The Rock

You know, I've repeatedly seen The Rock referred to as one of if not the only good movie Michael Bay has made. But... I really don't see it. It's not as bad as some of his other work. I didn't hate it. But as far as big action movies go, I've seen a hell of a lot better and smarter. It's clear that some people, including developers of popular video games, took quite a liking to what it did. But while I wasn't bored or annoyed by what was happening on screen, I wasn't terribly entertained either. It was the kind of movie you just watch while rarely caring about what you're seeing.

There were a few elements I liked. I'll get into the oddness of the plot in a bit, but I liked Ed Harris as the main antagonist. There was a righteousness and power to his performance that I didn't quite expect, and it lent some gravitas to some of the more dramatic scenes he was involved with. That stuff tended to work okay. Sean Connery is likable as good guy one, and while he's already in self-parody mode as early as 1996 here, Nicolas Cage is a tolerable good guy two. I didn't care that he was worrying about his pregnant girlfriend because she was a prop instead of a character, but he wasn't bad. And some of the shootouts and fights were okay. I'm really not a huge fan of the way Michael Bay films action; it's often too cluttered and jumpy to really understand and thus enjoy what's going on. Especially car chases, the one here was pretty much a mess of choppy editing and irritating wacky reactions from bystanders (that kind of stuff: basically never funny). But some of the stuff on the prison island itself was mildly enjoyable.

And the way they handled the main plot was just odd. The primary antagonist was more sympathetic than the guys the heroes were working for. Simply put, a decorated general is mad at his country for neglecting to honor and provide support to some of its soldiers, even that which they were lawfully obligated to. So instead of doing something productive about it, he recruits some men under his command, they steal a dangerous chemical weapon, and threaten to launch it on San Francisco from Alcatraz, where they've taken hostages, unless their monetary demands are met. But rather than even pay for the legally required monetary support to the families of fallen soldiers, let alone the further demands, the government decides to send in a SWAT team led by Cage's chemical weapons expert FBI agent and Connery's grizzled former spy who knows the prison from having escaped there. And by the way, Connery hates the government because they held him without trial for over thirty years. Also, after the evil plot falls apart, things still aren't over because the cavalry still doesn't know what's going on in a fairly ludicrous sequence. So basically, the bad guys in this movie are the military and the government. Great. This edge to the plot is handled with no subtlety and distracts from what's already a mediocre action movie. The government doesn't even try to justify itself in any way, we're just expected to be on their side because the citizens of San Francisco are at risk. It's pretty weak stuff. And that describes the movie in general. Again, I wasn't actively bothered by the movie. It was just incredibly dumb and did little to make up for it.

Diamonds Are Forever

Sean Connery's swansong for the role, at least in an official capacity, completes a sort of trilogy featuring Blofeld as the main antagonist. This time he's played by another different actor, and one who played a different character that was killed by one of Blofeld's henchmen two movies ago, plus there's a bunch of plastic surgery-created clones of him running around, so it's all a bit confusing. The story is about blood diamonds, and of course the villain's plot is more diabolical than simply controlling the market. Probably needless to say, a satellite is involved. Blofeld's main agents throughout the story are a pair of hitmen who go around killing whoever comes in contact with the diamonds and taking them for themselves. Except for James Bond, of course, whom they merely leave to die in fairly easy-to-escape situations despite him being easily the most competent of any of their marks. One of them's just creepy too, not in a good way, just in a can't-act-what-is-this-man-doing-in-films kind of way.

The movie starts off okay, but once they get to Vegas, the story just kind of slows down. Bond does some spying and driving and impersonating and flirting, but for some reason I just wasn't totally into it. Bond only really has one girl as Jill St. John is running around most of the time, which was generally fine by me. There's a chase in a moon buggy and a pair of deadly female henchpeople called Bambi and Thumper. Really a visible increase in silliness in this film besides the absurdity of the evil plot - an elephant wins at a slot machine and dances happily, Bond is able to drive a car through a tight alley by balancing it on two wheels and thanks to a continuity error comes out the other side flipped in the other direction, and John is so unprepared for the recoil of an automatic weapon that it blows her back fifteen feet and off the edge of an oil rig. I also enjoyed how there's a guy there at the rig sitting by a microphone and counting things down, instead of it being automated. As we're entering the 70s, I can see it becoming a series that I can find enjoyment in, but not truly appreciate as films like the earlier Connery ones or the Craig ones.

James Bond stats
Theme song: "Diamonds Are Forever" by Shirley Bassey
Foreign locations: Amsterdam, California, Las Vegas
Bond, James Bond: 1:30
Martini shaken, not stirred: Not ordered
Ladies seduced: 1
Chases: 2
Kills: 7
Non-lethal takedowns: 7

You Only Live Twice

James Bond's descent into silliness was a slow and gradual one. You can see it coming here in the script penned by Roald Dahl which only slightly resembles the original novel, although it's less of a goofy tone here as just fairly outlandish situations. This movie is probably actually the key for Dr. Evil. We finally see Blofeld's face in this one, and he's got the baldness, eye scar, fluffy white cat, and less than threatening voice. Also, he has a secret volcano lair. Which Bond ends up attacking with an army of ninjas led by the chief of the Japanese Secret Service. And to help infiltrate operations beforehand, he gets disguised as a Japanese man by wearing prosthetics on his eyes that don't actually seem to do much and a black wig. And Blofeld uses the volcano lair to launch spaceships that capture other ones in an attempt to trigger World War III on Earth - you know, the planet he lives on. I can't remember if he explained why he wanted to do that.

It's kind of a shame the second half is so ludicrous because I actually really liked the first. There's a good theme song, classic catchphrases are subverted, Bond does some legitimate espionage work. A girl he sleeps with who works for SPECTRE gets dropped in a pool of piranhas after she leaves Bond in an airplane she bails out of. When Bond is being chased at a harbor he makes it to the roof and there's a really cool overhead shot as he is pursued by a bunch of guys and he coldcocks several of them. And the plot really is genuinely intriguing until you figure out what's really going on. The change in setting and characters to predominantly Asian is an interesting one, although apparently responsible for Sean Connery's temporary abdication of the role after he was constantly bothered by the Japanese press during filming. Twice is a flawed movie, though I admit to liking it more than the last one.

James Bond stats
Theme song: "You Only Live Twice" by Nancy Sinatra
Foreign locations: Hong Kong, Japan
Bond, James Bond: Not uttered
Martini shaken, not stirred: 21:55 (backwards)
Ladies seduced: 4
Chases: 2
Kills: 15
Non-lethal takedowns: 16

Thunderball

After the Bond movies continually seemed to get better through the first three, the fourth felt like an honest misstep. You get the feeling that the technology they used to film underwater must have been new and impressive at the time, because they spend an absolutely unreasonable amount of time there. The movie is fun as always when Bond stays above the surface, but the insistence on having so many major plot turns take place with everyone wearing breathing equipment and floating around turns into a real drag. It culminates in the big fight scene where dudes writhe around trying to choke and stab and shoot each other with harpoons, and I couldn't even tell which one was James after a while. It's hard to make a major action sequence actually boring, but they managed to pull it off.

On the good side of things though, it did continue to inspire future movies and spoofs with things like an eye-patched, high ranking henchman to the still mostly-off screen principal villain and a board room where inadequate employees can be conveniently executed from their seats. Bond's sneaky and the Bond girls are as nice as ever, and they even subvert the formula a bit this early on when one of the villainous ones asks incredulously if he expected her to change sides after he slept with her, something that worked quite well in both previous films. Number 2 is a solid primary antagonist, and shockingly the fourth in a row that Bond doesn't actually kill directly. The action scene where they duke it out on the bridge of a runaway boat is unfortunately quite dated at this point, as the sped up footage of the ocean superimposed on the background is laughably absurd looking. You can sort of see in this movie of the roots taking hold that would transform the series from interesting spy films to high budget, silly action fests. They're still enjoyable, but for me definitely less so.

James Bond stats
Theme song: "Thunderball" by Tom Jones
Foreign locations: Paris, Bahamas
Bond, James Bond: Not uttered
Martini shaken, not stirred: Not ordered
Ladies seduced: 3
Chases: 2
Kills: 14, more underwater. I lost track of who Bond was.
Non-lethal takedowns: 11

Goldfinger

Of all these early Bond films I've seen (I'm up through the sixth), this is my favorite. It's also the only one that has nothing to do with SPECTRE. It's not that I don't like SPECTRE, I just enjoyed Goldfinger's story and characters the most. It gets rolling early with the classic scene of the woman covered in gold paint, something that wouldn't actually kill you, but an iconic moment nonetheless. Goldfinger himself is a classic Bond villain, with a particularly clever evil plan and penchant for theatrics. I mean, this is the guy who strapped Bond to a table with a laser and told him he expected him to die. Oddjob is the quintessential henchman; silent, nearly indestructible, and extremely deadly. And Pussy Galore is a great Bond girl; the first one who actually spoke with her own voice and was a legitimate actor, and actually put up a fight instead of just falling into his arms.

This is the first Bond movie to take place in the United States at least part of the time, and it's funny to hear the voices of the actors picked to play the gangsters Goldfinger works with, they're as stereotypically American as possible. The most important location in the film is actually Kentucky, which is fairly tame by Bond's standards, but there's a good reason, his target is Fort Knox, and the assault on said building is the series' biggest and most elaborate sequence yet. Bond actually spends a great deal of his time in Kentucky being captured and trying haplessly to get a message to the outside world, and it's interesting to see the first time he really seemed vulnerable. Of course his manhood's just as deadly as his brawling skills or Walther PPK and ends up being what saves the day in a convoluted sort of way. As a break from the early films' all-SPECTRE-all-the-time approach, I liked it a lot.

James Bond stats
Theme song: "Goldfinger" by Shirley Bassey
Foreign locations: Cuba, Miami, Switzerland, Kentucky
Bond, James Bond: 12:00, 38:20 (interrupted)
Martini shaken, not stirred: 55:30
Ladies seduced: 4
Chases: 3
Kills: 7
Non-lethal takedowns: 5

From Russia with Love

It's interesting to see how these early Bond films influenced the later series and pop culture in general. This might have made more sense to mention in the last review, but the first time he says "Bond, James Bond," it's in reply to someone else asking his name after she revealed hers using the same pattern. I was quick to find out that his catchphrases weren't nearly as consistently used in the early films as more recent ones. This movie had multiple firsts - the first opening scene between the gun barrel intro and the animated credits sequence, the first theme song sung by a popular artist, although it doesn't make an appearance until the end of the film. Dr. No mentioned SPECTRE, the secretive evil organization that became the basis for all secretive evil organizations in the future, but this was the first movie where we saw a man petting a cat and executing his numbered henchmen when they failed him.

I enjoyed this movie overall more than the first. The storyline is more overtly political as the bad guys start a conflict between the Brits and the USSR, and more adventurous as Bond gets around a bit more. He's actually fairly docile in this one, rarely getting violent outside one scene, and, unless I misread his intentions in a scene with a couple gypsy girls, not too frisky either. Part of that might be how quickly they introduce the Bond girl, because usually it's a while before she's on his side or even introduced in these early movies. I honestly liked the subdued nature of the movie, because while there's something fun to the ridiculousness of higher budgeted spy capers, this just seems closer to the spirit of what a debonair operative like Bond might actually do. It's not without excitement, as a single brawl on a train car can be just as thrilling as a massive action sequence if done properly. They actually based a video game on this film a few years ago, which I now find perplexing because it's one of the least video game-y Bond movies I've seen, and I liked it for that.

James Bond stats
Theme song: "From Russia with Love" by Matt Monro
Foreign locations: Istanbul, Yugoslavia, Venice
Bond, James Bond: Not uttered
Martini shaken, not stirred: Not ordered
Ladies seduced: 1 new, 1 repeat
Chases: 2
Kills: 8, plus possible explosion victims
Non-lethal takedowns: 3

Dr. No

So I'm gonna watch all the James Bond movies. The reason for this is pretty simple - I've usually only seen the earlier films as part of marathons on TV where everything runs together, and so my mind is full of incomplete and fuzzy ideas of what the series is. Really, the only Bond actors whose films I can actually distinguish from each other are Pierce Brosnan and and Daniel Craig. Anyway, here we start at the beginning with Sean Connery's first turn as the famous character. Dr. No does a pretty solid job of establishing the franchise as we see a lot of the key elements in place. There's no opening scene before the credits, and said credits don't feature girls dancing around or a famous singer crooning a theme with the title in the lyrics. But Bond says some clever things, romances a few girls, faces off against a slightly over the top villain, spouts a couple catchphrases for the first time, and a few things blow up.

Really though, the movie is fairly tame. Not too violent, not too long, only one major exotic location. There's not even a scene where Q gives Bond a wacky high-tech gadget, just one where he's lectured on his choice of firearm. From what I can tell this was intentional, to start a movie series on a grounded, reasonable footing before letting things get bigger and more explosive. Dr. No himself is a pretty good villain though, complete with metallic hands and a menacing dinner conversation. He's one of the only early antagonists or main Bond girls to actually use his own voice, and it's fun to watch him interact with Bond for the first time, really setting a tone for what was to come. Ursula Andress is pretty damn hot in her bikini, but although she went on to some other movies doesn't do her own voice and just sort of stands around looking pretty in the second half of the film, more femme than fatale. In the end, it's a solid movie, not great, but better than a few other Bond flicks I've seen.

James Bond stats
Theme song: James Bond theme
Foreign location: Jamaica
Bond, James Bond: 8:00
Martini shaken, not stirred: 24:40, 1:28:10
Ladies seduced: 3
Chases: 2
Kills: 3 humans, 1 tarantula
Non-lethal takedowns: 9

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Last Crusade returns to the formula from the first movie, with lots of high adventure and killing of Nazis. Instead of a Chinese child, his sidekick is his dad, played by Sean Connery. They have an entertaining chemistry, Indiana being pretty rough-and-tumble and his dad getting things done without ruffling his clothes. A lot of the things they do end up being pretty corny, but that's the way of the series. This film is probably the most family friendly of the three, though it still contains some scenes with an obscene amount of vermin and surprisingly grotesque deaths. John Rhys-Davies and Indy's older college friend both reprise their roles from the first movie and make likable companions. This time, the female lead is physically attractive and actually an interesting character, so she's an improvement over her equivalent in the first two movies.

Whereas the second movie was a departure, Last Crusade really follows in the first's footsteps. The opening scene is a flashback to Indiana's youth, an improbable day in which he managed to pick up four of his notable character details. It connects with the modern day (1938) by showing him after the same artifact, and then leads to the real story, which like the first movie, happens to feature the same treasure-hunting villain who has the support of Hitler's regime. There's lots of action and humor as Indiana searches for his kidnapped dad and then the ultimate goal. There are some more great parts, like the "no ticket" scene on a gigantic zeppelin. Too much of the action is slapstick in nature, but it's still an enjoyable movie. I'm not sure what it is, but something about the whole trilogy just felt like it was missing something, though I can't say what. Still, entertaining films.