Cruising with Bond. James Bond.
Here’s an article purporting to rank the James Bond films in ascending order.
I saw a few of the early films, but I haven’t seem most of them on the list. So I can’t do my own ranking. But I can say unequivocally what my favorite Bond film was, and I know exactly why.
A little background. My parents loved cruising. They usually went away for two weeks every February, allowing my father (who was a lawyer and CPA) to relax a bit before the huge crush of tax season, and to escape winter for a while. They ordinarily went with a host of other couples friends and had a great time.
But in 1962 they did something they’d never done before – and didn’t do after, either – which was to take my older brother and me on a Christmas week cruise to the Caribbean on board the Mauretania.
It was memorable for many reasons. One was of course that I’d never been on a huge ocean liner. Another was that my brother and I had a tiny inside cabin with the wonderful characteristic of being completely dark, so that we could sleep in on days when we weren’t in port. There were quite a few of those days, since the ship departed from and returned to a pier in Manhattan.
The ship was already old even then, having been launched in 1938. Unbeknownst to us, it was close to retirement and was taken out of service in 1965, just a few years after our trip. The Mauretania had very few of the extras that are standard on modern cruise ships. It only carried about 1,100 passengers at the time, much smaller than many of today’s gargantuan vessels that often carry four to five thousand people. The cabin my brother and I occupied on the Mauretania was tiny, containing bunk beds and almost nothing else. The bathroom was a dorm-type thing down the hall. Every night we weren’t in port we had to dress formally – and that meant rented tuxes for my father and brother and evening gowns for my mother and me.
There wasn’t much entertainment, and what there was didn’t interest my brother and me. Except for one thing: there was a little movie theater that seated maybe 75 people. And in that movie theater they showed movies that hadn’t been released in the US yet. The most memorable one was the very first James Bond movie, Dr. No, which had come out in the UK in October but wasn’t released in the US until 1963.
The wonderful thing about that movie was that we previously knew nothing about it. No hype at all. I think I did know that JFK supposedly liked James Bond books, but that was it. I’d never heard of Sean Connery or Ursula Andress. Never read that a Bond movie was being made.
So the whole thing was a great surprise. I well remember its slightly humorous tone, and from almost the very first frame there was that great theme music:
The movie had a Caribbean setting, too, which fit the cruise well. But what I most remember was a sense of fun, freshness, wit, and surprise. That’s why Dr. No would have to be tops on my rather short James Bond movie list.
My introduction to the Bond films were the Roger Moore movies in the mid 70s to early 80s. It was only later when I was in my 20s that I got see the Sean Connery Bond films. I don’t think any of them are truly great films, but most of Connery and Moore films are entertaining. The subsequent Bond films after Moore gave up the role in 1985 are just too dull and serious for my taste.
Never cared for James Bond films. Some useful cultural references, I suppose. George Soros as Blofeld.
thats about where I started them it may have been with golden gun if not earlier,
I think the first one I went to see was for your eyes only, which was closer to the more realistic nature of the books, then the one with the all too cute by half name,
a view to a kill was very silly in retrospect, the dalton films tried to return to that more realism, specially license to kill, which I thought was a little grim
moonraker was a lark, with roger moore hamming it up, and Lois Chiles oh my I won’t
name her character, which was also very double entendre,
speaking of real life analogs both curt jurgens stronberg and the one who plays hugo drax, were like maurice strong and klaus schwab, in their antihumanist ethos,
My first Bond movies were Dr. No and From Russia With Love in a double feature (!) at our rural Minnesota theater. Talk about a WOW for an 11 year old!
The list was great – first time I’ve seen my fave as #1 in such a list. FRWL is now the only one I’ll stop down to watch when it comes across the cable…
moonraker was rewritten to cash in on the star wars craze, as spy who love me was related in part to the jaws film, the book plot concerned a rocket program, like in the woefully underestimate man from uncle film, and the second one had a totally different plot, moonraker also had the ninja element covering the fascination with martial arts,
Dr. No was great!
I’ve seen most of the Bonds and read about half the books. I have my quibbles but the list is quite good. Goldfinger is my favorite. Sean Connery is my favorite Bond.
Daniel Craig was in the running but the final movie, “No Time to Die,” when Bond lets himself be killed, killed my interest in the Craig Bonds. It’s part of the ongoing movement to humiliate and kill off classic male heroes to make way for their girlboss replacements. (The execrable Phoebe Waller-Bridge wrote the “No Time to Die” script and was the girl boss in the last Indiana Jones who completely humiliated Harrison Ford.)
They did have a sexy black girlboss in the last Craig/Bond film being groomed to replace Craig as 007, but the rumors got out and there was too much fan backlash. They moderated that angle and that black girlboss in reshoots, but they still killed off Craig/Bond.
Hard to say where they go for the next Bond. It may be that deconstructions of classic franchises have hit Peak Woke and white male heroes may be allowed to live.
aaron taylor johnsen is the new bond, who was in the fall guy revamp, oops, the second joss whedon marvel film, he was also in that lively action piece bullet train,
I thought henry cavill who was napoleon solo in the last film I mentioned but was woefully underused in argylle, would have better, but I have no imput into these things,
Mission Impossible, imho has really stolen a march from the bond films, rogue nation did secret spy org, better than quantum and skyfall, bond hasn’t really done a nuke plot like ghost protocol or fall out in some time,
since the brosnan days the one set in turkey
I saw Dr. No, as a kid, not long after it’s American release, with my whole family at a drive-in movie theater. It definitely had a big impact. I’ve seen it several times in the last 20 years.
Goldfinger is another classic. “Do you expect me to talk? Noooo, Mr. Bond,… I expect you to die!” Gert Fröbe was terrific.
The very beginning of the video clip is interesting with the electronic oscillator sounds. The story I’ve heard is that the very first product the Hewlett Packard Corp. produced was a signal generator. Their first big customer was Hollywood, who wanted it for those very sounds that we first hear in the clip.
Crossed the Atlantic when I was eleven on the Empress of England in 1965, from Montreal to Liverpool and back again. Your post brought back memories of watching films with my brother in the small theatre, dressing for dinner, ordering from a menu, sitting for tea, and using (with no adult supervision) the penny slot machines that took Britian’s huge copper (silver-dollar sized) coins. Also the fun and formality of sitting in the writing room, using nib pens dipped in ink to write on the ship’s tissue-thin blue air-mail stationary. Spent time on the deck wrapped in the blue wool blankets placed on every deck chair, saw a iceberg near Newfoundland, with the size of the waves seen and the hugeness of the ocean still impressing me to this day! While there’s no going back to a way of life long gone (with the ship sold for scrap in 1975) it was fun to take the memory train there with this post. Thanks for that. Will also go back to Dr. No and see what that brings up!
The place where the crane bond is at the opening is at the opening to no time left to die is near where fleming had his home goldeneye in jamaica
Richard madden who played a soldier in bodyguard and a sort of spy in citadel theres a twist at the end should have also been considered there was a six year window between the dalton and brosnan films four between brosnan and craig
Thats a peculiar list for those at the bottom and middle yes die anothet day was cringe worthy with toby stephens as the bond villain (he had once been under consideration for bond) the whome satellite gimmick was silly but there were salvageable elements moonraker was never that bad walken nearly a view to a kill from bond with his scenery chewing
What’s cruising like these days?
A cruise is on my bucket list, though not near the top.
______________________________
I got to get t’movin’ baby I ain’t lyin’
My heart is beatin’ rhythm and it’s right on time
So be my guest, you got nothin’ to lose
Won’t ya let me take you on a sea cruise?
–Frankie Ford, “Sea Cruise” (1959)
https://youtu.be/i5tIHtbctFQ?t=32
My experience is not recent, 2003 or 2004 I believe. But speaking of movies on a cruise ship, my one trip was on a brand new Disney ship, cruising in the Carribean. Since Disney is in the movie business, the theater on board was large and fabulous. We watched an early release of Open Range, with Costner and Duvall. Excellent.
In the two years between the release they pared down much of the black 007 manque because she came off like a pill that doesnt mean a black bond wouldnt work but you need a personality rhey should have had more of de armas paloma as well
They set this in cuba like die another day well its supposed to be the villain wasnt compelling as compared to walz who lost something with the goldmember comparison austin and doctor evil are brothers spare me
huxley:
I’ve never been particularly interested in cruises but went on my first cruise last summer on the Mark Steyn cruise and found it quite enjoyable. It left from Trieste then to Dubrovnik, Montenegro and Santorini. As I get older I found it nice not to have to worry about arranging all the travel, hotel and restaurant planning. I got to meet many like minded people and the panel discussions Mark had were enjoyable.
He is actually planning another cruise next April leaving from Spain and stopping in Portugal. Unfortunately, given his health, I don’t know if he will make it that long.
As far as Bond films go, the first one I saw in the theater was Diamonds are Forever. For an 11 year old boy, the film was quite the revelation. I’d never seen a movie with so much action. I much prefer the Sean Connery Bond films and would rank Goldfinger at the top followed by Dr. No and From Russia with Love.
Bond is a rake, how does that work as a woman?
Took a different kind of cruise aboard the sailing ship Star Clipper…only about 170 passengers. Departed from Turkey, visited several of the Greek islands, trip ended in Athens. Highly recommended.
https://www.starclippers.com/en/our-fleet/tall-ships/star-clipper.html
Bond is a rake, how does that work as a woman?
Chases Eagles:
Super easy, barely an inconvenience!
(H/T Ryan George)
Today’s women often have amazing body counts and are proud of it.
MamaM:
I think the Mauretania had a writing room, too.
It also had a gym the size of a postage stamp. All that was in it were a few weights.
The dining room had a menu, but you could order anything you could think of if the chef agreed to make it. I remember having things I’d never had before (or, in some cases, since) such as Beef Wellington, Cherries Jubilee, and Baked Alaska.
I watch old TV shows and movies and if cruises were still like that, on ships that small, I might be interested in one. These GARGANTUAN cruise ships don’t interest me.
Maybe one of those European river cruises….
Roger Moore played James Bond too long. I saw my first James Bond film in high school, and thought Roger Moore was too old. I thought Timothy Dalton was cute; ditto Pierce Brosnan. Everyone rags on Timothy Dalton. I think Daniel Craig comes across as too cold. But then, I’ve only seen “Quantum of Solace.”
I see a lot of crap on the Internet about “the next Bond.” I recall reading something about Idris Elba, but snotty lefties were saying that racist conservatives and James Bond fans would never accept that. I think the most important thing is that Bond is British, comes across as very classy, is very attractive, and is very masculine. Idris Elba could do that. I really didn’t think that many Bond fans would object as long as he’s is Bond, James Bond.
When I’ve gone back to old ones, I really like Sean Connery. Robert Moore was okay at first but then got too campy. Never saw “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” so I can’t weigh in on George Lazenby.
I saw the disaster that was the first Casino Royale on television a long time ago. David Niven played the aging Bond. Niven was fine, but the film was a mess: it was apparently supposed to be satire. It went through five directors. Utter dreck. Except for “The Look of Love” and the theme song.
I once bought a used copy of HG Wells’ “Outline of History,” an early edition.
Its bookmark was a cruise menu for a day in 1921 with upper-crust fare. It was quaint. I’m sorry I threw it out.
Re: “Casino Royale” (1967)
Someone+Else:
That was an insane 60s spoof of a Bond film. It was a complete mess. It’s not well-regarded except as a good bad film. It isn’t even included in the list of Bond films neo linked.
It did, however, feature Burt Bacharach’s “The Look of Love.”
Interesting cruise stories.
I’ve seen most of the Connery and Moore oeuvres, some of the Brosnan and so on. Lost interest in the franchise a significant number of years ago. But as to which Bond film would work best for a cruise… hmm, not so clear to me off the bat. Did any of the Bond movies feature a significant part of the plot that was taking place on a cruise ship? Obviously, Death on the Nile with Ustinov is probably not what one wants to be watching on a cruise, but the closest thing I can think of in Bond-space is maybe that scene from, I think, The Spy Who Loved Me when Barbara Bach blew drugged smoke in Bond’s face on that little boat on the Nile. Is there anything else? Kind of ironic that I can’t bring to mind many nautical types of scenes, well, okay, I guess the Liparus from that same movie. I mean, ironic since Bond was supposedly of the rank of Cmdr in the Royal Navy.
I will admit that if I were to meet someone on a cruise who looked as Chiles did in Moonraker, it would make it difficult for me to concentrate while on board.
What wonderful stories, neo and MamaM!
Thank you for sharing your memories.
Speaking of ocean liners…the SS United States, launched in 1952, is considered to be the ultimate ocean liner; in addition to its technical excellence it is surely one of the most beautiful powered ships ever built.
Hopefully, it can be saved from imminent scrapping: although converting it to a modern cruise ship has turned out to be infeasible, it could make a great tourist centerpiece of a harbor, similar to the RMS Queen Mary and the USS New Jersey.
https://www.ssusc.org/
My Wife and I have done a fair bit of cruising. We have done River Cruises (Grand Circle, and 2 on Canels), mostly in France. One down the Danube all the way.
Sea Cruises, with various companies – Princes, Oceania ( very good – smaller ships), Cunard (large ships – very good, had to dress up then), Holland America (good), Norwegian (never again, but could have been the ship), and Silver Seas (Expensive, but very very good- booze included. Even to having what bottles you want in your stateroom). Cruising is fun, only unpack once, food usually very good, ship size determines what entertainment there is. Slots. Hope to done one next year, depending on my Wifes progress.
I saw two of the early Bond Films with Sean Connery while on cruise – compliments of the U.S. Navy. When the ship wasn’t having night ops, we would have a movie night in the ready room. A bunch of Navy pilots watching a Bond film was a lot of fun. Plenty of ribald comments and appreciation for the Bond ladies.
I saw all the movies done by Connery, Lazenby, Moore, and a couple by Brosnan. Enjoyed them all for the humor, the good special effects, and the idea of a patriotic, ant-Communist spy
Got to see Ursula Andress in person in the Philippines. John Derek, her husband at the time, was shooting a film there and they were allowed to stay at the Subic Naval Base for a few days. When they ate dinner at the O’ Club, me and some other squadron mates were there. Although she had no makeup on and her hair wasn’t done up, there was no doubt she was one beautiful woman.
While travelling in Switzerland in 1998, we made it to the chateau on the top of the Schilt horn that was featured in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)” Quite an experience to have the James Bond breakfast (Two fired eggs, two bangers, hash browns, and champagne.) in the revolving dining room and enjoying the view of the surrounding mountains.
Pictures here:
https://www.bing.com/search?q=schilthorn+switzerland&form=ANNTH1&refig=58782d3d998e467e8a0c024b823e98ea&pc=DCTS&pqasv=schilt+hormn+&pqlth=13&assgl=22&sgcn=schilthorn+switzerland&sgtpv=SC&swbcn=10&smvpcn=0&cvid=58782d3d998e467e8a0c024b823e98ea&clckatsg=1&hsmssg=0
From 2006 until 2020, we cruised several times. We prefer Holland America – small ships, reliably good beds, well done tours, and a choice of the more formal dining room or the less formal cafeteria. It helps that the layout is the same on all their ships. Learn where everything is, and you’re set. It’s like coming home to a familiar place on each new cruise.
My favorite cruise was the 30-day, round-trip Tahiti cruise from San Diego. Off the beaten track, and a wonderful trip to learn all about Captain Cook’s explorations of the Pacific.
Second favorite: The Cape Horn cruise from Buenos Aires to Valparaiso. Learn about Magellan and the sailors who braved Cape Horn in the days before the Panama Canal was built.
At a certain age, cruising allows you to continue to explore the world with less packing and unpacking.
That’s a wonderfully written little essay, Neo. Thank you.
Great cruise stories, everyone!
Gonna bump that one up on my bucket list.
JFK was reading one of Fleming’s best works, “From Russia With Love”. The movie version had lasting key characters like Money Penny and the gadget master “Q” (short form of Quarter Master). It had double the budget of “Dr. No”, and it shows on the screen, such as more travel assignments to exotic location scenes.
But “Goldfinger”, the third film, became iconic for the series, and epic because it has had lasting influence, not just on spy films, but the entire action genre, straight into recent decade’s of Super Hero comic book derived films.
That eminence comes down to the Five Act story-telling structure, which announces and perpetuates a mythic ‘continuing story” arc, which slows for sequels and prequels to be created and inserted into the lead character’s timeline.
As such, the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan employs the Bond plot as an external paradigmatic example of family myth making, which is client’s real or underlying (internalised)/subject for his or her psychic malady. In dysfunctional family systems, this myth becomes circular and self-perpetuating. And unless arrested and owned, can remain to perpetuate toxic relationships.
All of this convinced me to start a book entitled “James Bond in History”, in order to explore the past events either directly or sotto voce implied in this, the longest and most profitable film series in history.
I’ve always been rather fond of Casino Royale.
But then, I’ve also always been quite fond of David Niven.
And Bacharach’s music is also among my favorites.
Who cared in 1967 how good the plot was?
The cast list, which I vaguely recalled, makes it clear that this is a “name dropper” flick, such that everybody in the world has at least ONE of their favorite actors in it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casino_Royale_(1967_film)
Congratulations Neo; another episode in a Rich life I could only wish I could have a fraction of. God even discussions of cruises feels like an event from “the before times”.
I have always been a Bond fan, both films and books. The latter are sadly overlooked, though I will be the first to admit they are of massively uneven quality. I’ve liked almost every Bond, even if Brosnan is my favorite followed by Connery and a mixture between Dalton and Lazenby. I even enjoyed Niven’s spin. I was leery about it Craig but he won me over with CR only to then drop the ball and lose me with every other movie he made. I still rankle and wonder what the hell people see in Skyfall when to me it just reeks as a nakedly inferior version of Goldeneye (which admittedly is probably my favorite). I admit I am a gamer and so much of how I drink in the franchise is from games (many of which are good or great), but even considering that. I will never forgive them for what they did to Dame Dench’s M.
It irritates me how many people seem to think they are above Bond and now seem bent on denigrating or destroying the entire series and brand. Some examination or the like can be useful (like M’s “misogynist dinosaur” monologue, back before those two words would instinctively make me cringe for fear of the Woke), but not without love or affection.
Craig frankly should’ve had the honesty to bow out after QoS at the latest. And frankly Blofeld makes me angry at how he was misused.
It is worth remembering that Fleming was a genuine spook and he wrote with knowledge of that. And while some of his writings have not aged well (I have been one of the heretics that never had Goldfinger as one of their favorites, though it has grown on me, but the movie adaptation was superb work that saved what was an absolutely godawful, unworkable book from oblivion), he deserves respect for the knowledge. And as a side effect I kind of regret the existence of SPECTRE which was clearly a legal dodge to avoid addressing Soviet state terrorism honestly, as gets covered (heavy handedly as such) with the books’ version of SMERSH.
Pace Someone+Else, I do think Elba could pull off a Bond to some degree, but I feel it’d be much better if he were a separate Double O agent in a spin off or the like, which’s also allow a good amount more leeway. But above all he has to respect the franchise and character, which Craig so obviously did not.
I remember seeing that movie in my remote small town in upper East Tennessee when I was about 14 years old. What I recall about that excellent movie was the anti-hero character of James Bond when he sets a trap for a hired assassin. The assassin creeps into his bungalow bedroom and empties his revolver into a pile of sheets and pillows that Bond had set up… after questioning the assassin about who hired him, the assassin leaps for his revolver and you hear the empty snaps of the hammer falling on empty casings.
Bond casually says, “That is a Smith & Wesson, and you’ve had your six.” And he calmly shoots the assassin in cold blood. I had never seen that kind of calculated killing in a movie before, and that was the era of Film Noir!
I came away from the movie with a different outlook on the world.
David Foster,
My in-laws emigrated to the U.S. on the United States. We have several mementos from the ship, as while as photos.
J.J.: the movie with John Derek and Ursula Andress was “Once Before I Die”. Filmed in the Philippines in 1964-1965, released in 1966. I saw it on TV as a kid. IrisOtter might be interested in it. It’s set in the Philippines in December 1941 during the Japanese invasion and features Andress in tight-fitting riding kit (jodhpurs, open-necked shirt etc.).
Bond: I saw that list and agreed with the placement of “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” at No. 3. I screened that movie for our movie night group several years ago. It’s held up surprisingly well and Lazenby wasn’t at all bad. On Bonds-Who-Weren’t, one of the names in the running back in the 1960s-1970s was Czech-born actor Frederick Stafford (birth name: Friedrich Strobel von Stein). A multilingual chemist, athlete, and former pharmaceutical industry executive, Stafford would have made a good Bond. He certainly looked the part and he had the genuine Mitteleuropäisch background (there are allusions throughout the Bond books to Bond’s upbringing and travels in interwar Europe, probably based on Fleming’s own experiences). Stafford appeared in eurospy movies and in Hitchcock’s “Topaz” (1970–another underrated movie), where he played a French intelligence officer in Cuba.
Neo and MamaM: thanks for those evocative descriptions of a vanished world. They made me look up the Mauretania and another Cunard ship, the Caronia. It sounds like Neo and her family caught the Mauretania at the end of her (the ship’s) career. Even more poignant.
This is from the link David Foster posted:
I knew of the dispute, but did not know the conservators had run out of legal challenges regarding the Philadelphia mooring. If it ends up getting scrapped I’d like to take my wife to see it beforehand. Maybe a trip to Philly in the next few months for cheesesteak and Ikea meatballs…
Do the meatballs come in a box and require assembly?
T J:
Fun fact: Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” is often considered the unofficial “first” James Bond film, due to its theme, pacing, in jokes and of course, Cary Grant. Ian Fleming wanted Cary Grant to play Bond, but he wasn’t available, so they got Sean Connery instead.
And be sure to check out “From Russia With Love”: Tatiana Romanov shares the name and description of Grand Duchess Tatiana Romanov, who was shot to death along with the rest of the Russian Imperial Family in 1918. I’m sure Ian Fleming based that particular “Bond Girl” on her.
this was the film lazenby followed up with,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5J15nMG1u4 he had really gotten into the bohemian swing of things, carnaby street and all that, had he not, diamonds are forever was slated to be more of a revenge flick with bond pursuing blofeld to avenge tracy’s death, instead of the lark with the lasers the fake moon landings, and the nod to howard hughes absence from his company, as such it would have resembled quantum of solace, where craig racks up the body count, including gemma arterton, to make up for vesper lynds death, vesper lynd was largely based on several real life persons including a dead SOE agent Christine Grenville, and something of an acquaintance in his school years Muriel something to other, who died in a bombing raid,
Fleming was more a desk man, than a field operative, he was liason to Naval Intelligence who M was based on, some of the missions he commissioned are the ones in West Africa, and later France, in the Ministry of Ungentlemanly warfare, where Henry Cavill was given too small a role, he also did a behind the lines mission to stop the German nuclear bond, when he returned to England, he was a stringer for the times where he generated much of his material, like the research behind diamonds, letters from the period, he started writing in part to present another face in the midst of the beginnning of the Cambridge Spy revelations, they are mentioned in passing in her majesty’s secret service,also as a fun lark, now probably he had his hands full with the former miss rothermere who was his new wife,
yes james mason and martin landau are supposed to be an eastern european spy syndicate with eva marie saint, George Kaplan is supposed to be a phantom, a little like the corpse in operation mince meat, the deception operation against the German, Charade has certain bond elements, as the mcguffin is the stolen gold shipment, as they chase Audrey Hepburn through paris, Grant’s character goes by a different name, than he tells hepburn, who is the real villain of the story, is not who you would expect,
the difference is grant’s character in the first film is kind of an everyman who stumbles into the plot, unlike john forsyth’s name escapes me, in hitchcock’s topaz, where he plays a character not like james angleton who had ties to dissident French agents like Vosjoli
As is probably true of many or most who saw the early Bond films in our teens, Sean Connery is for me the only really genuine article. But having said that, I think Idris Elba could totally bring it off. And I think only genuine racists would complain. The guy really has charisma on screen.
Likewise, Ursula Andress is *the* Bond girl. Dang, she was electrifying to a fourteen-year-old boy.
I’ve never been an enthusiast for the series, and have probably not seen even half of them. So I have to ask: are y’all saying that Bond was killed in the last installment? Killed as in known to be dead, not to be plausibly brought back by some hand-waving about a secret substitution of corpses or something of that sort? If so, even as a non-fan, I mourn, slightly, the destruction of another bit of the Before Times.
Huibert, thanks for the info about Derek’s film in the PI. I don’t think I ever saw it. If it had Ursula in it, I think I would have remembered it. 🙂
Their presence at Subic Bay created a buzz among the ranks, but mainly because, at that time, John Derek was a pretty well-known actor and a handsome devil.
The scuttlebutt was that he had finally found a woman who was better looking than him. To see this pair in person was not to be missed. At the time I saw them in the PI, we all had seen “Dr. No” and were very curious to see Ursula in person.
I just read Derk’s biography.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Derek
It appears that he hated acting and had a very tumultuous love life. Four wives, and three of them stunningly beautiful actresses. Well, that’s not all bad. 🙂
…are y’all saying that Bond was killed in the last installment? Killed as in known to be dead, not to be plausibly brought back by some hand-waving about a secret substitution of corpses or something of that sort?
He’s dead, Mac.
–“No Time to Die (2021) – The End of James Bond Scene (10/10)”
https://youtu.be/WH1AtjCO_20?t=144
My bet is a complete reboot. Which is not too much of a reach. Essentially the Daniel Craig Bonds were a reboot too.
Reboots of reboots are tight!
part of phoebe waller bridges demolition, although not as severe as Indiana Jones, long story short, he had nanobites in his system, that would kill any of his relatives, in this case his daughter, he also has to sacrifice himself to make sure the enemy base is totally destroyed, so the torch will be passed off to aaron taylor johnson, who really doesn’t embody bond in any way, madden cavill in an earlier outing perhaps clive owen, would have worked,
moore was closest to the chronology of bond, he was supposed to be have been around 40 at the time of dr no, in his 60s, by his last outing, I imagine, lazenby woul have been considerably younger until dalton and brosnan, I think Elba would also do a Bond more like his Luther character
Re: Bond replacement
Any British AAA alpha male who can pull off “Bond, James Bond” will do.
the problem is good writers and directors, phoebe waller bridge, gah and cary fukunaga, nearly as terrible, are not it, neal purvis martin campbell, know how to write and direct stories, you wipe out all of spectre in one blow, you kill off a side kick for the first two films, as I recall who is African American, you make the head of MI-6 a villain or a fool in trusting the Russian scientist, who they borrowed from one of the fast and furious stand alones,
if not for barbenheimer, the last mission impossible film would have done much better,
because of the sets the stunts et al, one might argue the big mcguffin, being AI was not sufficiently menacing, a little gimmicky it can erase certain images from video surveillances, but esai morales made up for it, they retcon the origin of ethan hunt, maybe they’ll explain it next year
Miguel: “…unlike john forsyth’s name escapes me, in hitchcock’s topaz, where he plays a character not like james angleton who had ties to dissident French agents like Vosjoli”
Interesting thing about the casting in “Topaz”. John Forsythe and Roscoe Lee Brown were practically the only American actors in the lineup. Forsythe played “Michael Nordstrom” (the CIA counterintelligence debriefer at the safe house in the Virginia countryside) and Brown played “Philippe Dubois” (the Harlem flower shop owner who is actually one of Frederick Stafford’s/de Vosjoli’s Caribbean agents). The rest of the actors were Czech-Australian (Stafford), Swedish (Per-Axel Arosenius and Tina Hedström, as the Soviet defectors who get the action started), French (Claude Jade, Michel Subor, Michel Piccoli, and Philippe Noiret), Dutch (John van Dreelen), German (Karin Dor), and Canadian (John Vernon, as the Fidel Castro figure).
J.J.: “Once Before I Die” isn’t a great movie but it’s an enjoyable piece of 1960s drama. And of course Ursula. Scuttlebutt: funny.
More movie trivia involving the Philippines, probably before your time there. John Wayne had lunch with a Marine detachment on Corregidor while filming “The Barbarian and the Geisha” in Japan in 1958. There’s a very poor-quality photo of Wayne in the mess hall with a t-shirted Marine on KP duty slouching in a doorway in the background:
https://corregidor.proboards.com/thread/861/corregidor-trivia
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/qtqmjr/john_wayne_center_facing_camera_visiting_a_group/
The KP guy? Lee Harvey Oswald. IIRC, Edward Jay Epstein reproduced this photo in his book “Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald” (1978).
Well, that’s sad, but then maybe it was time to retire the whole thing. But in that case a reboot would just be kind of an insult, especially considering what woke filmmakers are doing to other “franchises”: kill it, spit on its grave, then give its inheritance to someone who hates it. I guess anyone here who’s remotely interested in Star Wars has heard of the current abomination.
” Elba would also do a Bond more like his Luther character” Yeah, that’s what I was thinking of. That’s a pretty impressive portrayal, I think. Certainly alpha enough, but I suppose an intense, moody, troubled Bond might not be what fans want.
I’ve seen all of them. I recall wanting to see You Only Live Twice as an 8yo kid in Manhattan while visiting with my father, who lived there at the time. It didn’t happen, so I think the first Bond film I saw in the theater was likely to have been Diamonds are Forever, some years later. I likely saw several of the earlier films on TV before then.
Bonds, in order:
Sean Connery
Pierce Brosnan
Daniel Craig
Roger Moore
George Lazenby
Timothy Dalton
Dalton is probably the best actor of all of them, but, as Bond, he’s much too… smarmy is the only word that comes to mind. He just never ever sold himself well as Bond. He did not have that “alpha male I’m in charge here” feel
Moore’s problem is that he felt more like a businessman than as an agent. The fact that he smoked cigars all the time also did that. While Bond would smoke cigars, and could probably name the factory it was rolled at, they would not be his preferred smoke. It is amusing, in some ways, that, as I understand, he was desired for Bond before Connery, but was already involved in The Saint, and Bond wasn’t a “sure thing” back when it first was being made. His movies were generally pretty weak, being mostly about the spectacle and very little about the story. The worst, almost certainly, was Moonraker, which had “SuperBond”, who could fly a space shuttle… of course. :-/ It has the absolute poorest, most unlikely of plots of all the episodes. All action, not much in the way of story. Interestingly, the original end credits for The Spy Who Loved Me were in error… They said “James Bond Will Return in The Friend Who Came To Dinner” and the actual subsequent film was Moonraker. I recall a friend of mine who was with me to see the film found it hard to believe that would be made into a movie, as it is supposedly a short story which is really nothing but talking heads sitting down for a meal… not obvious spectacle-type source for Bond Fodder, especially in the Moore era.
Craig did ok, and he was Bond for one of the best, if not THE best, Bond film, in Skyfall, as well as one of the worst, in Spectre. His Casino Royale was pretty well done, too. And was one of the first films to incorporate parkour as a part of its action sequences. It was far more serious than the 1960s spoof (which was a really fun movie, with a lot of talented actors though it was considered a flop at the time. I think it’s considered a cult classic these days).
Brosnan was really damned good — if there was anyone who was obviously naturally suited for the role, it was him. He got thoroughly screwed over by the producers of Remington Steele — he’d pretty much been selected by the Bond people to be the next Bond, and the RS show was not being renewed… when the news of him being Bond came out, they picked RS back up, and his contract forced him to return… so the Bond people dropped him. And then RS was dropped after a half-season. SMH. Luckily, Dalton, who was the eventual alternative choice, did not go over well, and so Brosnan got to pick up the role and go with it, and did a great job. But he might have made 2 or 3 more Bond pictures if not for the bastards who made RS.
Then there is Connery. The man obviously had the benefit of being the first significant Bond (There was a live 1954 adaptation of Casino Royale starring Barry Nelson (interestingly, it flipped the nationalities of Bond and Leiter — Bond was an American and Leiter was the Brit… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casino_Royale_(Climax!) if interested/curious), but it is hard to see anyone else as Bond in comparison to him. I’d always hoped that some bright boy who had access to those who owned the IP would convince them to do a followup series with an older Bond (Connery) who trained and shepherded new agents, allowing the young people to do the dirty work, while Connery was the M/Q/Brain of the role — kind of like what they did with Patrick McNee as Steed in The New Avengers… Connery did a spectacular job for a 60s action star, and he just ooozed that needful suave Alpha Male charm that the role utterly demands, better than anyone else, including Brosnan. Brosnan, it feels a little bit like an overlay, even though he does it perfectly. Connery, it feels like it’s HIM, even though, from everything else he did, you know it is at least somewhat an affectation for the actor he was. He did, clearly, have a lot of that quality/nature himself.
I thought Craig came across as too grim, rumor has it he didn’t enjoy the role, he didn’t mind the paycheck, since connery you have to have a light side, to what is grim work, Casino Royale was good, Quantum sufffered from a lack of a script,
so they had to do much exposition dumps and some bewildering choices of sets, there was also the presence of David Harbour, I didn’t know who he was then, but he does a real bad ugly American turn, justifying Greene’s coup in Bolivia, as Leiter’s supervisor
Skyfall picked up some of the momentum, the end for M, was a little depressing as she had been the boss since 1995, Bardem’s Silva was like Beans Trevelyan, a betrayed agent who had gone rogue, there are also elements of the Tomlinson affair, he was the one who turned on the Brits, and compromised some 300 agents including Christopher Steele, another exemplar of what is known as British intelligence
There is a story that fits your timeline, Neo, about Sean Connery encountering Carly Simon and her sister on a transatlantic cruise. At that time Carly and her sister performed together as the Simon Sisters.
Sean proposed a Simon Sandwich, in which both sisters claimed to have no interest at all. Carly was quite upset to later discover that her sister had cheerfully acceded to the open-faced version. Some said it was the reason they split as a performing act, but both were quite friendly to each other in later years, so perhaps it was brief anger.
As to the Best Bond Films, ranked — without looking at the ranking at Neo’s link, and, making understandable adjustments for the State of the Art — you cannot realistically expect the same degree of stuntwork in a 60s film compared to a 2000s film, nor can you expect the FX to match, nor the production quality to be the same.
In every way, media, both TV and Film, have made massive improvements in almost every aspect of “How To Make TV Shows and Films” in the intervening 60 years, with key breakpoints in overall quality in the 1980s for film and the 1990s for TV.
From Best to Worst:
=======================
Skyfall
Goldfinger
Diamonds Are Forever
You Only Live Twice
Goldeneye
Thunderball
Die Another Day
From Russia With Love
The Man With The Golden Gun
Never Say Never
Dr. No
The World Is Not Enough
Tomorrow Never Dies
Casino Royale (2006)
For Your Eyes Only
The Living Daylights
Quantum of Solace
Licence to Kill
The Spy Who Loved Me
A View to a Kill
Octopussy
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
No Time to Die
Live and Let Die
Moonraker
Spectre
=======================
Spectre ranks as worse than Moonraker only because, with improved production values and the same director and screenwriters, pretty much, as they had for Skyfall, it just sucked as it felt utterly like a poorer, and inexcusably, far less competent Bond, to me. It all felt wrong, somehow, and just did not work for me (YMMV).
Moonraker is undoubtedly the worse film in almost every way, but Spectre was such a massive disappointment as a followup to Skyfall.
You will note, of course, that I mostly rank Connery and Brosnan Bonds high, because I think they most closely capture the quality that makes “Bond be Bond”. There is no question the more modern pics, especially the Brosnan and Craig ones, are slicker, better produced, and better edited by modern standards. AND their stunts are more complex, and the various FX and props are much more well done. Also, the visual pacing of films done before 1980 and after 1990 are radically different (with a gradual adjustment occurring during the 1980s) which can have a distinct effect on watching them, esp. if you haven’t watched enough older films to recognize and have cultivated the patience needed for older movies with the slower visual pace.
}}} Lois Chiles oh my I won’t name her character, which was also very double entendre,
Well, anyone familiar with the history of Bond films, they should be readily aware of the naming double-entendres going by to some of the earliest.
The Honor Blackman character in 1964’s Goldfinger was named, after all, “Pussy Galore”.
This also worked into the 1967 Spoof Casino Royale, in which Jacqueline Bisset, in one of her earliest roles, plays “Miss Giovanna Goodthighs”.
😛
Moonraker was a fun film, I could go all ryan george, nitpicking but I’m not gonna,
in the anthony horowitz novels, they bring back honor blackmans’s character
to tackle a korean millionaire who has a dr no type plot, to sabotage the space program, remember Goldfinger were set in the late 50s, Jeffrey Deaver had a more modern bond with derring do in South Africa and Dubai among other places,
The real issue with the entire grlboss stuff is that they don’t NEED to kill off or replace a character — particularly with something like Bond… Just use a Bond film to introduce a 006 character or someone who is female — and play it much like they did with Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh) in Tomorrow Never Dies. Equal in skill, they score points on each other, they clash, but learn to respect one another.
Then spin off the female to make a female “00x” film. People would go to see it if it wasn’t written as an emasculating woke beyotch like Phoebe Waller Bridge was in Indy 5. I wouldn’t care if she played it more as female, using female talents and natural qualities as much as being kickass. The female 00x doesn’t need to be James Bond with breasts, just an interesting and entertaining female agent. They have to exist out there, there are possibly just as many female field agents as male field agents. So it should be possible to find enough inspiration for their activities in real world history to make an interesting story or so out of it, and see if it can capture attention to justify a longer series.
But part of the whole point of Woke is to destroy “the Patriarchy”, which is and has always been a feminist boogie man — it never truly existed in the last 100 years, and, while there have certainly been times when there was a great deal of sexism, it usually was an ebb and flow over time in that time frame. It last peaked in the 1950s, however, and did not last for long after. By the late 60s it was already strongly on the wane and by 1980 it was defacto history. Whatever residual “sexism” was more strongly associated with differences between male and female choices far more than any overtly sexist attitudes.
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P.S., I find it almost hilarious that the Yahoo listing ranks most films in almost the exact opposite order than I do, with some exceptions. They clearly hated the Brosnan films, and liked Roger Moore a hell of a lot better than I did. But even there, they rank those “wrong”. Putting “A View To A Kill”, which is one of the worst Bonds, only saved by having Walken doing his usual over the top villain, and one of the best “sidekick villains” ever in Grace Jones, far above The Man w/The Golden Gun, which, in addition to being one of the more grounded Moore Bonds, also has the excellent Christopher Lee as his opponent? Sorry, that dog don’t hunt.
By the way, the best “Bond” movie of recent eras, other than Skyfall, was, actually, Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Secret Service, the original Kingsmen film ;-).
The other day, I said:
And not one of you reminded me of the yacht in Thunderball?! I’ll assume you all maintained silence to spare my feelings. 🙂 I suppose that one would have to be the primary choice for a cruise-oriented Bond screening.
As to cruises as such, have any of you taken a Star Clippers outing? Those seem like they could have some nice adventures on sailing ships.
The ending was a little grand guignol but the villain was a black tech mogul with schwabs address conferring with an open cabal of subordinates
Also never say never again the nabila was lhashoggi then trumps now prince talal that was largos yacht
I was never that into Bond. It’s hard to remember now, but back in the Bond era John LeCarre’s work was a breath of fresh air (or a breath of stale air that was still refreshing). Other spy films from the Sixties, ones with Michael Cane or Laurence Harvey for example, are more realistic and have been largely ignored and forgotten. I will concede that Sean Connery’s Bond films are better than Dean Martin’s Matt Helm films or James Coburn’s Flint movies.
I didn’t much like Kingsman. BTW, Matthew Vaughn grew up thinking that his father was Robert Vaughn, the Man From U.N.C.L.E. He wasn’t, but as the twig is bent, so grows the tree.
Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came In from the Cold is a great book from which a great movie was made. Both are artistically in another category altogether from the Bond stuff. Bond is basically escapist fun. LeCarre is all too realistic tragedy.
Tenet was christopher noland version of a bond john david washington was kind of a black bond brannaugh was kind of a bond villain a little more subtle then he played in ghost protocol sets from kiev to lake como to india to russia yes the time travel tripped things up
Theres a dialogue in kingsman where both harry and valentine are knowingly talking about bond films whose deceiving who the world is not about nice endings where the hero gets away ‘its not that kind of movie’
The scene in the westboro type church is gratuitous its this english contempt for christians might have been the source material as well from mark millar
Abraxas: “Other spy films from the Sixties, ones with Michael Cane or Laurence Harvey for example, are more realistic and have been largely ignored and forgotten.”
I watched two of the Len Deighton-based ones featuring Michael Caine five years or so ago: The Ipcress File and Funeral in Berlin. I thought the former was so-so, the latter very good. I watched them on either Netflix or Amazon. Worth a look if you can get them.
Long list of comments for a summer’s day and night! For those who don’t have Bond film in their streaming subscription service, I have a workaround for you.
Internet Archive.org (previously “The Wayback Machine”) has perhaps all of these Bond titles for streaming or download.
Bond on the Criterion Collection and laserdisc digital media — as well as lower 720p.
Just use your browser “archive.org” and the title and see what you get.
I’ve noticed that some versions have foreign language subtitles, some are dubbed. But there is a wide selection.
For example, when YouTube doesn’t have an old Hitchcock film or 70s TV series like Colombo), I can often find it at archive.org. Same with “Bond — James Bond.”
Re: Le Carré / Deighton spy movies
I love the Bond franchise, especially the Connery Bonds, but the early John le Carré and Len Deighton spy novels turned films, i.e. “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold,” “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” “Smiley’s People” (Le Carré) and “The Ipcress File”, “Funeral in Berlin” (Deighton) are ones I have watched many more times than the Bonds.
IMO, the BBC Smiley TV series, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” (1979) and “Smiley’s People,” (1982) with Alec Guinness are unequaled in the spy genre. Guinness was so masterful that le Carré felt Guinness had stolen his most memorable character.
Well … Alec Guinness. 🙂
The much ballyhooed “Tinker, Tailor…” (2011) was OK (though embarrassing for shoehorning in gay characters which didn’t exist in the book) and Gary Oldman was great, but it wasn’t a patch on the Guinness BBC version.
BTW, John le Carré translated from the French means “John the Square” — which was David Cornwell’s pseudonym. Cornwell claims he doesn’t know how he came up with it. I rather suspect it was his counter reaction to the then popular Beat writers.
Live, laugh, love and watch “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” with Alec Guinness.
There were pretty much four authors who wrote “Spy vs. Spy” novels after WWII. Ian Fleming wrote the James Bond novels (total of 12 novels and two collections of short stories between 1953 and 1964), Donald Hamilton wrote the Matt Helm series (23 novels between 1960 and 1993), John LeCarre wrote somewhere around 14 novels between 1961-2010 that dealt mostly with spying, and Adam Hall wrote 18 Quiller spy vs. spy novels between 1965-1996.
A couple quotes from Wiki “The noted critic Anthony Boucher wrote: ‘Donald Hamilton has brought to the spy novel the authentic hard realism of Dashiell Hammett; and his stories are as compelling, and probably as close to the sordid truth of espionage, as any now being told’”. Another quote from Wiki: “Most of le Carré’s books are spy stories set during the Cold War (1945–91) and portray British Intelligence agents as unheroic political functionaries, aware of the moral ambiguity of their work and engaged more in psychological than physical drama.” Regarding the Quiller novels, Wiki says: “Quiller’s narration of the tradecraft he routinely employs is one of the defining elements of the novels. There are detailed descriptions of “shadowing,” the art of following targets and evading surveillance. He is almost always reluctant to take on a mission and he regularly tells the reader all Bureau operatives have an option to refuse. Manipulation to get him to agree to the mission is usually necessary…In contrast to the glamorous lifestyles depicted in the James Bond canon, Quiller’s operational locations are almost always unfriendly (Warsaw in winter, the Sahara under the blazing sun, etc.). He is aware his expenses will be scrutinized minutely. Most of the books feature an extended, detailed scene of hand-to-hand combat. His missions are organized under the control of a director in the field, and a control operating from the bureau in London. Several of these characters recur in the books; some are heartily disliked by Quiller, and he comments on how much he doesn’t want to work with them.”
Many of their novels were made into movies. While I’ve read all the James Bond and Matt Helm books, as well as most of the John leCarre novels and a couple of the Quiller books (and enjoyed them all), I think I’ve only seen maybe one James Bond movie and none of the Matt Helm movies. I didn’t consider them serious attempts to do justice to the genre and were somewhat silly. I did see The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy and thought they were good. I also saw The Quiller Memorandum and it was OK.
I guess I’m more of a reader.
Mark Eby:
Nice summing up. But one can’t ignore Len Deighton, best known for the Harry Palmer books played by Michael Caine. Deighton wrote spy novels, military novels, military histories, histories and even cookbooks.
In the 80s/90s he wrote a trilogy of trilogies (nine books) of intricately plotted spy novels. When I was in London in 1996, i saw advertisements for the ninth book, “Charity”, of the Faith, Hope and Charity trilogy advertised everywhere in the subway stations. I mean to reread the nine eventually.
His “SS-GB,” a Nazi-won-WW2 alternative history, was made into a decent TV series (2017).
The man was a machine. Deighton’s research was well-regarded as were his books. He didn’t really catch on in America. He’s still alive at 95, though retired from writing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Len_Deighton_bibliography
Saw my first Bond film in Albuquerque New Mexico, sometime between December 29 and 31 1964. I was morning sick pregnant and we were driving from Ohio to So. Cal. According to release dates it should have been Goldfinger. But, then again, in those days it took a few months for new releases to get to out of the way small towns–could have been From Russia With Love. We were so young and this was the most “amazing” film we had ever seen!
The real issue with the entire grlboss stuff is that they don’t NEED to kill off or replace a character…
But part of the whole point of Woke is to destroy “the Patriarchy”…
ObloodyHell:
Got it in one.
The money plan was to lose some toxic male customers and gain many more woke women, BIPOCs and LGBTQ+s worldwide to replace them.
However, the strategy keeps failing. Turns out that spy/thriller/action films are guy brands. Their audiences are always predominantly male. Even with girlboss movies, the audience is still mostly male. Interestingly, switching to girlboss loses even more female customers.
But they ain’t giving up yet! Patriarchy is evil. Even if they lose money, it’s still the Right Thing to Do.
I see Brosnan cited by OBloodyHell as the second best Bond actor. And he’ll find much agreement about that, despite Craig’s alpha intensity cranking.
If you haven’t seen his “November Man” comeback picture from over a decade ago — which didn’t do too well, even though he invested his own money in the production — it is very underrated. In fact, it’s quite good as a spy film, and exploits a Putin like Russian villain or two, with bad roots in Chechen war genocide, a too much neglected plot device in spy pics back then.
The book’s author was a Chicago reporter, Bill Something, and this is the only one of his many admired novels to be turned into film. The reading is good, this film is, too
“The November Man” is also available at archive.org.
But back to ranking Bond films. When I was young and a teen, gadgets and deception plots and hand-concept (nukes, depopulating diseases) and then high-tech interested me most in Bond films.
As I got older, however, I preferred romance and connection over simple ‘women in jeopardy’ rescue story telling, or the distraction of tech and gadgets.
Thus, I would raise these 5 Bond films in order higher than OBloodyHell does:
The World Is Not Enough
Tomorrow Never Dies
Casino Royale (2006)
For Your Eyes Only
The Living Daylights
The latter Moore — and the first Dalton films — are the two meatier light romantic comedies that Moore specialised in doing. And either you bought in or you don’t.
Back to another one I’d move up a lot is “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.””Like “Casino Royale”, these are genuine Spy Romances with wonderful adventures mixed. And in its “damaged goods” way, so is Brosnan’s “The World is Not Enough.” My favorite Brosnan Bond film.
The trouble comes in what in the top ten I would demote from OBloodyHell’s list! But rather than dwell on that conundrum, let’s turn to more Bond dogs I dislike.
But before I close with that, let’s admit the the first two-thirds of “Die Another Day” is a solid Bond adventure tale. It’s the final third with the surfing of a sun beam melting glacier that’s risible and over the top silly.
If I recall correctly, that director did achieve his set goal of hat tipping gestures from the entire Bond oeuvre, too (brought on by some commemorative anniversary celebration). Like Hallie Berry emerging from the sea to a beach like Ursula Andress in “Dr No.” Very clever!
And two-thirds of a solid Bond makes it better than any average Bond film, overall. But then, what’s an average Bond pic? “Octopussy”, methinks.
The three dogs I would put at the bottom of the list along with Spectre are “License to Kill” and “Quantum of [SUCK] Solace.” (I notice scenes from Spectre up on YT from it without the yellowish sepia tone that mars almost that entire film — so much better without that!) Both employ the then fashionable shaky cam shooting technique to intensify the action scenes. And the latter uses super fast editing to achieve this audience effect. The problem then becomes “Which audience?”
I find this style painful and disorienting. “License” also suffers from EXTREMELY LOUD soundtracking throughout, which, fortunately, no other Bond film has repeated.
Its other flaw is the motivation on Bond’s part. His CIA pal Felix is murdered by the LatAm drug Cartel. Nobody will do anything about it. Thus, Bond goes on a guerrilla war style rampage to take out the evil Cartel.
Plausible? Just as plausible and silly as later Rambo pics! Timothy Dalton is no Sylvester Stallone or “Rocky”. It’s beneath Bond to pretend he is. And therefore it makes no sense. I’ve checked out of “License” after the first third,
There are similar problems in “Quantum of Suck”, as its detractors have taken to call it. One faux paux is how Bond disposes of the lifeless body of his friend, a late great Italian actor and a romantic older character from “Casino”, as well as Bond’s treasured friend, simply dumped into a trash dumpster. This is beneath our Bond, the hero.
While too much can be made of this, as some do, QofS has worse problems. The early sequence at a concert in Austria starts things off well and the mission premise of going after the bankers of terrorists is set up. But thereafter the exposition is fragmented, and the action sequences are all super duper closeups. Scenes don’t develop or choreograph. Instead, they just happen!
I watched it in a theater with a group of friends. “Well, WHAT was THAT?” I blurted out loud to general agreement. Sucks, indeed. How forgettable — or I wanted to forget it! I felt insulted by Q of Suck.
The lesson the producers’ learned was to never again hire a prize winning arty Swiss director who has no feel or reverence for Bond’s mythos.
Both of these films also violate Terrence Young’s strong taste: the director of founding Bond films “Dr No” and “From Russia Wth Love” hated closeups in action scenes. He used full scene filming except for inserts on key action for conveying threat-motive and reaction suspense in the audience. Winning techniques.
Overuse of closeups just kills viewer involvement in caring about action. I checked out of both films early, as a consequence.
The one demographic that enjoyed Quantum of Suck turns out to have been young video gamers, teens and older raised on fast and extreme editing.
In fact, one’s grasp of the flow of the story, including mine, improved after each repeat viewing. Why? One can anticipate action event and tie together cut up fast segments, thus making the jumble more coherent, ultimately.
But while ‘art for arts sake’ can appeal to the specialised connoisseur well enough, where does that leave the mass audience? She or he hasn’t enough patience to put up with all that. Concentration over two and an half hours is too stressing. And the emotional self-abuse of puzzling out event sequence after sequence from a blizzard of jigsaw images is too trying.
Thus, endeth my disagreements with OBloodyHell’s superior Best Bond film listing! Thank you, man.
huxley: 100% agreement about the Alec Guinness/Smiley series. Among a fairly small number of dramatizations of novels that do justice to the novels. Single 2-3 hour films can’t really do it, if the book is at all long and/or complex, which these are.
Single 2-3 hour films can’t really do it, if the book is at all long and/or complex, which these are.
Mac:
That was certainly a huge problem with the 2011 “Tinker, Tailor…” Though I’m not sure that team cared enough about the source material to do a good job of adaption in any event. The ending was not Smiley at all.
I think the long-arc quality television show, epitomized by “The Sopranos” and “Breaking Bad,” really pointed to how great the long-arc format could be for telling a complex story.
T J:
God, I hated “Quantum of Solace.” I couldn’t exactly tell you why. It just seemed stupid and disappointing throughout.
That was the beginning of my disenchantment with Daniel Craig. I thought his first, “Casino Royale,” was a return to form after all the gimmicky Bonds with a grittier, muscular Bond, who could thrill with real-life stunts.
BTW, Craig paid for those stunts — two teeth knocked out, sliced off a finger tip, eight facial stitches, ruptured both calf muscles, tore an ACL, broke a leg. Yet he kept filming through most of it.
No wonder he looked grim and was happy to be blown to bits in the last movie.
I have never seen it, but it seems that a lot of people (not OBH) believe that On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is underrated and one of the best Bond films even though the same people mostly agree that star George Lazenby was not well-suited for the Bond role.
Honestly I found every Craig movie after Casino Royale to range from mediocre to bad. It was a real shame. He managed to go from convincing me there could be a blonde Bond to showing me he was not it. The grit and misanthropy fit, but almost nothing else did. He also seemed to lack respect for the source material or the audience to the point where I have soured on him as a whole. We can all chew out Brosnan for his downright inane ones like Die Another Day, but I’d take them any day of the week over most of Craig’s work.
And as a hot take, I wonder why people like Skyfall as much as they do, because to me it was downright painful. Part of this may be my partialness to Goldeneye and whatnot, but it really really did come across to be as a less worthy copycat of that. But worse. The damage they did to M’s character was aggravating, and I flatout wanted to throttle Whitshaw’s Q, who seemed to not know how spycraft or intel gathering work in favor of being “merely” yet another Leet Haxxor Computer Whiz. In spite of being one who managed to have worse computer security skills than I do.
An attack that managed to hit MI6’s Headquarters in London was meant to be a shock; I still remember the feeling of it seeing Tomorrow Never Dies and how it was compromised and hit (arguably twice). Pushing the suspension of disbelief a bit? Sure, but I think it made some degree of sense given who was doing it. Now it seems like it can happen at any time.
I won’t grudge people who like it, I’m glad for them honestly. But for me it stank to high heaven, especially for an anniversary film.
To be honest, I’m one of those odd ones that actually liked (at least relatively) Dalton and Lazenby and their work. License was no masterpiece but I will watch it in part during anthology without TOO much complaint. I’m not sure that will be the case for me with most of Craig’s work, or ever will be.
Cruisin’ with “Biden”. “Joe Biden”…
“Welfare Offices Providing Voter Registration Forms To Illegals Without Proof Of Citizenship”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/welfare-offices-providing-voter-registration-forms-illegals-without-proof-citizenship
Looks like another round of “Free, Fair and Transparent Elections”(TM)
(With the emphasis on “FREE”…)
– – – – – – – – – –
AND…an updated version of that classic treat: “California Dreamin'”….
“California Reveals All Job Gains In 2023 Were Fake”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/california-reveals-all-job-gains-2023-were-fake
(Hey, what’s honesty anyway? Just a colonialist, oppressive, racist white, patriarchal construct…. Anyway, coming to a theater near you!)
There was no script a whole bunch of podcasts have pointed this out the austrian set piece was good but the meeting in haiti miss kurylenko and arterton were wasted i thought dalton was good in the roles this slightly surly welsh tone fit him maybe too much of a contrast with moore i give props to november man even though it broke the canon of graham books
The real ira did fire a rocket at the lego palace theres a whole series by jon stock the telegraphs indian correspondence in that vein
The protagonist is the son of a spymaster his half brother is an indian terrorist ruckas gueen and country had serbs supplied by russians fire the rocket because revenge
It has inspired my own writing endeavour
as has greg ruckas queen and country a trial at a grittier tale for the modern era
Mac and Huxley: agree about “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” (book and 1965 movie) and the BBC productions of “Tinker Tailor” and “Smiley’s People”. Both available for free on YouTube, btw.
Coincidentally, I featured two of the Len Deighton/Michael Caine/Harry Palmer movies–“The Ipcress File” and “Funeral in Berlin”–in my just-ended movie night season. Both good. The third movie in the series–“The Billion-Dollar Brain”–is a trainwreck, so I didn’t show it. It does have Françoise Dorleac (Catherine Deneuve’s older and even hotter sister), however. And neo-fascist Texas cowboys in 10-gallon hats rampaging through the Helsinki train station. And an uncredited cameo by the late Donald Sutherland as a mainframe nerd (the billion-dollar brain of the title). I also showed “The Quiller Memorandum”, with George Segal (odd choice), Senta Berger, and Alec Guinness as a very un-Smiley-like MI6 officer.
Mark Eby: you can add Edward Aarons to that list. He wrote the “Assignment:…” series featuring Sam Durell. Not as good as Donald Hamilton, but still very enjoyable. I’ve got a full set of both, plus all the Bond paperbacks. I started picking them up for their pulpy 1950s-1960s covers (examples at https://www.goodreads.com/series/42822-matt-helm) and then discovered that they’re very good reads, Hamilton especially. Hamilton wrote Westerns (“The Big Country”) and crime novels in addition to the Matt Helm series. His “Line of Fire” (1955) is excellent. It should be made into a movie. You’re right about the 1960s Dean Martin movie “adaptations”–they’re schlock. Hamilton was a gun guy–he also wrote about hunting (and sailing)–so his books are filled with asides about firearms. Kind of like the Beretta/Walther/S&W back-and-forth in the Bond novels. The Swedish-born Hamilton had a degree in Chemistry from the University of Chicago and served “as a chemist” in the USN Reserve during WWII, doing unspecified things. He moved to New Mexico shortly after the war. University of Chicago, Chemistry, vague-ish war service, New Mexico–I’m getting a strong Manhattan Project vibe.
played by Michael Caine
==
Snooze
Why not forget about fictional agents like Bond and Bourne dashing to save the world from disaster and forget about CIA and MI6 officers reclining on their couches dreaming up espionage scenarios to thrill you.
Check out what a real MI6 and CIA secret agent does nowadays. Why not browse through TheBurlingtonFiles.org website and read about Bill Fairclough’s escapades when he was an active MI6 and CIA agent? The website is rather like an espionage museum without an admission fee … and no adverts. You will soon be immersed in a whole new world which you won’t want to exit.
After that experience you may not know who to trust so best read Beyond Enkription, the first novel in The Burlington Files series. It’s a noir fact based spy thriller that may shock you. What is interesting is that this book is apparently mandatory reading in some countries’ intelligence agencies’ induction programs. Why? Maybe because the book is not only realistic but has been heralded by those who should know as “being up there with My Silent War by Kim Philby and No Other Choice by George Blake”. It is an enthralling read as long as you don’t expect fictional agents like Ian Fleming’s incredible 007 to save the world or John le Carré’s couch potato yet illustrious Smiley to send you to sleep with his delicate diction, sophisticated syntax and placid plots!
George Segal starred in the Quiller Memorandum based on the spy thriller by Elleston Trevor (born Trevor Dudley-Smith aka Adam Hall). The name of the author of the Quiller Memorandum remains a tad mysterious but it is one of those under-rated thrilling espionage classics whether in writing or on the silver screen that deserve so much more adulation. If you liked Len Deighton’s masterpiece Funeral in Berlin or the Deightonesque Bill Fairclough’s epic unadulterated and noir spy novel Beyond Enkription in The Burlington Files series, you are going to love the Quiller Memorandum and vice versa. Why mention Deighton and Fairclough you may ask?
Critics have described Fairclough who was an MI6 agent codename JJ (and one of Pemberton’s People in MI6) in real life as a posh Harry Palmer and his parents worked for MI1 in Germany in the aftermath of World War II just as Quiller did. Both Elleston Trevor and Bill Fairclough (aka Edward Burlington) used many pseudonyms. Given Bill Fairclough was a spy that is not unexpected but why Elleston Trevor (born Trevor Dudley-Smith) published over one hundred books under about a dozen nom de plumes remains a conundrum.
The Quiller Memorandum, Funeral in Berlin and Beyond Enkription are “must reads” for espionage cognoscenti who should of course know how they are linked! John Barry (composer of the Bond, Palmer and Quiller theme tunes) and Bill Fairclough both went to St Peter’s School in York where Guy Fawkes and his co-traitors were educated which is why Fairclough’s MI6 codename was JJ. For more see an astonishing brief News Article dated 3 May 2024 at TheBurlingtonFiles website.
Why not make a real blockbuster as good as Bond or Bourne or any other assassin but for real? Here are 50 plus reasons why Hollywood should make a film based on the life of the accountant/banker come spy Bill Fairclough’s. Fairclough (MI6 codename JJ) aka Edward Burlington is the protagonist in TheBurlingtonFiles series of fact based spy thrillers. If you enjoy noir and genuine espionage read the news article dated 7 August 2023 entitled Bill Fairclough’s Known Life-threatening Incidents in TheBurlingtonFiles website and thank your god you are still alive. After all, you probably weren’t protected by Pemberton’s People in MI6 (see another intriguing news article in the same website dated 3 May 2024 about them).
The news articles were released several years after Beyond Enkription was published which makes them all the more beguiling. Little wonder it’s mandatory reading on some countries’ intelligence induction programs. All this is not only mind-boggling but backed up by some evidence so who needs fictitious spies like Bond and Bourne anymore? Just like the spy novel Beyond Enkription based on Bill Fairclough’s life in 1974, these articles make for sobering yet superb reads as long as you don’t expect John le Carré’s delicate diction, sophisticated syntax and placid plots.
The links to these articles are https://theburlingtonfiles.org/news_2023_06.07.php and https://theburlingtonfiles.org/news_2022.10.31.php.
Cruising used to be a habit mainly of upper middle class families. My grandmother took my brother and me on the Mariposa many years ago, which at the time was owned by Pacific Far East Lines, a line controlled by the Alioto family of San Francisco. By then tuxedos were required only for the formal evenings, at all other times gentlemen were expected to be in coat and tie after 6 PM.
Then along comes “The Love Boat” and cruising was popularized as a middle class pastime. There was a cruise line out of Los Angeles back in the early 1980s, Western Cruise Lines,” that specialized in 3 and 4 day cruises to Baja California. The crowd on board this ship made the usual Carnival Cruise Line bunch look stuffy by comparison. One of the first things I saw upon boarding was a paunchy middle aged guy wearing a tee shirt that on the front said “SEX AT SEA OLYMPICS TEAM” and on the back announced that he was “COACH.” A real chick magnet, that.
@ Barry > “Cruisin’ with “Biden”. “Joe Biden”…
“Welfare Offices Providing Voter Registration Forms To Illegals Without Proof Of Citizenship”—”
Well, of course they are.
Counterpoint:
https://notthebee.com/article/weird-desantis-signed-a-law-requiring-hospitals-to-ask-patients-about-immigration-status-and-suddenly-medicaid-spending-on-illegal-immigrants-plummeted-
His first book is at the bottom of the list
https://www.narehotel.co.uk/tosnareaspy/about-the-author
I would not count the Mossad or MI6 out just yet.
Sounds like a great memory, neo.
}}} Did any of the Bond movies feature a significant part of the plot that was taking place on a cruise ship? […] Is there anything else? Kind of ironic that I can’t bring to mind many nautical types of scenes […]
Well, the closest instance of this would be at the end of Diamonds Are Forever, which ends on a cruise ship, with Bond and Tiffany Case (Jill St. John) in an intimate situation as things wind down. (Spoiler alert!)
She’s about to open the notion of something more permanent in their relationship, when “room service” comes to the door with a “bombe”, purportedly “courtesy of the captain”. The audience recognizes the two involved as assassins from earlier in the movie. Bond smells things being wrong, and winds up tossing them both overboard, one with the “bombe” between his legs (their cabin has a balcony… not sure how much that actually happens, particularly in pre-1973 liners). Tiffany has been overwhelmed by it all, of course, while Bond took it fully in stride as “ho hum… another typical day”. He asks Tiffany what she was about to ask, and she shifts gears, knowing he’s deadly to be around, so she asks about something else entirely.
There’s a not dissimilar ending to The Man With The Golden Gun, with Bond and Britt Eklund (“Ms. Goodnight”) on a small sailing ship, when Hervé Villechaize (“Tattoo” from Fantasy Island), ticked about Bond killing his mealticket, tries to kill them. Bond shoves him into a suitcase and hangs it from the mast.
87 comments to this post at this point!
Why so many?
Bizarre.
}}} I have never seen it, but it seems that a lot of people (not OBH) believe that On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is underrated and one of the best Bond films even though the same people mostly agree that star George Lazenby was not well-suited for the Bond role.
I don’t think so much that it is “poor”, as much as it just lacks something. And Lazenby isn’t all that bad, he might even have grown into the role, had he played it more (that was the original intention, and I recall seeing something recently that said he originally planned to, but someone convinced him to get out of it… which led to them getting Connery back for DAF).
I don’t know what it is, he just doesn’t *feel* like Bond enough. There’s something he’s lacking though I can’t name it… not as bad as Dalton’s “smarmy” Bond but worse than Moore’s “occasionally” “Businessman Bond” (there are certainly times Moore does have the right feel, just not all the time). Lazenby never ever really felt quite like Bond. He was close but just didn’t step up to cross the line. He felt “cold” instead of “cool”. Probably more like a real secret agent would be, but less like the character should be.
Contrast with Connery and Brosnan, who always manage to feel like “Bond”, and even Craig is pretty consistently “Bond”, though a distinctly angrier, grittier “Bond”.
}}} The Spy Who Came in from the Cold -and- Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
I dunno — both of these managed to take two of the greatest actors of their generation — Richard Burton (for contrast see him in Equus), and Gary Oldman (see him in almost anything! 😀 ) and produce remarkably boring films, such that my own feeling at the end was, “meh.” I just didn’t really care all that much for anyone at all in them, by the endings. Given both their acting talents, that’s really not that easy to do. It may be the books themselves, which I grant have not read, or it may be the screenplay/direction in both cases, was lacking.
}}} 87 comments to this post at this point!
Why so many?
Bizarre.
An interesting topic, and, for once, of interest to a lot of people yet not a depressing political discussion? 😉
BTW, someone mentioned an author who knew guns well, and I’ll suggest, here, that some may like Larry Correia, who was trained as an accountant, but eventually shifted into gun sales, to the point where he has, or had, a full-auto license… not easy to obtain. He’s also a competitive marksman.
He has a trilogy, co-written with Mike Kupari, called Dead Six:
The summary of the first one:
Not exactly a “spy novel” but good and entertaining. Correia is a good writer, as is Kupari. And you can bet that anything about guns is “dead on balls accurate”… 😀
Correia mostly does SF/Fantasy, but this is pretty much as far from SF/Fantasy as reasonably can be.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1451637586
where is Zubara located, its a city in Qatar, a real life country, that has influence in the news,
leamas, was from the bank division, they paid off agents, rented safehouses, all the support that an agency like the Circus, Le Carre’s own security service, Cornwell was a relatively low level employee of the Firm, as it was known in the parlance, yet Kim Philby gave him up anyways, for spite, Tinker assumes a not implausible scenario that a traitor could rise up to the top of the organization
Oldman interestingly is protagonists in another modern series, Slough Horse from Mick Herron, on Apple TV, the title refers to a location for operatives that had reached a nadir in their career,
This thread has been a pleasant trip down memory land. I enjoyed many of these books (and movies) back in the day when the “spy vs. spy” genre made more sense than it does now. In those days, Russia was the bad guy, and we were the good guys. Now…not so much.
But they were fun reads and movies.
Thanks. I’d read some of the novels I was unaware of, except they would probably seem…outdated somehow. Anyhow, great fun. Thanks.
@ Mark > “they would probably seem…outdated somehow”
I enjoy reading “classic” mysteries (Christie, Sayers, etc) — even thought they are outdated in the sense that what were “major current events” are no longer important factors driving the story, I read them as if they were “historical fiction” — just focused on the recent rather than the distant past.
After all, the authors were actually living through the historical period that they describe, not trying to simulate it through research, which makes it much more authentic “history” than the milieus and characterizations that have to be reconstructed.
AesopFan > You’re not wrong. I recently revisited J.D. Carr’s “The Blind Barber” (starring Gideon Fell) and it hasn’t lost it’s charm or humor. These books are, or can be, nostalgic for people who actually remember the climate at the time they were written. I remember the “Duck, and Cover” “tornado drills” with Bert the Turtle telling us what to do when we see the flash. So Hamilton’s “The Ambushers” and Fleming’s “Moonraker” seemed more possible, so I was glad we had some “hard” men on our side.
with the upcoming Iranian bomb, we will likely revisit those times, except well this current regime is likely to surrender to them,
yes Dean Martin like James Coburn, was more a lark, somewhat like Boysie Oakes of Gardner fame, I came across that first one the Liquidators recently where some bloke played by Rod Taylor, is hired by a Mandarin played by Trevor Howard, to hit specific targets he subcontracts in the style of the day, and comes across a Russian cell in the South of France, who mistake him from an actual agent, much hijinks result,
there was also another film, part of a series with David Niven, No Time for Spies, set largely in Rome and Lebanon, he plays a doctor who is sent to Lebanon on another murky mission, he is contacted by the Secret Service
because of his time in Burma during the last war, interestingly there is an intro
which you can’t quite understand, as a fellow is giving a lecture on Spy techniques, when you run it back, it is clearly someone like Kim Philby who is lecturing the KGB trainees how to handle members of his service, the film is set around 1965, and it shows what Beirut looked when it was the Paris of the Middle East, before Arafat turned into a killing field, for at least the next twenty years, as the Squirrel allowed Fatah to openly carry arms, until the other factions like the Maronites got wise, this I got second hand from Ignatius,
at least as I recall from the Ipcress File, Harry Palmer, has a sojourn through there all of these films were set in this time,the Casino in Jounieh and Beirut proper were set pieces to the story,
Why not forget about fictional agents like Bond and Bourne dashing to save the world from disaster and forget about CIA and MI6 officers reclining on their couches dreaming up espionage scenarios to thrill you. Check out what a real MI6 and CIA secret agent does nowadays. Why not browse through TheBurlingtonFiles.org website and read about Bill Fairclough’s escapades when he was an active MI6 and CIA agent? The website is rather like an espionage museum without an admission fee … and no adverts. You will soon be immersed in a whole new world which you won’t want to exit.
After that experience you may not know who to trust so best read Beyond Enkription, the first novel in The Burlington Files series. It’s a noir fact based spy thriller that may shock you. What is interesting is that this book is apparently mandatory reading in some countries’ intelligence agencies’ induction programs. Why? Maybe because the book is not only realistic but has been heralded by those who should know as “being up there with My Silent War by Kim Philby and No Other Choice by George Blake”. It is an enthralling read as long as you don’t expect fictional agents like Ian Fleming’s incredible 007 to save the world or John le Carré’s couch potato yet illustrious Smiley to send you to sleep with his delicate diction, sophisticated syntax and placid plots!
See https://theburlingtonfiles.org/news_2023_06.07.php and https://theburlingtonfiles.org/news_2022.10.31.php.
again jim, pushing the memoirs of two traitors is not a way to properly pitch a book, make some references to Cumming or Stock on even Herron,
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18946745-the-liquidator
https://cinemaretro.com/index.php?/archives/12066-DVD-REVIEW-WHERE-THE-SPIES-ARE-1966-STARRING-DAVID-NIVEN-AND-FRANCOISE-DORLEAC.html
corrections
If you enjoy reading fact based espionage thrillers, of which there are only a handful of decent ones, do try reading Bill Fairclough’s Beyond Enkription. It is an enthralling unadulterated fact based autobiographical spy thriller and a super read as long as you don’t expect John le Carré’s delicate diction, sophisticated syntax and placid plots.
What is interesting is that this book is so different to any other espionage thrillers fact or fiction that I have ever read. It is extraordinarily memorable and unsurprisingly apparently mandatory reading in some countries’ intelligence agencies’ induction programs. Why?
Maybe because the book has been heralded by those who should know as “being up there with My Silent War by Kim Philby and No Other Choice by George Blake”; maybe because Bill Fairclough (the author) deviously dissects unusual topics, for example, by using real situations relating to how much agents are kept in the dark by their spy-masters and (surprisingly) vice versa; and/or maybe because he has survived literally dozens of death defying experiences including 20 plus attempted murders.
The action in Beyond Enkription is set in 1974 about a real maverick British accountant who worked in Coopers & Lybrand (now PwC) in London, Nassau, Miami and Port au Prince. Initially in 1974 he unwittingly worked for MI5 and MI6 based in London infiltrating an organised crime gang. Later he worked knowingly for the CIA in the Americas. In subsequent books yet to be published (when employed by Citicorp, Barclays, Reuters and others) he continued to work for several intelligence agencies. Fairclough has been justifiably likened to a posh version of Harry Palmer aka Michael Caine in the films based on Len Deighton’s spy novels.
Beyond Enkription is a must read for espionage cognoscenti. Whatever you do, you must read some of the latest news articles (since August 2021) in TheBurlingtonFiles website before taking the plunge and getting stuck into Beyond Enkription. You’ll soon be immersed in a whole new world which you won’t want to exit. Intriguingly, the articles were released seven or more years after the book was published. TheBurlingtonFiles website itself is well worth a visit and don’t miss the articles about FaireSansDire. The website is a bit like a virtual espionage museum and refreshingly advert free.
Returning to the intense and electrifying thriller Beyond Enkription, it has had mainly five star reviews so don’t be put off by Chapter 1 if you are squeamish. You can always skip through the squeamish bits and just get the gist of what is going on in the first chapter. Mind you, infiltrating international state sponsored people and body part smuggling mobs isn’t a job for the squeamish! Thereafter don’t skip any of the text or you’ll lose the plots. The book is ever increasingly cerebral albeit pacy and action packed. Indeed, the twists and turns in the interwoven plots kept me guessing beyond the epilogue even on my second reading.
The characters were wholesome, well-developed and beguiling to the extent that you’ll probably end up loving those you hated ab initio, particularly Sara Burlington. The attention to detail added extra layers of authenticity to the narrative and above all else you can’t escape the realism. Unlike reading most spy thrillers, you will soon realise it actually happened but don’t trust a soul.