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Back then, with a different actor playing Blofeld each time they showed him -- starting with YOLT, and for the next two films -- and with a different persona, etc. as well as appearance, he pretty much WAS a one-off villain each time he appeared: YOLT, OHMSS, DAF...There was no consistency between those three Blofelds. The only consistency was when the Mysterious Number One -- Blofeld -- appeared only partially (FRWL), or in silhouette (TB). As I understand it, he was portrayed by Joseph Wiseman each time. (JWiseman had portrayed Doctor No in DN, but was not seen in FRWL or TB, so, what the heck.
Mr White ends up with the money despite never learning Bond's password. Because you don't need (and couldn't use) Bond's password. Vesper decides where the money goes.
So if Vesper is cooperating with Le Chiffre, he can get the money through her. If she's not cooperating with him (and then Mathis is), Le Chiffre should be torturing Vesper.
Also, Vesper doesn't seem to want to hand over the money, but she thinks they'll kill her if she doesn't. But she also thinks they'll kill her if she does. So...?
True, although there are some actresses in the franchise whose talent seems questionable at best...
She doesn't trust them not to murder her after she gives over the money, but she trusts them not to kill Bond? I guess?
But the stupidity of what Le Chiffre is doing is the big one. He even tells Bond they're gonna get the account number from her. For what? Bond should be thinking, "This makes no sense."
They'd never do it of course, but that sounds terrific to me!
And also someone pointed out that she doesn't give Bond the money to buy back in to continue playing the poker game, which makes no sense if Le Chiffre was making her betray her country to give him the money. Was it supposed to be that she was protecting Bond?
I never really think about the Vesper blackmail plot (or whether Mathis was a traitor!) because it makes my head spin.
Oh sure, but they've been cast because they were hot. Which is at least a reason to hire them, but I don't think anyone was hired because they were weak at acting.
Mr. White was presumably given Bond's password by Vesper after she heard Bond saying it out loud when he was recuperating.
Vesper didn't buy Bond back in because LeChiffre (really Quantum) wanted Bond out of the game. If LeChiffre wins, Quantum gets the money. If LeChiffre loses, Quantum has to use Vesper to get the money to him. Getting Bond out of the game was just easier for them.
FIFY
:))
Er, no, Vesper learned the password from Bond when he had her enter it. Mr White also did not require a password to receive a suitcase of cash from Vesper.
I'm imagining Bond recuperating, mumbling "Vesper", and Vesper is there thinking, "'Vesper?' What the hell is 'Vesper'? Oh crap, that must be the password!!!" :))
And again, if Vesper was cooperating with Le Chiffre there is no reason for him to have captured and tortured Bond at all.
Yeah fair points on Savalas but all the Blofelds were very different, and he doesn’t really have a consistent character in the books either. Completely different every time.
I liked what Savalas did with it. I understand the sentiment that Blofeld should be sort of an anti-Bond, but I think having a smooth talking gangster take on the character did wonders for that film. The biggest problem with the book, imo, was Bond and Blofeld never really squaring off, which sort of took away from the ending a bit for me. And even if you added a scene like the one in the film where Bond is captured, would that be enough? This is the villain who kills Bond’s wife. I think he’s due a fair bit of plot time. Having a Blofeld like Savalas meant he could get in on the action a bit more (joining in the ski chase, trying to seduce Tracy), and be more of a presence throughout.
There was no briefcase of cash until the funds were transferred from the Swiss bank. The password was needed to transfer the funds. When Bond and Vesper were captured, only Bond knew the password. All Vesper had was the account number. LeChiffre tortured Bond for the password but was killed by Mr. White before he could get it, as Vesper made a deal with Mr. White to spare Bond's life in exchange for the money. Vesper is not cooperating with LeChiffre, who's a target of Quantum/Spectre, she's cooperating with Mr. White. By Mr. White's own words ("Money isn't as important to us as is knowing who to trust" or something), they were going to kill LeChiffre regardless whether he won or not, simply because he betrayed them by gambling their money. Getting the money was Mr. White's payment for sparing Bond. It's spelled out in the movie.
I get that (sort of--I thought Vesper was cooperating enough to pass on the tell info), but it does not make sense for Le Chiffre to torture Bond, regardless. Vesper decides where the money goes.
This stuff isn't spelled out well in the movie, which is why I just read a weird theory about Vesper guessing the password early and giving it to Mr White for some reason.
But Bond had just lost: he wasn't really a threat- and they wanted as much money in there as possible.
There's also something about the way we only hear Vesper screaming off in the distance on the barge in the torture scene which suggests (to me at least) that she's not actually being tortured and is just playing along. It's all quite vague.
I'm being thick though: why does Vesper decide where the money goes when it's Bond who only has access at that point?
Right. Adding a couple hours to the game for extra $5 million is a pretty good deal.
Mr White's motives regarding Le Chiffre are clear and do make sense. Most of the rest does not.
Vesper is a Treasury agent. She authorizes money going from the British government to Bond's personal account so he can buy in to the game. The money the players win is held in a separate Swiss bank account represented by Mr. Mendel. To access that account, the players have to set their own password. Only Bond knew his. Again, it's not Vesper's account, it's the Swiss bank's, and only Bond knew its password since he was the winning player. LeChiffre tortured him for the password. Vesper has nothing to give LeChiffre but the account number. Vesper's job was to make sure Mr. White got the money, either by sabotaging Bond, in which case LeChiffre wins and Mr. White can get his money directly from LeChiffre, or by seducing Bond and getting the password from him, which she did.
And she's made a deal with White to romance the cash out from Bond in order to save her lover.
Vesper only decides money going from the Treasury to Bond.
There are two separate bank accounts in this movie. One is Bond's personal account. Vesper authorizes the transfer of cash from the British government to that account so Bond can play.
The other account is the Swiss bank's. It holds the players' winnings. Vesper does NOT have access to this account in any way. Only the winning player does. That's Bond. He sets the password. Nobody but him knows it. When Le Chiffre loses, he tries to torture it out of Bond.
Then Vesper gets the password from Bond and delivers Mr. White his money on the condition that he spare Bond's life. That's it.
Exactly, that's what I thought. So it is weird that she doesn't let Bond buy back in - unless it's because she cares for him enough at that point (we're post-shower after all) that she doesn't want him involved.
Mr White presumably allows the game to go ahead because he wouldn't mind Le Chiffre winning so he can recover some cash (so it's odd he doesn't put pressure on Vesper to keep Bond in the game to increase the winnings), although Bond has probably done Spec-tum's business some harm by killing Obano.
Hey, I'd love to be wrong about this, and I hope I am somehow!
But Vesper has another role. She also designates the account Bond's winnings will be sent to when he enters his password into Mendel's encryptor. Whether she sent that money to Bond's account, to a Treasury account, or as I had assumed, some other account, is not specified. I've assumed she sends it to some other account because a)she can, b)it would suit her motives, c)Bond, M, and the Treasury people all expected Treasury to have the money but they didn't, d)there is no further discussion about sending the money to the Treasury after the meeting with Mendel.
Also, as far as I can see, Vesper doesn't need Bond's password, because he would have entered it anyway. And that password exists only to release the funds into a designated account one time. It would not be the password to later access the account itself. Why would it be?
It's so weird that Le Chiffre talks about getting the account number from Vesper (which apparently is a bluff?). So his plan is to go to Mendel, say James couldn't make it, so I, the loser of the match, will enter the password for him. And then he'll enter Vesper's account number and Bond's password thereby...sending the money to Bond's account/Treasury? What?
Vesper made a deal with Mr White to save Bond's life. Of course, she already had an ongoing working relationship with Mr White, and if Mr White wants the money, he can't kill Bond anyway, so it's not a very novel deal. Vesper does not know Bond's password, but she is able to make this "deal" because she knows she doesn't need his password, and Mr White seems to understand this too, given that he went for the deal. Furthermore, Vesper never makes any effort at all to get Bond's password out of him, because it isn't relevant.
As to the deal itself, again, it's odd. She could have made the exact same deal with Le Chiffre and save Bond even more pain, while still getting Mr White his money ultimately. It's odd that she and Le Chiffre both fail to understand this. And again, after Mr White doesn't kill Bond, she got her end of the deal, so why deliver the money at all? If you think they'll try to kill you either way, not meeting with them is surely the safer route. If you want to die, you can always commit suicide on your own terms. I'm not sure why it's so important to her to make her final act delivering that money. She's clearly not a fan of the baddies, and she clearly doesn't trust them not to kill her, so what's the point?
Again, hopefully I'm just wrong somehow, but I'm becoming less inclined to think so. You did suggest that Bond revealed the password in his delirium and Vesper passed it along to Mr White, which doesn't really make sense and doesn't seem to have happened. So it's pretty damn opaque to everyone. I think it all results from too much baggage from trying to modernize the payment stuff in the movie, and then adding Mr White as a character.
I'm not seeing the problem there, that's all what happens isn't it? Bond thinks the money has gone back to the Treasury but M tells him it hasn't- Vesper has put her own account details in instead of the Treasury's.
Presumably Mendel's encoder isn't the only way to access it, although I agree the film makes it look like it is.
I'm not sure what you mean here: she surely does need the password, but she doesn't need to get it out of Bond because he'll just type it in for her. Either way, Bond must live. Is that what you mean?
(Yeah, unless she can get it out of him before he wins, but there's no reason to think he won't enter the password after he wins, if he wins - it's his mission) In actual fact White is lucky that Bond wins: he seems to be the only player that White has an asset in the team of.
Yes this is probably the most important point. Mr White surely wants Le Chiffre to win so he can get his cash, and ultimately doesn't care what happens to Le Chiffre or Vesper, so why not just get them to work together instead of against each other? Then kill 'em both. Le Chiffre is presumably planning to give the money to Obanno (problem solved thanks to Bond!) or Mr White, both of which White is happy with..?
Yeah that's a fair point about meeting them, but I guess it's just something Gettler insisted on? I don't know. Maybe as she hadn't transferred it to them in all the time she and Bond were off sailing he put their foot down and demanded it in cash. And she had to give the money to them to save her unseen boyfriend (I think).
I don't really know who Gettler is in all this!
Well, she'd still need him to enter it though. I think when slide_99 said she 'gets it from Bond' they meant that he enters it into the device for her. You're right that he'll enter it in no matter what though, even if she's not there. Her only actual act is to enter the incorrect account in before the game starts.
Considering that her aim is to give the money to Mr White though, and Le Chiffre also (presumably) plans to give the money to Mr White, it is odd that she isn't encouraged to work with Le Chiff. All she has to say to Le Chiff is 'you don't have to torture Bond, I'm giving the cash straight to White'. (I guess the question is, why doesn't she give them the money straight away? Because she's fallen for Bond?)
Unless Le Chiff's plan was to do a runner with the cash, but the book suggests he's trying to pay back his debtors.
I guess the slight problem with the film is that it doesn't actually matter who wins the poker game: either way, White gets the money (unless Le Chiff mentions he has other plans for it which I don't recall). And White's apparently poor planning actually puts this in jeopardy when he doesn't get Vesper and Le Chiff to work together as Le Chiff almost kills Bond (who is his only way of getting the money).
As for the password, I think it's only for Mendels encryptor. It's not a password for an account. There wasnt a passwordless bank account out there until Bond typed a number into the encryptor!
EDIT: Does Vesper enter Mr White's account BEFORE the match? Mendel says that when the winner enters his or her password, the money will be sent to any account they "nominate". Future tense. And if she entered Whites account number before the match, then no deal was made later at all! Bond has to live anyway, and White was always getting the money!
Trying to solve this thing just makes it worse... :))