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I watched his last two films recently and they make for interesting viewing. First up was The Protégé...For what is essentially a B-movie, this is a watchable and entertaining affair. However, the script is really quite ridiculous. Regardless of this, the film is helped along by Campbell's slick direction. He knows where to put the camera in order to give a sense of basic geography and the fight-scene choreography is well staged. I also enjoyed how he really showed the brutality that Maggie Q's character suffers. It goes some way to humanising her character. Though make no mistake, this is routine and generic material. The only thing 'new' is the cringeworthy attempt to craft an adversarial romance between Q and Michael Keaton. Both are rather good in their roles though, especially Keaton who could even have made a good 007 himself....
I feel Memory sold me a false bill of goods. The premise is unique: A hired assassin has Alzheimer’s. Could this be a genre film with some thoughtful musings on life and death? Could it employ some inventive methods to place the audience in the disoriented state of the killer? The answer to both questions is a resounding 'nope'. Quite honestly, NOTHING is done with the concept. There is no attempt to impair the audience (like the scenery-switching in The Father) or to make us question what is real and what has been misremembered. Instead, Campbell tries to emulate both Memento and Sicario, not coming close to either. He orchestrates the proceedings with a flat efficacy, stringing together bland action beats and churning up little that rings true. Liam Neeson lacks commitment in the action scenes but does offer unforced glimmers of a soul lost to brutality (there's a great scene where he has to deal with an injury). However, he is perfectly lucid when the plot demands it. Meanwhile, Guy Pearce (get it?) is the strongest and most convincing element of the film.
As for Bond 26, I think it depends. My gut instinct is Campbell won’t return and the next director will have more story input than what we’ve seen before, more akin to Fukunaga (or indeed Boyle) during NTTD. Nonetheless, Campbell does understand Bond (or at least how to interpret the character cinematically) so who knows.
Just saw this old interview quoted on the previous page. I think I'd disagree with Mr Campbell there- GoldenEye is a lot of fun but I remember my initial reaction was that it didn't really do much but be a sort of updated version of a John Glen Bond film. I don't think it's closer to a Connery at all.
Eek. That film sounds a bit tasteless.
Considering the issues created by the writers strike, his experience would have helped Quantum immensely .
No, I'm surprised he said that, especially considering at the time, they seemed focused to try to distance the new era from the Dalton era. They treated that like a stain on franchise and the GE attitude was more like "we're back and picking up where Moore left off."
I wouldn't say I was disappointed, but on the other hand perhaps I was expecting something a bit more. With regards to the other conversations we're having on here about the future of Bond, I don't think there's anything wrong with moving things on and giving the audience a bit more than they were expecting. I think that's why CR went down so well.
Now pass the ketchup.
I think tonally there's a fair bit of the Connery-era in there. And in GoldenEye I'd say Brosnan was closer to Connery than Moore, but the film itself is offset by a lot of the grander action (especially in the vehicular sense) that Glen injected into a lot of his films. The supporting characters (Xenia, mainly) also felt more like the larger than life counterparts that we got in the Moore era. So there's a nice cocktail of both in there, and that's probably why it's still so revered so highly. It hits quite a lot of marks.
Out of interest, where do you see the Connery tone?
This is inaccurate. Eon was still trying to keep the flag up for the Dalton films even though Dalton was no longer around. There was a 1995 special that was leading up to GoldenEye and they kept highlighting Dalton’s run like name dropping Sanchez as one of the best and memorable villains, giving Robert Davi a bit interview in it too.
And yeah, they were mostly focusing on trying to recapture the Connery era rather than Moore. If there’s anything in GE that resembles Moore then it’s Brosnan trying to keep that tongue in cheek element. Even then, they were still trying to give Brosnan the kind of pathos that Dalton got. So they were not trying to totally distance from Dalton.
I should probably have stressed "early Connery" as obviously that era shifted quite a bit towards its end. However, it mainly comes from the self-seriousness/straight faced nature that breaks through at times. If I had to pick one, I'd probably say Thunderball is the Connery film it most feels like even though visually they don't have a lot in common. A lot of the MI6-based scenes evoke similar scenes in TB to me. A lot of that could be structural, too; GoldenEye's plot kicks into gear a lot later than other Bond films do, similar to TB.
And obviously the Russian-set scenes have shades of FRWL to them, specifically the earlier moments; but that's arguably natural rather than creatively determined considering the setting. And even that is capped off with wonderful Moore-esque action.
This doesn't surprise me. Almost everything I dislike about the Craig era came from Craig himself, from firing Lindy Hemming to hiring Sam Mendes to the whole NTTD fiasco. Babs and Michael should have put him in his place. It's telling that the only Bond movie he did that's universally-praised is the one he had little or no input in.
And if Craig is the reason we got Mendes, THANK GOODNESS.
Yes, totally agree there. The things I enjoy least about CR are probably the hangovers from Brosnan’s time (Dame Judi excepted, natch).
Hemming's work was very understated and traditional without looking dated. I thought it complemented Craig-Bond perfectly. After she left, his wardrobe started becoming increasingly garish and overdone, like the peacoat/jumper/tie getup in SF and his mafioso funeral attire in SP.
On a side note, Hemming is also the reason why Christian Bale looked more Bondian (and ironically more British) in The Dark Knight movies than Craig did during the same era.
But I’ll say Bale is well suited there because his Bruce Wayne persona is supposed to be insufferably posh for appearance’s sake.
Reread my post. I was talking about this suit.
And shout out to his vest.
The vest is nice, but in full suit that collar pin and the handkerchief ruin it for me.
On a second note, the coat in the previous scene wasn’t terrible at all. I very much like it.
I WISH we had more of this confident Bond in his run.