Tag Archives: Action

A Good Day to Die Hard  (2013)    65/100

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Rating :   65/100                                                                       98 Min        12A

Bruce Willis reprises the role of John McClane that made him officially a movie star way back in 1988 with the original ‘Die Hard’, a movie that set the benchmark for every action film made ever since and became a Christmas/family tradition to watch every year (partly because it’s set at, and aired, every Christmas, and also partly due to a similar tradition set by Joey and Chandler in ‘Friends’).  The original film was followed by ‘Die Hard 2: Die Harder’ 1990, ‘Die Hard with a Vengeance’ 95, and ‘Die Hard 4.0/Live Free or Die Hard’ (also the state motto of New Hampshire incidentally – minus the ‘Hard’ part of course) 07.  All four of the previous films were worthy additions to the canon, featuring the world’s hardest cop vs. money grabbing pseudo terrorists, but what of the fifth one?  Well, it’s a lot more action focused than even its predecessors, and with a relatively short running time a lot of that action is extremely tightly cut, making it quite fast paced but also at times difficult to make out what’s going on.  Perhaps especially true during a huge car chase sequence which is otherwise packed full of impressive stunts, but is mostly reduced to a visual blur and a series of loud metallic crunches.  For a sequence that took weeks of filming, all the effort put into it deserved a better final product.  Similarly there’s a scene where Bruce Willis’ hands go from being tied to being free to beat the hell out of the bad guy, and I guess you’re supposed to assume he unties himself offscreen somehow, but there’s a constant thread of unbelievability throughout the action sequences, and one of the things that made the previous films a success was that even though they were, quite literally, over the top, efforts were made to make it seem plausible.

A plot does exist here, but so much emphasis is placed on the action that it’s been degraded in the process.  John McClane’s kids are alluded to in ‘Die Hard’, but whereas the introduction of his daughter worked with the great story in the fourth instalment, here the appearance of his son, played by Australian actor Jai Courtney (the bad guy in ‘Jack Reacher’), feels a little tawdry and allows for more than one overly cheesy moment, and although the always lovely Mary Elizabeth Winstead appears briefly as the daughter again, she only has about thirty seconds or less screen time.  If they are grooming Jai to take over the franchise they may be in for trouble as although he has the physique of an action star, he is so far lacking the onscreen charisma that would be needed for the role, in a similar way to the general reception of Indy’s son Mutt in the last Indiana Jones film.  The action all takes place in Russia, the latest in a list of Hollywood films to do so (‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’, ‘Chernobyl Diaries’, ‘The Darkest Hour’, a tiny bit of the last Transformers movie), although it was filmed in Hungary, and anyone who has played ‘Call of Duty’ will see some very familiar scenes in Chernobyl.  Indeed, one can easily imagine the filmmakers sitting playing the game and having a ‘brainwave’, “Hey I know, let’s put John McClane in Chernobyl and have him blow the shit out of it!”.  Hmm.  The game is actually more realistic than the film, with radiation treated as a minor irritation to fitting Chernobyl into the story.

Despite all this, The Red Dragon still gained some nostalgic pleasure from investing in another Die Hard film, but alas it is a mar on a franchise that had thus far put paid to the widely, and falsely, held notion that sequels only dilute the original.  It was a great idea to release the film on Valentine’s Day, but an extremely questionable one to pick a director and a writer (John Moore and Skip Woods respectively) with only a small number of ok-ish films under their belt, including video game adaptations for each of them.  It seems that British audiences have been treated with the disdain of being given a heavily cut version so that the film can have a 12A rating (it’s rated R in the states), which is absolutely disgraceful.  The fact that the director has already started working on his director’s cut suggests he is far from happy with the released version on either side of the Atlantic, and we can hopefully expect to see a better one appearing on dvd in the future.  Good to see the continuation of some of the music from the other films, and indeed a classy Rolling Stones song play over the credits at the end, one knew to The Red Dragon, and one that you can see the video for, featuring Noomi Rapace, below.  If Bruce Willis and company can make number six something special, then all will be forgiven.

Bullet to the head  (2012)    65/100

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Rating :   65/100                                                                       92 Min        15

It is impossible not to think of Rage Against the Machine when reading the title of this film, but unfortunately it misses a trick by not having their song of the same name play at any point. Nonetheless, based on the French graphic novel by Alexis Nolent, this is a fun, no nonsense action flick from director Walter Hill (of ‘The Warriors’, 1979, fame) with the sound effects heavily augmented for extra brutality. Sylvester Stallone is the wronged hitman (with a conscience of course) forced to buddy up with Korean cop Sung Kang to take on the bad guys, primarily in the guise of ‘Conan the Barbarian’ (11) and ‘Game of Thrones’ star Jason Momoa, who stalks around like a solid, skulking chunk of evil (he really is much better suited to play the baddie). Expect stylised violence and one-liners. Good stuff.

The Last Stand  (2013)    50/100

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Rating :   50/100                                                                     107 Min        15

This has been touted as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s return to the big-screen after his two term, eight year stint as governor of the state of California. Of course, it’s not entirely accurate, as he also appeared in ‘The Expendables’ (2010) and its more action stars per bullet sequel ‘The Expendables 2’. Nevertheless, here he is the main character, the sheriff of a small American town near the Mexican border; a semi-retirement from the horrors of solving crime in Los Angeles. Cue entry of one on-the-run criminal looking to escape south of the border (from the clutches of FBI agent Forest Whitaker), and no second guesses over where he decides to cross.

The film opens with a shot of a police officer in his car eating donuts, from which we can infer it’s either going to be full of stereotypes, or something that perhaps turns those stereotypes into satire. Sadly it’s mostly the former. This really is a step in the wrong direction for Arnie, harking back to films in his early career such as ‘Commando’ (85) rather than classics like ‘Predator’ (87) and the Terminator series (though it has been confirmed he will return to that franchise as per his catchphrase {which, incidentally, was actually a botched line – he was meant to say ‘I’ll come back’}, whether they’ll be able to pull it from the depths of ‘Terminator Salvation’ 09 is another matter).

The film features some unbelievably bad tactics by both the criminal gang orchestrating the escape attempt and also the cops led by the big man himself. Though it is good to see him on the big-screen again, as his acting creaks into gear like a huge, rusty, ahem, machine before he eventually gets into a rhythm and delivers some of the one-liners we would expect, but never with full conviction. I’m pretty sure he shoots one of the bad guys in the head at point-blank range at one point, and then launches himself of a roof with the, presumably, deceased for company. Most amusing.

The film also stars Johnny Knoxville of Jackass fame, who seems to be relaunching his movie career too with a spate of films made in 2012. Perhaps his main selling point is being able to save on stunt man costs, as in at least three of those films, including this one, he performs some ridiculous stunt for no reason other than he wants to remind everyone he is as far removed from a character actor as you can get. This is the first American film for South Korean director Jee-woon Kim, who has a critically and commercially successful backlog of films, but unusually he didn’t write the screenplay for this project (no less than three people are credited with that glory), a story which could have worked, but ultimately, really doesn’t.

Ends with a painfully unbelievable final fight sequence too.


Quotes

“I’m the sheriff.”   Arnold Schwarzenegger/Ray Owens

Django Unchained  (2012)    62/100

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Rating :   62/100                                                                     165 Min        18

Tarantino’s latest gets a lot right but, unusually for the director, it also gets a lot wrong. Here he tackles the western genre and has said he wanted it to fit into the spaghetti western style but in an American way. Whilst imagining a western done in the style of Quentin Tarantino delivers exactly what we see here, there is also an element of style being prioritised over story; particularly in the length of the film, which starts off very strongly, but soon begins to drag. The Red Dragon is a fan of westerns, but if you ask anyone who doesn’t like them one of the commonest complaints is that they find them boring and tedious, and asides from some over the top gory violence ‘Django Unchained’ isn’t going to do much to change that view for many.

The story follows that of freed slave Django (Jamie Foxx) as he and bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) travel the pre-Civil War American Deep South, ultimately in search of Django’s still enslaved wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). There are a lot of nice touches, including a lot of jokes at the expense of racist plantation owners, but at one point Django makes an extremely dubious out of character decision, and it’s purely to set up events in the rest of the film. Indeed, anyone familiar with ‘Inglorious Basterds’ (09), which was a fantastic movie, will recognise several nods in its direction, but also very strong similarities with the way tension was created in that film and then released.

With that knowledge everything plays out with an inevitable unoriginality, and it does indeed become quite tedious, to an almost childish degree, with even some of the music jarring badly with the narrative – something for which Tarantino is famous for normally getting completely spot on. Even things like having one of the slave owners suggest that all black people are genetically programmed to be submissive and that Django, being different, is one in ten thousand, and then much later on having the ‘hero’ Django saying something along the lines of ‘you were right about one thing, I am one in ten thousand’, well it kind of has a lot of negative connotations with it, though this is possibly more down to carelessness than anything else. Christoph Watlz and Samuel L. Jackson (in a masterfully Machiavellian role) give the strongest performances.

Upon the release of the film, Tarantino has had to face a bit of a grilling from journalists over its content, and over the very hot debate at the moment surrounding whether or not movie violence has a direct link to several gun related massacres in the States and elsewhere. In the following interview with Krishnan Guru-Murthy, the strain of that is perhaps beginning to tell….

Gangster Squad  (2013)    66/100

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Rating :   66/100                                                                      113 Min       15

A fairly OK gangster film, but one with nothing to really make it stand out and too little in the way of invention when it comes to shootouts and characters. Based very loosely on real life LAPD cop John O’Mara, the gangster squad themselves consist of an off-the-books undercover police operation to harass and attack the illegal shenanigans of one Mickey Cohen (who had a different fate in real life to that in the film) in late 1940’s Los Angeles. The squad are brought to life by Josh Brolin as O’Mara, Ryan Gosling playing Jerry Wooters (the other real character of the group) with a somewhat effeminate voice that takes a bit of getting used too, Robert Patrick, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, and Micheal Peña. Sean Penn plays Cohen, with Emma Stone as the bit of skirt who sleeps around and generally acts as a 2D plot device, albeit one in the occasional sexy dress. It starts off promisingly, but it’s just not very involving or particularly convincing. There is enough of the traditional gangster film in there to hold interest to the end though.

Jack Reacher  (2012)    73/100

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Rating :   73/100                                                                     130 Min        15

Tom Cruise stars as the titular character in this detective style thriller: a highly decorated ex-military drifter mysteriously called in to help solve a high profile, brutal crime at the bequest of one of the suspects. The character is the central one in a whole line of novels by British writer Lee Child (real name, Jim Grant), and this is his first venture onto the big-screen, courtesy of screenwriter and director Christopher McQuarrie (winner of the best original screenplay Oscar for 1995’s ‘The Usual Suspects’), and, based on the success of this, it’s likely not to be his last. The film stays satisfyingly true to the genre whilst at the same time turning a number of clichés on their head, often to comical effect. All of the cast are good, from the very beautiful Rosamund Pike as the defence attorney working with Reacher, to renowned auteur Werner Herzog (‘Aguirre, Wrath of God’ 72, ‘Stroszek’ 77, ‘Rescue Dawn’ 06, ‘Bad Lieutenant : Port of Call New Orleans’ 09) as one of the bad guys, and a smaller role for Robert Duvall. It’s a little obvious what’s going on, but at the same time not everything is put on display and Reacher’s sarcastic wit is pleasant countermeasure to the ruthlessness of his enemies.


Quotes

“You think I’m a hero? I am not a hero. I’m a drifter with nothing to lose. You killed that girl to put me in a frame. I mean to beat you to death, and drink your blood from a boot. Now this is how it’s going to work, you’re going to give me the address and I’ll be along when I am damn good and ready, if she doesn’t answer the phone when I call this number, if I even think you’ve hurt her, I disappear. And if you’re smart that scares you. Because I’m in your blind spot. And I have nothing better to do.”   Tom Cruise/Jack Reacher

Rooster Cogburn  (1975)    67/100

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Rating :   67/100                                                                     108 Min        U

A fair few folk know that Mr western himself, John Wayne, won his only best actor Oscar for playing Rooster Cogburn in the original version of ‘True Grit’ (69). Fairly few people know that he reprised the role in this sequel in 1975, his second last film before he passed away in 1979. It follows a similar sort of formula to its prequel, with Rooster set out to enforce the law in the Old West and a strong willed female accompanying him, much to his chagrin, for her own personal reasons. This time around it is no child that brightens his days, but rather a devoutly Christian old mare in the guise of Katharine Hepburn. Both exuberate wit and charm together, and the bonds of their relationship prove one of the finest things in the movie along with the visual presentation of the wonderful Oregon scenery.

A perfectly decent western, it’s worth watching for the fact alone that it was the only time the two screen legends appeared in a film together. The pair were both born in May 1907, John Wayne eventually succumbed to cancer – it’s thought as a possible result of his work as Genghis Khan in ‘The Conqueror’ in 1956, as the US military were conducting nuclear tests near the filming location, and not only did a disproportionate number of the cast and crew die of cancer, and it become one of the biggest flops of all time, but producer Howard Hughes (played by Leonardo DiCaprio in ‘The Aviator’ 04) reputedly knew about the testing and pressed on with the production, then spent the final years of his life consumed by guilt, locked away by himself watching the film repeatedly. So the story goes anyway.

Someone who was up for casting John Wayne as Genghis Khan clearly had some issues in the first place. Katherine Hepburn went on to cement her solitary stranglehold on the Academy Awards, winning best actress for 1981’s ‘On Golden Pond’ and becoming the first, and still only, actor to win four lead acting Oscars (she is one of only two actors to have even won three in the leading category {the other being Daniel Day-Lewis} and she also appeared in ‘The Aviator’ played by Cate Blanchett, a role which landed Blanchett the best supporting actress Oscar), though her early life was marked with tragedy, developing a large mistrust for people after discovering the body of her older brother after he apparently committed suicide. She would live until the ripe old age of 96.

Seraphim Falls  (2006)    45/100

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Rating :   45/100                                                                     115 Min        15

‘Seraphim Falls’ is a western that pits Liam Neeson against Pierce Brosnan. This is a winning premise, but it is misleading. The film opens with Neeson and his posse wounding and then hunting a desperate Brosnan through the Ruby mountains in Nevada, a few years after the Civil War. We have no idea why, and the chase continues leading to what we soon realise will be the inevitable confrontation in order for us to learn about the back story. It’s fairly dull, and nothing we haven’t seen many times before. Pierce Brosnan comes off least worst from this, and there are a few nice touches and shots of the both beautiful and oppressive landscapes (by director of photography John Toll, Oscar winner for ‘Legends of the Fall’ 94 and ‘Braveheart’ 95) but the acting isn’t at fault here, it’s the screenwriting and direction that are fully to blame for allowing what could have been a decent modern western descend into nothing more than a humdrum TV movie. At one point Brosnan gives a particularly convincing performance of removing a bullet from his arm with a knife he’s heated in a fire, but then drops it and noticeably rolls the flesh of his arm onto it with no effect, which pretty much sums up the attention given to detail throughout the whole film. Angelica Huston and Wes Studi make random appearances toward the end too.

Joe Kidd  (1972)    64/100

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Rating :   64/100                                                                       88 Min        15

‘Joe Kidd’ is a western directed by John Sturges, the man behind classics like ‘The Great Escape’ (63) and ‘Gunfight at the O.K. Corral’ (57), and it was one of the last films he ever did (the very last being ‘The Eagle has Landed’ with Michael Caine and Robert Duvall in 1976). It is also a classic Clint Eastwood film that was shot the same year he did ‘Dirty Harry’ (72), in between helming his directorial debut ‘Play Misty for Me’ (71) and his next outing behind the camera ‘High Plains Drifter’ (73). It stands up well against those better known films, with Clint in his usual hard man role complimented by some wonderful one-liners, casual standoffs with armed goons, and the use of whatever is at hand to defeat the bad guys, including at one point a train…

Eastwood plays a reluctant ex-bounty hunter hired by ruthless land owner and hunter Robert Duvall to take care of a little problem. Duvall appeared in ‘The Godfather’ the same year, and it’s interesting to see the contrast in the two characters. Here he is just as convincing at being somewhat dishevelled and unhinged, as he was at being the controlled and calculating Tom Hagen. As is common with westerns though, the characters don’t really get much in the way of backstory. What prevents this from being a film in the genre that everyone has heard of is there isn’t much in the way of the big showdown that makes it really stand out. There are some nice touches here and there, but several people on both sides don’t seem particularly concerned whether or not they get hit, judging from how much cover they’re taking.

If you generally like westerns and/or Clint Eastwood then this is certainly a worthy watch, and you will no doubt acquire some new lines to practice while you’re shaving by the mirror …

Skyfall  (2012)    95/100

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Rating :   95/100                       Treasure Chest                      143 Min        12A

Skyfall is very, very good. Part of its success is that it at times has you thinking ‘goodness I’m bored’, and ‘doesn’t Daniel Craig look way older in this one than in the last two’. The former attribute avoids the pitfall of many an action movie – trying to constantly outdo the last scene and ‘ramp up the action’ to the point where what should be a story becomes an avalanche of machine gun flashes and damsels in distress being propelled through the air by grenades that have hair stylists as secondary functions. The filmmaker must play tricks on the viewer’s mind in order to captivate it properly. Here it’s done in a number of ways, the plot slows, then gradually becomes more intriguing. The music matches this pace, with long stretches that have no music at all, allowing for the appreciation of more nuances in the acting as well as the feeling that we are watching real people rather than scripted movie stars.

Within this framework, it’s the acting that’s really allowed scope to carry the whole, and Judi Dench and Javier Bardem really deliver here. Don’t be at all surprised to see both of them nominated in the best supporting category again this awards season. It is the difference that a great deal of, no pun intended, intelligence into the piece has made. From the Broccoli’s decision to hire an Oscar winning director in the shape of Sam Mendes, and nine times Oscar nominee Roger Deakins as director of photography (who is a true master of his craft, evinced by several of his films: ‘True Grit’ in 2010, ‘No Country for Old Men’ in 2007 and ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ in 1994 to name but a few), to their whole outlook with regard to revamping the franchise, beginning with ‘Casino Royale’ in 2006.

Part of that outlook is evident here, as we see a beat up version of Bond, far removed from the suave, unruffled, and ridiculously cheesy Bond of past movies. In some of the novels Bond was at times much more human and fragile, and that certainly is how the opening of Skyfall feels. It’s almost like subverting the symbol of movie land masculinity. There is a scene where Bond has to go through a medical exam – it would have been wonderful to have seen him go through an STD test as well. One can imagine Q, ‘em, we may have to add a few to the number of women that have died as a result of having had intercourse with you 007…’. It would make sense for the future of the franchise to see a Bond musing on the family he never had, or indeed discovering a hitherto unknown son, or twenty. So long as none of them are called Mutt…..

Skyfall then is a well crafted and bold statement from the crew who worked on it. An engaging tale that reinserts Bond as a real person fighting modern day enemies, and one that leaves the audience thirsty for more. There is more than one nod to previous films in the franchise along the way too. Though, as is always the case when you encounter a film that you really enjoy, there are the inevitable parts where you wish they’d said this instead of that, or omitted that line, or why did he do x instead of y. For example, one scene has Bond receive his new weapon in an open case from Q whilst they admire some of Turner’s work in the National Gallery. The National Gallery which, oddly enough, has cameras covering every single part of the public space and security warders on constant patrol around no more than two or three rooms each. It doesn’t take MI6’s finest to work out this is not really the best place for the handing over of live arms and a nice chit chat to go along with it (although the moment does go well with the last scene the pair of them, Craig and Ben Whishaw, shared onscreen together in ‘Layer Cake’ 04). These things are though consistent with the other two instalments of the new Bond franchise. If you watch the keys Bond presses to insert the password for the money in ‘Casino Royale’ you’ll notice they do in fact not match what he later states the password to be. The Red Dragon, upon realising this, figured Bond was one step ahead of the game…

Spoiler alert!

To go into the specifics of Skyfall in a little more detail, the opening of the film has a few things that could have been tweaked. Like the way bond states he’s trying to stop the downed agent’s bleeding, and all he does is dab his wound with a grotty looking cloth. Then when Moneypenny shoots him, she has ample time to let off another round with that rather deadly looking weapon she’s holding and actually hit the now sitting duck bad guy. Probably best, as they acknowledge, she takes up an office job afterwards. These details make the feel of the opening sequence, although the stunts are good and it is actually Daniel Craig on the train travelling at fifty miles an hour, more like an episode of ‘Spooks’ than a big budget film. Having said that, The Red Dragon was thinking as Bond faces the bad guy in the forklift truck ‘O yeah, like he wouldn’t get shot through the glass’, and then he does. Great!

They are running through the same streets and along the same rooftops in Istanbul as Maggie Grace and co do in ‘Taken 2’ (12), which is interesting. If I’m not mistaken Clive Owen appeared on them too in ‘The International’ (09), interesting if one influenced the other, or if Turkey has realised a good business opportunity. Unfortunately, there are shadows of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy here, as there are in many films now. This is especially noticeable with the music as they are besieged in Skyfall at the end, but also the concept of the criminal mastermind who plans to be captured for some greater purpose (also with Loki in the ‘The Avengers’ 12), and the explosives under the city, though ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ would probably have been filming around the same time as ‘Skyfall’. It’s not a major complaint, enough of the rest is completely original.

For The Red Dragon, the feeling that this film was a little special didn’t really begin until the fight sequence with the lights of Shanghai’s advertising in the background, a poetic death to the skilled enemy assassin. From then on in it really got interesting. Even with the first face to face scene with the next Bond girl soon to bite the dust. Said Bond girl’s acting caliber seemed to be in question, until you realise there is a lot more going on, that feeling of ‘That’s rubbish…O, I see…’, almost fooling the viewer, is a very effective trick. Speaking of which, could he not have done all his heroics before Javier Bardem shoots her?!  Similarly, surely with some trusted people at MI6 clued up to Bond’s plan at the end they could have sent some reinforcements! ‘It’s OK, there’s a shotgun up there and a Scotsman, more than enough for some terrorists!’.

The Red Dragon would very much like to know if that was a real, venomous scorpion on Bond’s arm when he’s busy becoming an alcoholic and unnamed substance abuser. Whilst Daniel Craig was a real action man on the set (which really adds depth to the film when you realise it’s actually him you’re seeing doing the stunts), Havier Bardem has stated that he is a “big believer in stunt doubles”, I wonder if prior to ‘No Country for Old Men’ he could have envisioned himself as a Bond villain, as famously the Cohen brothers had to work hard to convince him he could play the bad guy, in what would later become his Oscar winning role.

For The Red Dragon, what is by far the most interesting part of this film though, and one reason it has scored so highly, is the fact that James Bond’s heritage is definitively shown to be Scottish! This gets a massive thumbs up from The Red Dragon. Earlier in the film, it did jar slightly when there was a reference to Britain and then very quickly afterward when Bond is playing word associations he gives ‘England’ as his response to country. There seemed to be a hint of double standards going on. However, at the same time his home of Skyfall is mentioned. So, is it perhaps that as a spy he has eradicated his own personal story, and so his claim to be English is to throw anyone else off the scent of his true backstory? Or does he, the character, want to forget his own childhood and its trauma, and prefers to think of himself as English? We aren’t given enough details to tell.

We see the graves of his mother and father who we know from the novels, and from previously in the film franchise, were Swiss and Scottish respectively – this lineage was introduced in the novels by Fleming as a nod to Sean Connery’s interpretation of the Bond character in ‘Dr .No’ (62), and Fleming mentioned once in a magazine article that Bond was born in Glencoe, Scotland, the site of an infamous massacre in Scottish history, and where several of the scenes in the film were shot. The specific house of ‘Skyfall’ however, is new. It may be a reference to the home Fleming’s family owned in the Scottish highlands (both his father and grandfather were Scottish, from Fife and Dundee respectively) but where previous film and novelised tales of his early years differ, here we learn he grew up there, in what appears to be an ancestral home. He also lets us know he always hated the place when he burns it, but we don’t know why. It seems odd, growing up there he can’t have known many other places so why hate it so much? Was he abused? Did he have a hand in the deaths of his parents?! Expect to see this looked at in more detail in future instalments with Daniel Craig as Bond.

It is curious to consider the timing of this introduction to the legend of James Bond. Before the next film is released, the referendum for Scottish independence will have taken place. Is this inclusion in the story linked to the politics of the day? His reference to England also means he can continue to represent England should Scotland vote to go her own way, and his dual Scottish/English background may be placed as a sort of cinematic cement on the fabric of the United Kingdom. Political annalists are expecting the biggest independence voting demographic to be the ‘Braveheart’ (95) generation, those who were growing up when the film was released, underpinning the emotive power of cinema and the age old adage ‘life imitates art’. After all, an integral part of the franchise is that 007 is a British agent (as an update to this, on the weekend before the referendum the filming schedule for the next Bond film was released – due to begin December 6 2014. Also Finland’s independence day, incidentally. RD 2.12.14). It may be that the people behind this multi-billion dollar (circa twelve with inflation taken into consideration) institution would consider a break up of the country he represents as a negative…

In any case, the revelation of more of Bond’s formative years, regardless of the exact details, adds a lot to the film, and to the depth of the character that will continue to be depicted over the next two films. Eight more films down the line, the Daniel Craig years may be remembered as the most definitive guide as to the fleshed out character of Mr Bond. A guiding template of his past, to better shape his future.