What you saw was marsh gas. The jet airliner? A common barn owl, which appeared enormous due to a trick of perspective.
Agreed. I assume every government spy agency has a JK Simmons character looking up from a manila folder saying, “And why do I give a shit about any of this…?”
Actually, his arrest at the airport was a refreshing moment of realism. James Bond can knock down dozens of henchmen that politely attack him one at a time, but when four or five cops swarm him, he’s done.
Woman runs past Wiggum’s squad car.
Chief Wiggum: Ehh, that was really more of a Brandeis blue.
Chief Wiggum: It’s not her. I’ve seen hotter at the Quick-E Mart.
How the motorcycles got into the Armani I’ll never know.
Alternately, the four or five cops swarmed him, he went along with it because he was done. He had stopped the bad guy from blowing up the plane, so he had no reason to resist arrest. Also, the fuel truck didn’t explode, just the bad guy. You’ll recall Bond removed the explosive device from the truck and attached it to the dude’s belt.
As an aside, jet fuel doesn’t explode. From what I understand, modern JP is actually relatively difficult to ignite at all, but once it does ignite, it burns pretty intensely. That said, modern airliners also burn pretty intensely once ignited, due to their relatively light construction and extensive use of lightweight plastics and such, and particularly due to being full of jet fuel.
EDIT: But yeah, the fun thing about Casino Royale is that he gets chewed out for being caught doing his thing on camera. Later on in the movie, you see him scoping out places and spotting surveillance cameras before he does anything. He even uses the cameras to figure out when a bad guy made a phone call to one of his henchmen by matching time stamps.
Non-aerosolized jet fuel doesn’t explode.
Good distinction. Do fuel trucks carry it in aerosolized form or in liquid form?
Although it’s very common for spies to be “hidden” as members of their country’s diplomatic mission, I believe the conventions covering such issues specifically exclude spies from diplomatic immunity. Something like “We promise not to prosecute any of your diplomats, unless they turn out to be spies, in which case all bets are off.” Using your embassy to facilitate espionage in another country is against the rules.
However, since virtually all countries break this rule, spies are likely to be exchanged if caught. The US catches a Russian spy, we give him back to the Russians in exchange for one of our captured spies, etc.
I’ve had people in the intelligence community - serious people - who’ve told me that that scene was pitch-perfect. That THAT was what intelligence work was really all about.
Everything you say here is wrong. EVERY diplomat is, to one degree or another, a spy for their country, and they gather intelligence according to their abilities, training and opportunities. Some routinely communicate with other spies (who don’t have diplomatic immunity) in order to pass information back and forth. A country cannot simply “turn off” the diplomatic immunity of someone because they do something spy-like, for instance receiving stolen secret documents. At best, they can expel that diplomat from the country. Every embassy that engages in spying to a large degree facilitates that spying by various means. These may include facilities for electronic surveillance and transporting clandestine goods in and out of other countries through diplomatic luggage.
There are three kinds of spies. “Legals” are the type your post is referring to – people generally under diplomatic “cover” who rarely personally engage in espionage. They are there to manage the spies who do, and to collect their information and pass it along. “Illegals” are those who have infiltrated the target country under a false identity in order to carry out their missions. These people have no legal protections and if they’re caught can face serious punishment. The 3rd type is a “real” person who is who he says he is and does whatever real life job he does, but who also has somehow been persuaded to provide information or assistance to intelligence agency. Almost all of the spies captured and prosecuted in the US are in the 3rd category.
I can’t believe you forgot to mention the 5’’ heels.
For a very realistic portrayal of intelligence work I would reccomend the film Spy Kids.
If movies were real John McClane would be the most famous man in the world.
James Bond never bothered me, aside from the reboot all of them have a tongue in cheek tone. Other stuff like the Bourne series however aims for a certain amount of realism that is hurt by this crap.
Hell even the TV show Alias had most of the mayhem happen in compounds and secret research bunkers, not in broad daylight in one of the major cities of the world.
“Illegals” are also known as a NOC or Non-Official Cover (apparently that’s actually a real thing). Most modern intelligence networks keep an accurate and up to date listing of all their NOCs and their current operations in a single unencrypted database that will typically fit on a CD-ROM or thumb drive.
In all fairness to the Bourne films, the CIA did seem to put a lot of effort trying to prevent Jason Bourne from turning the Treadstone project into the public shit-show it became.
Ironically, it seems to me that in cases like Bourne or The Long Kiss Goodnight where you have an agent who ends up with amnesia, the best course of action might be to just do nothing but discretely monitor them. As opposed to say, doing everything in your power to jog their memory of how to fuck shit up on a massive scale.
Just based on the trailers and having never seen a Bourne film (including the most recent), isn’t the recurring premise that the secret government agency, having created a super-agent, now goes to ridiculous lengths to eliminate him?
What is this, a Democrat make-work project?
Back in the post-Cold War period where spy agencies had much less to do in the 90’s, of course, these databases would fit on floppy disks.