Movies – Hank Kalet

Old-fashioned spy thriller

Four reasons to recommend Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy:

1. Superb acting. Gary Oldham and the rest of the cast offer taut, restrained and pitch-perfect performances as early-’70s spies with Britain’s MI6.

2. Pacing. In a movie with almost no fireworks — no chase scenes, no explosions — the film maintains the highest level of suspense.

3. A great story.

4. Production, design and costume. We too often reserve kudos in these categories for the big period pieces, but the recreation of early-’70s Europe is pitch perfect.

The Friday Five: Remake these, please

Hollywood has made some awful movies over the years, most of which deserve to be forgotten. But what of the films that should have been better, the ones that failed because of poor casting, unimaginative direction or an unwillingness to trust the audience?

In this week’s Friday Five, my occasional series, I offer five movies that had potential but failed to meet the mark:

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969): Not the worst Bond film, but not because of the man playing Bond. George Lazenby — with an assist from Telly Salavas as Blofeld — takes one of the stronger Bond stories and surprisingly nuanced direction (has a Bond film ever been so dark and brooding?) and sucks its life out. Now that the franchise has been revived with Daniel Craig as Bond, this one needs a retooling.

The Natural (1984): Bernard Malamud’s faux Greek tragedy is turned into one of those cliche myths that plague the baseball movie genre. I’d like to see this redone as Malamud wrote it, even if the novel was not top-tier Malamud.

Breathless (1983): A great French caper turned into a lifeless American vehicle for Richard Gere in the 1980s. it deserved a lot better and should be updated.

Get Smart (2008): Occasionally funny, but lacking the absurdist wit of Buck Henry and Mel Brooks’ original television show. The casting was brilliant — Steve Carell and Alan Arkin, in particular, were genius choices — but the story missed the point of the series. Max was Control’s top agent on television, an absurdity that was meant to undercut everything that both Control and Chaos engaged in. Turning him into the lovable loser may have gibed with Carrell’s movie persona, but it robbed the film of its energy. “Missed it by that much.”

A Farewell to Arms (1957): This had a lot of competition — Daredevil, Howard the Duck, nearly every movie made about Babe Ruth — but Jennifer Jones does such a poor job running Hemingway’s dialogue that I had to put this one at the top. One of its chief failings, of course, is that Ernest Hemingway needs to be translated to the screen; his terse, almost staccato dialogue does not read well aloud and can too easily be turned into melodramatic pap by the wrong actors. That was the case not only with Jones’ portrayal of nurse Catherine Barkley, but Rock Hudson’s turn as Lt. Frederick Henry.

The Friday Five: Superhero movies

As I said a few weeks ago, I have started a new feature here at Channel Surfing called the Friday Five. I’m hoping it will be a regular feature and that we’ll get some participation from readers.

This week I’ve turned it over to my brother, Mark, who knows far more about the superhero business than I do (he is a bit of comic-book geek, and I mean that as a compliment). This week — so that the lead up makes sense — I offer the Top 5 Superhero movies, according to Mark Kalet:

I can do that in my sleep and in no particular order:

Spider-Man

Superman: The Movie

Batman Begins/The Dark Knight

Spider-Man 2

X-Men 2

Honorable Mention: The Matrix, because it showed the studios how to do real superhero action.

When I told him I would have included Iron-Man, he responded:

Hmm. Ok this is harder than I thought because I liked Iron Man more than Dark Knight.

Good choices, all in all — and no Daredevil!

Bond, James Bond II

I didn’t mention in my earlier post the politics of the new Bond film, which differs from the traditionally conservative template. But Juan Cole on his blog does a nice job outlining the new Bond ideology:

The original Bond began his education at Eton (he was thrown out) and was a member of the British elite, even if he exhibited its otherwise hidden rough edges and occasionally ruthless methods (deployed against still more ruthless opponents such as Soviet assassination squads). Still, he defended the interests of his social class against challengers.

With this film, Daniel Craig’s Bond, who is from a considerably lower social class than Flemings’, has chosen to defy the white-tie set, and the Bush administration’s greed and lawlessness, and to stand up for the little people (including Camille, who symbolizes Morales’s Indios). At one point the smarmy CIA man Beame rejects any criticism from Bond of US imperialism, given Britain’s own long and sordid imperial history. But a country, and a people, always has a choice in each generation, of whether to do the right thing. They are not prisoners of their ancestors.

Craig’s Bond is an intimation of the sort of Britain that could have been, if Tony Blair had stood up to Bush and refused to be dragged into an illegal war of choice, and into other actions and policies that profoundly contradicted the principles on which the Labour Party had been founded (and you could imagine Craig’s Bond voting for Old Labour, while Flemings’s was obviously a Tory). In a way, this Bond stands in for Clare Short, who resigned as a cabinet minister from Blair’s government in 2003 over the illegitimacy of the Iraq War.

Bond, James Bond

Quantum of Solace hit the theaters in the United States on Friday and was the top-grossing film in the country. And, make no mistake, it is a thrilling, explosive action pic — a little out of character for the Bond franchise, but a great deal of fun.

But if I had to grade the film, I’d give it an incomplete. The reason? The film does not stand on its own. If you did not see Casino Royale — a top-notch Bond film, one of the best — then QoS will make little sense. That is not necessarily its death-knell, but it does limit its effectiveness.

I see the film more as a bridge from Casino Royale to whatever if is that will follow.

Some other thoughts:

The title credits, which were so striking in Casino Royale and play such an important mood-setting role in earlier bond films, were dull.
The theme song, performed by Jack White and Alicia Keys, was terrible, far less than the sum of its parts.
The opening car chase was both thrilling and confusing, a victim of an over-eager editor. Otherwise, the film was brilliantly paced, better in this regard than Casino Royale, which suffered from an overly long aside detailing Bond’s relationship with Vesper.
We didn’t need the homage to Goldfinger (I won’t say anymore; Bond fans will know what I mean when they see it).
The Bond character progresses in Qos, grows, and it’s clear that the hard edges are softening, the roughness giving way to a Connery-like charm.
The film was about 20 minutes too short, the 20 minutes not included being the back-story that would have better fleshed out the narrative.

Recommendation: See Quantum of Solace, but rent Casino Royale first.