Yeah. The feeling I walked out of the theater with was that they had done a 2.5-hour transition from the more serious, modern take on Bond in the previous Daniel Craig movies to a promised revival of the pre-Craig Bond style.
“Are you ready to get back to work, Mr. Bond? [Corny quips, extravagantly crazy villains, no more major female characters unless they’re young and hot?]” “Yes, sir.”
And some policemen, solme politicians, a train driver and perhaps some passengers.
I suspect that Craig giving himself a boost by jumping off a live komodo dragon was a direct homage to Roger Moore’s crocodile stunt in Live and Let Die.
But he didn’t stop Silva from killing M. She died as a result of Silva’s firefight. Bond was supposed to keep M alive and failed.
Not so sure. First, as noted, he sneaks naked into the shower with a woman he knows is a sex slave abused sexually since childhood. Then after having promised to save her he really does not try too hard.
A theme of the movie is characters betraying other characters who trust them, and those are the good guys. Sure M mostly, but these actions reveal Bond as being just like M in that sense. Severine was used by Bond and was expendable. Just as Silva and Bond were used by M and were expendable.
Bond is not a nice man.
He really didn’t have much of an option to save her at that point - I do agree that Bond is not a nice man - but given the situation, the only compassionate thing he could have done was to kill her after the shower (and prevent whatever torture/beating she recieved on the island).
At least Bond himself didn’t shoot her - which also let him play into Silva’s underestimation of Bond suitability for duty.
Basically, as it was - Severine was dead as soon as she told Bond where the boat was - which was her job at that point - I think even Severine knew this to be true IF Bond made it to the boat - but that also freed Severine from that life (and life in general).
(eta - that sounds rather cold hearted on my part - but it is the way this story is told)
Second-best line in the movie.
Best line: “Welcome to Scotland.”
Some things I didn’t get:
Who was the lady who saved Bond?
Wasn’t Bond shot by Eve? Yet his only wound is from the assassin?
Why didn’t he just shoot the villain as soon as he exited the helicopter? I’m sure alighting from a helicopter next to a hostile house is not a good idea.
I’m surprised people thought Casino Royale was better - it just felt like a 2 hour long poker game to me.
It certainly was a very pretty movie. I don’t feel that Javier Bardem quite lived up to the big buildup that he was given, and his blonde-ness was just distracting. I also agree that moving to the old house was really not a great strategic move. The blaring Bond theme sometimes seemed silly and pointless. Also eeeevil homosexual bad guy? Really?
So, I give it 3 stars out of 5. Good, but not epic. 
The lady at teh beginning was a random lady - not named or important - just to show that Bond was ‘recovering in retirement’.
Bond was shot by the assasin when he jumped into the digger on the train - he was later shot by Eve on top of the train. (rough day).
That was a fun movie, excellent combination of modern action flick and cheesy Bond movie.
Yeah. We saw one version of how events played out, but odds are he had various other plans too. The speech about them being the last two rats could have been delivered to any agent who happened to get that far, not just to Bond.
I like Baddie Barden, even though he did look like he was in Stupid White Chicks.
My only nitpick is that Bond was merely missing, presumed dead (we saw M writing that). Seems a bit odd that they were selling his stuff off so quickly - usually someone would have to be declared missing for seven years for that to happen.
Of course when someone shoots you and sees you fall off a bridge but they don’t find a body, that’s a different shade of of “missing, presumed dead” from just “no idea what happened to him”.
The death of Bond at the start and the obit struck me as a fiction M and her assistant knew in full, they printed the obit and sold the stuff to be convincing to people who might still want to look him up.
See, I thought it was perfectly clear what happened: he survived (barely) the fall over the waterfall, and he was found and saved by the girl. Hers was the hand that grabbed his wrist before the opening credits began; the rest was his unconscious hallucination/dream.
At the start it certainly did seem a little set up - its the words from M later that convinced me that M truly thought Bond was dead
It’s based on the original novel You Only Live Twice, where Bond was presumed dead, and M wrote an obit for him.
I think this is a point that people tend to forget, especially after Rodger Moore made a mockery of the character.
James Bond is a bad man who works for the good guys. In the books, he’s a cold blooded killer. In Dr. No, he shoots a (then) unarmed man in cold blood by stating famously “That’s a Smith & Wesson, and you’ve had your six.”
Bond got progressively touchy-feely thereafter. I’m glad he’s back to being bad.
Couldn’t be. M says that she was never a good shot. Mrs. Peel never missed.
I don’t think the plan was necessarily that complicated. All that Silva really needed was to be captured and taken to the temporary MI6 HQ under ground. He certainly did seem to have a lot of help waiting for him during his escape; someone gave him a police uniform, and then he was picked up in a police vehicle.
All of which may have been a backup plan. He may have simply wanted to attack M at the hearing. If he hadn’t been captured, he still could have shown up there and started shooting.
The part that didn’t make sense to me was the explosion in M’s office. Silva knew M’s schedule and triggered the explosion when she wasn’t there. So he deliberately didn’t kill her in order to set off a sequence of events that would lead to her death. Sure.
I noticed that, and also found it troubling. The only explanation I could think of is that Silva had so hacked into their systems that he’d have known about any backup that Bond would have arranged. They had to be seen to be weak and isolated to draw Silva out; otherwise he’d have lain low and attacked at some time and place when it wasn’t expected. If that’s what the filmmakers intended, they should have made it clearer.
Yes. He used two women in the film, promised to keep them safe, and both were killed.
There’s that, although Silva really was a sitting duck at that point. He was unarmed, and Bond had him at gunpoint with the helicopters arriving. No particular reason to kill him. Not much reason to keep him alive, either; there was no one higher up the chain for Silva to lead them to.
Bond had another chance to shoot Silva, during the chase through the underground. Silva was climbing that ladder, Bond had a clear shot, and he said something like “the next one won’t miss.” Then Silva triggered an explosion and escaped. As a wise man once said, “when it’s time to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.”
I don’t think they sold off his stuff - they cleared out his apartment and put his stuff in storage. I assumed in the same garage where the DB5 was.
They said they sold his apartment and put his stuff in storage - why they’d sell the home and not the contents, I don’t know. And they sold his family home and contents. All a bit hasty with no body.