultaneously pay tribute to the past and look forward:

--A domme villainess who crushes men to death with her thighs? Yup (Xenia Onatopp, modernizing Pussy Galore but without the ultimate redemption, since Bond’s ability to de-evil women with his dick died with Sean Connery.)
--A genuinely exotic and hot Russian ingénue played by an Italian model? Sure, why not (Izzy Scorupco, per Daniela Bianchi in From Russia With Love)
--Alan Cumming playing a greaseball computer nerd? Hell yeah. This has nothing to do with Bond history, it’s just kinda cool, and man is he slimy in this.
--Judi Dench is so good as M that Bernard Lee starts to fade from the memory, which has more to do with Judi Dench being Dame Judi than it has to do with Bernard Lee being weak.

The greatest asset GoldenEye has going for it, though, is its new-school villain: 006. First off, Sean Bean would be badass saying Merry Christmas to his grandmother. But the idea of a 00 going bad raises the interesting question: how far can Bond be pushed? And how much more of a moral exemplar will Bond appear by not cracking?

(Also, GoldenEye inspired one of the better video games of all time, and began a tradition of top-notch Bond video games, one of which inspired my biggest “if I ever have a couple hundred million bucks” filmmaking desires: to shoot a car chase without visible cuts. Sure, there’d have to be some digital compositing, but the idea of doing a car chase as a tracking shot makes me geek out nearly psychotically.)

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)—Exists

Doesn’t really hold up as well as GoldenEye, but when it came out this movie was fucking awesome. I saw this with my cousin in a freezing night in the middle of nowhere in Massachussetts and she was rendered rather weak-kneed by Jonathan Pryce’s Eurotrash lead henchman (but not so weak-kneed that she couldn’t utter a perfect summation of action cinema: “Violent movies are only cool when people are getting killed,” apropos of her calling me a nerd for liking Starship Troopers).

While I thought the Eurotrash bad guy was cool, Michelle Yeoh was more my type. Michelle Yeoh’s character in this was a tremendously risky gamble by the Bond producers: how to introduce a female equal for Bond who he still fucks senseless, but who he doesn’t have to save when the shit comes down. They kind of fucked up because she’s still all tied up and helpless at the end—horrendous bullshit considering the metric tons of ass she kicks earlier in the picture—but erring on the side of gender regressivism rather than PC is the more acceptable error for a Bond movie (since Bond movies exist in a bubble outside conventional morality).

Brosnan again is solid, and Jonathan Pryce basically plays Rupert Murdoch as Bond villain, which is brilliant since Rupert Murdoch is one of the rare real guys who basically are Bond villains. (Dick Cheney is, of course, the best: that sneer, and he actually fucking has a secret villainous lair! The next Bond movie should be Daniel Craig and some six-foot-one Brazilian model in a short skirt kicking Dick Cheney in the balls with nuclear weapons . . .) Even though this isn’t the most memorable entry in the series, it still has enough pluses to be allowed to exist, and as per the You Only Live Twice corollary, the fact that it apparently started as a treatment by Donald Westlake (??????) gives it sufficient goofball cred to ensure continued existence.

The World Is Not Enough (1999)—Doesn’t exist. In fact, the only two Denise Richards movies that exist are Starship Troopers and Wild Things, and neither owes their existence to her.

Die Another Day (2002)—Exists

The idea of 00s being pushed to the breaking point, first introduced in GoldenEye, is revisited here, with Bond getting thrown in a North Korean prison for a couple years and growing a Lebowski-esque beard in the process. Of course, Bond being Bond, he doesn't break. This leads to a glorious sequence wherein Bond, bearded and dressed in soaking-wet pajamas fresh off an escape from a yacht, strolls into the finest hotel in Hong Kong and calmly asks for a suite, a tailor, and some room service. Fuck what you heard, Brosnan pulled that off? He gets to be Bond.

The rest of the movie is largely over-the-top, with a lot of borderline blasphemous touches (Bond ordering a mojito and having “London Calling” playing as Bond touches down in the UK are both okay as far as I’m concerned, because who the fuck drinks martinis in Cuba, first of all, and second of all, Bond’s stability as a cultural icon is shaky enough due to all the hits it’s taken over the years that he needs to be diplomatic with the Clash, a disparate but similarly important cultural entity). Halle Berry fails miserably in the “hurf durf let’s give Bond a female ‘equal’ but let’s forget to three-dimensionalize her character” role, but it’s not entirely her fault, and she is sufficiently decorative. Miranda Frost, though, she’s my girl in this one—not only does she have that cold repressed thing going on (part of what makes her so sexy in that fencing outfit), but she be baaaaaad. (If you’re keeping score at home, yes, the sexiest movie of all time would feature nothing but tall, thin, emotionless women in glasses and tweed. Who chase each other in cars.)

The villain appears to be kind of a weak sister in this, when you think he’s Maggie Smith’s ginger son, but after the Scooby-Doo moment when we realize he’s really the North Korean guy, all is once again well. And he has a palace made of ice, which you really can’t fuck with, and Pierce Brosnan drives a car through it as it melts, which is pretty far out.


Casino Royale (2006)—Exists with extreme prejudice

I almost can’t sit still to write about this movie. A couple overheated, possibly ridiculous statements:

--Daniel Craig is as cool as Sean Connery. Daniel Craig is the English Steve McQueen.
--Eva Green as Vesper Lynd is on that Honey Ryder/Pussy Galore level.
--Any movie where the villain cries tears of blood is motherfucking on point.
---The Madagascar chase scene where Daniel Craig is huffing and puffing after the parkour guy is the single best foot chase scene in the history of cinema, period, point-blank, fuck off.

It’s hard to imagine a reboot being pulled off better than this. They even managed to make Bond a flawed, imperfect human being without dulling his edge as a badass in the slightest. Since this is an origin story, it’s important to see how Bond learned to be the Bond we’d previously known for 12 movies (remember, a bunch of them don’t actually exist), and part of that means he has to fuck up a couple times to learn from his mistakes.

The biggest issue I had with Casino Royale is microscopic, and so dorky I should probably be put to death. While since no one plays baccarat anymore, having Bond take down Le Chiffre at Texas Hold ‘Em instead makes sense, on the surface, since thanks to Rounders and ESPN everybody knows what turns, rivers, flops, cowboys, rockets, and the like are. But they play a lot more Omaha Hold ‘Em in Europe, so while Le Chiffre would probably be good at both, a tournament in Europe would probably have been Omaha rather than plain old Hold ‘Em. The point is this: if I’m stooping to these depths to find anything to criticize about this movie, it’s very good indeed.


Quantum of Solace (2008)—Bitch please

Goddammit, people, stop fucking shooting car chases with handheld cameras. It’s like heroin, doing it doesn’t make you cool. It makes you a fucking asshole. Mount the goddamn thing on something.

And please, for the love of Christ, don’t just cast a French guy as the villain and think that that’s enough. You’d think having a Swiss guy directing this one would have obviated that kind of silliness, but no. The bad guy isn’t doing anything all that bad in this; he’s barely even doing anything illegal. I guess Bond has to whomp on some Frogs on general principle due to producer fiat, or because the WGA strike didn’t give Paul Haggis enough time to finish the script . . . or because fucking Paul Haggis wrote the goddamn thing.

Unfortunately Quantum of Solace exists due to reasons beyond my control. As the most recent movie in the series, it’s the last one everyone saw, and we need at least a one-movie buffer before practicing our aesthetic Stalinism on the undesirables.


And Q. And Shaken Not Stirred. And the Aston Martin. And the music. And on and on til the break of dawn. Long live Bond!