Our review of the eighteenth James Bond movie. May the ghost of Cubby Broccoli watch over us as the Brosnan Age continues.
Our review of the eighteenth James Bond movie. May the ghost of Cubby Broccoli watch over us as the Brosnan Age continues.
Maybe it’s the lack of heterosexual in me but Michelle Yeoh didn’t do jack for me to improve this film; She was yet another boring “equal”. I enjoyed Pryce as Elliot Carver because of his mania to play god; Like he said “words are the new weapons”. I think the stand out moment in this film was the “station break” scene when Bond shut off the power at Carver’s party and Carver panicked and what follows is a surprising moment of vulnerability that he shows in front his wife. I also second you about your opinion on Brosnan’s performance. This time around, the film seems to trust it’s leading man instead of the previous one which had Brosnan as a prop with “Copyright MGM/EON” stamped on his ass.
GoldenEye‘s success helped The Bros overcome the pressure and performance anxiety that grew on him during that decade of being “everyone’s” Designated Next Bond. I think Spottiswoode helped him along with that, too. Dude’s merits as an Action director are open to debate (particularly on a film with this large of a second unit), but I have very little doubt about his power to direct people. Work in TV long enough and you either develop that, or become an executive producer of your own show and let someone else inherit the headache.
I am not familiar with Spottiswoode’s work as a director but I know he served as editor for the greatest movie Charles Bronson had top billing in, Hard Times.
What also helped Brosnan is that he put on weight. He was way too skinny in Goldeneye.
And that’s a fact. Bond doesn’t have to be a brick shithouse, but his actors do need to pass for ex-Navy.
The good thing about this movie is that it brought us Swan Lee, the Danish pop band. Their song was rejected for this movie’s soundtrack (Sheryl Crow was far more easily marketable than some obscure European band), but it appeared later in the soundtrack to the Hitman game “Blood Money”.
Sheryl’s involvement in this seems to have squeezed more artists out of the spotlight than anything else. Certainly didn’t help her career worth a damn. All in a shameless bid to get a Top 40 hit out of the soundtrack, which seems even more egregious now that soundtracks have lost the cross-promotional power they enjoyed at the turn of the Willennium.
As to Swan Lee…you can tell how far I got into Hitman by the fact I had to look this song up. I’m sure, in the context of the game, it has some beautifully appropriate meaning, but in isolation it’s too tinny for me. Too weightless. Too breathy. Too self-consciously Europop. It hearkens back to the Bad Old Days of the Mid-80s, when Duran Duran and A-ha were wasting their, and John Barry’s, and most importantly our, time. But at least Pernille Rosendahl stays within spitting distance of her own vocal range.
Between this film and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, I would have fully expected Michelle Yeoh to blossom as the next female action star (it would certainly have made a nice break from Milla “Resident Evil: Redundancy” Jovovich). Yet the only films of note that she had a hand in were Kung Fu Panda 2 and The Lady. People talk about how being in “Star Trek” tends to mostly kill acting careers; maybe it’s time to put being a Bond girl in the same category…
Frankly, I’d say it was time for that back in the late-60s. Look what happened to Diana Rigg. If Emma Peel, the Bride of Bond, can’t escape TV movie land, what chance have we mere mortals?
Much the same thing happened with Doctor Who companions. Which doesn’t say much – of a random crop of young actors and actresses, most of them won’t go on to fame – but Pauline Collins, who was offered the slot in 1968 and turned it down, did have something of a career…
(But if you want a real curse of Bond girls, see that trailer for Empire of the Deep that’s going round…)