Will The Real James Bond Stand Up Part IV-Pierce Brosnan’s “The World Is Not Enough” (1999)-A Film Review

Will The Real James Bond Stand Up Part IV-Pierce Brosnan’s “The World Is Not Enough” (1999)-A Film Review 

DVD Review

By former Associate Film Critic Alden Riley

The World Is Not Enough, starring Pierce Brosnan, Sophie, Marceau, Robert Carlyle, Denise Richards, 1999

A curtain is beginning to descend on the American Left History blog that I have been associated with (had been an associate film critic before such titles were eliminated without discussion by the head of the new regime Greg Green and his hand-picked minions). No, not the famous, or infamous as the case may be, one signaled by old-time British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at Fulton, Missouri in 1947 for the start of my parents’ generation’s Cold War which ultimately defrosted with the demise of the Soviet Union about quarter century ago but sinister enough. (By the way this whole latter day Bond series starting with he-man in a tight spot Pierce Brosnan, John Le Carre, and Tom Clancy must be eternally weeping real tears since they don’t have that behemoth to beat up on anymore as much they try like in the film under review here The World Is Not Enough with one of the villains being an ex-KGB agent.)

Sinister enough for comment here before my review of yet another James Bond film in the seemingly never-ending “mock heroic” battle with former Senior Film Critic Sandy Salmon over who the fuck is the real James Bond. (Apparently in audience land nobody cares since the revenue stream is measured in the hundreds of millions.) And before I can no longer make such comment under the agreement that Sam Lowell made with Greg Green and rubber-stamped by the Editorial Board that will soon prohibit mention of the just concluded internal struggle over direction and personnel changes. More importantly the ban on mentioning by name the previous site manager Allan Jackson, his accomplishments, or his short-comings.

So while the amnesty lasts which only extended to the ten or fifteen pieces that were in the pipeline before the agreement was reached I will express my displeasure. First at the elimination of titles which I have mentioned before and which still rankles since I put in some great effort to get to that status and have now been thrown on the Everyman, Every-person now that we have good women writers coming along , scrapheap like everybody else. Secondly at that ominous trend of making non-persons out of people who were critical to the success and development of this blog (and in its previous hard copy iterations which Sam Lowell, a key figure in all of this, is writing a history of to close the curtain down tight) and who taught me a lot about social media survival. This worry by the way from a person, from THE person, if one person can be said to have started the furor over the demise of Allan Jackson one of the founding members. Me. Rumor has it that Allan is out in exile, exile after purge as Sam Lowell put the matter inelegantly but correctly, hustling the Mormons for newspaper subscriptions.

The truth I don’t know but that sounds weird about a guy who has skewered well-known Mormon honcho and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney about his white underwear and about his unjust abandonment of his great-grandfather and his polygamous five wives. Another truth, a known truth is that I am standing by my remarks about the descending curtain despite the fact that I hated Allan Jackson, hated the way the blog was heading and fought tooth and nail with the “Young Turks” to purge the bastard. The immediate reason which is all I will detail now and let Sam do his business is the time in 2017 that he went crazy over commemorating the 50^th anniversary of the Summer of Love, 1967 and was assigning everybody who could walk, who could write, some silly assignment about that year.

My “mistake” is that he heard about my ignorance of Janis Joplin, a key rising blues singing star during that time, who made a big splash at the first Monterey Pops Festival that year which Sandy had written about and I had told him that I had never heard of her. Allan went wild and assigned me like some naughty schoolboy a biopic about her life. Yes, so no love lost here. But Allan was a larger than life personality and he should not be resigned to the dustbin of history like his buddy Leon Trotsky said about the old regime in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Trotsky, a guy, a larger than life personality, they, the Stalin supporters in the Soviet Union when there was a Soviet Union, tried might and main to make a non-person. It will not wash with me, it just will not.      

But now onto the real battle of today. The mismatch between one senile old goat Sandy Salmon, like Allan locked in a time capsule about 1965, hanging on to his lame excuse for a James Bond old fogy Sean Connery against me, against the king of the hill, and my favorite sporty handsome he-man full of prowess that Sean would buckle under, one Pierce Brosnan. For those following this life and death struggle the basic difference is that Pierce’s Bond, James Bond could run circles around the asthmatic Connery who should have been put in an old age home about that same 1965 that Sandy-and Allan- seems locked into.

Enough of that though. Let’s run the tale, let’s tell how many “kills” and “collateral damage” Pierce put on his scorecard while Sean was still walking down the garden path with some good-looking eye candy woman who last read a book about 1949. James is onto some craziness around the fate of that former KGB agent I mentioned earlier who has turned rogue, has made himself a big spot in the international terrorist hall of fame. The target a rich British oil man who is assassinated by that dastardly former KGB agent. A separate thread has this oil king’s daughter taking over the business after having been kidnapped and NOT released via ransom paid by but by stealth and sexual allure. That no ransom the very public stance of MI6 and of its leader M. It turned out that the terrorist and kidnap victim were murkily working together on a big caper. Drive the price of oil through the roof by “killing” the market. Killing the oil by blowing away oil sites and driving production low via some stolen high tech gizmos which wind up like the British Empite not working. Nice move.

Naturally James, an erstwhile agent of the British interests in cheap oil is the one the case. He has his suspicious about that oil man’s daughter although, as is always the case, when she does here come hither act on him he goes under the silky sheets just like any other guy. Along the way sweet baby James is helped by yet another secret agent perk, a shapely drop dead beautiful young women posing as a brainy oil doctor. Posing at the end after a zillion escapades which would have drained the life right out of pokey Sean Connery. Yeah sent those old guys out to pasture just like we did with Allan Jackson except maybe not Utah, maybe Siberia.                 

Will The Real James Bond Stand Up-Part II-Sean Connery’s “Thunderball” (1965 )-A Film Review

Will The Real James Bond Stand Up-Part II-Sean Connery’s “Thunderball” (1965 )-A Film Review

DVD Review

By former Senior Film Critic Sandy Salmon    

[I personally do not like the new regime, under Greg Green’s steady guidance, policy of getting rid of titles which were the hallmark of the now safely departed and exiled Allan Jackson who used to run the show here. It took many years for me to get that Senior Film Critic title having come over from the American Film Gazette under the Jackson regime when former Associate Film Critic Alden Riley decided to come over on retiring Senior Film Critic Sam Lowell’s say so and I resent being thrown on the dung heap and placed with everybody else with just their names on the by-line line. For now I will use my old title in the past tense until we go back to titles or Greg make a big deal out of my moniker and tries to shut it down. Then I will go back to being an Everyman like Alden Riley and Si Lannon have mentioned elsewhere. Sandy Salmon]   

**********

Readers who have read Associate Film Critic Alden Riley’s recent review of Goldeneye posted on this site on December 5, 2017 (and on the on-line American Film Gazette the same day) the first of four films where well-known action actor Pierce Brosnan plays the legendary super-spy Ian Fleming-created Bond, James Bond know that he and I had a dispute over whether to review that film or not. I had insisted that he finish up the original James Bond part of the long running series starring Sean Connery started in the early 1960s of which I had reviewed the first three efforts. He balked saying that being significantly younger than I by a generation that he could not see Sean Connery as his idea of the Bond character and argued that he would prefer to do the Pierce Brosnan series which he felt epitomized the Bond role. Since this dispute underscored a storm which has been brewing among the writers on this site (and to a lesser extent at the on-line Progressive American and American Film Gazette respectively) I conceded the point and challenged him to a “duel” to argue in the public prints over who was the “real” James Bond-Connery or Brosnan. The other post-Connery Bonds like Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton interested neither of us so the chase was on.          

[Since this concession by me to a younger writer is of some importance to the future direction of this site I should explain my view about the real deal which has produced this continual tension (something Sam Lowell, the film critic emeritus on this site and all around gadfly who while surprisingly siding with the younger writers against his old regime site manager friend has called a “tempest in a tea pot” and maybe he was right). This site (and to a lesser extent Progressive American, American Film Gazette and the American Music Annals which all of the older writers have written for at some point) had been tilted as might be expected toward the coterie of writers who came up the ranks with Jackson, a coterie of men which is a separate issue, who were formed one way or another by the turbulent 1960s. Although I have only recently taken over Sam Lowell’s position as film critic, now senior film critic with the addition of Alden and a couple of other stringers I too am of that generation and the “dispute” over the Sean Connery James Bond series with Alden has reflected both my preferences and my sense of where we should put our collective energies.            

According to Sam, and the former site administrator, they saw nothing wrong with tilting toward the 1960s which they saw above all as a defining cultural, political and social moment which has been reflected even now in the long rear-guard actions to fight against what Jackson calls the night-takers. Then several years ago when Markin brought in younger writers like Alden, Zack James, Lance Lawrence, Brad Fox and a few other stringers he, and the older writers, expected somewhat rigidly and erroneously that they would “keep the ‘60s alive” for the next generation. Naturally those younger writers balked not so much about having to cover the 1960s history stuff which they knew was a key the site’s existence but that all subsequent nodal points which informed their lives were down-played if not dismissed.

It was in that content that the Connery-Brosnan fight represented a prime example of the “Old Guard” stifling (Zack James’ word) the “Young Turks.” Alden reminded me during this argument though that it had really come to a head when during an expansive, some said seemingly endless, commemoration of the 50^th anniversary of the Summer of Love, 1967 San Francisco-based explosion when Allan asked everybody to hone in on those events when taking up writing projects. I, and looking back on it, the other older writers took up the cause in a heartbeat. The younger writers with the exception of Zack James whose older brother Alex started the whole thing in 2017 and had been out there in 1967 balked for the most part.

The firestorm really came when I mentioned to Alden that I had done a review of a documentary about the first Monterey Pops Festival also in 1967 where Janis Joplin among others won their spurs in the rock pantheon and he told me that he did not know who Janis Joplin was. I let that pass but somehow Allan heard about it and in a fit of pique ordered over my head Alden to do a review of a bio-pic of Janis: Little Girl Blues. Alden did it but the past several months as I said have been a tug-of-war among those whose sensibilities were established during the 1960s and those whose sensibilities were essentially formed by the Reagan years. Two very different epochs. The net effect though is that now Alden can write about Brosnan’s James Bond and anything else he wants. Allan had decided to retire soon and had brought in Greg Green from American Film Gazette to act as administrator so a different focus should be expected.           

I would like to add since Lance Lawrence of the younger writer set snidely brought something of the dispute up in a round-about way when he was doing a light commentary, posted December 5, 2017 here (and on the 6^th on the on-line American Folk Gazette and Progressive American websites) on a recent book by a Harvard professor about 1960s folk king icon Bob Dylan arguing that he, Dylan, belong right up there in the Western Civilization literary pantheon with the classic lyric poet like Homer and Virgil. In his public take on this internal site storm Lance mentioned that Dylan was another one of the causes for the bad feelings among the staff since Allan had assigned him to do a review of Volume 12 of what even I consider never-ending the Dylan Bootleg series.

Lance balked after listening to the six CD set and accompanying booklets saying that it was just mishmash of bullshit and outtakes and not worthy of consideration. Allan flipped out and this too brought matters to a head. Allan after heated arguments about direction and emphasis on the site told the collective audience that he was bringing in Greg Green as acting administrator and that he planned to retire. Lance’s implication: Allan had been purged, “purged like his buddy Trotsky” is the way he put it. Yes, a vote of confidence was taken and Allan was on the short end of the stick when Sam Lowell unexpectedly considering they had grown up together sided with the “Young Turks” but he was not purged, was not in any way in put in Trotsky’s position of having to defend his place in the Russian Revolution, in the Bolshevik Party when Uncle Joe pulled the hammer down, and eventually laid down his head for his belief when all was said and done. Allan will have like Sam emeritus status and can write, or not write, whenever something interest him.]            

Alden is right that in the now 20 something Bond, James Bond, films whether directly inspired by Ian Fleming’s novels or merely on the developed character that a certain familiar formula has kept the series running through several Bonds. Everybody knows that there will be plenty of high tech gadgetry provided by the ever present and resourceful Q who really should retire if he has not already, plenty of physically over-the-top action and plenty of sexy women either chasing or being chased by any actor who plays Bond. Additionally something that Alden did not pick up since he was a baby during the heyday of the big Cold War rivalry between the West, America centrally and the now long gone Soviet Union, that in the fight against the bad guys by British intelligence although they are given names like SPECTRE and Janus they are really stand-ins for the opponent bad guy countries of the moment like Russia and China.

All of this goes with the territory even though this first Pierce Brosnan Bond vehicle was not created out of Fleming’s stockpile. It most clearly in present in the early Connery films as he is something of a dashing one man avenging angel for the good guy Western values that guys like Doctor No and Gold-finger threaten. Connery uses his handsomeness, not “pretty boy” demeanor as a way to make his work easier since there is a toughness that shows whether he is in stilted work suit or casual clothes.  Brosnan only brings a “pretty boy” charm and over the top, and at times unbelievable physical manifestation to the role against Connery’s dashingly handsome demeanor. Sean also plays the role with more cheek, more sense that this whole thing is just an arduous task to get through to keep the lights burning.

As to the actual plot-line of Thunderball here as Sam Lowell likes to say the short skinny since as has already been suggested about other parts of this long-running Bond series there is a certain set formula. The bastards at SPECTRE are at it again as they as per Number One are responsible for hijacking through the usual nefarious means two atomic weapons to be used as bargaining chips for a big payoff of $100 million a lot then but chicken feed now for not destroying a major city. The city turned out to be Miami which now has its own problems to confront with climate change but then was a mecca for the sun-drenched tourists and plenty of mobster and ex-pats from all over Latin America after being giving the boot from their home countries. Bond is put on the case first to find the hiding place of the two bombs and then shutting down as much of the SPECTRE operation as possible for a single avenging angel to do. Along the way he snags the inevitable beauty who turns up in his path, succumbs to his charms and helps get the bomb situation under control. I wish I could say that would be the end of the bad guys but the world and slew of future Bond movies including ‘Pretty Boy” Brosnan’s portion tell us otherwise.   

Will The Real Bond, James Bond Stand Up- Sean Connery’s “You Only Live Twice” (1967)-A Film Review

Will The Real Bond, James Bond Stand Up- Sean Connery’s “You Only Live Twice” (1967)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sandy Salmon  

I am not sure what to say right now after reading Leslie Dumont’s scathing polemic cum review of one in the apparently never-ending series of James Bond films which new manager Greg Green went out of his way to have her write even though young Alden Riley and I have been running the rack on this series. The film, Tomorrow Never Dies with the lovely delicious Pierce Brosnan going through the paces of the legendary indestructible MI6 agent in the 1990s. That “apparently never-ending” no joke despite the fact that the original creator of the character Ian Fleming has long passed the shades (they were diddling with the plots when he was alive in any case including on the film I will attempt to review). James Bond, although I am not sure either party will like the comparison, now joins Bob Dylan in the never-ending category (for concerts still performed and Bootleg CD series never finished).

All of that though is not the beef today since Leslie whom I knew for a short time when she was a stringer for the American Film Gazette after she left her stringer job on this site and before she finally, finally landed a by-line at New York Today has thrown down the gauntlet. Leslie in that review of hers took on the whole James Bond male chauvinism bullshit mystique. (Although the fact that he is never really scratched despite an armada of weaponry thrown his way by every bad ass in the world, male or female, apparently does not bother her or the not so veiled battles between the good British Empire and the heathen commies of whatever designation.) But what has me in dither is that she went after the little pseudo-battle that Alden Riley, the former Associate Film Critic under the previous management and I, the former Senior Film Critic under that same management about who was the epitome of the James Bond character. When the deal went down it came down to two contestants-subtly handsome Connery or pretty boy Brosnan. She took us apart for not dwelling on the obvious 1950s sense of the male-female relationship. Seemingly the woman that I knew, even if slightly, with the wicked sense of irony has ditched that persona for the crusading third-wave feminist.

And Leslie might be right. No, not right about Alden and my little fisticuff but in light of the sexual harassment and sexual crimes of Harvey Weinstein and a now long trial of powerful Hollywood power brokers, Washington heavies, media hotshots, and hell the guys next door against women maybe this is a time to shed some light on the way business was done in the old days. Maybe the way the female eye candy in the various Bond films are portrayed aids and abets those real life situations but I believe that is Leslie’s place to speak about. And she did.

Look I have spent a zillion years doing freaking film reviews here and at American Film Gazette (according to the new site manager here Greg Green who also came over from that publication it has racked up forty thousand plus reviews in its long hard copy and on-line history). The angle I was looking at, Alden too except he wanted to look at it from the view of the more recent Bond films, was in the context of the silly plotlines, the improbable escapes and the silly concept of sexual allure developed in those films. It would have been false, and maybe that is wrong but that is the way it comes down, for me, Alden can speak for himself, if I started going on and on about the sexploitation inherent in the romanticizing of what after all in real life is a pretty dull and unrewarding profession-covert spying.  This is probable not the last of the dispute between Leslie and me on the social issues as she called thet but let’s fight that out on more serious looks at what is wrong with the still prevalent sexually unequal society that we live in. As we have found very graphically in the immediate past we do not live in a post-racial society and now we know we have been living in a “bubble” as well about living in a post-sexual inequality world.        

It almost seems silly to go through the plot now except there is no heavy lifting once you have seen a few of these formula films and can do a quick, very quick, summary since we have already hit Leslie’s male chauvinist pig aspect, my hero unscathed aspect, and that anti-communist angle as well. All we really have left is whether Sean Connery is the real Bond, James Bond or is that sniveling pretty boy the champ.   

An American spaceship is dragooned in space whereabouts unknown except it was probably brought down somewhere near Japan. Naturally in anti-communist, pre-Soviet meltdown times that country would be the number one fall guy. But the Bolsheviks don’t figure although not for trying since before long a second space almost goes missing and the POTUS (you know what that means today in text-speak) is ready to rain hell and damnation on Moscow and Leningrad if the caper goes off. Not to worry because not only is WWIII avoided but private citizen bad guys are put to the screws (although not forever since, as usual, the mastermind bad guy makes his escape to fight another inevitable day).

The whole caper was an outsourced job by the infamous SPECTRE organization that knows no limits, no boundaries and will do whatever is necessary for the highest bidder. Here the Reds, Red China, People’s Republic. After ten million kicks, about six millions rounds of ammo fired his way, a few new techno-toys driven escapes, some cavorting with women after a hard day’s work Bond, James Bond, once again saves the world. As Leslie quoting mad monk Phil Larkin, another wild man writer here, WFT. And maybe that is really what we should all take out of this stuff.      

Will The Real James Bond Stand Up-With Pretty Boy Brosnan’s James, James Bond “Tomorrow Never Dies” (1997) In Mind

Will The Real James Bond Stand Up-With Pretty Boy Brosnan’s James, James Bond “Tomorrow Never Dies” (1997) In Mind 

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont

[Since Leslie Dumont was only recently hired to begin to yank the overwhelming male “good old boy club” previous character of this blog from its moorings she is naturally outside the truce agreement. Although, unlike recent hire Alex Radley also outside the agreement, strange as it may seem since she was very close, was a companion for several years of Josh Breslin who also writes in this space, and who was extremely close to the previous site manager she knew the previous site manager very well. Nevertheless that manager refused to hire her full time after she had been a stringer for a few years. Fed up she went elsewhere and finally got a by-line at New York Today. I deliberately assigned her this film which she accepted with good grace to finally get a woman’s view of this skirt-chasing fool Bond, James Bond. Greg Green]    

Tomorrow Never Dies, starring Pierce Brosnan, 1997

As my old friend and now fellow writer here Phil Larkin is fond of saying –WTF. (I have to laugh every time I think about his growing up moniker Foul-mouth, if ever a name.) In the year 2018 after all we have heard in gruesome detail about the misogynies of half the powerful men in Hollywood-land and who knows who else or what else it is rather fitting to be able to review a film that comes out of a series via the pen of bloody old British Empire aficionado Ian Fleming (did he ever may “Sir”) based on the character of one of the most cravenly misogynous men in fiction or film, Bond, James Bond (sorry Greg I couldn’t resist mimicking you).

Although it probable does not matter on these formula-driven vehicles now over the twenty hump in number this one is entitled Tomorrow Never Dies which is probably not true but at least gives this beast of a film a title. Another thing that clearly does not matter is who is playing the lead, the Bond, James Bond lead from Her Royal Highness’ the Queen’s first guy handsome Johnny Sean Connery through to whoever is doing the hard-scrabble chore these days. Pretty Boy Brosnan did four in the 1990s or so this one the second. Before I get into the play-by-play I should reference this silly little pissing contest that Sandy Salmon and Alden Riley both who should know better about who the real James Bond is have been having since Greg decided to run the road with this batch of films. Between from what I understand the two finalists Connery and Brosnan.

Beyond Phil’s classic WTF who cares. More important, more important for the future sanity of this space, why did neither of them even if only by implication if they were afraid to actually come out and say it that both these guys are twerps, male chauvinist pigs in second-wave feminist speak when it comes to what Josh (through the late Peter Paul Markin who I never met but who I heard a million too many stories about when Josh and I were bedmates) calls speaking the true no matter how bitter.         

It seem crazy to build the MCP case for something that is so obvious and has been through twenty something episodes but I will soldier on. Start with the main action (after ten senseless minutes of Jimmy proving he has metal blowing up terrorist supply dumps on the Russia border to show his “cred”). Sin number one as the “real” action opens up he is bedded with some alleged Danish professor, hell Jimbo probably couldn’t spell Danish or maybe thinks it was that awful breakfast treat before duty calls to prove his “cred” as a skirt-chaser, womanizer, stud, and not a latent homosexual as various academic feminists have speculated about over the years. And the every useful male chauvinist pig of blessed memory. Not only that but he answers that duty call, dutifully, in the middle of, well, let’s just call it coitus interruptus and move on. Like whatever the goddam assignment from that female MI5 boss of his couldn’t wait since everybody in the world knows or should be expected to know that when J.B. is on the case it is open and shut. Done.          

Jimmy only adds insult to injury by bedding an old flame who just so happens to be married to the arch-enemy in this saga, a Rupert Murdoch-type guy who wants to own the universe, or else. Finally he beds a commie agent. No, not the old time Soviet nemesis, the Russians, come on now this film is dated 1997 well after after the USSR went up in smoke and shot guys like Ian Fleming, John Le Carre and Tom Clancy’s reasons for existence all to hell. This young woman a versatile, brave Chinese agent who is far too bright for him but who after the action is over starts the inevitable action post-coitus pillow talk waiting for help to arrive. Funny because I have seen maybe five of these Bond things to get a sense of what the hell is the draw and guess what they all have this same 1950s era formula of bedding women who are just waiting to go down and dirty on the satin sheets. Like the women’s liberation movement now getting a third wind never existed never change the nature of the game.  Never let women be anything but vessels for male inadequacies (I already mentioned that latent homosexual point so I don’t need to repeat it here.)          

Oh yeah, yawn, the plot. Seems this guy Murdoch, no, Carter is setting up World War III between God Save The Queen England and the commies, remember not the USSR guys they are kaput, the Red Chinese as they said in the old days. Purpose? To sell a zillion newspapers, to run the rack on the world media market, and, hell, just to prove he can do it. (I will save my WTF on these reasons until later) The set-up is to sink a HMS ship and blame it on the nefarious Chinese Reds, grab a nuclear weapon from said sunken ship and then throw it at China and let the games begin. He is also looking for regime change backing a renegade Red General who will take over to avoid that WWIII. Reason? To break into the huge Chinese media market where he had been shut out by the wily Reds. Yeah, two things yawn and now that WTF.      

Like I tried to telegraph to you the reader so maybe you will go read a recent article I did for New York Today instead of going down this vagrant trail Jimmy and the Chinese agent kick, blast, fight, motorbike chase, detonate, sky-dive, leap tall buildings at a single bound, kick again after avoiding enough spent ammunition to have kept WWI going for another ten years without a scratch or even sweat on the upper lip on the way to that pillow talk at the end. I know I am rolling that Promethean stone up some fairly steep hill but isn’t 2018 the year to start pulling some thumbs down to this sullen silliness.         

Will The Real James Bond Stand Up-Pierce Brosnan’s “Goldeneye” (1995) –A Film Review

Will The Real James Bond Stand Up-Pierce Brosnan’s “Goldeneye” (1995) –A Film Review

DVD Review

By former Associate Film Critic Alden Riley  

[I personally do not like the new regime’s,  under Greg Green’s steady guidance, policy of getting rid of  titles which were the hallmark of  the now safely departed and exiled Allan Jackson who used to run the show here. It took many years for me to get it and I resent being thrown on the dung heap and placed with everybody else with just their names on the by-line line. For now I will use my old title in the past tense until we go back to titles or Greg make a big deal out of my moniker and tries to shut it down. Then I will go back to being an Everyman like Sandy Salmon and Si Lannon have mentioned elsewhere. Alden Riley]    

Goldeneye, starring Pierce Brosnan, based on the character created by Ian Fleming although not on any of his novel series plot-lines, 1995

Sometimes writers, especially a coterie of writers of film reviews, will sometimes come up with the screwiest things to argue about in those dark getting to dawn hours when the booze has been flowing generously and the dregs of writing under deadline have passed by without comment. Especially when there are other disputes hanging in the shadows making things tense before the storm like the big blow we just went through at this site which basically came down to a battle royal against the old guard caught in their daydreams of 1960s growing up in turbulent times grandeur by the “Young Turks” whose frame of reference is later times and later connections, Reagan “trickle down” times, post-Soviet monster Clinton times, Bush-Obama boom and bust times, hip-hop, techno, social media explosion times.

That shadow battle got exploded a few months ago when I, ignorant of the hagiology of the 1960s musical scene which all the older guys carry with them like a lodestone, mentioned to then Senior Film Critic Sandy Salmon that I did not know who Janis Joplin was. Sandy, to be fair, was willing to forgive me my transgression but Pete Markin, the “boss” got wind of it and “forced” me to do a review of a Joplin bio-pic over Sandy’s head. That was one is a series of grievances we younger non-1960s devotees had built up inside.     

The way these “troubles” hit before getting resolved was the big blow-out Sandy and I did have over reviewing the myriad James Bond, you know, 007, films. Sandy has started reviewing the first four Sean Connery films, I don’t think in order which he usually doesn’t give a fuck about, Doctor No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger and Thunderball and had asked me to continue the series, at least the Sean Connery part which is all he cared about covering since for him Connery was Bond, was James Bond end of discussion.

When I mentioned that I thought Sean Connery was probably a good Bond for the 1960s although I hadn’t seen any of his films except Goldfinger where I thought he was a little over the top Sandy flipped.  I figured I was going to be assigned the litany without any recourse or appeal especially if fellow Sean Connery devotee Peter Markin got wind of my ignorance and would have probably added that I had to review Ian Fleming’s books as well. I finally was able to get Sandy to see reason, to see that a younger man whose frame of Bond reference was not Connery but the man who played 007 in the film under review Goldeneye the beautiful rather than handsome Pierce Brosnan should have an opportunity to compare the two or at least to show that different actors working in different times would have a different sensibility. Once he saw reason he mentioned that he would finish up the Sean Connery films and I could do “pretty boy” Brosnan (Sandy’s term) and we would fight out the battle when the reviews were done. Fair enough.

Now everybody knows that there will be plenty of high tech gadgetry, plenty of physically over-the-top action and plenty of sexy women either chasing or being chased by any actor who plays Bond. That goes with the territory even though this first Pierce Brosnan Bond vehicle was not created out of Fleming’s stockpile. Brosnan brings not only a “pretty boy” as against Connery’s dashingly handsome demeanor but is much more physically agile and adept than Connery ever was. And plays the role with more cheek.

Of course each film has a storyline roughly similar, some criminal operation here the nefarious Janus syndicate which wants to create a meltdown of the London stock exchange and the British economy in general. Reason: the head of the organization who is MI6 turned rogue had Cossack parents in Russia who collaborated with the Nazis against Stalin and the British after the war sent them back to Uncle Joe after falsely promising asylum. WTF. What did the parents, what did the rogue MI6 expect with Uncle Joe an ally then before Winston Churchill pulled the “iron curtain” down.

In any case to create the meltdown Janus steals a super Euro helicopter which he will use to help when he with inside help is able to use a Russian space probe to deflect some action and destroy London for good measure. Come hell or high water he will not get away with such a dastardly deed not if Bond and his fetching Russian super-technician have anything to say about it. And they do- God Save The Queen or something like that. Pierce does it in style.