Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Posted on April 11, 2020 by badblokebob

The 100 Films Guide to…

You’ve been waiting for him…
Asking for him…
Now he’s here.

Country: UK
Language: English
Runtime: 120 minutes
BBFC: A (cut, 1971) | PG (1987) | 12 (2012)
MPAA: PG

Original Release: 14th December 1971 (West Germany)
UK Release: 30th December 1971
Budget: $7.2 million
Worldwide Gross: $116 million

Stars
Sean Connery (Marnie, The Untouchables)
Jill St. John (The Lost World, Sitting Target)
Charles Gray (The Devil Rides Out, The Rocky Horror Picture Show)
Lana Wood (The Searchers, Grayeagle)

Director
Guy Hamilton (Battle of Britain, Evil Under the Sun)

Screenwriters
Richard Maibaum (Ransom!, Licence to Kill)
Tom Mankiewicz (The Sweet Ride, Ladyhawke)

Based on
Diamonds Are Forever, the fourth James Bond novel by Ian Fleming.

The Story
After finally assassinating his nemesis, Blofeld, Bond is assigned to investigate a diamond smuggling operation in Holland, but following the trail leads him to the glitz of Las Vegas — and a familiar foe.

Our Hero
Bond, James Bond, agent 007 of the British secret service. He may be looking a little older than when we last saw him, but he’s still capable of wooing all the ladies and scaling the outside of skyscrapers.

Our Villains
We so much focus on the Dr Nos and Auric Goldfingers of the early Bond films — plus the ever-changing roster of villains he’d face in later movies — that it’s easy to forget Blofeld has a presence in almost every Bond movie before Diamonds Are Forever (indeed, Dr. No (which only mentions SPECTRE) and Goldfinger (which has no ties whatsoever) are the only exceptions), so it’s no real surprise that he’s not just confined to the pre-titles here. It certainly wouldn’t have been to audiences in 1971, either: he’s prominent in the trailer, and Charles Gray is rather highly billed for someone who’s only in the opening minutes. That said, Lana Wood is fourth billed and she only has about three scenes, so… Until he’s properly revealed, however, we have overtly homosexual assassins Mr Wint and Mr Kidd to tide us over. Considering they’re shown as creepy and murderous, it’s hardly an enlightened portrayal of homosexuality; but then it is from 1971, so what do you expect?

Best Supporting Character
Tiffany Case is Bond’s way in to the diamond smuggling operation. She’s a self-assured and capable woman… for about the first half of the film, before she sharply descends into a stereotypical Bond Girl bimbo. Oh well, they tried.

Memorable Quote
“That’s quite a nice little nothing you’re almost wearing. I approve.” — James Bond

Memorable Scene
Bond travels to Amsterdam under the identity of a diamond smuggler they’ve captured, but when he escapes and to Amsterdam too, Bond must intercept the chap before his cover’s blown — which he does in a small lift, leading to a brutal close-quarters brawl that’s almost as good as the famous train carriage one in From Russia with Love.

Write the Theme Tune…
One of the most famous of the Bond title tracks, its music was written by the film’s — and, by this point, the series’ incumbent — composer, John Barry. It was his fifth Bond theme song (seventh if you include Mr. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and We Have All the Time in the World). The lyrics were by Don Black, returning for his second theme after Thunderball.

Sing the Theme Tune…
This is also the second Bond theme for singer Shirley Bassey, after (of course) Goldfinger. Apparently co-producer Harry Saltzman hated the song, objecting to the innuendo in the lyrics, and it was only saved by his fellow producer, Cubby Broccoli. That said, Saltzman may have had a point: in a later interview, Barry revealed that he instructed Bassey to imagine she was singing about… a penis. “They are all I need to please me / They can stimulate and tease me … Hold one up and then caress it / Touch it, stroke it and undress it…” Whew, crikey!

Making of
By this point in the Bond series (this is the seventh film, remember) a lot more original thought was going into which direction to take things than just “adapt a Fleming novel”. For one thing, they were worried Bond’s British style was becoming passé, so they decided to set the movie in glamorous Las Vegas — which, let’s be frank, has dated far, far more than the classier style of the earlier films. Anyway, they went even further than that: with Lazenby having deserted them, a new leading man was required, and so they cast… an American! *gasp* Unthinkable today. The man in question was John Gavin, best known for playing Sam Loomis in Psycho. He’d also played France’s answer to Bond, agent OSS 117, in a film just a couple of years earlier, which is either good training or a weird conflict, depending how you look at it. Not that it mattered anyway, because United Artists insisted they get Sean Connery back, and they did — albeit for a then-extraordinary $1.2 million salary. To Connery’s credit, he gave every cent of it to a Scottish education charity he’d established.

Previously on…
Connery played Bond in five movies between 1962 and 1967, eventually becoming bored of the role and quitting. They replaced him with an unknown Australian model, who promptly got too big for his boots and ran off after just one movie. It just so happens that the films’ storylines lend credence to the theory that James Bond is a codename that goes along with the 007 designation — normally I hate that theory, but the way it explains the events of OHMSS and Diamonds Are Forever is quite neat. (Basically: Connery-Bond retires and is replaced by Lazenby-Bond (hence the “this never happened to the other fella” line), but when Lazenby-Bond’s wife is killed he quits and Connery-Bond comes out of retirement to avenge her for him (hence him tracking down Blofeld at the start of DAF, but not seeming all that emotional about it).)

Next time…
Connery said he’d never play Bond again… which became the inspiration for the title the next time he did. But that really was his last hurrah in the role. As for the official Bond movies, they finally did the inevitable and cast Roger Moore. The rest is history.

Awards
1 Oscar nomination (Sound)

Verdict

Well throw me out a window and call me Plenty if Diamonds Are Forever isn’t actually a really enjoyable Bond movie. Okay, it’s probably still the worst (official) Connery movie, thanks to a few daft bits (the elephant playing the slot machine; Blofeld in drag; etc), and because it simply doesn’t have as many standout sequences or memorable lines as his other five. But, on its own merits, it’s good fun. The first 45 minutes or so are played admirably straight and serious; the car chase around Vegas is rather good; and while those bits of silliness do creep in, they’re only fleeting (albeit a precursor to where the whole series would go in the Moore years). I’d previously remembered Diamonds as a real nadir; a blight on the name of the series. Now, while I wouldn’t rank it among my most favourites, I found a lot to like.

(For the sake of comparison, I previously gave five stars to From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and four stars to Dr. No and Thunderball. This would be three-and-a-half, but I’ve never done half stars on this blog. If I did, perhaps one or two of those others would’ve been marked down by half-a-star too.)

The Hangover Parts II & III

Posted on May 13, 2018 by badblokebob

In today’s roundup:

The Hangover Part II (2011)

The Hangover Part III (2013)

The Hangover Part II
(2011)

The Hangover was a surprisingly big hit back in 2009 (was it really so long ago?), so naturally it spawned a sequel. That went down less well, mired in criticisms of just being a rehash of the original. I don’t know what people expected, really — The Hangover was sold on its high-concept setup, so naturally they repeat that for the sequel.

For those who don’t remember said setup, it’s a bunch of mates gathering for a bachelor party, only they wake up the next morning with no memories of the night before, surrounded by evidence that a bunch of crazy random stuff has happened, and one of their party missing — in the first film it’s the groom, which naturally has potential to upend the wedding; in this one it’s the bride’s brother, which is almost as bad. So they must retrace their steps to find the missing person, along the way learning what the hell they got up to the night before.

The devil, then, is in the detail. The big change is that the first film was set in Las Vegas and this one is in Bangkok. Other than that… look, I’m not going to list specifics, because what would be the point? But as I say, it’s the same broad outline, only with different specific events. I suppose I can see why some might feel they’d seen all that before, but when so many movies have the same plot without even meaning to, can we really begrudge a sequel for sticking to the same shape and structure as its forebear?

I wonder if part of the reason some people were so disappointed was their heightened expectations. The first was a very popular film, so I guess its fans expected a lot of a sequel. Receiving something that was almost a copy must’ve felt inferior. Personally, I only thought the original was okay — quite amusing, for what it was. I thought the sequel was at least equally as good. If anything, being free of expectations, I enjoyed Part II more. Thinking back on it, I didn’t actually laugh that often… but, somehow, I didn’t mind. So I guess I… kind of like the characters? And so hanging out with them for another couple of hours… was enough? Well, I didn’t expect to have that reaction.

Anyway, clearly fans of The Hangover need to approach this rehash sequel with caution; and if you hated Part I then Part II is samey enough that you don’t want to bother. But if, like me, you enjoyed the original well enough but that was all, this follow-up might surprise you.

The Hangover Part III
(2013)

Clearly the people in charge of the Hangover series took on board criticism that Part II just rehashed Part I’s plot, because Part III takes the same characters and spins them off onto a wholly different narrative. There isn’t even a hangover involved. Unfortunately, that didn’t work either: based on ratings found across the web, it’s the least popular of the trilogy.

Picking up after the events of the second film, it begins with Chow escaping from prison, leading a former criminal rival to force the Wolf Pack to track him down. Cue the gang finding themselves involved in a heist in Tijuana, before events take them back to Vegas to bring the series full circle. In the most fundamental change to the series’ MO, these events unfold linearly, meaning it ditches the piecing-the-night-together element of the previous two films. You can see why they tried to put the same characters through a new crazy adventure, but it’s missing something without that mystery structure.

Even worse, it’s just not as funny and the story isn’t as engaging. Some people say it’s completely humourless, which I think is a bit harsh, but it’s also a more serious film than it should be. The stakes are too high, and the need to construct a story that progresses sequentially leads to a focus on plot. Say what you will about the repeated structure in the first two films, but it allowed for the insertion of almost any random situation that seemed funny — what occurred the night before only has to just about hang together, because the guys are re-encountering their adventures out of order and without all the facts. Here, with the characters sober and the story unfurling in chronological order, there must be clear cause-and-effect from one scene to the next. That seems to have hampered the writers’ funny-bones. It almost becomes a comedic crime thriller rather than just a comedy — albeit a ludicrous, derivative one — which feels like it’s missing the point.

It’s also too long, especially when it moves onto an epilogue that seems to keep reaching an endpoint only for there to be another scene. Eventually there’s a montage of clips from all the previous films, which seems to be under the impression this was some epic saga and something more significant than it actually is. And then, to rub salt in the wound, there’s a mid-credits scene that suggests a better Hangover movie than the one we just watched.

Apparently the lead cast members all took convincing to return for this film, eventually being swayed by a $15 million payday (plus gross points). I mean, fair play, I’d appear in worse movies than this if I was being offered $15 million. At least it’s kind of alright, depending on how forgiving you’re feeling, with a few funny lines and bits; but it is also definitely the weakest and least memorable of the trilogy.

* Just as with the first film, the BBFC took issue with some of the photographs shown during the end credits, and so they were cropped to secure a 15. The version streaming on Amazon is unedited, however, meaning that technically what I watched hasn’t been passed by the BBFC. But there’s nothing there that your average fifteen-year-old hasn’t already seen on the internet anyway. ^

21 (2008)

Posted on September 3, 2017 by badblokebob

21 is based on a true story. Actually, it’s based on a book that’s based on a true story. Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich was a non-fiction bestseller, telling the fun and exciting story of the MIT blackjack team, a bunch of college kids who learnt card counting and took Vegas for millions of dollars. It was such a popular book that all the attention made people look into it, and it turned out it was heavily fictionalised — Mezrich not only exaggerated events, he flat out invented whole chunks of the story. (At the same time, he also left out some good stuff.) In turn, the book has itself been heavily melodramatised for this movie adaptation. What we’re left with is probably about as close to the truth as Game of Thrones is a fair depiction of the Wars of the Roses: some of it happened, but not to those people, not in that way, not at that time, and certainly not all of it.

As a film, it’s been mashed broadly into the heist movie template. Setting aside the veracity and treating it purely as an entertainment, this has pros and cons. Whenever it’s whizzing around in Vegas it’s kinda fun, with flashy camerawork and a slick feel for the excitement of being a successful high-roller. But when it puts that aside to get stuck into the characters’ thinly-drawn personal lives, it gets kinda dull. Part of the point of the book is how boring normal life began to seem to the team when compared to their Vegas lifestyle, but 21 tacks on more interpersonal subplots that just become finger-drumming.

Trying to make the chosen genre function isn’t helped by the fact that there’s no complicated heist here. The blackjack team are doing the same thing over and over — that’s basically how their system works as a moneymaker — and once the system’s been explained and we see it in action, the film only has a few ways to jazz that up. Between that and those subplots, at over two hours 21 is much longer than it needs to be, but doesn’t focus that time in the right areas: at least one major character undergoes a huge personality change across a single montage.

21’s got enough pizzazz to make it enjoyable purely as a lightweight movie experience, but you do have to wonder: would the incredible real story, by dint of being true and not movieised to fit a genre template, actually have been more interesting?

Ocean’s Eleven (2001)

Posted on July 19, 2017 by badblokebob

The 100 Films Guide to…

3 casinos.
11 guys.
150 million bucks.
Ready to win big?

Country: USA
Language: English
Runtime: 117 minutes
BBFC: 12
MPAA: PG-13

Original Release: 7th December 2001 (USA & Canada)
UK Release: 15th February 2002
Budget: $85 million
Worldwide Gross: $450.7 million

Stars
George Clooney (Batman & Robin, Michael Clayton)
Brad Pitt (Fight Club, World War Z)
Matt Damon (The Talented Mr. Ripley, Jason Bourne)
Andy Garcia (The Godfather: Part III, Jennifer 8)
Julia Roberts (Pretty Woman, Closer)

Director
Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Magic Mike)

Screenwriter
Ted Griffin (Ravenous, Matchstick Men)

Based on
Ocean’s Eleven, a 1960 film starring the Rat Pack.

The Story
A gang of crooks plot the biggest heist in Las Vegas history: robbing three casinos at once.

Our Heroes
Danny Ocean, a charming con man fresh out of prison, planning his biggest job yet — well, anyone’s biggest job yet. To do it he’ll need ten more men, including right-hand-man Rusty, newbie Linus, explosives expert Basher, inside man Frank, old pro Saul, tech head Livingston, gymnast Yen, general double-act support Virgil and Turk, and all of it bankrolled by Reuben.

Our Villains
Smug Las Vegas big shot Terry Benedict, owner of all three casinos the gang are targeting. Also: he’s shagging Ocean’s ex-wife.

Best Supporting Character
The aforementioned former Mrs Ocean, Tess, who’s shacked up with Benedict in part because he’s a more honest man than her ex. Or so she thinks…

Memorable Quote
Danny: “Because the house always wins. Play long enough, you never change the stakes, the house takes you. Unless, when that perfect hand comes along, you bet big, and then you take the house.”
Rusty: “Been practicing that speech, haven’t you?”
Danny: “Little bit. Did I rush it? Felt like I rushed it.”
Rusty: “No, it was good, I liked it.”

Memorable Scene
As with any good entry in this genre, the heist itself — which is less “a scene” and more “the third act”, of course — is the highlight of the movie.

Letting the Side Down
Don Cheadle’s cockney accent is less Guy Ritchie, more Dick Van Dyke. But then, as we know, that’s how cockneys are meant to sound anyway.

Next time…
A pair of less well regarded sequels followed in 2004 and 2007 (ten years ago! Time flies), while an all-female spin-off is out next summer.

Verdict

As slick and stylish now as it was a decade-and-a-half ago, Steven Soderbergh’s remake of the Rat Pack comedy-thriller is that rarest of all things in moviedom: a remake that’s better than the original. Apparently Soderbergh said that he saw this as an opportunity to give audiences “pleasure from beginning to end… a movie that you just surrender to, without embarrassment and without regret.” Well, he nailed it. It’s a film packed with likeable characters, memorable lines, snazzy direction, cool music cues, and the raison d’être of a heist movie: a final act that pulls the wool over the audience’s eyes. It’s pretty much perfect entertainment.

Jason Bourne (2016)

Posted on November 28, 2016 by badblokebob

Much like the Bond films to which they’re so often compared, the Bourne movies have their devotees while only fitfully pleasing the critical establishment. This fifth movie — which is notable for marking the return of star Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass after the semi-reboot of The Bourne Legacy — certainly met with mixed reviews when it came out at the end of this summer. Mixed erring towards negative, anyhow, though it does have its supporters. I’d love to say I’m among them, but my take was more… well, mixed.

The story picks up a decade-ish since the last Damon movie, Ultimatum (I don’t recall if the time gap is specified on screen, but we’re led to believe it’s been roughly real-time). Bourne is still living off the grid, participating in underground bare-knuckle fights in Greece for money and/or something to do. When his former associate Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) hacks into the CIA to retrieve documents on the black ops missions she and Bourne used to be a part of, she discovers something about Bourne’s past that leads her to meet up with him. In Langley, hotshot young tech-head Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander) and her boss Director Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones) are on to Nicky and presume Bourne is involved in her plot, dispatching The Asset (Vincent Cassel) to rub them out — but he has his own history with Bourne.

Action sequences ensue, shot with all the ShakyCam you’d expect from Greengrass. By now I imagine you have your own view on whether his style works or not. Personally, I think it’s considerably less bamboozling than when it made its debut in Supremacy 12 years ago — it’s been so copied that we’re more used to seeing it. I think Greengrass has a better handle on the purpose of the style than many of his imitators, however. I’d also argue that the cinematography in Jason Bourne is a smidgen more stable, with shots held a few frames longer, so that it’s even less seasickness-inducing than before. In fact, some shots — even in the quick-cut action montages — are downright pretty. The film was shot by Barry Ackroyd, who hasn’t lensed a Bourne before but has done most of Greengrass’ other movies, so maybe that has something to do with it.

It’s in the big set pieces that Jason Bourne functions best. One in London in the middle of the film is just people walking around a lot looking over their shoulders, but Greengrass still invests it with some tension. Better is the climax, a kind of drag race down the Las Vegas strip… in the middle of traffic, of course. It’s largely implausible (I’ve been to Vegas — I remember the strip as being permanently gridlocked), but it’s certainly adrenaline-pumping. However, the highlight is probably the first: a chase through a smoky nighttime riot in Athens, with Bourne and Nicky on foot and then a motorbike as they’re pursued by the local police, an undercover CIA team, and the Asset, the latter two directed by Lee, Dewey, and their Langley lot via satellite imagery, CCTV, and… social media.

Frankly, Jason Bourne is at pains to mix in hyper-current iconography; the reasoning for Damon and Greengrass’ return now being that the world has changed and how does Bourne fit into that? So as well as social media and Greek riots we’ve got references to and riffs on hacking, Edward Snowden, government surveillance of its own citizens, the prevalence of Facebook/Twitter-esque tech companies, and so on. Sadly, I’m not sure the film’s actually got anything to say about any of these things. Greengrass and his co-writer, editor Christopher Rouse, have appropriated all these zeitgeisty concepts to make the film feel very Now, but that surface sheen is more or less where it ends. I mean, there’s a whole subplot starring Riz Ahmed as the Zuckerberg-like CEO of a social media company that I didn’t even mention in my plot summary because it’s kind of an aside. It’s kind of ironic, really, that it always seemed as if Greengrass’ more natural stomping ground was his documentary-ish real-world-exposé type movies, with his contributions to the Bourne series an unusual sideline; yet when he finally marries the two halves of his filmmaking career, it’s the action rather than current-affairs commentary that takes precedence.

Even leaving that aside, the plot is no great shakes. It’s too slight, serving primarily to string together the three or four big set pieces; and it’s too simplistic — Greengrass’ Bourne movies used to be entertainingly baffling, a web of crosses and double-crosses and historical connections and hidden plans. Jason Bourne re-appropriates many of the series’ familiar beats — all of them, in fact — but it feels like Greengrass and Rouse just analysed the previous movies for repeated elements and copied them, rather than having anything fresh to do with the constituent parts. So while few of these building blocks are poorly handled, there’s little remarkable about them either. Some are at least elevated by quality performances: Vikander tries to inject complexity into her character, with some success thanks to final-act kinda-twists, while Tommy Lee Jones brings natural class.

The end result is that Jason Bourne does thrill as an action movie, which seems to have been the primary goal of its makers, at the end of the day. As an action-thriller, however, the rinsed-and-repeated plot is a slightly faded imitation of former successes; a through-the-motions way to provide those impressively staged chases and punch-ups. It’s not the definitive Bourne movie one might’ve expected from the returning star/director combo (why else come back if not to perfect, or at least add to, the formula?), but instead means the film ends on an odd note: even though it wasn’t a wholly satisfying experience, and even though it doesn’t end with questions still blatantly hanging (as every Bourne movie bar Ultimatum has done), I want Damon and Greengrass to come back and do it all again, please. Only do it properly next time, yeah guys?

Jason Bourne is released on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK today and the US next week.

The Hangover (2009)

Posted on March 22, 2016 by badblokebob

I confess, I only watched The Hangover to see what the fuss was about, and to get the tick on iCM’s Most Checked.

The high-concept plot (guys on a stag are unable to remember the night before, but must use the evening’s bizarre detritus as clues to piece together their wild experiences so they can find the missing groom) is neat, though not as cleverly executed as it could be. The humour is straightforward, perhaps best exemplified by an Asian guy saying “motherfucker” in a silly high-pitched voice — and yeah, I did laugh at that.

It’s easy, decidedly uncomplicated viewing.

For more quick reviews like this, look here.

Ocean’s Eleven (1960)

Posted on September 22, 2010 by badblokebob

2010 #80
Lewis Milestone | 122 mins | TV | PG

“Remakes are not as good as the original” is one of the rules of filmmaking. Of course there are plenty of exceptions, and everyone has their own opinion, and most modern remakes are expressly about making a quick buck from a US audience who can’t watch a film and read at the same time rather than making a better quality film — but, more or less, the rule persists. It may have won him an Oscar, but the consensus seems to be that not even Martin Scorsese can overcome this rule.

Steven Soderbergh’s star-studded 2001 remake of Vegas-set Rat Pack vehicle Ocean’s Eleven, then, is widely seen as a rarity in bucking this trend. And that opinion is right. This original is a scrappier film, with a less focused story and a seemingly endless number of scenes that are seemingly endless, no doubt due to the indulgence of allowing the matey cast to improvise much of the dialogue.

Indeed, the whole film is more about its actors, their camaraderie and humour, than the heist itself, which is fairly basic… and yet still shown in mundane, repetitive detail. Soderbergh managed to create a likeable, funny crew and an exciting heist, not to mention a story that didn’t feel like it was meandering on with no purpose, besting the original in every respect.

It does have its moments: a couple of songs are shoehorned in (even if there’s only two or three and each gets two or three airings) and the cast do succeed in making some of their indulgences entertaining. Nonetheless, this would definitely be for Rat Pack fans only had it not been for the remake… and, really, there’s no reason the remake should change that.

The two Ocean’s Elevens stand as proof that, given the right filmmakers, a mediocre original can be remade into a highly entertaining film. That would be a good new rule for Hollywood to learn.

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