This weekend I watched 3 movies - This post is about 2 of them - Casino Royale (the latest Bond flick and Bourne Identity - the first edition of the Bourne trilogy). Review of the third one (Lost in Translation) to follow.
Growing up, I was always a James Bond fan. Liked some of the Bonds better than the others... Sean Connery > Pierce Brosnan > Roger Moore > Timothy Dalton > George Lazenby..... and too early to talk about Daniel Criag and I've liked all the films. Really liked Casino Royale as well, although many elements of the movie surprised me.
It's been 45 years and 21 films since the first edition in this epic series and the character of Bond has never changed - he's suave, stylish, very British, drinks his martini shaken (not stirred), drives fast cars, sleeps with hot women and doesn't fall in love. Until now.
James Bond, with Casino Royale, has gotten just a little more soppy (falls in love with a woman who actually dupes him. Even worse - he's still moony eyed in love even after he discovers that). He's gets beaten up a couple of times and has had to perform rigorous action scenes to earn his bread like any other action star today.
Therein lies the problem (and the connection with the other film I watched this weekend). What makes Bond, well, Bond is the unbelievability of the whole thing with all the points I mentioned above. Now when you depart from that, Bond is like any other action star - like Jason Bourne!!
This past weekend, I also watched Bourne Identity (I guess I was catching up with a new breed of Hollywood action blockbusters which everyone in the world bar me seems to have watched... next up is the Oceans series). Really liked this film as well. Great plot - fast and fantastic - very Robert Ludlum. Jason Bourne is this super-human-esque secret agent who has lost his memory and the CIA is trying to kill him off as they think he's a rogue agent. In the meanwhile he's just trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
Now there's nothing wrong with being Jason Bourne (heck, he makes a lot of money and is very very popular among the girls), but when you're James Bond, you don't aspire to be Jason Bourne. Jason Bourne aspires to be you. Put differently, its kinda like Jason Bourne aspires to be you. Jason gets the girls, James gets the women.
My opinion - Let Bond be Bond. James Bond.
On a not so separate note, after watching Casino Royale, E, V, L and I were pondering the possibility of creating local Bonds for the subcontinent - (a) Joginder Bhogle from Bhatinda, India, (b) Jeetu Bandaranayake from Colombo, Sri Lanka. That's work in progress. Will post a more fleshed out email once we copyright the idea... NOT.
5 comments:
How about Jamshedji Bondawalla from Dadar Parsi Colony? Oh, and a belated happy birthday.
Mate,
Two corrections:
a) Bond didnt get duped by the girl. It looked like he was duped by her but "M" clarified that later. Watch the movie carefully again.
b) Whatever you might say, the bond franchise is the one trying to be Jason Bourne, not otherwise.
Mahog - This could really be a money making parody! Let's nail the copyrights soon.
And Beta - clearly you've made it back safe and sound. A little bald bird told me you're coming back to town this weekend. true? On your points - yes he got duped... the fact that the girl didn't intend it that way or was forced, is a different issue. and your other point - never insisted otherwise. Oh and did I call you a c*$t?? c*$t! :)
Well written article.
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