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It's funny, because I wouldn't say this about Batman for instance, but as someone not particularly invested in the Bondian mythos I wonder if we can't just ask how does this work as a film? rather than take Buttergun's dedicated, painstakingly informed approach based around fidelity, authenticity and the context of the whole Bond canon.
While Bond is important enough to me on the peripheries of my cultural life that "007" and the theme tune touch some thrill-buttons ~ and variations on those motifs, like excitable choirs singing the tune, can give me a bit of a novelty-kick ~ I'm more interested in how this film would work on its own than how it related to previous Bonds, which I don't even remember in much detail.
On those terms: I don't know why it's initially in black and white, and why they give up this style, because actually it looked really good with that crisp, arty, period, even "French" visual. In colour, shots of speedboats and skyplanes look a bit ho-hum to me, like something we've seen many times before. The casino scenes put me in mind of Croupier, with semi lookalike also-ran Bond Clive Owen... the now notorious emerging-from-the-sea scene is perhaps an ironic nod to Ursula Andress (and Halle Berry's echo of that iconic shot). Craig's eyes look cgi-enhanced, but in any case are captivating.
What I felt a little dubious about is the apparent love theme: the idea of this new Bond giving up his heart, letting down all his defences, becoming that vulnerable. I can see how this creates drama and everything, but my idea of Bond was all about callous, cynical hardness, and to have him lower his barriers in the first film with this new incarnation seems a bit... rash. |
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