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That's exactly what I'm saying, and why Quantum introduces her into the plot; it's a Plan B in the event that Le Chiffre loses, so that the money doesn't end up with MI6.
Yes, IMO, it is her that reveals the tell. "It only proves that she's guilty, not that he's [Mathis] innocent."
Love sussing this stuff out!
;)
Maybe we can say Quantum handles Counterintelligence and Extortion, and SMERSH or something handles Terrorism and Revenge? :P
It is specified. When Bond finds out he's being betrayed at the end, Mendel tells Bond over the phone that the account (the one Vesper is withdrawing the money from) is the one given to them by his company (MI6 or presumably a shell company they own). That's where the funds were transferred to when he told Vesper the password and had her enter it into Mendel's computer.
Not sure what you're asking. Why wouldn't it be the same password? Maybe it's not realistic that MI6 wouldn't change the password for extra security instead of keeping Bond's, but it's not really a plot hole.
Presumably Le Chiffre was going to kill Bond and keep Vesper alive so she could enter the account number and password in Bond's stead, as she was a member of the British Treasury and wasn't under any suspicion.
Mr. White didn't really care about the money. He himself said so just before he killed Le Chiffre. The money was just payment for keeping Bond alive.
Again, Mr. White was going to kill LeChiffre no matter what. There was no reason for Vesper to cooperate with LeChiffre since he was dead meat anyway. Mr. White was calling the shots.
If Vesper doesn't deliver the money, Quantum/Spectre kills Bond.
I meant that Bond told her the password during the recuperation segment. I just worded it poorly.
The money was never in a treasury/MI6 bank account.
See above, Plan A, Plan B.
Yeah I forgot about that bit with M calling Bond before he calls Mendel. Actually that does strain credibility, how MI6 let Bond/Vesper transfer the winnings to an unknown account and not one they controlled.
It's damned near being the greatest film ever made; it just breached my top 20.
“Our organization can only guarantee the introduction.”
If Le Chiffre was a member of Quantum, Mr. White would not have responded that way.
When is an account designated?
Before the match, Mendel explains, "The money will remain in escrow until I return and the winner of the contest enters his or her password into the encryptor whereupon the entire sum will be wired to any bank account in the world you nominate."
That's not the past tense. No account has been nominated at that point. We see Bond enter a password, but no account is ever entered or mentioned being entered until Vesper types one in at the clinic. There is no reason to think an account number has been entered before that.
What is happening when Mendel is at the clinic?
When Vesper does enter an account number, and Bond enters the password, Bond seems to think the money is going to Treasury. Because he never again talks about sending the money to Treasury and is surprised to learn Treasury doesn't have the money. And the movie seems to expect you to find this immediately sinister. Not to think, "Oh, they just haven't sent the money from their other account to Treasury yet."
This is why I have the impression that Vesper can enter any account number she wants at that point, and why I think that's exactly what she does (but to Mr White's benefit, obviously not Le Chiffre's or Treasury's).
What does Bond's password do?@slide_99
The password releases money to any account in the world that you nominate. It is not the password for your nominated account. Mendel does not have a machine that can change the password on "any bank account in the world" and thereby allow access to it. (If he did, Le Chiffre would be advised to kidnap Mendel and try to get that wonderful machine! :)))
It seems to be a one-time thing. That password will be re-entered once, into Mendel's encryptor.
Is there a reason for Vesper to help Le Chiffre?
Well, the movie suggests she already has helped him with the "tell" thing, so yes. And the movie tells us she wants to save Bond, so making a deal with Le Chiffre seems to make sense. You save Bond from torture, and when your boss comes and kills Le Chiffre, he'll get the money anyway.
And Le Chiffre could have and should have pressed her do this regardless of what Vesper wanted. No reason to talk to Bond at all. Mr White got the money without ever talking to Bond or getting his password.
Is there a reason for Vesper to hand over the money at the end?
Not that I can think of. If Vesper can't trust Quantum/Spectre not to kill her after doing it (and the movie tells us "she knew she was going to her death"), I have no idea why she would trust them not to kill Bond. It seems like the dumbest of several options.
---
At the very least, this is only cut and dry on a superficial emotional level. Almost every aspect of these events has had a variety of explanations. You can't say the same of, say, Zorin's plan to flood Silicon Valley. There are moments that line up with this concept or that, but there's always something contradictory too. It's not well-written.
Agreed on Mathis (it's very unclear in the film and I think a bit messy to leave it unresolved) but I'm not so sure about LC's intentions with the money. He clearly wants to pay back Obanno before he's killed, but even after that he seems to be acting from desperation rather than greed, ready to go to the Americans etc. to save his skin.
But if she does tell LC and they are working together, as pointed out, why would he need to torture Bond at all when she could just enter the account number for him? It only makes sense if they're not working together.
So what's in it for White to let any of this play out at all? Just kill Le Chiffre at the start.
More reason for White to have just killed him, or at least straight after Obanno is killed. Quantum had Vesper's (supposed) boyfriend so they could manipulate her, but why all the grand planning if all they want is Le Chiffre dead and they're not even bothered about the money?
The only bonus seems to be that they have, through Vesper, an in to having a hold over a double-O MI6 agent, but they mess that up by him leaving the service anyway. Really Mr White makes a terrible hash of the whole thing.
It was the only thing that annoyed me coming out of the film, they had so clearly fudged that.
You're in this poker match. Your personal bank account is with Deutsche Bank. Mendel tells you they can send the winnings to "any bank account in the world you nominate." You decide you will nominate your Deutsche Bank account, obviously, and enter "VESPER" as your password for Mendel's encryptor.
Does "VESPER" become the password to your Deutsche Bank account? Of course not. It is the password to send your potential winnings to your Deutsche Bank account. If you want to get funds from that account, you'll need whatever passwords/PINs/TANs exist for that account.
So if, in the movie now, Vesper CAN'T put in any account number she wants when Mendel arrives, then LC is torturing Bond solely for the right to enter an account number and password that will be entered anyway. The money will go to the account designated by Vesper before, and he can't access it. Unless Vesper helps him access it. He should be persuading/torturing Vesper.
If Vesper CAN put any account number in when Mendel arrives, she can send the money wherever she wants, and LC should be persuading/torturing Vesper.
Doing anything at all with James Bond is a complete waste of time.
White is the one who has leverage on Vesper (using the Algerian), not LC - and White and LC aren't working together. So the only course of action available to LC is to force Bond to give him the password, and then most probably take Mendel's machine by force - which shouldn't be too hard.
Torturing Vesper a few weeks before she has to put the code in and then letting her go is hardly going to make her do it! :))
First of all, none of this changes the uselessness of LC learning Bond's password. Second, he has no more leverage over Bond than he does over Vesper. Third, torturing Bond for a password a few weeks (?) before it needs to be entered is hardly going to be sure its accurate when you enter it (after finding Mendel and stealing his machine).
It just doesn't make sense.
No it doesn't. If he has the password and grabs the machine, he has the money. This is simple.
Well he has Vesper, whose safety he threatens right there and then; and he has the threat of torture. That's what torture is generally for! :))
It's not the greatest plan, but he's desperate. But those are quite clearly two points of leverage.
Torturing Vesper in order to make her do something at an indeterminate future date as you suggest really doesn't make any sense.
Why would it be a few weeks? He could keep Bond alive and go and get it the next day. Or he could torture it out of Bond and then kill him, but warn him that if it's incorrect he'll kill Vesper later.
You didn't answer my question about how exactly he would persuade Vesper to enter a different account number? You keep saying that would be a better plan but you don't explain how he could possibly actually make her do that when she's alone later with Bond..?
Slide_99 also raises an interesting point about how Mendel talks about an account which Bond's 'company' gave him, possibly suggesting he had the details before Bond arrived at the poker table. It certainly seems an odd way to talk about Vesper.
Torturing Bond, getting his password, robbing a Swiss bank of an encryptor, and then hoping the password was correct is "simple" only insofar as "simple" can be a synonym for "stupid."
How do you make Vesper enter a different password? Threaten to kill her/Bond if she does anything funny? How did he get her to cooperate on the "tell" thing? I don't know if you're being serious or if this is a weird intellectual exercise, but it's easier to imagine a way of doing that than it is to imagine taking an encryptor from a Swiss bank by force. And hoping Vesper enters your account number (or else) is not dumber than hoping Bond's password is correct. It also has the advantage of not having to rob a Swiss bank.
The plot elements offered by CR just don't allow for a logical scenario with any of this.
No, that one was for Vesper going off and doing it under Bond's nose without him suspecting, hence it will take as long as it takes; if LC takes the password by force there's no reason to hang around.
No.. you can't torture someone to do something for you at a future indeterminate date (i.e. Vesper inputting the account later). You can torture them to give you information right there and then (Bond's password). Two different things.
Vesper can be threatened to get the password because he has her right there and then; Bond cannot be threatened to change the account number because he needs to be free and not suspicious to enter it. Again, two different situations.
Irrelevant. LC is desperate and out of options.
After you've released her into Bond and MI6's protection? Not a very solid plan.
Why say this?
Rhetorical question, there's no need to get into personal stuff as per usual.
Not really. Mendel doesn't appear to have any protection as he wanders around and LC manages to capture a Double-O agent, so it's easier to imagine him stealing a briefcase from a wimpy guy than it is exerting some sort of mind control on a woman.
It really is, especially if it involves her going and simply telling Bond and the entire weight of MI6 about the plan. Even if somehow he does manage to get to Vesper to exert revenge he still has no cash- and bear in mind that the US/UK plan is that LC is left with no choice but to actually defect to them in order to get protection from White, and we know that LC sees that as very much being his backup plan because he says as much. How's he supposed to take revenge on her when he's in protective custody? It wouldn't work as a plan. Also his desperation suggests that he's out of time.
Stealing a briefcase/getting Mendel to let him just access the briefcase is much less dumb than that.
Agreed, none of it hangs together very well, but some parts do. Torturing the password out of Bond is the only thing he can do at that point, and it would work.
Is it always on the cards (no pun) from the train meet? Or at some point later in the story?
An interesting detail I only really spotted on my most recent CR viewing is Vesper's reaction immediately after typing the password in at the hospital. If you don't know what's coming next it is throwaway but knowing about the betrayal beforehand as a viewer it can be read as guilt or regret. It's a very nice moment.
She had been working for SPECTRE presumably for years at that point. We later see in Mr. White’s secret room that there was an interrogation VHS with her name on the label. That tracks well with the novel, where she had been working for SMERSH for years.
I wonder then what the timeline for the kidnapping of her "boyfriend" was then in relation to the events of CR.
:)) I'm fascinated by how little sense the plot makes, and I'm easily baited when my comments are broken up into a bunch of little quotes interspersed with inane responses.
How does Mr White get her to hand over a bunch of money to his side when she has been released into Bond's and MI6's protection (and is over her boyfriend)?
Look, maybe I'm underestimating how difficult it is to get Vesper, who helped out with the "tell" thing and seemingly was in on a deception to get Bond to go after her, to cooperate with you and enter your account number, when it in no way goes against her apparent interests to do so. Maybe that'd be hard for some reason. :-?? I don't think anything sensible can be made out of what's in the movie, and they should have thought more carefully about what they added to Fleming's story.
I admit, your idea can work, if Mendel just walks around with that encryptor all the time, without security, and not just when he's en route to the winner of the poker match. LC can overpower him, enter his own account number (assuming slide_99 is wrong about whether that's possible), and hope Bond's password was real, and if it isn't, they have time to torture out another one before the encryptor is deactivated or recovered or whatever. I mean, if that's what you think they're going for, super.
I wish I could just get an overview of what LC and the others thought they were doing. Slide_99's explanation seems to require "VESPER" to be the password for the bank account, which is crazy. Yours seems to require obtaining a Swiss bank's encryptor to be "simple". The first idea seems impossible, and the second adds ideas not even suggested by the film, and strike me as more implausible as getting an already cooperative person to act in her own interests. But that is obviously subjective.
Might have been a year or two, it’s vague enough to say anything. In the novel I think it’s implied that her boyfriend was kidnapped during WWII, which means in the book she had been working for SMERSH for at least 7 years. I could be wrong.
No, it’s her boyfriend who is the Spectre/Quantum agent. He seduces important women, they stage a kidnapping, Quantum says “we have your boyfriend and we’ll kill him unless you do as we say.” There’s every reason to think she actually works for the Treasury like she says. She implicated in the plot by Quantum through her boyfriend. This part at least was made very clear in the film and in the end of Quantum.