Tag Archive: James Bond


Tenet – back to front baloney

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September 4, 2020

TENET directed by Christopher Nolan (UK/USA, 2020)

Up till now there has been plenty to celebrate in the movies of Christopher Nolan. With his redefining of Batman as The Dark Knight and visually striking films like Dunkirk, Interstellar and Inception he has established himself as a director whose films are made to be appreciated on the big screen. Streaming may provide the same information, but the spectacle is lost.

Nolan’s are the type of movies that Mark Cousins, in The Story of Film, spoke of as transforming the viewers experience and expectations from the ‘want see’ into the ‘can see’. In other words, the action is not limited by what is possible but transformed and expanded into a world of limitless possibilities.

The release of Nolan’s latest move, Tenet, was delayed to coincide with the end of Covid-19 restrictions and the media has gone into hype-drive pitching Nolan as a kind of savior of the multiplex. It’s a pity therefore that it is easily his worst movie to date and far from being the masterpiece we had good reason to hope for. Continue reading →

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SPECTRE LEAVES YOU SHAKEN BUT NOT STIRRED

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November 11, 2015

SPECTRE directed by Sam Mendes (UK, 2015)

This movie is two and a half hours of pure Bond bunkum which starts promisingly but, unlike the superior Skyfall, is content to fall back on style over substance.

Daniel Craig with steely blue eyes and tight muscular body makes a good 007 and is as indestructible and unflappable as ever.

Realism is not the keynote of course but you would expect him to accrue a few designer scars or at least to get a few stains or rips in his clothes.

As it is, you cut him and he does not bleed, beat him and he does not bruise and he always gets the girl. Another unfathomable trick he pulls off is to be able to find an immaculate range of suits or elegant casual wear despite never carrying more than hand luggage.

His maverick mission is to crack Spectre (note the English spelling), a criminal organization which has infiltrated the heart of the British establishment with a cunning plan of using global surveillance via the Internet and wiretapping – sound familiar? Continue reading →

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IAN McEWAN’S SWEET TOOTH

Filed under: Books, Fiction — Leave a comment
June 3, 2013

Write about what you know is the predictable advice given to budding authors. I think it’s safe to say that Ian McEwan knows more about writing and publishing houses than he does about spying and the MI5.

The acknowledgements are there to show that he did the required reading before putting pen to paper but anyone expecting some action packed James Bond style adventure will be seriously disappointed. The undercover role of agent Serena Plume doesn’t involve risking life and limb but winds up with her becoming a “writer’s moll” (with plenty of under covers work).

Her mission as a well-read reader of contemporary fiction is to recruit an up and coming writer named Tom Haley. The cunning plan is that his work can thereafter be used for propaganda purposes.

The author is in the dark about the MI5 involvement; he thinks he is being supported by a generous arts foundation. Sweet Tooth is mainly set in London and Brighton during the early 1970s. This means that McEwan doesn’t have to worry about the huge technological changes within security work. It allows him to concentrate on getting the period detail right through references to the provisional IRA, pub rock, the cold war, Edward Heath and the three-day week. He can also make quirky statements like: “Paper tissues were becoming ubiquitous, like supermarket trolleys. The world was starting to become seriously disposable”.

Serena is a prolific reader but doesn’t care much for ‘clever’ writers who play tricks on their readers (“I was the basest of readers. All I wanted was my own world and myself in it, given back to me in artful shapes and accessible form”). Haley has more of a literary taste; he likes poetry and experimental authors. He’s also a bit of new man who, in his stories “seems to know women from the inside”. He explains that fiction needs tricks if it is to work.

Of the novella that makes his name, he says: “The end is there in the beginning – there is no plot. It’s a meditation”. This is also a concise description of McEwan’s novel which begins: “My name is Serena Frome (rhymes with plume)and almost 40 years ago I was sent on a secret mission for the British security service. I didn’t return safely. Within 18 months I was sacked, having disgraced myself and ruined my lover, though he certainly had a hand in his own undoing”.

Having the central character as a sexy spy in her early 20s is a temporary distraction from the fact that the novel is essentially an autobiographical meditation on the world seen from a literary, rather than political, perspective.

There is a lot of stuff about the donkey work involved in writing and how the finished work then gets to be dissected by critics. There’s a cameo for Ian Hamilton of The New Review and knowing references to Martin Amis. McEwan seems to be treading water with this novel. It drifts along through some affectionate character studies but the lack of tension or intrigue means that it also ends up being smug, contrived and self-indulgent.

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JAMES BOND DRIVES BACK TO HIS ROOTS

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November 4, 2012

SKYFALL directed by Sam Mendes (UK, 2012)

The final lo-tech half hour of this movie reminded of Christmas Day 1965,  a large part of which I spent looking for James Bond in my living room.

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HOMELAND STAYS CONNECTED

Filed under: Fiction, Italy, Movies, Television — Leave a comment
October 16, 2012

Homeland’s Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) with his magic cell phone.

I think all of us know in our hearts that the drama we see on our big and small screens mostly bears only a passing resemblance to the ‘real world’.

Mostly we are content to accept this. After all, no-one wants to see all action heroes like James Bond or Jason Bourne spending half their allotted time hobbling on crutches or checking into casualty wards.

When there are villains to track down, there is something reassuring about their apparently indestructibility.

Yet, in the light of the recent backlash in some quarters against the Emmy award winning Homeland, it seems that the collective suspension of disbelief doesn’t necessarily stretch to portrayals of new technology. Continue reading →

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