Thanks for you kind comments, Walker in Eternity.
In fairness to both of us for our cluelessness to Bolivian motor oil containers, it looked like the kind of tube that in the U.S. might hold Comet scouring powder or Pringles (either of which would be perfectly servicable for taunting a man doomed to die of thirst in the desert). Certainly not motor oil; that stuff comes in a short, squat can or in a plastic container with a nice handle and tapered spout, for pouring…
Um… Timothy Spall, then? :eek:
Overall, I liked it, but with some qualms.
Liked:
Daniel Craig as Bond. 'Nuff said… Judi Dench as M; just keeps getting better and better!.. Miss Fields (but there was too little of her)… The opera conference which Bond purposely breaks up… Camille made an OK Bond girl, all in all, but not one likely to be remembered as one of the best… the no-holds-barred fight between Mitchell and Bond, dangling from the construction scaffolding… different fonts showing where the scene was taking place… Bond’s talk with Camille in the car when they first meet in Haiti… Escaping from the burning old plane (but having the parachute deploy for such a short time would surely mean their deaths).
Hated:
Title… Opening song… often too-fast-paced editing (esp. the opening car chase, and the Haitian boat chase)… a hotel that seemed to exist for no other purpose than to blow up… a grossly implausible (even for Bond) escape by Bond and Camille from the burning room at the hotel.
Questions:
When Mitchell went rogue and helped Mr. White escape from MI6 custody, I thought he’d shot M. Apparently not; but what happened to her when he busted out?.. Did Mitchell shoot some people in the street who were there for the horserace? Very unclear… Also, how did Camille manage to get back into Mr. Greene’s entourage at the Bolivian party?.. Did the Bolivian dictator-wannabe’s bodyguard reach in his holster to threaten the general, or Greene? Wasn’t sure what he was up to.
BTW, just realized from IMDB that the guy who played the British foreign secretary, Tim Pigott-Smith, played the top secret-police official, Creedy, in V for Vendetta.
Overall, I’d give the movie a solid B (to Casino Royale’s A+).
Same here. I figured it was some kind of poison (Bond’s quote, “I bet you’ll walk twenty miles before you consider drinking that.”), but I wasn’t sure of its exact contents.
Which just begs the question, which is a more agonizing death? Trudging through the desert and eventually dying from heat stroke/dehydration, or ingesting oil? Drinking oil may kill you faster, but it would probably be a heck of a lot more painful.
Oh, and M said that Dominic Greene was found with two bullets in the back of his head in addition to oil in his stomach. Who shot him?
Near the end, Greene says
that Bond is supposed to let him go because he told Bond everything he knew about Quantum. Bond replies that, yes he did, and that Quantum will know that. I assume someone from Quantum went looking for Greene and found him wandering in the desert, although it’s not clear they found him after he drank the oil, or before (and then forced him to drink it before shooting him).
Bond is a sadistic fuck. I love it.
Ditto on all this. As for the hotel’s improbable location, Sundance said it best:
Butch Cassidy: Jeesh, all Bolivia can’t look like this.
Sundance Kid: How do you know? This might be the garden spot of the whole country. People may travel hundreds of miles just to get to this spot where we’re standing now. This might be the Atlantic City, New Jersey of all Bolivia for all you know.
And earlier, this:
Butch Cassidy: You know, it could be worse. You get a lot more for your money in Bolivia, I checked on it.
Sundance Kid: What could they have here that you could possibly want to buy?
I also thought Mitchell was trying to kill M; if that was his intent, he was a very bad shot! (Although that’s typical of bad guys in action flicks.)
And re. Bond’s shooting the hydrogen fuel cell thingy in the hotel room, wouldn’t most of the force of the blast be directed inwards, against the air and the rest of the room (and thus Bond and girl)? There’s just something about the concept of shaped charges that’s ridiculous. As real as they can be IRL, put them in an action movie and it seems like a cheap contrivance. I saw a program on TV once about WWII in which it was shown that the more a [Russian, I think] city was bombed, the less effective additional bombs were, because all the blown windows and missing walls functioned as release valves. So, the first big bomb dropped onto a building might be relatively catastrophic, but once the walls had been reduced to a honeycomb lattice, it was harder to blast any hiding soldiers or partisans to pieces.
How long will we have to wait before Mythbusters revisits Bond and re-enacts this scenario [the hydrogen cell explosion, not WWII]?
M definitely flinches and then puts her hands on her stomach like she was hit. Huge plot hole?
Oh, and the MI6 computer system was 'way cool, if 'way too advanced for government use today. 
She got hit, she just managed to get away in time and find medical care. (I don’t Mitchell intended to kill M–although if she died it would’ve been a bonus for QUANTUM–just to disable her long enough to get White out of there.)
I mean, presumably M was an agent once herself, she knows how to remove herself from a bad situation…
It looked almost more advanced than the interface used in Minority Report… and that was set in the future!
For some reason I feel that I have to point out the silly plot hole that the guy in the desert, knowing there was no good to come from drinking that motor oil, apparently carried it with him a far distance before he got desperate enough to drink it. I tend to think someone exhausted wouldn’t be carrying extra stuff - not only useless stuff, but actually dangerous to have around.
I believe the oil would have been the equivalent of a cyanide pill. Sure, it’s not as portable, but it would have killed him quicker than slowly roasting in the sun. That is if he wanted to put himself out of his misery. He had the choice…
To answer my own question… maybe.
We need a screen capture! Go see it again and bootleg that shit.
Actually, I think Greene’s buying up the water was actually brilliant. He wouldn’t have to squeeze the people: he could just charge the government. That’s what he was after the whole time - permanent monopoly. He doesn’t have to actually screw with people, just make it less painful to pay him off than try to take it back.
That’s what made him such a bland Bond villain. His plan was rational and could actually happen somewhere.
Not as good as Casino Royale, but then again Casino Royale is one fo the all time great Bond Movies, so not a real fair comparison.
I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, partially because I like Daniel Craig and I like the fact that it isn’t too heavy with the tongue-in-cheek stuff. I liked the symmetry of them doing a chase on land with the cars, on water and in the air. It had it’s flaws, I agree that many of the action sequences had a bit too much of the hyper-cutting going on. But bottom line is that I enjoyed my two hours plus and look forward to the next bond movie.
I also think Judi Dench is absolutely fantastic as M.
Interesting note about Mr White: he’s actually not particularly evil. Note that his plan involved killing no one except the idiot who basically brought things upon himself.
Le Chiffre, to be precise. He was apparently planning to blackmail Bond. He already had Vesper, who’d committed several criminal acts. Bond would have been invaluable to Quantum, perhaps even rising to the upper ranks.
That is exactly what I like about Quantum, or at least what we have been able to puzzle out about them. They are insidious and ruthless, but logical. They work purely from self-interest like a corporation without any government oversight. Taking over the world is a means to maximize profit.
They frighten me because I can believe in them. Like corporate Illuminati.
That was Michael Wilson - Producer of several Bond movies and Cubby Broccoli’s stepson. See here:
As for the movie - I liked it but completely agree that the quick-cut edits were the worst thing about it. I had no idea how that anchor-grappling-hook thing was supposed to work.