Bond #16 - You Only Live Twice

Next on the Bond countdown is a bizarre movie that could almost work as a surreal fantasy if not for a few fatal mistakes. It's the 5th Bond movie produced...


AS IAN FLEMING'S JAMES BOND 007: Sean Connery

SETUP: A US space capsule disappears, literally snatched from orbit by another craft. The Americans blame the Russians and heat up the Cold War, while the British insist that the rogue attack craft originated somewhere near Japan. MI6 puts their best agent, James Bond, on the case, but the credits haven't even started before he's gunned down by Hong Kong assassins.

BUT IN REALITY: Obviously Bond isn’t dead, although that might have made for an interesting movie. Bond faked his assassination to confuse SPECTRE and provide much needed freedom while moving through the Japanese underworld. The enemy craft is crucial to SPECTRE master Ernst Stavro Blofeld's plan to send the superpowers into a shooting war, and Bond enlists the aid of Japanese agent Tiger Tanaka (Tetsuro Tamba) and his army of ninjas to infiltrate Blofeld's volcano base and put a stop to the plan. Blofeld escapes, but the war is averted.

VILLAINOUS DISFIGUREMENT: Blofeld was an unseen presence in the original Bond films, always stroking his pet cat and cruelly slaughtering minions whenever they failed to kill Bond or complete their master plans.


This movie pushed Blofeld to the front lines for the very first time, casting Donald Pleasance in the role and revealing both Blofeld's face and his wicked eye scar. This look later served as the blueprint for Mike Myers's Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers spoofs.

THE MUSCLE: Having presumably killed every minion he's ever bothered to hire, Blofeld is down to a Japanese businessman named Osato, a fiery redhead named Helga Brandt (more on her below), and an anonymous army of color-coded henchmen. There's not a real killer in the bunch. I guess I'd have to pass the honors to Blofeld's pet piranha, kept well-fed by their master's firing policy.


Yeah, he's tough, but make it one year working for Blofeld and you can write your own ticket in the super villain community.

BOND GIRL AND FEMME FATALE: Bond's first love in the film is Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi), Tanaka's partner and Bond's guide through Japan. Unfortunately, Aki suffers a decidedly brutal death courtesy of ninja poison dropped on her lips in the night. Bond moves on and takes a sham Japanese wife to go undercover in the fishing village. The wife, Kissy Suzuki (Mie Hama) although she's never named in the film, is instrumental to getting Bond inside the volcano and bringing back Tanaka's ninjas as backup. She's great.

The femme fatale is Helga Brandt (Karin Dor), a ruthless SPECTRE agent who threatens Bond, sleeps with Bond, and then tries to crash an airplane carrying Bond, all pretty much during the same scene. She meets her death in the piranha pool, obviously.

“PAY ATTENTION, 007”: Bond brings Q to Japan to acquire “Little Nellie,” a gyrocopter equipped with missiles, flame throwers, and the cutest name a gyrocopter ever did have. Q exits after the Nellie scene, but Bond scores some additional equipment from Tanaka, including a gun hidden within a cigarette that saves Bond from execution at a dramatically appropriate moment.

BOND'S BEST ONE-LINER: “I just might retire to here,” spoken after learning that in Japan, men come first and women come second. (*ahem*)

MOST EMBARRASSING CULTURAL MOMENT: This.


For some reason, Bond can only investigate the fishing village and the nearby volcano if he's disguised as a simple Japanese fisherman. Tanaka accomplishes this by dying Bond's skin, waxing his chest hair, giving him a Spock wig, and using prosthetic implants to alter his eyes. The result is exactly what you see: Sean Connery with goofy makeup on. This, plus a bucket of other offenses such as Bond going through “ninja class”, give this film a cultural infamy few Bond films can match.

WORTH MENTIONING: The screenplay was written by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory author Roald Dahl, which actually makes a strange amount of sense... This is the first of three consecutive films to feature Blofeld as the primary villain, but he would never be played by the same actor twice, or even have the same makeup. Incidentally, the third Blofeld (Charles Gray, who we saw in Diamonds are Forever) appears in this movie as Henderson, Bond's ill-fated British contact... Sean Connery was fed up with playing the Bond role by this point in his career and only agreed to this film for a hefty pay raise. He fled the series for the next film, although he would return for one last run in Diamonds are Forever.


OVERALL: This is a tough one. Depending on who you ask, You Only Live Twice is either one of the best Bond movies that has ever been made, or it's one of the worst. I think it's an interesting film, an example of a franchise movie in transition, unsure of what, exactly, it wants to be.

This was the first Bond movie to significantly depart from its source novel, an important marker. The franchise was on its own for the first time, trying to decide what tone to strike and what kind of action and adventure it should create (mostly) from scratch. The decision was to go BIG. From the mammoth volcano set to the Little Nellie helicopter dogfight, the script's set pieces are huge and larger than life, bigger than anything seen so far in the series and establishing the tone for the wilder, wackier Bonds to come.

And it mostly works. The whimsical script blends nicely with director Lewis Gilbert's comic strip aesthetic, giving the movie a fun, campy tone that never wears out its welcome. By the time Tanaka's army of screaming ninjas storm Blofeld's volcano, it feels natural. Of course ninjas and hollowed out volcanoes. How else was this supposed to end?

But is it good Bond? The shift in tone from the four earlier Bond movies to this one is stark, and Sean Connery's performance suffers as a result. He plays his part seemingly on the verge of rolling his eyes, going through the motions until he can make his escape. It doesn't help that Blofeld shows up way too late in the film to offer any kind of real menace or threat, leaving Bond to wander aimlessly around office buildings and corridors until the action finally comes to him. The film is spectacle, but not entirely spectacular.

Worst of all, there's no escaping the cartoonish and absurd “transformation” that Bond undergoes, one of the few elements retained from the novel and one that undoubtedly works better sitting on the page than just lying there on the screen, assaulting our suspension of disbelief. This embarrassment would have been buried and forgotten already if You Only Live Twice was a lesser film or part of a forgotten franchise. As it is, the film is permanently relevant to Bond films, leading to those pesky debates about its quality. Me? I don't love it, I don't hate it, and I'm quite happy to move on to something else.

The James Bond Project

15. ???

16. You Only Live Twice

17. Quantum of Solace

18. Die Another Day

19. The Man with the Golden Gun

20. Diamonds are Forever

21. A View to a Kill

22. Moonraker

Bond #17 - Quantum of Solace

We're moving out of the worst of the Bond movies, but not before taking a look at the 22nd, and most recent, film...


. .AS IAN FLEMING’S JAMES BOND 007: Daniel Craig

SETUP: Bond has the mysterious Mr. White in custody, but soon learns that White's organization actually does have people "everywhere." M's personal bodyguard turns his gun on the room, and White escapes in the chaos. A righteously ticked M orders Bond to uncover White's mystery group and discover just what MI6 is up against.

BUT IN REALITY: Bond turns the mission into a personal vendetta to avenge Vesper Lynd, the lover who betrayed him in Casino Royale. Bond loses control, murdering every lead he comes across and forcing MI6 to cut ties just as his carnage actually gets a result. Bond crosses paths with Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), a wealthy environmentalist and high-ranking member of White's organization, QUANTUM. The group is facilitating a regime change in Bolivia to gain control of a seemingly barren piece of land, which the Americans support because they believe Greene has discovered oil. The truth is worse. Greene has been secretly diverting underground water sources, giving QUANTUM control of over 60% of Bolivia's drinking water, which he plans to sell back to the people at a huge increase.


Bond tracks Greene and the Bolivian power players to a desert hotel literally made of explosives. He assaults the place, killing the corrupt Bolivians, and capturing Greene for information. Bond releases Greene, knowing that QUANTUM will catch up with him soon.

Bond uses Greene's intel to find Vesper's ex-boyfriend, a QUANTUM agent, and delivers him into MI6 custody. Bond drops her necklace into the snow and, supposedly, moves on.

VILLAINOUS DISFIGUREMENT: Dominic Greene has no disfigurement, an intentional choice by director Marc Forster to emphasize how easily QUANTUM blends in with the rest of us. That will not stop me from pointing out Greene's googely eyes.


THE MUSCLE: Greene has a few henchmen and bodyguards, none of them memorable. The closest we get to a real side villain is General Medrano (Joaquin Cosio), a deposed Bolivian dictator Greene plans to “re-elect” to get at the country's water. Medrano has a depraved and violent sexual appetite, and meets his end at the hands of Bond's leading lady, Camille.

BOND GIRL AND FEMME FATALE: There is no femme fatale in Quantum of Solace, but two ladies make their mark on the film. The first is Camille Montes (Olga Kurylenko), a Bolivian-Russian agent who watched General Medrano kill her family when she was just a little girl. She seeks revenge and will happily use anyone, including Greene, to achieve it. Bond saves her life a number of times, giving her the chance to finally put a bullet in Medrano. Tragically, she feels no better after securing her revenge, giving Bond a glimpse into what awaits him should he let his rage get the better of him again.

On the other side, there's Strawberry Fields (Gemma Arterton), an MI6 office functionary sent to bring Bond in. She's cold and reluctant, but Bond quickly seduces her and draws her into his adventure, and it doesn't go well. Her death, drowned in crude oil and displayed on her hotel bed, should have been one of the most memorable moments of the film and maybe even the series, obviously evoking the iconic scene from Goldfinger, but the scene is cut so haphazardly that the moment barely has time to sink in before the characters move on to something else. A wasted opportunity.


“PAY ATTENTION, 007”: This film has no Q and hardly any gadgetry to speak of. The only high-tech tool Bond wields is a cell phone that can instantly track any other phone that calls in, whether Bond picks up or not. MI6, on the other hand, has blown their budget turning the office into a holodeck, with insane full-room viewscreens and computer monitors straight from Tony Stark's basement lab. They're probably holding out on their field agents because this stuff is just too damn cool to share.

MOST EMBARRASSING CULTURAL MOMENT: Despite mountains of public evidence about her temperamental behavior, the producers chose Amy Winehouse to write and record the theme song for Quantum of Solace. Only Winehouse and the producers know what happened next, but her song was axed and the honors passed to a limp, unmemorable duet called “Another Way to Die” by Jack White and Alicia Keys. Rumors attribute the Winehouse fallout to anything from her issues with drugs, to her public image, and to the always popular “creative differences” (screaming matches.) Winehouse was so furious at the snub that she took to insulting the producers in the press. She threatened to release her single on the same day as the UK film premiere, but this didn't materialize.

BOND'S BEST ONE-LINER: When asked what happened with Slate, a suspected QUANTUM contact in Haiti, Bond replies, “Slate was a dead end.” Not a great line, but made better by M's astonished reaction: “Damn it! He killed him!” I love that he's been a 00 agent for just a few months, but M already knows how to interpret Bond's punchline code.


WORTH MENTIONING: With this movie, Jeffrey Wright became the first actor to play CIA agent Felix Leiter in consecutive movies. Wright is my favorite Leiter yet, by the way... The scene in which Bond and Camille jump from an airplane, fall into a sinkhole, and then pull the parachute while underground is an action sequence that was planned for a number of the Pierce Brosnan Bond movies but never shot... The unusual title comes from an Ian Fleming short story and refers to the amount of comfort between two partners in order to make a marriage work. In this film, it refers to the amount of comfort Bond receives by finally avenging Vesper (very, very little.)

OVERALL: Quantum of Solace has no space stations. No invisible cars. There are no third nipples or laser beam battles, and you won't find a little person named Nick Nack no matter how hard you look. And trust me, these are the only reasons you haven't seen Quantum of Solace in this project until now.

There's been occasional self-loathing in the Bond series ever since the Mad Men 60s ended. The cold war provided a time and a setting where when men like Bond, and Ian Fleming, actually made sense, and the character has been a little lost since those days ended. Every few movies, Bond puts on a fresh tux and a new coat of paint and pretends that the last umpteen years have all been a bad dream and that this film finally delivers Bond into the modern era. Casino Royale accomplished this in impressive style, but Solace seems determined to take a step backward. Rather than forge Bond's new path, this film wants to make Bond into someone else, specifically Jason Bourne.

Director Marc Forster has called the Bond/Bourne comparison unfair, as the two are wildly different characters. That's certainly true, but then why hire Dan Bradley, second unit director on two of the Bourne movies, to fill the same role in Solace? The action in this movie, and there's loads of it, so clearly apes the Bourne series that it's embarrassing. I say that because for 40 years every spy franchise has wanted to grow up to be Bond, and now here's the flagship, the gold standard, trying to be someone else in what honestly feels like a desperate attempt to stay relevant. Which, of course, makes no sense at all when you consider Casino Royale had been such a spectacular success.

Worst of all, this film imitates Bourne badly.

The editing feels like it was done on a kitchen counter top with a dull knife. I challenge you to put the DVD into your player and actually make sense of the car chase that opens the film. I've seen the movie three times now, and I still get tripped up trying to figure out which car is which. When one of the cars careens off the edge of a cliff, I need the following shot of Bond shifting gears to realize that Bond didn't just die.

The regrettable action photography could be forgiven if there wasn't so bloody much of it. There are at least six – six – different action sequences in the first 30 minutes of film, averaging an action scene every five minutes. Since most of this action lasts minutes at a time, and can only be seen by people whose eyes defy physics, that leaves room for about six minutes of meaningful dialogue in a first act saturated with a nauseating, shaky camera work. By the time the movie slows down enough to sustain a plot, the audience's ability to care is lost in the debris. Thus, there's no emotion, no stakes, no interest. The film doesn't pop, it deflates.

Which is a true shame because there are great moments sprinkled throughout the chaos, most of them carrying on themes from the far superior Casino Royale. One scene at a performance of Tosca belongs in the canon of great Bond moments, and Amalric is a smarmy and effective villain. But while Casino Royale succeeded by teasing the slow evolution of Bond, Quantum of Solace leaves that progress trapped in suspended animation. By the end of this movie, Bond is no closer to the character we love than he was at the end of the last movie, leaving Quantum of Solace stuck in neutral, pointlessly revving an engine with nowhere to go.

The James Bond Project

16. ???

17. Quantum of Solace

18. Die Another Day

19. The Man with the Golden Gun

20. Diamonds are Forever

21. A View to a Kill

22. Moonraker