PC Review: 007 Nightfire (2002)

We already did this one on consoles, but I finally managed to finish it on PC after years of trying. It sucks! But I was bored.

Nightfire on PS2 (and the other Sixth Generation consoles) is still an amazing 007 game. I break it out once a year and, while it's not flawless, fond memories aside it translates the formula of the films to video games better than any before or since. The PC version is a near disaster, however. I tried this version years ago (probably a decade) and couldn't bring myself to finish it. I kept coming back to it, though, for the fascinating and uncanny ways it evokes and even extends the console version in ways that nearly break it. Say goodbye to the excellent driving levels of the PS2 edition, for example, and the professionalism (if not the originality) of its storytelling. I'm not saying Nightfire is fine literature, but the PC edition is lacking production values and, for lack of a better word, polish. Audio quality is, frankly, shitty. The cutscenes have all the direction of CCTV footage. Gameplay variety is practically non-existent: instead, it's just a lot of corridors of clunky, Half-Life engine shooting, with super dumb, unresponsive enemy agents. PC Nightfire even has a few of those "classic" insta-fail stealth missions of yore, irritating beyond belief, and thankfully these don't exist in games anymore. Some of the levels go on forever against uninspiring, confusing backdrops. Yet, as someone who plays PS2 Nightfire annually, I'll admit there's something like novelty in seeing these slightly different, more stringently PC FPS-focused versions of the levels with a roughly similar narrative DNA. The multiplayer is also weird but much more palatable, especially given that there's still support and an admittedly small fanbase for it. Remarkably, I played a few hours of deathmatch and capture the flag while on a work trip with two or three rando human players and bots in 2023, and, even though the whole enterprise is janky and old-fashioned, managed to have quite a bit of fun whooping ass as a cell-phone grappling Christmas Jones. Nightfire fans might give this a try (you can get it for free if you look in the right places), but the console version is way, way better.

PS3 Review: 007 Legends (2012)

This one's a bit late. I had originally planned to review 007 Legends in tandem with my review of Skyfall last fall, but you know, things happen. Better late than never, I guess. Keep your eyes peeled for more 007 coverage from your fellow spy enthusiasts at Code Redd Net.

I liked the first Die Another Day game I played better. You know, Nightfire.

I had been hoping for a game like 007 Legends for a long time. It seems like an easy project: to collect the best action set-pieces from the best James Bond films in one game and to serve it up in a competent shooter with a few multiplayer options. From Russia With Love had the right idea, successfully converting the classic '60s spy film for PS2 in the Everything or Nothing model. It was a solid Bond game that captured the look and feel of the film while simultaneously bringing it up to speed with the more stunt-heavy recent Bond films. 007 Legends also has the right idea, as it incorporates the most spectacular scenes from five Bond films and ties them into the plot of Skyfall: those films being Goldfinger, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, License to Kill, Die Another Day and Moonraker. This is an excellent idea well suited for today's generation of games, but 007 Legends falters somewhat in execution.

The game has a real flimsy narrative excuse to revisit all these old missions. It begins with a cinematic adapted from the pre-credits sequence in Skyfall, where Bond is shot by another agent while fighting an adversary on the roof of a speeding train. As Bond hits the water, he is reminded of his previous encounters with Goldfinger, Blofeld, Jaws and others. The game proper begins with a scene from Goldfinger in which Bond finds that girl dead, covered in gold paint. What makes this recreation of Goldfinger odd is that you play as Daniel Craig instead of Sean Connery, and you have access to a smartphone device and other contemporary technology/weaponry.  This is in contrast to the architecture, as well as the design of the surrounding characters, virtually all of whom retain their 1960s clothing. It's an odd inconsistency in art direction spread throughout the entire game, and it never feels quite right. I would've liked to have seen a total commitment to each era, all the way down to its rudimentary gadgets, or a total process of bringing-up-to-date rather than the hybrid nostalgic-contemporary setting provided instead. That's not to say, however, that the structure of 007 Legends is without benefit: those five Bond films, bounded together, make room for considerable variety in setting and gameplay mechanics. Throughout the game, you switch between several styles of gameplay, including the straightforward shooting portions, stealth segments, sleuthing, vehicle combat, and fisticuffs. Unfortunately, these styles are highly organized and segregated in your missions. In other words, a bit of hand-to-hand combat is always bracketed by a cinematic that cues up the switch to this style, and stealth often becomes mandatory to mission completion upon entering a particular room rather than being simply a strategic choice with consequences. Nonetheless, each mission draws on particularly strong action scenes from its respective film to keep the game moving at a commendable pace.

I was also impressed by other improvements over the previous GoldenEye: Reloaded, particularly a dramatic increase in replay value. Whereas more recent Bond games have suffered from a weak single-player experience that did not invite multiple playthroughs, 007 Legends has a strong set of weapon upgrades and unlockables for multiplayer, based on finding objects and overall mission scores. Furthermore, I was impressed by Legends' customization options. Like most modern first-person shooters, on the default option health regenerates after a few seconds: thankfully, though, Legends gives you the option of switching to an old school system in which health does not regenerate and you must rely on body armor spread throughout the level. This is a nice addition that makes the game considerably more challenging, in many instances artificially so as body armor is unevenly distributed in these missions. Multiplayer support is fairly strong, though the lack of AI bots hurts this feature substantially, as online multiplayer is sparsely populated.

Overall, 007 Legends is only a fair-to-middling entry in the franchise, one that does a decent enough job with a promising idea but nothing more. It's much better than the other Bonds released in the last few years, yet nowhere near the level of PS2-era shooters like Nightfire, Everything or Nothing, or From Russia With Love. Fans of the super spy should give it a spin with a weekend rental, but this is probably not one you will want to own.

What You Want in The World is Not Enough N64

We love TWINE for the N64, as you know, and more than that we love games with replay value. TWINE has some fairly challenging time cheats you can beat to unlock additonal characters, weapons, maps and modes for multiplayer (w/ bots or without, though we prefer with). I have managed to get through most of them, though there are still a few that have eluded my grasp. If you take a look at GameFAQs portal for TWINE, you'll find a bevvy of tasks that seem nearly impossible to complete. If you want to prioritze them, I suggest tackling the following challenges, all of which will add fantastic maps and a nice weapon set to spice up your multiplayer options:

Unlike Renard here, who obviously feels no pain, beating
 these time cheats requires a high threshold for pain (at least
for emotional pain).

• The Air Raid multiplayer map. This is by far my favorite map in TWINE. A bit small, but totally worth beating the "Masquerade" level on Agent in under 3:05. If you need help in doing this, here's a video to help out:

• There's also the "Wildfire" weapon set, which you earn by beating "City of Walkways II" on Agent in under 3:00. Now, at least this one is on Agent: had it been on double-o, that helicopter at the end would have prevented even the most seasoned agents from earning this unlockable. Take a look at this if you need a spot of help:

• Finally, you can play the excellent Forest multiplayer map by beating "Night Watch on 00 Agent in under 2:20. I know this sounds insane, and for the longest time I believed it to be impossible, but watch this video and it will, at least, seem somewhat possible. I got it eventually, but you have to keep trying because Gabor appears in random places, and usually at the most inappropriate moments. This level is one of the best for Capture the Flag matches, so it's a must-have:

Game Boy Review: James Bond 007 (1998)

Our first Game Boy review, and no better way to do it than to take a look at one of the most curious games in the James Bond franchise. Keep your eyes on Code Redd Net for more 007 coverage in the very near future.

It's always nice to play something a little bit different. Ever since GoldenEye broke out on the N64, the 007 franchise has stuck fairly close that first-person shooter model. Sure, there were a few misfires with third-person action, such as Tomorrow Never Dies, and a few hits, such as the inimitable Everything or Nothing, but overall the series has stayed within a pretty limited range of first- and occasionally third-person shooters. James Bond 007 for the Game Boy has its fair share of action, no question, but it's much more Zelda or Pokemon than anything else, as there's far more puzzles to solve and items to collect than thugs to gun down.

008, not 006.

Most of the plot and dialogue is recycled wholesale from old Bond films, including key villains Oddjob and Jaws, and there's just enough of a simplistic gun smuggling subplot to tie it all together. On your travels to find the source of the smuggling, and to locate the missing 008, you stop in mainland China, Marrakech, the Sahara Desert, Tibet, and a super-secret final base. Most of your time in-mission will be spent in trying to track down the right people and to collect the right keycard or item. Some of the puzzles you have to solve range from absolutely dumby-proof to esoteric, and many times an ally will only hand over the proper keycard when you've spoken to him twice, which can be quite irritating to find out after spending an half hour wandering around the level once again. Too often the puzzles to be solved only require persistence and not intelligence. I found that running alongside the walls would often yield the location of secret switches much more efficiently than solving the riddles by wit. Combat is kind of odd, too: pressing the select button brings up an inventory where you can assign an item to either the A or B button, such as a pistol, a rocket launcher, a very un-suave machete, or a pair of fists. Shooting can be difficult and slow, and bullets seem to take an hour to reach their target. Though later stages require more ammunition in order to get through the levels, earlier stages have a bit more variety to recommend them. I particularly enjoy laying the fisticuffs down on the streets of Marrakech, then ducking into the casino for a game of Blackjack. For me, this is the principal appeal of James Bond 007: you don't just shoot baddies, you go undercover, you partake in a little high-stakes gambling, you have to find a way to survive without water in the Sahara. There's not much to do once you beat the game, and it won't take long to do so, but upon completing your mission the game rewards you with passwords to unlock the gambling mini-games. So, not only do you have a solid, if unspectacular, Bond experience for your next flight or bus ride, you also have the best baccarat simulator around. It's worth picking up if you're a Bond fan with a mind for something different.

Movie Review: xXx (2002)

Vin Diesel's infiltration of Code Redd Net continues this week with one of his earliest star vehicles, the beautifully idiotic xXx.

What if James Bond was, like, into motocross and stuff? Well, here you go: xXx is perfect if you ever wanted to see a secret agent bust drug cartels while doing superman seat grabs. Vin Diesel plays an extreme sports exemplary and all-star faux-renegade, recruited by the NSA to infiltrate some Eastern European gangsters. He does all the things Bond does, but does them to the tune of early aughts nu-metal. How do we know he can shoot a gun? Because he broke his leg once pretending to be Matt Hoffman, and spent a few months playing first-person shooters, at least that's what he claims. Obviously, xXx goes for that coveted young male demo by washing every spy movie plot point down with Red Bull: he gets his gadgets from a nerdy white guy who follows him around like an obsessed fan (resulting in one of the all-time great screen grabs*), his globetrotting is limited to places where he can find some rad powder or surf, his language is as colorful as PG-13 allows, he seems to prefer strippers over supermodels, and all the upper-middle-class spoils enjoyed by 007 (Beluga caviar, Vodka martinis, BMWs/Astin Martins) get swapped out for lower-class equivalents, your Playstations, Vans sneakers, Corvettes.

*I love everything about this photo.

As I may have already indicated, it's impossible not to read xXx alongside or against the Bond film from the same year, Die Another Day, one of the more schizophrenic and bloated entries in the series. Whereas DAD had plenty of poorly conceptualized and executed CGI sequences, xXx has aged much more gracefully in that department. Though often implausible, the motorcycle/snowboard chases come across quite clearly, and they make sense in their own stupid way. Similar scenes in DAD don't work because the digital Surfing Bond is so obviously phony: xXx, however, has the good taste to hire a few X-Games athletes as stuntmen to give the scenes weight. It's also easier to stomach Diesel's admittedly insipid one-liners than the nonsense innuendos of Pierce Brosnan and Halle Berry. Strange to say, but with a decade's perspective, it's clear that xXx did what DAD did that same year, and did it better.

Thoughts On Scene It? 007 Edition

In lieu of a more traditional review of this DVD board game, I've decided to share with you a few quick notes on Scene It? 007 Edition. I was quite pleased to finally find this thing, and for the most part, it didn't disappoint. Here's a few thoughts on the game, based on my familiarity with the subject matter and the mechanics of Scene It?:

• First of all, 007 fans should only pick this up under the assumption that you anticipate finding willing and capable opponents to play against. Admittedly, it's fun for a while to run roughshod over the other players because you've seen every film in the series, but this soon becomes boring and there's no way to turn up the difficulty on your friends.

• As for the difficulty of the trivia, there's a good balance between questions drawn from inside and outside the films: that is, questions about the films' characters and plots are offset by questions about actors, directors, and theme songs. Furthermore, these questions range from the textually obvious (i.e. who played who in what film) to minute details which require considerable familiarity with the film. As such, it becomes obvious throughout the course of several games which films your friends/family members are more familiar with; for instance, I was swift in answering detailed queries on the plot of The World is Not Enough (or anything starring Pierce Brosnan), but struggled to recall the principle players of The Living Daylights, besides star Timothy Dalton. Still, the game is careful not to overwhelm casual viewers of the series with minutia, while at the same time keeping obsessed fans interested. It's a sufficient balance to insure broad appeal at your next party.

• Obviously, 007 Edition features clips from all official films in the series, from Dr. No to Die Another Day. They vary somewhat in length, but in general they are carefully selected and fun to watch or re-watch, as the case may be. My biggest problem with the clips is the volatile nature of the questions which follow them: too often these questions have little or nothing to do with the preceding clip. After watching a clip from TWINE, in which Bond and Christmas Jones escape from the exploding blast pit, I was asked, "Who played Electra King in this film?" Points for sticking with the same film, I guess, but minus several million for totally ignoring the content of the clip. On the other hand, these clips are sometimes followed by questions which only necessitate a player's attentiveness to seemingly arbitrary detail, such as the color of Bond's shirt in For Your Eyes Only. Rarely do the clips justify themselves within the game; instead, they only seem to be there for the purpose of visual distraction, and this is a complaint I often lodge regarding the various Scene It?s.

Nonetheless, if you have a cadre of pals willing and able to challenge your exquisite knowledge of 007, this edition of Scene It? is worthwhile. Daniel Craig was nowhere to be found in my somewhat dated version, but there's a Casino Royale Collector's Edition that brings things a little bit up-to-date.

Nobody Reviews It Better: Skyfall (2012)

Finally, Skyfall has arrived; it doesn't disappoint. Thrasher gives you all the details in the conclusion (for now) of our Nobody Reviews It Better series. Truly, we can think of no better way to celebrate Code Redd Net's 11th anniversary than by reviewing this fantastic film.

Throughout Skyfall, villains and allies alike allude to Bond's aptitude for the job; that he has "lost his edge" is certainly the consensus opinion. I take this as a tacit apology for Quantum of Solace, as much for his fellow characters as for his audience. Skyfall is a resurrection narrative, a literal reinscription of the Bond mythos. The generic "bad grammar" of Solace is corrected systematically, starting with the traditional pre-credits sequence. As always, this is pure spectacle and is satisfying on those terms alone (indeed, all the stuntery in the film is clean, well-choreographed, and logical), but a simple gesture reintroduces Bond as we knew him before; as Bond leaps onto the back of a train, which he has just creatively demolished, he adjusts the cuffs of his shirt before continuing the chase. It may seem a banal thing in isolation, but it's a crucial signal, something which Craig-Bond has too often forgotten. Even on the level of story, Skyfall is an investigation, and ultimately a validation, of the renewed relevance of 007. Instead of trying to "update" Bond, Skyfall retrofits his world, gives him Moneypenny, Q, his Astin Martin DB5 (complete with ejector seat!); it places him once again in exotic locales, all shot in expressionistic tones; henchmen routinely meet beautifully absurd deaths; and in a world of increasingly cybernetic, faceless threats, embodies the Other in the classically cheesy villain Raoul Silva, played with aplomb by Javier Bardem. Such retroactivity never seems merely self-referential or cannibalistic, and it's truly wonderful to see the series finally come to terms with its status as an anachronism rather than try to compensate for it. Skyfall is unquestionably Craig's best Bond film, one that finally proves, beyond doubt, his qualifications.

Nobody Reviews It Better: Casino Royale (2006)

Enter Daniel Craig in the chiaroscuro of film noir for a most unusual pre-credits sequence. Today Thrasher breaks down Casino Royale, a radical Bond film that thankfully challenged many of the stagnant tropes of the series. Regrettably, in the long run it may have been overaggressive in shrugging off much of what makes a Bond film distinctive. But that's a tale for Chicken Man to tell in the final installment of Nobody Reviews It Better.

 

When Bond looks at a bartender, who innocently, even expectantly, asks him how he would like his vodka martini mixed, and Bond replies, "Do I look like I give a damn?", well, that is precisely the sort of generic insouciance Daniel Craig needed to distance himself and the series from the bloated extravagance of Die Another Day. Such an unconventional response is an immeasurably important moment. It's a moment that signifies a significant change in the tenor of the series. Indeed, so much of Casino Royale is given over to reconfiguring Bond that it seems like Craig's Bond is not quite Bond yet, he hasn't earned that title; he's very much Bond-in-training. And quite unlike the others, you would never think to describe his 007 as a smooth operator. He fails at his job, and often. For his first real mission after attaining 00-status (has there ever been a starker contrast in the series than the one between the CGI-driven finale of Die Another Day and the film noir pre-credits sequence of Royale?), Bond must travel to Montenegro to enter an ultra-high-stakes poker game organized by Le Chiffre, one of the world's most notorious and terrorist-friendly bankers. During the game, Bond loses. It's something that would never have happened to Sean Connery, Roger Moore, or Pierce Brosnan; they were all faultless, invincible gamblers. Sure, Bond gets back in the game with the help of his old CIA pal Felix, but seeing Bond lose like this, even once, shakes loose decades-old expectations and prepares us for something new. That's what makes his unexpected, monogamous devotion to fellow agent Vesper Lynd work so unexpectedly; when you unseat one set of conventions, you make it possible to unseat them all, and Craig thankfully tosses aside the womanizing connotations of the role in favor of love, something Bond hasn't hasn't had the courage to try since On Her Majesty's Secret Service (and, to some degree, in the Timothy Dalton films). Lest you think it's all wine and roses, Casino Royale has many outstanding action and suspense numbers, even though I think the hand-to-hand fights, despite their suitably brutal presentation, are sometimes filmed in a confusing, headache-inducing manner. For all his "failings," though, this Bond emerges with our respect, and soon enough our sympathy. When the iconic theme music finally plays at the end (an astoundingly astute use of the music, I might add), he's earned it.



Nobody Reviews It Better: Die Another Day (2002)

It's Thanksgiving today in our cushy Montreal office, so to celebrate, we offer you the second part of a 007 double-header this weekend. Thrasher returns to Die Another Day for the first time in 10 years, and believe it when we tell you, it hasn't aged gracefully. Unlike Moore-Bond's final outing, Brosnan-Bond was still more than suitable for the role; it's just the material that got bloated. Casino Royale was the recoil, and that's next up in Nobody Reviews It Better.

At least we got Nightfire out of all this.

Back in the Geocities days, I wrote this about Die Another Day: "I meant to say that [Halle Berry] is clearly not very good in her role as Jinx, and together with Bond they are content to trade insipid sexual innuendos throughout the film, something that was immensely annoying on my second time through." Go ahead and add a third time to that statement. Without question, Halle Berry is the worst of Bond's coterie of gal pals, and she doesn't just "trade" those insipid sexual innuendos with Pierce Brosnan, she speaks entirely in them. Pun is just about the only language she knows, and everything she says will make you cringe ("Ornithologist, huh? Wow. Now there's a mouthful."). It's too bad, really, because when she's not onscreen the film isn't that bad, certainly not as bad as I remember it. Of course, there's a rather odd plot involving a few North Koreans who use gene therapy to become snooty, sneering Brits, and a giant satellite laser called Icarus that melts away an ice hotel, but that's fine. It works generically, anyway, seeing as how most Bond narratives are pretty far-fetched. What matters most is that everything is executed well, and with conviction, and the first half of Die Another Day works. By far the best action sequence in the film is Bond's fencing match with "white" playboy Gustav Graves; it's so carefully constructed and exciting it manages to overcome the completely unnecessary Madonna cameo by sheer, boundless will (incidentally, I'd be remiss if I forgot to mention just how god-awful her theme song really is, about as bad as her acting). And for eagle-eyed Bond aficionados, there's plenty of Easter eggs and hidden references to find. But such references, cute though they may be, only serve to remind viewers of much older, much better, and much less anniversary-driven films. This becomes even more clear once Halle Berry, after disappearing following a short introduction at the beginning of the film, suddenly reappears for Round 2 of her pun war with Bond ("Oh yeah, I think I got the thrust of it."). Patience wears thin during these exchanges, and it seems as if their uninspired dialogue has been matched by a series of equally uninspired stunts in the second half. There's a phenomenally lame laser grid boxing match between Bond and Gustav's muscular bodyguard, and in the background Jinx flails around while strapped to a malfunctioning chair, still saying idiotic things ("Switch them off, or I'll be half the girl I used to be!"). Bond even goes surfboarding for a minute or two, and his CGI self hasn't aged gracefully over the past decade. Furthermore, there's a strange and intermittent use of slow-mo in the fight scenes that seems absolutely at-odds not only with the style of this film, but of the whole series as well. DAD may be an overblown mess, but there's still some enjoyment to be salvaged from the rubble. There's just a lot of rubble to clear first.



PS1 Review: 007 Racing (2000)

 

It's not a bad idea, right? Perhaps 007 Racing is somewhat misleading as a title (it's not as if Bond has joined a Formula 1 circuit), but it's a bankable project theoretically. In execution, however, things fall apart rather quickly. Remember, 007 Racing was released on PS1 roughly a year before Agent Under Fire arrived on PS2. AUF had a much more refined "racing" component, thanks in no small part to the first draft sensibilities of Racing. There's not much of a story going on here, just a collection of mission briefings and vague allusions to the films. Similarly vague mission objectives present frustrating and artificial levels of difficulty. Replaying the missions so often (while Q repeatedly yaps in your ear with the same three or four disapproving soundbites) wouldn't be problematic if the graphics didn't insist on muddying the waters even further. Everything is so pixilated and poorly animated that it all becomes a nauseating, low-speed blur. Furthermore, there's little sense of urgency or speed; proceeding through the missions at little more than the pace of brisk walk is not only enforced by the cramped level designs themselves, but it's strategically necessary as well. More often than not, missions devolve into a demolition derby with stinger missiles that routinely do more damage to your Astin Martin than your adversaries. And it's not as if your car handles like a dream, either; it's slippery at "high" speeds and prone to ignoring your button commands whenever. It's hard to say which of these aspects make 007 Racing so difficult, but their gestalt certainly makes you want to turn it off with the quickness. This is not Spy Hunter; stick with that one instead.

Artistic rendering of 007 Racing.

Nobody Reviews It Better: Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

How do you follow up something as seminal as GoldenEye? For Pierce Brosnan, you kick back and settle in for the ride. In this installment of Nobody Reviews It Better, Thrasher catches up with Brosnan-Bond as he relaxes in the well-earned comforts of formula.

i totes got a licenz 2 kill, lol

Pierce Brosnan's 007 loves his toys, even more so than Sean Connery, and the scenes in which he remotely, and so deftly, maneuvers his new car with a cell phone is likely the best evidence of his growing technophilia. Though GoldenEye had its share of pocket-sized gadgets, Tomorrow Never Dies is tops in Q-labs exhibitionism, and yet, despite the increased sophistication of the electronics, it's a tried-and-true, traditional Bond film. Elliot Carver may be an intriguing, and very contemporary, take on the megalomaniac super villain, but he's still seeking out his worldwide empire, just like Dr. No, Goldfinger, Blofeld, and others. He plans to further his news supremacy via yellow journalism; specifically, he coordinates the disappearance of a British warship in the territorial waters of China, thereby pushing the UK and China close to war, and thereby putting himself in a position to assume the exclusive broadcast rights once the smoke has cleared. Bond is quickly sent abroad to sort things out before it all goes sour, and that's where he runs into Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh), one of the more respectable (if not exactly well-rounded) female cohorts in the entire canon. Bond and Lin make for a pretty good team, and their motorcycle chase through the crowded streets of Saigon is a ludicrous, enjoyable sequence. All the action is handled competently, even though some of the special effects and CGI have not aged gracefully (this is especially noticeable when Bond and Lin use one of Carver's banners for a makeshift escape). Still, though, it's obvious Tomorrow Never Dies is little more than a routine mission for Bond. Eventually Carver captures him, tells him far too much of his nefarious schemes, fails to kill him when it would be advantageous to do so, and so on. Maybe that's part of its charm; Dies may play it safe, but it proves the formula is still satisfying when followed properly. As Bond tells Carver, "You forgot the first rule of mass media, Elliot: give the people what they want!" And who would know this better than Bond? He's been doing it (better) for fifty years.



Nobody Reviews It Better: GoldenEye (1995)

We now move into the era of Pierce Brosnan, the Bond we grew up watching. As Chicken Man intimates in his review, we came to appreciate Brosnan-Bond in GoldenEye through an inverse method: it was the N64 shooter of the same name that turned us on to the film (and, eventually, all the others in the series). That's probably not an uncommon phenomenon for our generation. Nevertheless, whatever the course of our affective relationships with the multiple texts of GoldenEye, the film is unquestionably one of the finest in the series. Indeed, if the Code Redd Net Awards and its Best Bond Movie prize were the last word on the subject, we'd have to say GoldenEye is tops.

 

 

For myself (and I imagine for a few others) GoldenEye is the movie adaption of a very popular N64 game. Though not saying much, it is probably the best movie adaption of a game ever made. Kidding aside, I find GoldenEye  to be everything a Bond film should be. If we think of James Bond as the man men want to be and women want to be with, Pierce Brosnan plays this part succinctly. I find him to be the most "charming and sophisticated secret agent" of the Bonds, as Valentin Zukovsky suggests. Unlike Moore, he is not upper-crusty, but fits well on the cover of Cigar Aficionado.

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, Jean-Claude Van Damme I'm fine!"

 

His enemy well chosen: an MI6 agent, Alec Trevelyan, 006 (Skyfall seems to be trying to replicate this villain device). Trevelyan is also a personal friend; one who grew tired of serving a government that betrayed his family. He wants revenge and thought of asking Bond to join him, but accuses him of having greater loyalty to the mission than to his friends. As I've mentioned before, it interests me when Bond's servitude to the state is put into question. It would have been better had Trevelyan's plan not intended to harm so many innocents, making Bond's decision not so clear cut. Regardless, it is so much more enjoyable when the Bond villain is a respectable adversary. It is somewhat refreshing that he doesn't have some ridiculous scheme involving the destruction of Earth, but an EMP space weapon that seems plausible and reasonable in furthering his objectives. Bond is really being unfair in calling him "nothing more than a common thief."

The surrounding cast is good as well. Female villains are always interesting, especially when they have not-so-subtle names. Xenia Onatopp is one of the most vivacious of Bond chicks, along with May Day, and is as easily remembered. Boris Grishenko is a likable, though arrogant computer programmer who, like Baron Samedi, is "invincible." Quite a team, they are.

A (mostly) required element to a good Bond movie are the gadgets, and Q keeps it pretty simple with a belt containing a rappel cord (I enjoy how Bond asks about a possible contingency, considering my criticism in the past of Q's perfect foresight), a grenade pen, and a watch that can detonate mines and shoot lasers.

The final requisite is the action scenes, and I find GoldenEye to be unsurpassed in this regard. It certainly is more violent (according to my count, Bond shot more people in his escape from the Russian military archives than Connery did in whole movies), enough to make a game out of it, but this isn't what makes it good. It is the frequency and the way in which it is done. During the tank chase scene, the Bond theme music is well incorporated (something noticeably missing in previous films), especially with its dramatic flair in the crescendo with the timpani drums. Fantastic work.

It's all here. Bond seems like Bond. The villains are cool and scary. The plot is high stakes yet believable. The gadgets are practical. The action is constant. GoldenEye is what a 007 movie should be.

Nobody Reviews It Better: Licence to Kill (1989)

Much like Chicken Man in his appraisal of The Living Daylights, here Thrasher finds Timothy Dalton's final turn as Bond in Licence to Kill to be a refreshing thing indeed. Unfortunately, legal disputes put the series on a significant hiatus after this solid action film, so we never got to see where else Dalton-Bond could go. Fortunately, though, he steered Bond away from the absurd comedy Roger Moore's adventures had devolved into, towards our preferred incarnation, that being Brosnan-Bond, and also towards a fantastic video game adaptation.

Last time I looked into the series, Roger Moore was still waddling around after young girls and tussling with Christopher Walken in a blimp. For me, A View to a Kill exemplified the excessive stupidity and bloated boredom of the Moore years. But things certainly changed for the better when Timothy Dalton came aboard, and his brooding Bond in The Living Daylights was so pleasantly different from Moore's cheeky, upper-crusty version. Dalton's seriousness is embellished still further in Licence to Kill, when a highly personal revenge motive drives Bond instead of the usual cold-blooded assignment carried out for Queen and Country. In our traditional pre-credits sequence, Bond accompanies his old CIA pal Felix (in the middle of his wedding in Miami, no less) on an emergency mission to catch Franz Sanchez, a notorious, and immensely wealthy, drug lord. They succeed in a thrilling aerial chase, a sequence not only exciting for its own sake (as is the implicit purpose of these pre-credits stunts), but also one of the rare instances when the pre-credits sequence is directly related to the rest of the film, a la The World is Not Enough. Following his capture, Sanchez is freed and he immediately returns to kill Felix. Though he is unsuccessful in killing Felix via sharks, Sanchez shoots his wife and retreats to a banana republic. Bond swears revenge and is subsequently suspended by MI6 after he refuses to drop his vendetta.

For the first hour or so, Licence to Kill doesn't really feel like a Bond film, except for the hyperbolic stunts. Bond's suspension from MI6 means very few of the familiar narrative tropes remind us that we are watching 007. Thankfully, however, and unlike the similar Quantum of Solace, about midway through Q turns up to issue Bond his trademark gadgetry, even though he seems to forget to bring along Bond's equally trademark wit. It's not a totally dreary affair, but Licence to Kill is indeed fairly austere. I'm reminded of early Bonds, like the earliest, Dr. No; Dalton does make a few quips here and there, but the tone is realistic, or grasping at it, and Dalton has the sensibilities to pull this off. It's welcome after a decade-plus of Moore's lecherous innuendos. He's matched by a strong villain in Sanchez, as well as his surprisingly adept (and very young!) henchman, Benicio Del Toro. Licence to Kill also has some of the finest stunt work in any Bond film, especially the wonderful tanker chase/fight to close things. Still, it's tempting to simply look at Dalton's tenure as a stop-gap en route to Pierce Brosnan, especially with only two films to his name, but closer inspection reveals a fine, multilayered interpretation of the character that fits in nicely with the canon.

Nobody Reviews It Better: Spice World (1997) Interlude

Parodies (loving or otherwise) of the 007 films are legion, and ultimately they attest to the enduring cultural impact of the series. These parodies range from the generic and fairly banal (In Like Flint, Our Man Flint) to the more ostentatious (Austin Powers x3). Aside from full on parody, there's plenty of quick cameos and references to the series, including this one, a personal favorite, from Spice World:

I have to say, Roger's way more fun in these few scenes than he is throughout the entirety of Octopussy and A View to a Kill. It's good to see him bring out his inner Blofeld.

Stick with CRN for more (that is, with less Moore) 007 coverage as part of "Nobody Reviews It Better," our comprehensive countdown to the release of Skyfall on November 9.

007 Legends Gets Goldfinger

I was wrong; the fifth classic mission to be featured in 007 Legends is not Dr. No. You probably already know this, seeing as how it was reported three days ago and all. I've never really been the most punctual bloggers in the world, but if you haven't been privy to the news, take a look:

If it couldn't be Dr. No, then I suppose Goldfinger is the only other option. For the time being, I'm assuming there's not going to be a golfing mission against Auric. Nonetheless, this looks perfectly acceptable, with most of the key moments from the film remaining intact, for the most part. Why, Bond even jettisons some poor guy from the seat of his car, even though the car this time is something glossy and new, and not the vintage Aston Martin DB5 I prefer.

(Curiously enough, the comments section for that video is filled with youtubers clamoring for a game more like Nightfire or Everything or Nothing. I'd like to endorse that viewpoint.)

So there you have it. On October 16, get ready to take digital Daniel Craig through Moonraker, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Licence to Kill, Die Another Day, Goldfinger, and eventually a downloadable Skyfall mission.

Nobody Reviews It Better: A View to a Kill (1985)

Thrasher returns to Mooreville one last time for Roger's seventh (!) sordid mission as 007. Happy trails, old boy. MGM would wisely bring in Timothy Dalton as the relief pitcher in The Living Daylights, something which Chicken Man will detail in the next installment of Nobody Reviews It Better.

We've come to the end of Roger Moore's tenure as 007, and A View to a Kill is certainly more of a whimper than a bang. After seven tepid, uninspired and uninterrupted entries, Moore's ridiculously agile, and somehow, still virile, seemingly septuagenarian Bond goes out with one of the most pedestrian films in the series. Christopher Walken is a fantastic choice for the classically maniacal Bond villain Max Zorin; unfortunately, he doesn't get to be the kind of Napoleon he should be until the last act, and by then it's too late. Though he gets to rattle off some wonderful Walken-isms ("More! More power! More! Do it!"), he spends most of his time on screen as a quietly menacing richboy who bets on horses. His fantastic schemes only take form at the end; he plans to trigger a catechism that would inundate Silicon Valley, thus giving him a virtual monopoly in microchip technology. When the film finally yields to his over-the-top-ness, he really shines, cackling as he shoots his own men with a submachine gun and flying his blimp into the Golden Gate Bridge. His enthusiasm in these scenes stands in stark contrast with Moore's wearying temper. Moore looks like the tired old man he probably was, and this is particularly noticeable when he seduces his much younger co-stars, or when he "snowboards" down a mountain momentarily to the tune of "California Girls." The problem isn't the action sports segue, or the song, both of which could be amusing in a different context. Moore is the problem. It's simply not believable, even in the fictional world of 007, that a man who looks so old could do so much. There's a fun sequence or two, especially the rigged horse race through Zorin's estate, or the vertiginous finale in San Francisco, but it's all been done before by other Bonds, and it's all been done better. And for those few spirited moments of action, there's that many more scenes of banal dialogue. Unlike, say, Diamonds Are Forever, which is at least interesting because it marks a time of tension and transition for the series, A View to a Kill in no way indicates future directions. This is about as mediocre as Bond would ever be.

Nobody Reviews It Better: Octopussy (1983)

Join the Chickenman as he chops up and serves Octopussy, made to order. Thrasher finishes off the Moore era next.

After watching a series of consecutive Roger Moore Bond films, some things seem to stand out as routine (one even might go so far as to say mundane). At one point, just before bedding Octopussy's right hand woman who talks of scrap booking and collecting memories, he actually says, "Let's get on with making a few," in a way such that he might have well said, "Let's get this over with." And so goes the "relationships" Moore-Bond has with women. He doesn't seem to particularly enjoy them or their company; they are simply there. Thrasher's description of Moore as "upper crusty" from the outtakes of Podcast 4 seems to apply here: Bond uses one of Q's camera gadgets to zoom in on the cleavage of a woman in Q's lab. One can hardly imagine Connery-Bond doing such a juvenile act. Moore-Bond acts as though he has an upper-class upbringing but seems to lack any class. Very unlike Bond, in my abstract conception of him.

As well, other things that plague the Moore-Bond are clear and present. A criticism I've made in the past is that Moore-Bond should be dead several times over; that he isn't is less due to his survival skills than it is to incredible luck and incompetent enemies. He certainly gets captured often, sometimes more than once in the same movie. He does so in the very first scene in Octopussy, yet escapes with nonchalant ease. The reason they don't kill him on the spot could be because they want to uphold the rule of law and try him before executing him, but it seems like an unwarranted favor. When pinned to a door with throwing knives wielded by one of the pair that killed 009, he is able to avoid being stabbed because for some reason his enemy has to stab him by hand instead of by throwing the knife. Perhaps this could be explained by his wanting to get a more intimate revenge, but clearly blind luck is on Moore-Bond's side. Other events just make things silly. At one point, Moore-Bond needs to diffuse a nuclear bomb at a circus. The circus is on a U.S. military base and, being in a hurry, he blasts past security and goes to hide. In his hiding spot, which happens to be a trailer for the clowns, he commandeers a disguise. Besides the fact that seeing Bond in a clown costume is a bit off-putting, the fact that he took the time to put on makeup when there is a bomb about to go off seems like a very unwise decision. It doesn't seem like he was forced into this decision and the dramatic effect suffers.

There are, however, some positives to this installment in the series. The biggest one is that Q assumes a rather large role, actually participating in field operations (as well as being more of a ladies man than Moore-Bond). Also good was Kamal Khan's henchman, Gobinda, who resembles Odd Job in his strong, silent demeanor; seeming much more of a worthy adversary than Hugo Drax's Chang (though this image of him was somewhat ruined by the fact that he was defeated by an antenna). I also quite liked Bond's Indian sidekick, Vijay, but as Quarrel was in Dr. No,, he was apparently expendale and suffered a brutal death.

Overall, besides its silly title, Octopussy is one of the less memorable moments in the Bond franchise.

Nobody Reviews It Better: For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Chicken Man, our resident Roger Moore scholar, is taking short break from covering Sir Sleeze in order to give Thrasher a crack at it. Now broadcasting from our new Montreal office!

James Bond may get serious once again with For Your Eyes Only, especially after the absurd weightlessness of Moonraker, but it's a schizophrenic seriousness at best. Witness the traditional pre-credits sequence: in an uncharacteristically sober moment, Bond convalesces at the grave of his short-lived wife, Teresa, and then, with nothing more than a wry smile, off he goes to chuck Blofeld (and his poor cat) into a factory's chimney. It's a breathlessly stupid, farcical sequence, and I would be willing to praise it if the rest of the film fell more or less in line. It doesn't. There's a bit of a throwback narrative here to the Cold War concerns of Sean Connery's 007, as a British spy boat is sunk in the Ionian Sea and Bond is asked to recover its missile targeting computer before the Reds can do the same. Bond also has to contend with Melina Havelock, seeking revenge for the murder of her parents. Naturally, they up working toward the same goal, and they get along famously, that is after Roger Moore pushes her around for a while. It's a workable concept for a spy film, but it gets confused by too many characters, too many betrayals, and some sensationally slow going expository scenes. Often it feels like little more than a travelogue, as Bond and Melina stop to gab about the philosophical weight of vengeance in front of alternating, but always beatific, Spanish and Italian vistas. Thankfully, Moore's upper-crusty peevishness had yet to really reach full bloom, and even his own special brand of sleaze is noticeably absent. This is probably the most sincere Moore would ever be, and for a Moore film, For Your Eyes Only has some exceptionally well-designed action sequences, including an extended car chase in the Spanish countryside, where Bond's usually well-equipped car is swapped for a nimble yellow bug, and an even more prolonged chase in which Bond runs the winter sports gambit through the Olympic village in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. These scenes amusing, no doubt, as well as properly filmed and fantastically edited, but they are poorly integrated into the overall film, and they happen so early on that bland story has to carry things until the fairly enjoyable finale. For Your Eyes Only is fine for an afternoon's entertainment, but it's only a middling, mild-mannered Bond.

Nobody Reviews It Better: Moonraker (1979)

Hello and welcome again. From under the sea to outer space, CRN analyzes Bond from our purpose-built laboratory couches. Stay tuned. Thrasher will return in For Your Eyes Only.

To fully enjoy Moonraker, and frankly anything with Roger Moore in it, one must not take it seriously. Major plot points left me asking, what? The very first scene, which shows the hijacking of a Moonraker shuttle while it's being transported on a 747, sets things in motion, with Bond being sent to investigate. We find out later that Drax took it after having loaned it to the British. Bond later asks him why he would steal his own spacecraft and he responds that there was a malfunction with another aircraft so he needed this one back. It seems very mystifying to me that after hatching his plot for years in advance, Drax wouldn't have the patience to simply wait to get his spaceship back and avoid unwanted attention. He might not have had to deal with Bond if not for this indiscretion. Generally his dealings with Bond seem very reckless. First, he tries to kill Bond with an aeronautic centrifuge, and this could plausibly look like an accident. But then Drax tries to end him by a sniper while they are out hunting. My problem with this is that if Drax had instead tried to kill Bond by shotgun, there was at least the possibility of making it look like a hunting accident. If he just wanted Bond dead (with or without fabricating a cause of death without foul play), it seemed like he had ample opportunity to do so. As Thrasher points out in CRN Podcast 3, there is the Aristotelian notion that actions in drama should not only seem plausible and probable, but somewhat inevitable. The lack of adherence to this notion is perhaps the biggest problem with Moonraker.

Nevertheless, it does have its appeals. The gadgets range from the very practical to the somewhat outlandish. Twice Bond is rescued by his dart-shooting bracelet; the utility of such a device is apparent. However, Bond also has a canoe that can not only turn into a motorized speedboat, but also convert into a hovercraft for amphibious use. Later, he is driving a different speedboat that could transform into a hang-glider (just in case you're boating next to a waterfall). So, the appeal has diminishing marginal utility the more crazy they get, not in terms of the technology, but in terms of how Q or Bond would have the foresight to see their applicability and the logistics of having the ideal boat wherever in the world Bond may be. (Other Bond movies deal with this problem by Bond making use of what's available to him: in The Man with the Golden Gun, Bond "commandeers" an AMC in a showroom to give chase; in GoldenEye, a tank). Also, the space scenes are done quite well and to my untrained eye, the Moonraker space station looks convincing. The large space combat scene adequately pays homage to the massive underwater battle filmed in Thunderball. The climax in the final frontier is easily the highlight of the movie, and is what makes Moonraker as memorable as it is. (Also Jaws). To top it all off, there is a very good game adaption. It is called Night Fire.

The World is Not Enough 100%, and more

PS1 TWINE, that is. Sure, it's nowhere near as good as its classic, award-winning N64 cousin, but it still works quite well on its own. As I noted in my review, if nothing else, I love the Russian Roulette stage. Besides, the PS1 version has to be one of the only decent first-person shooters on that system, which wasn't known for producing them beyond the Medal of Honor series. Alas, there's no multiplayer mode, so all that you get for achieving high scores on any particular level are cheats, such as All Weapons, Invisible Bond, and my favorite, Power Goons. Still, though, I have what Chicken Man once called the Curse of Completionism, and so I just had to see this one through. It was far easier than I anticipated. Missions scores are calculated in four ways: Efficiency, Accuracy, Health, and Time. Most levels are short if you know what you're doing, armor is plentiful (even on the hardest difficulty setting, 007), auto-aim makes marksmanship a breeze, and I'm still not totally sure what efficiency is supposed to imply, and I routinely had low scores in that category. If you don't dally around, always use your Wolfram P2K, and keep yourself clothed in armor, piece of cake, you'll have this one 100% in a day or so.

We certainly hope you're enjoying the current deluge of Bond coverage on Code Redd Net. In addition to the ongoing Nobody Reviews It Better series, we have an upcoming podcast on the subject, as well as our continuing interest in the forthcoming Skyfall film and the accompanying 007 Legends game. Stay tuned for more.