The Sixties Wasn't All Bad
Since the 1962 appearance of the first entry in the now 22-movie series that constitutes the James Bond movie franchise, the focus, style, and content of the entries have slowly but inexorably devolved from the nicely detailed, winkingly humorous, cleverly plotted and peopled fantasy scenarios, and polished and debonair MCP-macho sophistication of the series's first three entries, all based loosely on the original Ian Fleming novels of the same names — Dr. No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), and Goldfinger (1964) — into little more than bubblegum action flicks replete with wall-to-wall special effects; a non-stop array of unsmiling and in dead earnest car/boat chases, fisticuffs, shootouts, and things blowing up, the movies' flimsy, largely contrived, po-faced plots mere excuses for the non-stop array of unsmiling and in dead earnest car/boat chases, fisticuffs, shootouts, and things blowing up. In short, high-production-values Steven Seagal-Chuck Norris-type fare fit only for kiddies and morons, and all but unwatchable by anyone with an IQ larger than his belt size.
This was all brought home to us with special force by our viewing yesterday of the 44-year-old Goldfinger, the apotheosis of the early, classic Bond movie aesthetic and a movie we haven't seen in some 25 years or so, after viewing for the first time three of the newer Bond flicks back-to-back, courtesy of USA Network: Golden Eye (1995), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), and The World Is Not Enough (1999).
One looks in vain in these latter-day Bond flicks for a plot as wickedly humorous and as cleverly fantastic as Goldfinger's plan to knock off Fort Knox. Or a villain as slick, cool, and calculating as Auric Goldfinger (Bond, strapped to a table of gold, and about to be sliced in half lengthwise from crotch to crown by a slowly moving, steel-cutting laser beam set in motion by Goldfinger, inquires of him, his eyes locked on the threatening laser beam and nervous sweat forming on his brow, "Do you expect me to talk?", to which Goldfinger replies coolly in a voice absent so much as a hint of anger or malice, "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die."). Or a villain's sidekick as enigmatic, imperturbable, and as all but indestructible as Oddjob with his neat little hat trick. Or a villain's associate as extravagantly and big-haired lovely and with a name as female redolent as Pussy Galore; a name which on first hearing Bond responds to with a disbelieving, "I must be dreaming."
No, there's none of this to be found in these risible, overblown latter-day Bond flicks. No winking good humor here. They all take themselves terribly seriously, and expect us to do so as well.
Futile expectation. As if we Bond connoisseurs, all other considerations set aside, could get past the ultimate absurdity of these movie actors playing at being James Bond. We all know Sean Connery is James Bond, and these others merely inadequate, playacting imposters.
And so it goes.
