Film review: Munich

I'm one of a minority of ardent champions of Steven Spielberg's 2005 dramatisation of Israel's response to the massacre of eleven of its athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that it's probably my favourite of his "serious" films (i.e. those with a more "worthy" bent, as opposed to more crowd-pleasing blockbuster fare like the Indiana Jones movies. Ironically, the main reason I like it so much is arguably because it seems so unSpielbergian, with a cold, calculated sense of brutality and a distinct lack of the sentimentality for which the director has become known.

While the source material, the novel Vengeance by George Jonas, is unabashedly partisan — a fact willingly acknowledged by its staunchly pro-Israel author — it seems to me that Spielberg and his two writers, Tony Kushner and Eric Roth, have succeeded in identifying and teasing out the moral quandaries that Jonas was unwilling (or unable) to acknowledge. That's not to suggest for a moment that there's any ambiguity as to whether the murder of the athletes was wrong; indeed, I'm not even certain that the film seeks to portray the Israeli government's response as wrong. It does, however, raise significant questions both about the cyclical nature of violence and the futility of revenge, and about what enacting state-sponsored executions and acts of terrorism ultimately do to a person's psyche. Vengeance is replete with passages in which it is asserted (rather too often and adamantly to be entirely convincing) that "Avner", the Mossad agent played by Eric Bana in the film, experienced no qualms about the murders he carried out, but Spielberg and his writers take the opposite approach, depicting the complete mental breakdown of a man who begins his mission with a sense of utter certainty both about the justness of his mission and his own identity. The entirely fabricated encounter between Avner and a Palestinian operative, Ali (Omar Metwally), provides not only the film's midpoint but also its emotional core, articulating in the strongest terms that violence can only lead to more violence, and that both sides — in spite of their irreconcilable differences — are ultimately in pursuit of the same goal. As Ali puts it:

You don't know what it is not to have a home. That's why you European reds don't get it. You say it's nothing, but you have a home to come back to. ETA, ANC, IRA, — we all pretend we care about your international revolution, but we don't care. We want to be nations. Home is everything.

Beyond that, though, it's a tense Cold War thriller it's a first rate piece of cinema, with its mature, reasoned approach to the Middle Eastern conflict merely serving as the icing on the cake. The whole thing looks incredible thanks to Janusz Kaminski's steely (and very authentically 70s) photography, and the unusually minimalist score by John Williams knows when to retreat and when to come in for the maximum impact. I've seen Eric Bana's performance described as overwrought, and it's certainly true that it's anything but subtle, but as a portrait of a man gradually undergoing a crisis of belief and identity, I find it hard to criticise. The rest of the Euro-pudding cast are on fine form too, with Mathieu Kassovitz particularly impressing as the mild-mannered toymaker recruited to build bombs, and Mathieu Amalric fabulously ambiguous (in more ways than one) as Avner's contact, "Louis".

Many of my favourite films are ones towards which I was initially lukewarm and came round to on repeat viewings, and this is definitely one of them. When I first saw MUNICH, I thought it was decent but overlong and overwrought. Now, I wouldn't lose a second of it... even the much-criticised "sex and death" scene towards the end. While most people point to SCHINDLER'S LIST or SAVING PRIVATE RYAN as Spielberg's great "serious" work, for me MUNICH will always be by far the more mature and more satisfying film.

Bookshelf: So Deadly, So Perverse - 50 Years of Italian Giallo Films, Volume 1

The first of two tomes charting the giallo film from its inception to the present day, Volume 1 of Troy Howarth's SO DEADLY, SO PERVERSE: 50 YEARS OF ITALIAN GIALLO FILMS is the sort of book fans of the giallo have been crying out for. Its spiritual predecessor is arguably Adrian Luther Smith's excellent (if now surpassed) BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, and indeed structurally it owes a clear debt to that earlier book, but Howarth goes considerably further and into far more detail than that pioneering work.

Covering the first 20 years of the giallo film's lifespan, 1963 to 1973, Volume 1 begins with the expected introductions (provided by veteran giallo screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi) and attempts to define that most ambiguous of genres, before launching into an examination of early prototypical gialli, films with giallo elements but which don't quite make the grade as "true" gialli, and the literary gialli from which the filmic movement derives its name but to which it bears only a passing resemblance. This latter chapter, written by film historian Roberto Curti, is particularly insightful and breaks genuinely new ground. It provides the book with a unique selling point, charting an aspect of the giallo's development that hasn't been adequately explored elsewhere, since English-speaking authors lack the context necessary to unpick it.

The "meat and potatoes" of the book, however, is the 190 pages' worth of film reviews, cataloguing and appraising every known giallo to have been produced between 1963 and 1973. This section is truly exhaustive, digging up a number of titles I'd personally never even heard of, and even one or two that are now believed to be lost to the ages. For each review, the structure is the same: Howarth provides the main cast and crew credits, a brief (spoiler-free) synopsis and a more detailed review, concluding with a discussion of the careers of some of the more significant players on both sides of the camera. The reviews are insightful, in-depth and well-observed. Howarth isn't afraid to make it clear when a particular film isn't up to scratch (and says one or two scathing things about some of the, shall we say, less outstanding actors and directors associated with the movement), but he's also fair, pointing out the individual moments of pleasure that can be found in even the schlockiest and most ineptly made of giallo (and, let's be honest, there are quite a few which fit that category). The films of "big beasts" like Argento, Fulci, Bava and Martino understandably get the lion's share of the praise, but little-known gems also get their moment in the spotlight, including the likes of Fernando Di Leo's NAKED VIOLENCE and Damiano Damiani's A RATHER COMPLICATED GIRL.

It's worth pointing out that Howarth omits certain titles that some readers might expect to be included since he doesn't consider them to be part of the movement. This is unavoidable, since "giallo" is a vague term and much disagreement exists as to its precise parameters. Personally, I would have included Aldo Lado's SHORT NIGHT OF THE GLASS DOLLS (omitted here) and left out the likes of the western/giallo hybrid RINGO, IT'S MASSACRE TIME, but such is the beauty of a movement that, like film noir, is easier to recognise than to define (the "I know it when I see it" principle).

Any flaws are minor and don't impact substantially on the overwhelmingly positive qualities of the book; however, I feel that they should be acknowledged for completeness' sake. These are largely structural, stemming from the decision to separate the films by year of release and order them alphabetically within each year. This results in some slightly odd moments in that individual reviews often "refer forward" to another film that was actually released before the one currently being discussed -- for instance, we read about Sergio Martino's second giallo, THE CASE OF THE SCORPION'S TAIL, before his first, THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH (both 1971), which is slightly confusing given the extent to which the latter set the template for Martino's subsequent gialli. That's perhaps the downside of attempting to read a reference tome like this from cover to cover. However, the lack of any page references in the index of titles at the end, and the fact that production dates aren't provided in the reviews themselves (the year is listed only once, at the start of each "section"), makes it difficult to dip in and out.

But these are minor organisational quibbles. In his foreword, Howarth acknowledges that he didn't set out to write the be-all-and-end-all book about the giallo, and while it doesn't replace the likes of Mikel Koven's excellent LA DOLCE MORTE (which addresses a different audience and serves a different purpose), SO DEADLY, SO PERVERSE feels entirely at home among such lofty company. Experienced giallo aficionados and those new to the genre alike will want to pick this up without delay, and get their pre-orders in for Volume 2, which promises to explore the rather more sporadic output of the last 40 years.

Top 10 Giallo Films for the Beginner

It's been four years since I last wrote for DVD Times, the site now known as The Digital Fix. I had a few reasons for stepping down, including a degree of uncertainty surrounding the site's future. Thankfully, it survived and has continued to prosper, although I felt it was time for me to make a clean break. After writing more than 300 reviews, I'd burned myself out and was getting to the stage of no longer being able to remember what I'd written. (Or seen. I remember vehemently insisting that I'd never seen David Koepp's SECRET WINDOW, only for it to be pointed out to me that I'd written a review of it.)

Today marks the first time I've had an article on film published on a web site other than my own since 2010. Dan Stephens, one of my former DVD Times colleagues, contacted me asking if I'd be willing to put together an article for his web site, Top Ten Films, with the brief "an introduction to the giallo in 10 films." I said yes, and you can find the finished piece here:

Top 10 Giallo Films for the Beginner

Have a look and tell me what you think of my choice of films. As I mention in the article, I deliberately went for ten films that I felt would be most appropriate for someone new to the genre rather than my ten absolute favourite gialli (though if I did produce such a list, a number of the same films would also appear on it). I doubt I'll go back to writing regular reviews any time soon, but I enjoyed the process of putting this piece together and was surprised by how quickly I was able to "get back on the wagon", so to speak.

Film review: Opera

There is broad agreement on the notion that OPERA constitutes the end of Dario Argento's decade-long golden age. While he would subsequently go on to make a number of good and even great films -- 1996's THE STENDHAL SYNDROME being the standout -- this 1987 giallo is clearly the end of an era in many regards. It was the final time he would work with a number of his key collaborators and the last time his camerawork truly featured the vibrant, sweeping, Grand Guignol qualities for which he is justly celebrated. It would be six years before Argento directed another feature length project, and it's tempting to lay at least some of the blame for his subsequent decline on that self-imposed hiatus, bowing out at the height of his creativity.

With its sordid sexuality, allusions to the AIDS virus (it's no accident that the killer wears latex "protection" over his traditional black leather gloves) and a distinctly cruel streak running through its proceedings, OPERA feels very much like the giallo, which grew out of the sociocultural climate of the early 70s, responding to the mood and anxieties of the 80s, and provides a tantalising glimpse at where the movement might have gone had it continued to flourish. Even the camerawork, courtesy of the Oscar-winning English cinematographer Ronnie Taylor, feels aggressive, constantly moving, alternating between sweeping overhead shots and claustrophobic close-ups of the actors' faces. The latter are used to particularly powerful effect in the numerous shots of the protagonist, opera ingenue Betty, with rows of needles taped under her eyes to prevent her from closing them -- surely one of the most uncomfortable and arresting visual images Argento has ever created.

Like much of Argento's output, it's not really an actors' film, but the best performance by far is courtesy of Scottish stage actor Ian Charleson who, a few short years before his untimely death, delivers a nuanced and oddly sympathetic portrayal of a horror movie director helming an experimental production of MACBETH -- a thinly veiled stand-in for Argento himself. As Betty, Cristina Marsillach is a good deal more drippy than both previous and subsequent Argento female leads, serving as far more of a damsel in distress than the likes of Jessica Harper in SUSPIRIA or Jennifer Connelly in PHENOMENA, but she does what the role asks of her and acquits herself perfectly adequately. As far as the stable of Argento regulars is concerned, this is the last appearance of Daria Nicolodi (prior to MOTHER OF TEARS in 2007) and the first of three appearances by the wonderfully over-the-top Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni, who a year earlier made her debut in the Argento-produced DEMONS 2.

Its flaws -- awkward dialogue, the ill-placed use of heavy metal and a plot that doesn't stand up to scrutiny -- are par for the course with Argento's output during this period, but are part and parcel of what gives these films such a distinct identity. Indeed, the sheer audacity of its set-pieces -- of which the infamous "bullet through the peephole" is but one of many -- thoroughly overshadows any narrative shortcomings. It may not hit the dizzy heights of SUSPIRIA, DEEP RED or THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, each of which constituted a perfect alchemy in which every single element worked in tandem to deliver a film that was more than the sum of its parts, but OPERA remains one of the greats and serves as a fitting swansong to the most productive and creatively satisfying period in its director's career.

Film review: The Living Daylights

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Timothy Dalton's all too brief tenure as 007 emerged from the charred remains of the Roger Moore era -- a phase in the series that I could never fully get behind but which even I could tell was in a vastly worse state by the end of his tenure than when it had begun. I maintain that Moore should have stepped down after MOONRAKER -- the film itself was terrible, and the more sombre, down to earth FOR YOUR EYES ONLY could have served as the perfect introductory film for a new Bond of the sort ultimately played by Dalton. Sadly, it was not to be. Dalton arguably arrived a good six years too late and only got to play Bond in two films. But my, what films!

I'd previously seen THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS in two halves -- and, rather counterproductively, I saw the second half first. This was my first time watching it from beginning to end, and while I'd always known it was in the upper echelons of the Bond canon, I hadn't appreciated until now just HOW good it is.

Indeed, there's a case to be made that it features the best script in the series. Richard Maibaum, who had a hand in penning virtually every film in the series until the end of the 80s, dives into his brief to deliver a more grounded, realistic Bond with unmistakable relish, delivering a script that, barring a few moments of residual silliness, stands on its own two feet as a gripping Cold War spy thriller. Although it begins with a suitably action-packed pre-credits teaser, once Maurice Binder's opening titles are out of the way, the wacky hijinx of the Moore years are jettisoned in favour of an extended sequence in which Bond relies on his natural resourcefulness rather than sci-fi gadgets to extract a Soviet defector from Czechoslovakia. The whole thing is as expertly handled as any "serious" spy movie, and serves as a perfect introduction to the new Bond: cold, ruthless, cunning and jaded. There are no raised eyebrows here. Dalton's Bond is Fleming's Bond: a cool, calculating bastard who carries out his mission with expert efficiency.

And it's not just the script and Dalton's performance that carry the sequence -- everyone involved seems to have upped their game, from John Glen, whose previously rather flat direction now ekes out every last ounce of tension from the scenario, to John Barry, who, in his final contribution to the series, delivers the best score to a Bond film since ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE. It's a standard that's kept up for the duration of the film, which sees Bond set off on the trail of the supposed defector (it's actually a brilliantly executed triple-cross), taking him from Bratislava to Tangier by way of Vienna, and finally to Afghanistan where, in a move that will probably raise a few eyebrows among modern day audiences, he teams up with the noble Mujahideen to drive out the occupying Soviet forces. Along the way, he falls for Kara Milovy (Maryam d'Abo), the cellist girlfriend of said defector, and takes her along for the ride. Kara might not be an iconic Bond girl like Tracy or Pussy Galore, but she's believable and her relationship with Bond is genuinely charming. For once, her wide-eyed naiveté isn't annoying but rather entirely appropriate given the situation in which she finds herself.

If I have a slight preference for the first half of the film, it's because I find the European locales more redolent of Cold War espionage than the African and Asian settings of the second half. Once the film relocates to Afghanistan, it becomes more action-oriented and the spy mechanics take a back seat, but it remains thoroughly gripping nonetheless. A great many Bond films, particularly during the Moore years, suffer from a sagging middle; this one doesn't, and I suspect this is largely due to the fact that we actually invest in Bond as a character. I can't praise Dalton's performance enough. Whereas Moore and even to a considerable extent Connery played the character as a collection of easily recognisable traits, Dalton approaches the part with the utmost seriousness, taking a method approach to the character's motivation and responding to the events taking place as if they were real. Watch the scene where, after a fellow agent, Saunders, is murdered, he returns to Kara and pretends that everything is fine while at the same time conveying to the audience that he's ready to explode with anger. I'm not an actor myself, but even I can tell that something like that requires immense skill to pull off, and it's electrifying to watch on screen. If Connery and Moore were movie stars, Dalton is an Actor with a capital "A".

The film's only real failing, and the one that ensures that it remains behind FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE in my ranking of the series, is its villains -- something that the next film would rectify, in spades. The blond adonis Necros is really just a thinly veiled reimagining of Red Grant from that earlier film, while Jeroen Krabbé as the defector Koskov is too much of a figure of fun to ever seem like a genuine threat. Arms dealer Brad Whitaker (Joe Don Baker) is actually quite an interesting creation -- a self-styled "general" obsessed with military history -- but again it's hard to take him seriously, partly because he's so much larger than life compared to the comparatively sombre proceedings taking place around him. On the side of the goodies, we get a memorable turn from Art Malik as the leader of the Mujahideen, as well as Caroline Bliss's short-lived nerdy/sexy Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell looking even longer in the tooth than Roger Moore by this stage). Judging from the evidence on display here, she's no great actor, but her awkward delivery is somehow endearing, and I love the scene were Bond puts her glasses back on her face lopsided.

Rewatching THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS (and in its proper order!) has given me a newfound appreciation for the film, not to mention impressing on me the fact that, regardless of the many strengths of Dalton's next film, LICENCE TO KILL, this is by far the superior of the two. In many respects it's the last true hurrah of classic Bond: a proper Cold War spy thriller that contains just enough of the series mainstays -- Q's gadgets, "Bond, James Bond", vodka martinis -- to fit into the series as a whole while still standing on its own feet as an excellent film in its own right. I'm delighted that, after spending so long as the black sheep of the Bond series, Dalton is finally beginning to get the recognition he deserves.

Film review: For Your Eyes Only

If ever there was a film that makes it plain that Roger Moore should have hung up the mantle of James Bond before he did, it's this one. Not because it's a bad film or even because HE'S bad in it, but because it seems plain that it was written for a more ruthless, harder-edged interpretation of the character than Moore was capable of playing -- or had any desire to.

As the first 80s Bond, tonally it marks a clean break from the films of the 70s, which were characterised by increasingly outlandish stunts, sets and scenarios, culminating in the monumentally stupid MOONRAKER, an obvious cash-in on the success of STAR WARS that, after meandering all over the place for a tedious hour and a half, completely jumps the shark during its final act, sending Bond into space to engage in laser battles. As was the case when Sean Connery stepped down from the role, a change was desperately needed, and it came this time round in the form of producer Cubby Broccoli bringing the series back down to earth with a more sombre, realistic spy thriller in which Bond helps a young woman avenge the death of her murdered parents.

Unfortunately, with Moore still in the role and already wearing that wide-eyed, quasi-senile look that would come to define his performance in his subsequent two films, the series' transformation feels like a job half done. It doesn't help that the film begins with a pre-credits teaser straight out of the worst of the 70s Bonds, with Bond trapped aboard a helicopter being remote operated by a thinly-veiled Blofeld stand-in. Dispatched in an utterly ridiculous manner that feels like it was purely intended to give Kevin McClory the middle finger, the slapstick and bad puns are at odds both with the first shot of the sequence (Bond laying flowers at his wife's grave, in a callback to ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE) and the far grittier film that follows the rather bland, Maurice Binder-designed opening credits (I'm quite partial to the Sheena Easton song that accompanies them, though I appreciate that I'm in the minority there).

"Don't worry, old fella. We'll have your stunt double

take care of all the wide shots for you."

What follows feels like budget Bond to an extent, with the largely realistic sets and heavy use of locations contrasting with the bravura Ken Adam designs of the last two films, and the stakes rather lower with Bond up against a smuggler, Kristatos (Julian Glover), rather than a megalomaniac bent on world domination. But the tone works here because first-time director (and long-time editor) John Glen fully commits to the more sombre tone, ill-advised pre-credits sequence and an idiotic coda featuring a Margaret Thatcher impersonator aside. He, in collaboration with new production designer Peter Lamont and veteran writer Richard Maibaum, succeed in dragging the series back to its novelistic roots, albeit unfortunately saddled with Moore as a painful reminder of what came before it. He never looks truly comfortable in this film, and I suspect it's not too much of a stretch to assume that he was happier with the more campy theatrics of the preceding films. I know he found the scene where Bond kicks a car off the side of a cliff, sending its driver plunging to his death, particularly distasteful and didn't feel it was in keeping with the character. (Perhaps not in keeping with his Bond, but certainly in keeping with MINE!) Glen's direction is unflashy, almost utilitarian, but as was the case with Peter Hunt's direction on ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, his past experience as an editor obviously paid dividends in terms of his ability to build tension. The highlight comes at the start of the climax, with Bond scaling a sheer mountainside. The whole thing is shot and edited in such a way as to be positively nerve-racking, making you actually fear for Bond's safety for the first time since... well, probably OHMSS.

Like a number of Bond films, this one suffers from a sagging middle, with the action coming more or less to a standstill in the Corfu and Albania sequences, while the presence of Bibi Dahl (Lynn-Holly Johnson), a precocious ice skater who has the hots for Bond, is most unwelcome. The character and the actress are both excruciatingly annoying, and the sight of a teenager attempting to bed the increasingly aged Moore makes for decidedly uncomfortable viewing. On the other hand, Carole Bouquet imbues the Bond girl du jour, Melina, with a sense of wounded dignity and comes across as far less of an airhead than any of her 70s counterparts. For once, she's actually a fully developed character in her own right with motivation that makes sense, and you end up rooting for her. The romance between her and Bond is allowed to develop naturally and isn't actually consummated until (we assume) after the end credits, though it would have been more convincing had she been playing opposite a Bond closer to her own age. That said, she mercifully comes across as an adult rather than the overgrown children that so many Bond girls have resembled.

As much as I didn't want this review to descend into "I wish Moore wasn't in it", it's somewhat unavoidable and it's the note on which I'm going to sign off. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY has been described to me as a Timothy Dalton Bond film before its time, and oh how I wish Dalton had been cast a few years earlier! He would have really sunk his teeth into this material, and I suspect that his presence would have elevated the film to "great" as opposed to merely "decent". As it is, it's not the best of the Moore era -- that would be THE SPY WHO LOVED ME -- but it's a very close second and, it has to be said, far closer to my idea of Bond than that earlier film.

Film review: The Spy Who Loved Me

After the inanity of THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, the Bond films could have gone in two directions: take the series back to its more sombre, spy thriller routes or become even more camp and over the top. With Roger Moore the incumbent Bond, it's perhaps not surprising that they went for the latter. However, while GOLDEN GUN and Connery's last two outings had me rolling my eyes and itching to reach for the fast-forward button, somehow Moore's third film, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, makes the grandiose, campy theatrics work in its favour, delivering a vastly superior film to everything since ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE. Indeed, I'd go as far as to say that, while GOLDFINGER provided the template for the series a whole, it's this film that the makers of the four Pierce Brosnan entries were looking to ape -- not out and out self-parody, but grandiose and with a definite whiff of the ridiculous. The pre-credits sequence, which culminates in Bond skiing off a precipice, hurtling several thousand feet, then opening a Union Jack parachute while the Bond theme plays, sums up the film rather nicely: bold, ambitious, technically masterful, but silly as all hell.*

The plot itself is essentially YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE retold, with Curd Jürgens as a sort of Blofeld stand-in (to avoid legal action from creator Kevin McClory). His character Stromberg, has a rare wheeze to trigger nuclear armageddon and then establish a new civilisation under the sea -- a scheme so ridiculous it could only appear in a Moore-era Bond film. And yet it works, because the film itself shares Stromberg's level of outrageous ambition in terms of scope and scale. After Guy Hamilton's constrained, TV-like direction of the last two entries, Lewis Gilbert returns to the director's seat for the first time since YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and delivers a far grander, more cinematic film than its three predecessors. The 2.39:1 aspect ratio makes a welcome return, and Gilbert really opens up the canvas, treating us to sumptuous wide angle shots that show off the exotic locales. A tense stalking sequence amid the ruins of Karnak, photographed almost exclusively in extreme long shot and devoid of music or dialogue, is a particular standout, and when the action moves indoors, Ken Adam's bold production design takes over, offering up sets on such a massive scale that a new custom soundstage had to be built at Pinewood to accommodate them.

Barbara displaying her talents.

As for the cast, Barbara Bach is a perfect example of the series' tendency to cast actresses for their looks over their acting ability. Her character, KGB agent Anya Amasova, is set up as being Bond's equal -- tough, ruthless and libidinous. As long as the script doesn't require her to speak, she acquits herself well. Unfortunately, whenever she opens her mouth, her lack of acting ability becomes painfully apparent and the character becomes harder to take seriously. She also spends the entirety of the final act off-screen as Stromberg's prisoner, effectively neutralising what could have been the series' strongest female character since Tracy in ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE. Moore himself is all raised eyebrows and witty one-liners, but it works amid the overall campy tone of the film, and during the extended climactic battle, which is all action and provides no room for humour, he dispenses with the quips and plays it entirely straight, providing a fascinating glimpse into what could have been. He lacks the serious acting chops of someone like Timothy Dalton (Moore was always more of a "star" than an "actor", in my view), but he's at the height of his game here and pitches it perfectly for the film's tone.

I suspect I won't end up doing full reviews of this length for the lesser Moore Bonds (i.e. the rest of his tenure with the exception of FOR YOUR EYES ONLY) because there's very little productive I can say about them, but I might do a short piece summarising the Moore era if I get the time and inclination. For now, I'll just say that THE SPY WHO LOVED ME is almost certainly Moore's best Bond film, and the only one to make it into my Bond Top 10.

PS. The final title card reads "James Bond will return in FOR YOUR EYES ONLY." Curse you, Bond producers, for getting my hopes up! We all know, with the benefit of hindsight, that we have to endure MOONRAKER first.

* Incidentally, this appears to be the first film in the series to really stress the British nationalist element. There was, admittedly, always something a bit chauvinistic about the idea of a British agent travelling to far-flung corners of the world, defeating the savage locals and bedding their women. Previously, however, the character's nationality seemed more or less incidental (and any sense of "Britishness" in the Connery years is surely diluted with hindsight due to the actor's Scottish nationalism). With this film, I get the sense that it became a fundamental part of his identity, and a sense of British triumphalism (a reaction to the loss of the empire, perhaps, and a need to loudly proclaim Britain to still be top dog once this could no longer be taken as given) began to pervade.

Bookshelf: The Girl Who Played With Fire by Denise Mina

THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE was my favourite instalment of the Millennium trilogy when I first read the series in 2010. I loved the way Stieg Larsson eschewed the Agatha Christie-style whodunit that he used to great effect in THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, instead crafting an even more effective "wrong (wo)man" thriller, with Lisbeth Salander in hiding after being suspected of murdering her twisted guardian Nils Bjurman and a young couple investigating the trafficking and prostitution of Eastern European women. I was relatively disappointed with the film adaptation -- good though it was, I felt it took too many liberties with the source material and ultimately turned the best book into the weakest of the three films -- and was curious to see how Denise Mina would tackle the adaptation process with her comic book version.

First, it's worth pointing out that, whereas Mina's adaptation of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTO was split into two instalments and the marketing prior to release suggested that the same process would be used for its sequel, this 288-page book actually contains the full story of the original novel. This is probably just as well, because Mina's two DRAGON TATTOO adaptation was split rather awkwardly in two, with the first book not so much ending on a cliffhanger as stopping mid-sentence. FIRE, of course, ends on a cliffhanger of its own, setting up the events of the third instalment, THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNETS' NEST.

While streamlining some elements of the narrative, the comic book adaptation remains much closer to the plot of the novel than the film, and reading it in this form, I was struck by just how convoluted and multi-stranded the narrative is. In that respect, Mina does an excellent job of maintaining a sense of coherence in her writing. The plot is unmistakably Larsson's, but the dialogue exchanges are peppered with all manner of examples of the sort of dry humour that makes it clear the writer of GARNETHILL and the Paddy Meehan books is behind them -- in stark contrast to Larsson, whose own writing had an incredibly po-faced quality. A good example comes when the police are searching Salander and Miriam Wu's apartment, and one, the chauvinistic Faste, discovers a stash of sex toys, to his great delight. Seeing him proudly waving a vibrator in the air, one of his colleagues advises him to put it down, since "not everyone reaches for the antiseptic wipes just after sex."

The artwork is more problematic. Three artists -- Andrea Mutti, Antonio Fuso and Leonardo Manco -- contributed to the comic, each with his own individual style. I imagine it was felt that drawing a book of this length would constitute too much work for a single artist, but unfortunately the lack of consistency leads to certain problems. The cast of characters is vast, with many of the players middle-aged men, and it becomes difficult to tell them apart at the best of times -- particularly when their appearance can change from one page to the next. This is particularly true of Blomkvist and the "giant" Niedermann, who are hard to distinguish at the best of times (both are drawn as tall, blonde and granite-jawed, and both wear a black leather jacket). The main detective, Bublanski, is more distinctive thanks to his Jewish skullcap, but the fact that Fuso draws him completely baldheaded while Mutti gives him a full head of hair is a rather egregious continuity lapse.

While none of the art is bad per se, I find Mutti's work rather flat and prefer the sense of volume the other two artists give their work. I also continue to be rather bemused by the rugged, musclebound Blomkvist, though that may stem from my familiarity with the less imposing Michael Nyqvist from the films. A bigger problem is just how damn incomprehensible some of the panels are, resulting in quite a few instances where the only reason I had any idea what was going on was because I remembered the event in question from the original novel. There's also one instance about halfway through the book where Salander is shown to react with shock to something she sees on a TV screen in a shop window. I know, because I've read the novel and seen the film, that what she's reacting to is her own face, released to the public after the police launch a manhunt for her. Only, due to what appears to be a compositing error, the screen appears blank on the page apart from a ticker at the bottom reading "Share drop 4.6% of value within two hours of market..."

Ultimately, as was the case with the comic book version of DRAGON TATTOO, I'm not sure that there was a burning need to adapt the novel into this form. The script is superior to that of the film, but the graphic novel format just doesn't seem all that suited to what is essentially a story in which various groups of people sit around talking about events that took place in the past. I enjoyed it for the most part, and if time is of the essence, it's certainly a quicker way of digesting the story than either watching the film or reading the original novel, but you're ultimately left feeling that the story isn't particularly suited to the medium in which it's presented.

From crusty old diamonds to grubby golden guns

Between the years 1971 and 1974, director Guy Hamilton and screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz collaborated on three James Bond films which, in my view, form something of a loose trilogy given their similarities in tone and style, in addition to sharing the same writer and director. They represent a transitional period for the Bond films, with the torch being passed from one Bond to another, and the series moving increasingly further away from the tone and content of Ian Fleming's original novels.

The first, 1971's DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, bears the distinction of being the last of the official Bond films to feature Sean Connery in the role of 007. (Of course, he later reprised the role in the not very good 1983 curio NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN.) Connery, who had departed the role following 1967's YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, was lured back with the promise of an inflated pay-cheque following George Lazenby's one-off outing as the character in the impressive ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, but it's abundantly clear that his heart isn't in it. His shtick feels tired and pedestrian, his permanent look of disdain less that of an aloof secret agent and more that of an actor treating the material with contempt.

And to be fair, the material IS contemptible (though you'd think, given the amount of money he was being paid, he could have made more of an effort). After the more serious tone of OHMSS, which gave us a more human Bond capable of such emotions as love and grief, DIAMONDS jettisons any such affectations in the opening scene -- a montage of fisticuffs and pratfalls as Bond roughs up an array of villains in his hunt for Ernst Stavro Blofeld (now played by Charles Gray). Blofeld, of course, was last seen speeding off after shooting Bond's wife Tracy dead at the end of OHMSS, but you wouldn't know that from the tone of DIAMONDS' opening scenes. This is not a broken and grieving Bond but a (barely) two-dimensional superhero who jets around the world shooting and shagging. It feels like the series deliberately thumbing its nose at everything the previous film worked so hard to achieve, and it's hard not to feel insulted.

It's often said that GOLDFINGER provided the template for all future Bonds, and that's certainly the case here, albeit only in the most superficial sense. Shirley Bassey title song? Check. American setting? Check. Megalomaniac villain bent on world domination/destruction? Check. DIAMONDS is a tired, paint-by-numbers Bond film with few if any redeeming qualities. It reduces the series to the level of camp self-parody, to the extent that almost renders the AUSTIN POWERS movies, which lampoon the conventions of the Bond movies, an entirely pointless exercise. A change was desperately needed, and it came in the form of a new Bond and a radically different type of thriller.

LIVE AND LET DIE was released in 1973 with Roger Moore taking over the role of 007, and is by a significant margin the best of the three films under discussion here. That may, however, be damning it with faint praise. I must confess to not being particularly enamoured by it the first time I saw it, though this might have had something to do with the fact that the six-film Blu-ray box set I was watched jumped straight from THUNDERBALL -- when Connery was still relatively engaged with the role and the series had yet to plumb the depths to which it would later sink -- to Moore's debut. Viewed back to back with DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, LIVE AND LET DIE suddenly becomes a vastly more impressive film. It possesses a sense of youthful energy and vigour not felt since the first three Bonds, and Moore, while completely lacking the sense of menace and ruthlessness with which Connery imbued the role, seems like he genuinely WANTS to be there, which automatically elevates his performance above that of his predecessor in the last film.

It also helps that LIVE AND LET DIE is completely-off-the-wall-batshit-crazy. Tapping into the popularity of the then nascent Blaxploitation genre, it sees Bond heading off to Harlem, New Orleans and finally the Caribbean to do battle with an array of Afro-Caribbean gangsters and drug dealers, led by arch-dictator Dr. Kananga, a.k.a. Mr. Big (Yaphet Kotto). It all looks and sounds a bit politically incorrect now (indeed one fansite, now long gone, jokingly renamed it "All Black-skinned People are Drug Pushers, Pimps, Rapists and Corruptors of Civilised White Society"), but it's unlike anything seen in a Bond film before and rather enjoyable on those grounds alone. The first half of the film is infused with a distinctive air of mysticism and supernatural menace, giving it a rich, otherworldly quality. It also has one of the most brilliantly bizarre subplots in the form of Solitaire, Kananga's mistress and tarot reader, whose clairvoyance rests on her virginity. Bond, cad that he is, of course promptly beds her. The role of Solitaire may not be up there with greats like Pussy Galore or Vesper Lynd, but it's a suitably off-the-wall inclusion in an already off-the-wall film, and it certainly helps that Jane Seymour may well be the most beautiful of all the Bond girls (at least until Eva Green).

It's not an unqualified success, however. Hamilton shoots and stages the film like a TV-movie, and following a solid first hour, things begin to unravel in the second half, falling back on the tired physical comedy and jokiness that sunk DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER. This half of the film also introduces one of the singularly most annoying characters in the entire Bond canon -- the loud-mouthed Louisiana sheriff J.W. Pepper (Clifton James). He, and Bond's insufferable (though thankfully short-lived) sidekick Rosie Carver (Gloria Hendry) are both so bad that they threaten to derail the entire film. There's also the issue of Moore, who will never be Bond in my eyes. Roger Moore is by all accounts one of the nicest human beings on the planet (support for the Tory party notwithstanding), and unfortunately this shines through in his performance, to the extent that he never convinces as a ruthless secret agent.

Whatever good work was done in LIVE AND LET DIE was promptly undone the following year in 1974's THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, a film which plumbs depths to which even DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER did not sink. The GOLDFINGER formula returns, but devoid of the sense of scale, scope and wonderment with which the earlier film was infused. After LIVE AND LET DIE's liveliness and verve, GOLDEN GUN already feels tired and pedestrian, plodding from set-piece to set-piece and ticking off the various Bondian clichés.

It really should have been so much more -- James Bond versus Christopher Lee himself, in the role of megalomaniac Francisco Scaramanga, he of the superfluous third nipple. But even Lee, bringing to the part his usual elegance and sense of menace, can't inject any life into the proceedings. There is some amusement to be had in the form of Scaramanga's sidekick, the diminutive Nick Nack (Hervé Villechaize), but it all feels irritatingly juvenile, with most of the laughs stemming from the character (and the actor)'s short stature. Britt Ekland is the Bond girl du jour this time round. She gives a weak performance and her character is irritatingly stupid -- a re-tread of Rosie Carver in the previous film, only without the advantage of being killed off at an early stage.

Oh, and J.W. Pepper is back, sightseeing in Thailand and getting in Bond's way. Because that worked so well last time round.

There's little more to be said about this film. Some consider it the worst instalment in the series, and at the moment I'm inclined to agree, though I may end up revising my opinion once I've seen the three films that have eluded me so far -- MOONRAKER, OCTOPUSSY and A VIEW TO A KILL. Following the film's release, producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman went their separate ways, with Saltzman selling his stake in the series and Broccoli remaining as the sole Bond producer. Legal issues delayed the next instalment for three years, which may well have been for the best, because when it finally did arrive, in the form of 1977's THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, the situation had improved dramatically. But that's a story for another post...

Bookshelf: The Garnethill trilogy by Denise Mina

I recently listened to the audiobook version of Denise Mina's debut novel, GARNETHILL. Rather than repeat myself here, I'll repost the review I wrote of the Garnethill trilogy back in 2008, then follow it up with a few words specifically pertaining to the audiobook.

Prior to writing her first novel, Denise Mina researched a PhD on the ascription of mental illness to female offenders and taught criminology at Strathclyde University. These roots are very much in evidence throughout what is semi-officially referred to as the Garnethill trilogy, encompassing three books published between 1998 and 2001: Garnethill, Exile and Resolution. (The title refers to a residential area in the centre of Glasgow, most famous for the Glasgow School of Art.)

The central protagonist of the trilogy, Maureen O’Donnell, has not had what you’d call a happy life. As a child, she was abused by her father, culminating in what she later comes to suspect was a rape attack, an event which she blocked out for over a decade and which led to her father disappearing abruptly. Years later, as a History of Art student at Glasgow University, she suffered a nervous breakdown as her repressed memories of the attack resurfaced and was, for a while, institutionalised. However, her attempts to get her family to admit what had happened to her as a child fall on deaf ears, with her alcoholic mother seemingly repressing her own memories and her two sisters flat out refusing to believe Maureen’s version of events. Only her older brother, Liam, who makes a living peddling drugs, stands by her, and as a result the rift that has developed between these two factions of the O’Donnell clan is immense to say the least. At the start of the first novel, Maureen is on the mend. She’s holding down a job in a ticket office, self-sufficient enough to be able to live on her own in a flat at the top of Garnethill, and has recently decided to dump her boyfriend, therapist Douglas Brady, after discovering that he is in fact married. Then, one morning, she wakes up to find Douglas in a chair in her living room with his throat slit.

Oh, and the killer has gone to considerable lengths to make it look like she did it.

Garnethill St, courtesy of Urban Glasgow

Based on the above paragraph, you’d be forgiven for assuming that Maureen has “victim” branded on her forehead. And yet, throughout the trilogy, this is a label she refuses to accept. While the first half of Garnethill adopts the traditional “wrong (wo)man” framework of many a noirish thriller, compelling Maureen to track down the real perpetrator in order to clear her name, this is reasonably quickly dispensed with in favour of having her play amateur detective less out of a sense of self-preservation and more because she’s decided that, after being a victim for most of her life, no-one is going to fuck with her again. Over the course of the three novels, she not only identifies Douglas’ killer and deals with him in her own personal way, but also becomes embroiled in the lives of various other downtrodden individuals, establishing herself as something of a crusader for justice, siding with people who have been spurned by the rest of society. (A common theme, particularly in the first novel, is that those with a history of mental illness are automatically distrusted or considered to be unreliable witnesses, a fact that the book’s villain capitalises on in the cruellest way imaginable.) In doing so, unfortunately, she neglects herself, and by the final instalment in the trilogy she has a drink problem, is barely eating, and clearly plans to take the law into her own hands when she believes another child is at risk from her father. As the book puts it:

‘Sometimes it’s right to put yourself aside,’ she [Maureen] said. ‘It’s not always about a lack of self-esteem or destructive patterns of behaviour. Someone needs to be responsible.’

Sheila sat back in her chair and looked at her. ‘Yes, but it doesn’t need to be you, Maureen. It doesn’t always need to be you.’

What prevents the reader from becoming as depressed as Maureen is that Mina has the sense not to simply write page after page of woe. Yes, the stakes are high and yes, she depicts some of the deepest depravity humanity is capable of (there’s a scene in the third book in which Maureen discovers a video of a now-dead friend being raped by her father and brother which is nauseating to read), but she peppers each chapter with interesting and often amusing observations about human behaviour. A lot of the material is very funny indeed, finding black humour in the most unlikely of situations and often poking fun at the more ridiculous aspects of human behaviour. (There’s a scene in Resolution involving an extremely expensive wedding reception that had me nodding along and saying “Yes, they really are like that.”) All of the characters are larger than life, but never to the extent that they seem unreal. Better still, while the main villains are all rotten to the core, the rest of the roster of characters, good and bad, all have their positive and negative traits. Even Maureen’s mother, a self-obsessed, abusive drunk who doesn’t appear to have done a single kind act for her daughter in her life, is at least pathetic enough to garner a (minute) degree of sympathy. The first book has, for my money, by far the best line-up of characters, although the second does introduce the wonderfully named Kilty Goldfarb, who provides a lot of the much-needed light relief.

Author Denise Mina

It’s ultimately all about Maureen, though, and the eye-opening - not to mention perilous - journey upon which she embarks from the moment she discovers Douglas dead in her flat. All three novels provide a degree of continuity in that each deals with a different chapter in her life, one following on from the other. To a degree, Exile is the odd one out in that it has less of a connection to the overarching narrative of Douglas’ murder, although it does continue to explore the same themes of victimisation and responsibility as its predecessor and sequel, providing a parallel of sorts to Maureen’s own experience in Garnethill via her latest ‘charity case’, the husband of a murdered woman who swears he didn’t do it. Resolution, meanwhile, may in fact be the strongest instalment in the trilogy, although it does take longer to get going than the other two. It does what many concluding chapters to trilogies fail to do, and that is to provide a satisfying sense of closure, albeit without tying up every single loose end.

I don’t often write book reviews, but this series of novels compelled me to break with tradition and actually set down my thoughts on them. Ultimately, it does at times suffer from a tendency to wallow in its own seediness (believe it or not, not every part of Glasgow is festooned with squalor and debauchery), but then, you could argue that Mina is dealing with unpleasant subject matter and is simply applying an expressionistic approach to it. Regardless, it’s a cracking trilogy written in an unflowery and highly readable style. I’m still not sure whether I prefer Mina’s Garnethill trilogy or her more recent Paddy Meehan series (which I’ll probably review once that series reaches its conclusion in, oh, 2012 or thereabouts),* but one thing I can be sure of its that her reputation as Glasgow’s best crime novelist is not unwarranted.

* Alas, six years after I originally wrote this review, we're still waiting on the final two instalments of the Meehan series... though Mina did mention at a recent talk in the US that she intends to tackle the recent phone hacking scandal through Paddy's eyes. I hope she gets round to it soon, as I've never managed to take to her current series, focusing on DI Alex Morrow.

* * *

Listening to the audiobook version allowed me to speed through GARNETHILL at a faster pace than I'm accustomed to reading. I planned to pace myself but ended up listening to the whole thing in the space of three listening sessions, the whole thing is so compelling. The reason for that (beyond the writing itself, of course) is the delivery of the narrator, Katy Anderson. In addition to having a warm, chatty style of delivery that marries perfectly with that of Mina's prose, Anderson also gives each and every one of the colourful cast of characters a distinctive voice. She makes some slightly left-field choices -- her Angus Farrell is a plummy Englishman, while Maureen's mother Winnie speaks in a strong Belfast accent, neither of which were ever conveyed in the novel -- but they all add up to create a rich tapestry of different sounds, with Anderson effortlessly flitting from one to the other without taking a breath, and never leaving you in any doubt as to which character is speaking. The highlight is probably her take on Suicide Tanya, which I'm not even going to attempt to describe. You just have to hear it for yourself.

Bookshelf: Dario Argento by L. Andrew Cooper

An entry in the James Naremore-edited Contemporary Film Directors series, L. Andrew Cooper's book on giallo king Dario Argento was released in October 2012, but until recently I was unaware of it. I picked it up earlier this month, taking advantage of the (at the time) incredibly low price of the Kindle version on Amazon.co.uk -- a mere £1.85. It's now back up to a rather steeper £11.15, but even at that price there's still a lot to recommend in it, even for those who've already read the established Argento tomes like Maitland McDonagh's Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds and Chris Gallant's Art of Darkness.

An Assistant Professor in Film and Digital Media at the University of Louisville, Cooper understandably adopts the approach of an academic rather than a fan, meaning that his book has more in common with the two titles mentioned above than, say, Alan Jones's various writings. That in itself is no bad thing, particularly given that Cooper uses this approach to shed new light on Argento's filmography, offering up a variety of new theories that in some respects directly contradict prevailing interpretations of these films. Rather than being divided into chapters, the book takes the form of a single essay, Doing Violence on Film, which jumps back and forth through Argento's filmography in a manner which initially seems somewhat scattershot, but in fact allows Cooper to develop a coherent argument in a way that would have been less easy had he gone for the traditional chronological approach.

Beginning with a chapter on OPERA (1987) and THE STENDHAL SYNDROME (1996), Cooper argues that these films work primarily as a response to critics who have attacked Argento and his work, casting them as sadistic voyeurs themselves who force the films and their fans to conform to their own warped viewpoint. He then jumps back to the beginning of Argento's directorial career, examining the "Animal Trilogy" of THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (1970), THE CAT O'NINE TAILS (1971) and FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET (1971), arguing against the prevailing notion that these films (and the giallo in general) are steeped in Freudian psychoanalysis and instead suggesting that, far from embracing this largely discredited theory, the films in fact expressly REJECT it. I found this section to be the most interesting part of the book, offering as it does a genuinely fresh reading of the films that challenges received wisdom on them.

From the Animal Trilogy, Cooper continues down the giallo path with analyses of DEEP RED (1975) and TENEBRAE (1982), before doubling back to examine the "Three Mothers" trilogy of SUSPIRIA (1977), INFERNO (1980) and MOTHER OF TEARS (2007) and the giallo/horror hybrid PHENOMENA (1985) as anti-narrative films which privilege aesthetics above all else -- the prevailing view among many of Argento's work as a whole. Except, Cooper suggests, such an assumption would be incorrect, going on to argue that Argento's post-OPERA output has been characterised by an increasing emphasis on logic and narrative at the expense of the visual thrills that once defined his films. I must admit I found this part of the essay less convincing: while it's true that, since the mid-90s onwards, Argento's films have become less visually spellbinding, I'm not convinced that this has been accompanied by any great increase in narrative coherence. Indeed, I'd argue that the only post-OPERA film that is LESS opaque than his 70s output is SLEEPLESS (2001), which no doubt benefited from the input of acclaimed giallo novelist Carlo Lucarelli.

I was also disappointed by the failure to provide any analysis of Argento's non-giallo output post-INFERNO (which the exception of MOTHER OF TEARS), passed over without any explanation other than a statement that the remit of the remainder of the essay is the "tensions" that exist between his earlier and more recent gialli. This is regrettable since, while I don't regard THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1998) or his two MASTERS OF HORROR episodes highly at all, I would have welcomed a reading that subjected them to the same incisive analysis found elsewhere in the essay. More broadly, I also wonder at what sort of audience the book is targeted. Those already familiar with Argento could probably do without the extended narrative description, which is redundant if you already know the films, while those who don't know the films will probably want to avoid the book altogether on account of spoilers (all of the killers are identified, destroying the whodunit element that is so crucial to the enjoyment of most of these films).

The essay is bookended by translations of a couple of brief interviews with Argento originally conducted in French; I'm not sure why these were included other than to pad out the book's length.

Overall I found this an enjoyable read which at times challenged my own long-held opinions about these films, even if I wasn't convinced by every idea floated. There are some notable oversights, namely Argento's later horror output and the atypical political comedy LE CINQUE GIORNATE (1973), but it's an admirable attempt to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy relating to Argento's cinema.