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Anyway, I'm in the QWoS is Craig's best performance camp. I think the film is utterly underrated. I like his subtle acting. I think Skyfall and Spectre even more so asked him to go over that boundary, making him less cool (and in SP, even an a** in some scenes (M) ) .
With seemingly effortless ease, Craig depicted a Bond who had been stripped of all his ridiculous gadgets and had to rely on his own brain and brawn to overcome obstacles in Casino Royale. Here was a James Bond who was not invincible and detached, but a more human and even damaged man who made mistakes and got emotional at tough times. Just like the novels.....
Bond became real. The fans could now identify more with a man who used awe-inspiring parkour to chase the bad guy than a man who drove around in an invisible car and could make things explode by pressing a button on his watch.
Vesper Lynd, the Bond girl who was brilliantly depicted by Eva Green, played a role almost as crucial as Bond himself in the movie rather than being reduced to a damsel in distress whose job is to look pretty.
Daniel Craig’s entry into the James Bond franchise promised an exciting era of Bond films that broke the boring age-old rules of 007 movies and gave the audience something new and refreshing to look forward to.
It is disappointing, however, to see how the Bond films post-Casino Royale broke that promise (albeit slightly). The slow reversal from the promise of a new James Bond to the habit of sticking to the old and clichéd rulebook of making a Bond film was never more evident than in Spectre.
It’s almost as if the filmmakers were trying to make the film predictable and clichéd. Every person you think is the bad guy in the movie will turn out to be the bad guy. Even though Craig is still convincing as Bond, there is nothing in the movie which allows him to present Bond in a new light.
In Spectre, Bond is a man who relies on buttons in his watch to trigger an explosion, a fast car armed with flamethrowers and ejection seat, a pistol effective enough to take on a helicopter, a conveniently-placed net or a soft sofa at the end of a steep fall and even sheer, dumb luck to overcome obstacles.
When Bond does try to display emotion, it is done in a cringe-inducing clichéd and melo-dramatic manner. There is a scene in which Madeline Swann, the Bond girl, tells a trapped Bond that she loves him. Let’s just say that the events which follow that statement in the movie will remind you of a bad 1990s Bollywood romantic movie.
Speaking of the Bond girl, her role in the movie has been reduced to a pretty damsel in distress. The talent of other actors in the movie like Christoph Waltz (the Bond villain), Ralph Fiennes (M), Ben Whishaw (Q), Andrew Scott (C), Naomie Harris (Moneypenny) and Monica Bellucci (Lucia Sciarra) is wasted as they are given roles which are hollow and one-dimensional.
Also, the fact that Spectre, the third movie after Casino Royale, still keeps making references to Craig’s first Bond film is not very encouraging and makes us miss Casino Royale all the more.
But the disappointment of Spectre is not really unexpected. The downfall of the blonde Bond films began after Casino Royale and was seen in Quantum of Solace and even in Skyfall, which mostly got positive reviews. Quantum of Solace, the disappointing sequel to Casino Royale, had a weak plot and an even weaker and unoriginal Bond villain.
Craig’s talent was again wasted by depicting a Bond who, for a man out to avenge the death of a loved one, rarely displays any of that torment, darkness or even intensity which was present in Casino Royale.
Skyfall, of course, did have a gripping first half. It had some strong personal references to James Bond’s dark past and was arguably the most visually appealing Bond film.
I agree and this is exactly why QOS is such a missed opportunity. I watched it again the other day because of those qualities, but the film is at times so hyperactively edited I had difficulties enjoying the underlying greatness. And believe me, I tried.
Craig's performance in QoS is the highlight, the opening car chase is also exceptional. However, the main villain is a weak, limp wristed and bland. In reality Bond probably set out to kill Yosef but his strength of character ensured a different result.
I really like Greene,but a lot of members don't.
Greene is a business man,pure and simple.
He uses his intelligence and his slyness to gain what Quantum and he needs.
For example,leading everyone to believe that he is after the oil,including killing Fields with it,when he is in fact stockpiling water.
reading these two articles makes things interestingly clear:
http://ew.com/article/1992/06/19/robert-ludlum-pays-tribute-james-bond/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/event/article-3690475/Bourne-Jason-Bourne-wasn-t-creation-says-Eric-Van-Lustbader-ve-written-ten-Bourne-thrillers-no-one-s-complained-yet.html
To take away a water supply and openly kill people in the name of a private business (and not a Country) you have to be a psychopath as well as businessman. Greene is not convincing as a psychopath or a memorable heavy IMO. But I get the point you were making. As a Bond Villain a Politician or Businessman is a bore.
I found it quite convincing that he is a nutter (and so did Bond because he was caught cold) the way he just goes for Bond with the pipe,raining down blows on him and screaming at the same time ,then with the axe.
The part that is also clever,that shows Greene is a psycho but not skilled,is when he puts the axe through his own foot,and also when Bond has him by the hair dangling from the corridor : instead of pleading for his life,when the gunshot goes off,he laughs and says 'Looks like you just lost another one",which he knows will enrage Bond.
It's only when he realises later,when he cools down and grasps the situation he is in, that the other side of his persona appears and he spills everything about Quantum to Bond, in hope he will be kept alive.
Apart from the fact that he could barely lift the thing. But I get your point, which is a fair one, but he's just not an iconic villain.
hahaha glad we could get this vision over to you, you're close to conversion! For now, however, we'll accept that you don't see him as iconic. That's stage two ;-)
But the Bournes gave their stories the necessary more time to develop. Just a line here and there, maybe two,three more dialogs would have gone a long way in this movie. It has very redeeming qualities but that's its main problem as I see it.
One, they borrowed heavily from a film in the same genre that redefined that sector (the first two films were game changing). Second, they didn't hide it well.
Most who had seen the Bourne entries knew what they were doing, all the way down to the epilogue at the end. A little more subtlety would have helped QoS be more appreciated.
This is one of the reasons the film didn't go down all that well with the general public. The villain was indeed a bit nondescript. A cog in a larger network. I didn't like Almaric's Greene at first, but now I really appreciate the portrayal. Quite different from Le Chiffre or the far more outlandish Silva, but suitably charismatic.
”The name is Bond…James Bond.”
How wonderfully those words ignite out cinematic memories, whether spoken by the celebrated Sean Connery or the extremely underrated Roger Moore. They were a kind of magic carpet that let us all know that the man in the center of the bull’s-eye was about to take us on a storytelling journey, through the cross and double cross, good boys and girls versus bad guys and vixens, murder and mayhem, virtue triumphing over (very practical) stupidity and (very impractical) evil.
Each and every word of this is so true and shows exactly why Ludlum himself was such a successful writer. He just felt it.
I can't put in words how much I miss that feeling.
Agreed..Le Chiffre is one of my favourite villains,and definitely the best in the Craig era until now.
Mads was an inspired choice to play him,and was perfect in the role,which I realised even more after seeing him on the giant screen at the Albert Hall.
I feel the same way about GE.
You may not like it or believe it but in large parts of the world that's exactly how business is done. Very often by people hired and paid by Western companies I might add.
Absolutely.
Very fitting for his character. :)
And so I come to why SP is such a dissapointment. The three dimensional threat behind an organisation of which you sometimes see the rotten deeds turns into an open book run by a big boy with a chip on his shoulder.