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Comments
He does react though. The stern look he gives M and his line of "the thought had occurred to me" is appropriately underplayed. The emotion is there and for those few moments you can see Bond is irritated by M's remarks.
Basically, it was to not make her sound too cold towards Bond
DaltonCraig007, welcome to the ever growing band of QoS fans! Watched it myself again at the weekend, its really great, from breathless opening car chase to wonderful final scene with M! (I think Craig Bond and Denchs M scenes are at their best in QoS!)
:P
Really? I think it is the complete opposite. I mean what is the woman doing at all the places around the world? I guess it is enough that Bond practices unnecessary globe trotting. We do not need M to do the same, especially since her first scene in QoS showed how dangerous this can be. I also don't understand her behaviour. First she wants Bond to being brought back to England. But then out of nowhere she just lets him go. What has happened in the five minutes in between? OK there was the writers' strike but then they should have just deleted this scene. It's like ok you are totally going crazy and do not care for any of my orders, another agent has been killed because of that,... but ok just go on doing what you want, I don't really care about it...
The final dialouge is quite good but again what the hell is the head of mi6 doing somewhere in Russia? This is stupid.
So that was when M started to mother Bond. I was expecting her to check behind his ears before she let him leave the office. ;)
I'd suggest watching the film again and really paying attention to it-a criticism I give to many who slag it off as making no sense.
M is being pushed by her government and the CIA to get Bond captured, and the CIA even put out a capture or kill order out on him to make sure he's in the bin. There's also an implication that like Beam, these agents are crooked and are killing Bond for Quantum/SPECTRE's benefit given the trouble he's causing with his meddling.
M arrests Bond in anger over what happened with Fields, not seeing the bigger picture of what Bond's true motives are (all mission, no revenge), and after he escapes and tells her he's finishing his work to make good on what he started, she takes him at his word and trusts him to come through. She's got the British government and CIA barking in her ear to get Bond in chains, but she says in an actual dialogue that she's stuffing their orders and that Bond is her agent, who she trusts to do the job.
Bond solidifies her trust even more when he resists killing Yusef and instead allows MI6 to take him to get anything out of him regarding Quantum they can, a temptation that the rookie Bond of Casino Royale wouldn't have been able to pull away from. It shows Bond's growth as a man and agent of professionalism who looks at his mission and the good of the service first, and his own needs or problems last, which he does in the entire film, though it would have been easy for him to avenge Vesper left and right, blinded by the rage he feels. Thanks to Mathis and M, however, he sees the light and all Vesper did to help him, a poor woman caught in a nasty web of her own, which strikes his empathy deeply once he clears the major stages of grief and is no longer blinded by the anger and betrayal he felt he was suffering under.
That's the whole of it.
There's a stretch from when Bond gets captured to where he meets up with M in the underground tunnel that some really good things happen. It's not perfect, but they were on a roll here and it always makes me think that I need to give the film a reevaluation. Then, as we know all too well, it completely falls apart in Iceland.
It sucks that Pierce had to end his tenure like this, but I certainly understand why they wanted to go in another direction after this debacle. The franchise was definitely in need of an overhaul, as we've seen several times before. Still, I'm thankful for the time we had with Brosnan. He always gave it his all, even when the material was weak, as it certainly was here.
Brosnan Era Rankings
1) GE
2) TND
3) TWINE
4) DAD
The Yusef scene is pointless too. If he as a member of Quantum is important for mi6, why should the head of mi6 let him be interrogated by someone who is supossed to be driven by revenge and who does not seem to care about any of her orders? I mean what is the point? She even asked Bond: Is he alive? As if Bond could decide on that. Isn't M the one who should give the orders?
That really annoys me too...along with the M/Moneypenny exchange in TND : "don't ask".."Dont tell"....
Not to mention its a complete ripoff of the way Bourne 2 ended.
Bond wasn't driven by revenge, what don't you get about that? I hear this criticism all the time, but it simply isn't true if you actually pay attention to the film. Bond is doing all he can to accomplish his mission, and in the end, we assume Greene tells him all he knows about the organization and where he can find the man who was running the honeypot on Vesper before abandoning him in the desert. Bond finds the man and is allowed by M to face him in private, because she knows the stake he has in it and how much he wants and needs to find out the truth about Vesper after how much the whole situation has affected him. She knows that Bond will get everything useful out of him in a moment of fear at the sight of a gun, though it may not be much at all considering the steep hierarchy of Quantum and how things are kept secret by each level in certain ways, like Yusef may have been blockaded. I personally think it's a moment for M to see what kind of man Bond is following what he's dealt with in the film and to see if he really isn't motivated by revenge as he says he isn't, and he doesn't fail her by doing what she had hoped, remaining professional.
On Bond's side, he's not an idiot, and he's not going to "revenge" himself on Yusef, especially when the greater punishment for what he's done is jail time in a hole somewhere. Bond is simply searching Vesper's motivations for something he understands, and when he finds that out he leaves, getting what he was after. This was a moment of closure for him, and killing Yusef would have only extended his time traveling down that weary road. The whole film is about forgiveness, and that's exactly what Bond is expressing, thanks to Mathis having an impact on him in the film, getting him to see what he can't see-or won't see-about Vesper.
Bond was ordered to kill Dryden.
I think it was to show his discipline was much better, that's why M asks if Yusuf is still alive. Its a trail to see if Bond has control of his temper, and proves she can finally trust him.
"Give me 5 minutes, and then scream your head off." I love how Bond as pretty much only just met Lupe,, and he's got her figured out, summed up in that one line.
I have nothing new to add to my thoughts on this film. I still think that Licence To Kill is a cracking action thriller, with the usual Bond trappings, but done in a different way. Tim is terrific, Sanchez is by far and away the nastiest villain in the series, Q gets his finest hour and Kanem's Bond theme (especially during the Tanker wheelie*) gets the hair on th eback of my kneck to stand up. Not forgetting Pam and Lupe (even if she is a little too clingy with her "I love James, so much").
*It might not be realistic, but it's just such a typical Bondian moment, I always have to turn the volume up during that part.
My 1996-2016 20th Anniversary Bondathon
1. Licence To Kill
2. Tomorrow Never Dies
3. The World Is Not Enough
4. Spectre
5. GoldenEye
6. Die Another Day
7. Casino Royale
8. Skyfall
9. Quantum Of Solace
Despite her horrendous overacting, I must admit that she rocks in that black outfit though.
That we can agree.
She's an attractive lady.
Was that deliberate, d'ya think?