No Time To Digest: Part 3, Forgive Me Nots

Some things are just unforgivable old boy!

 

We left off the first half of the pre-title sequence with Satan Safin pulling 9 year old Madeline from the icy cold waters of Norway and smashing to older Madeline surging up from the Mediterranean breakers, finding a shirtless Craig-Bond smiling at her and asking if “everything is ok.” She assures him she’s fine and we jump to the two of them riding about in the DB5 with some music eerily similar to the “love suite” from Casino Royale. Swann turns to Craig and says, “Can we go faster.” He replies…

“We don’t have to go faster, we have all the time in the world.”

HOLY SHI… Easy old boy, I’m sure it’s just a throw away nod to the earlier film, as they are want to do, surely it has no impact on the film.

Right after he says that the music breaks into this…

Yes, you heard that right, an instrumental sample of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’s love theme; We Have All the Time in the World!

MOTHERFUC…

3 hours and 2 double bourbons later…

All jokes aside I really did have to walk away at this point and find some support from a liquid “friend.” What the bloody hell EON?! It’s bad enough you feel the need to throw in cheap “winks” and “nods” to your previous and far superior films in order to prop up your decidedly non-Bond films, but this is out and out emotional theft! And for what?! Those who know the film and care, are repulsed and those who don’t care just meet the reference with a shrug! 

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service? That’s that old movie right? Whatever.

This is not the only time OHMSS is referenced ether as we shall see, this was only petty theft by comparison, but more on that as it comes. As Craig-Bond and Swann are checking into their lodgings for the evening the duo notice people around them burning scraps of paper as part of some ritual, Craig asks the porter what all the pieces of paper are, the porter replies, “secrets, wishes, letting go of the past.”

I wish Babz would take a page from this book!

Immediately a love scene ensues. Swann is wearing an oversized T-shirt throughout the affair whereas Craig is stark assed naked the entire time, the shots are so low, if they were even a millimeter lower you’d see all the scars left by Le Chiffre’s knotted rope!

For Barbara Broccoli’s Eye’s Only.

 

Apparently this sojourn to Matera was at the suggestion of Swann so the Craig-Bond could visit the grave of Vesper Lynd and make amends. 15 years and 4 films later we are still bloody wrapped up in this gal?! The Craig-Bond knew her for all of about three weeks at best, a decade ago (this current scene is a 5 year flash back) and he’s still hung up on this person?! Bloody hell! So Craigster makes his way to the cemetery to visit the ancient tomb of his lost love in Matera which is located in the “instep” of the Italian “boot” about 530 miles from Venice where she died.

So how in the hell did this happen?

Vesper died in Venice at the north eastern tip of Italy, yet she’s burred in the south central edge of the country? According to the film Casino Royale she was an orphan like the Craig-Bond and not a citizen of Italy so who decided to place her 500 miles from where she died and not back in England? For my British friends that’s like dying in Inverness and getting burred in Brighton, or for those in the U.S. the equivalent to driving from San Francisco to San Diego California.

Minus traffic of course!

Once Craig situates himself in front of the tomb, the music gets sufficiently saccharine and he mutters, “I miss you.”

I miss you so much, those 3 weeks in August 2006 were divine!

He produces a note from his pocket which he sets ablaze, the note reading “forgive me.” Forgive him for what exactly? Why is he seeking forgiveness from the traitorous Vesper? She not only sold him out, but all of Great Britain and perhaps the entire world! She was handing over money to “directly finance terrorism” as she herself so ably put it in that film, she committed suicide rather than face justice for the acts she committed, what the bloody hell is the Craig-Bond apologizing to this broad for?

Forgive me for not being your accomplice in terror!

Just then Craig notices another note at his feet, it’s marked with the octopus of SPECTRE! Suddenly the tomb explodes and we’re transported to a scene from Saving Private Ryan with that concussion effect they made famous all those 25 years before!

Remember how cool this movie was a quarter century ago!

The blast knocks Craig on his ass and dulls his senses for a moment, he quickly recovers and begins rushing headlong back to Swann whom he believes to be in trouble.

“I’m coming to save you my darling!”

Along the way SPECTRE agents spring up and begin attacking our star crossed lover!

Nice aloha shirt bruh!

The would be assassins begin firing machine guns as well as trying to hit our hero with their car and I have to wonder why the hell didn’t they just pack that tomb with more explosives? If it’s me and I’m trying to kill the world’s best secret agent and nemesis to my boss, I’m going to pack that crypt with enough C4 to blow him and the corpse of his forlorn lover into orbit, but as I say, that’s just me.

Farewell cruel world!

Not to mention, it would have saved us nearly 3 hours of our lives just to come to the same conclusion!

RIP indeed old friend!

Anyway at this point the No-good-nicks still have our man Craig trapped on a bridge and think trying to run him over for a second time is the best course of action rather than just shooting him, since it worked out so great when they tried it a moment before.

You can’t get me!

That’s when Craigers decides to take a header off the bridge!

Weeeeeee!

This sets up the film’s tribute to George, George, George of the Jungle!

Watch out for that treeeeee!

Ooof! (Is it me or is the Craigster’s hair dyed darker in these Matera scenes?)

Remember how a few moments before, an explosion knocked Craig senseless and transported him back to filmmaking styles that were avant garde in 1998? Yeah well falling 50 feet and slamming into a solid stone wall has even less effect on him, as he springs back to his feet to continue the action! Suddenly an enemy on a motorcycle pulls up conveniently so Craig can make like “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka and procure the vehicle.

Oh YEAH brother, you’re about to taste the canvas! SNAP INTO A SLIMJIM™!

So if you’re one of the 250 idiots discerning individuals to have bought one of the special edition Triumph™ motorcycles modeled after this one, the 30 seconds of screen time featuring that $20,000 vanity purchase is about to start!

This poster makes my being a poser worth every penny!

Along the way during a brief bit-o-hand to hand combat the Craig-Bond pops the henchman’s false eye out…

“A false eye? Now do come along Bond!”

You can tell they were going for a laugh here, with Craig trying in vain to emote an eyebrow raise, but being in the middle of an artificially tense moment it falls flatter than a Moscow cop car during rush hour.

Tanks for not signaling jackass!

During this eye popping affair the Craig-Bond is told Swann is a “daughter of SPECTRE” causing him to second guess her loyalties. Which begs the question, why go back and collect her? Especially since he ultimately dumps her off at the train station anyway. He should…

The smarter option.

But truckin’ he does not keep on, back at the love nest he snatches her up and they make haste in the Aston Martin DB5™. I asked this question at the end of SPECTRE and I’ll repeat it here, how the hell does he have this car? He quit at the end of that previous film, yet rode off in ÂŁ1million quid worth of Her Majesty’s property, that’s not even mentioning the lethal equipment secreted in the vehicle! And here he is again, most definitely outside the employment of Her Majesty’s government, as a regular citizen driving a car with bloody mini-guns behind the headlights!

I don’t know what you’re talking about officer, it came that way from the factory!

So, let me back up a moment, Craig-Bond and Swann are speeding about in this inexplicable spy car when lo and behold Swann receives a phone call from… BROFELD! Bro tells her, “your father would be proud and your sacrifice will not be forgotten.” Remember when the Craig-Bond sat down with Mr. White and watched him commit suicide rather than succumb to the ravages of the radioactive poison SPECTRE planted in his cell phone? Or when the Craig-Bond had to save Swann from SPECTRE agents at her clinic? Or when she threw the Craig-Bond’s exploding watch under Brofeld’s chair saving Craig from the useless drill torture contraption? Well neither does Craig-Bond, because he believes all this bollocks.

Boom goes the Bro!

So after this friendly telephonic chit-chat wraps up, SPECTRE release a flock of sheep to side track them (no seriously that is a thing that happens in this film), causing the car to veer down an allyway and ultimately get cornered! Then… the Craig-Bond sits there… and sits there… aaaand sits there…

To the point crickets start chirping…

The surrounding enemies are firing from all sides when one enterprising young fellow begins closing the distance on the car.

No he’s not a member of a Color Me Bad tribute band as I had predicted

Instead he’s the completely underused henchman of both villains in the film, the one with the false eye, I don’t know if he even has a name. At any rate, as nameless one eye… No, I’ll do EON one better I’m going to give this poor chap a name! How about Bad Boy?

Well, I am the bad boy of the group!

(Edit, I got so caught up in my Color Me Bad gag I missed the obvious name choice; Popeye, so that’s what we’ll be calling him going forward, thanks to Kristatos in the forum!)

Ok, Bad Boy it is! So as Bad Boy (BB to his bandmates) gets ever closer to the car still firing his gun, the Craig-Bond just vacuously stares at the ground while Swann shrieks at him.

The scene consists of various close ups of this mug!

Eventually ol’ Craig remembers he’s in an action movie and needs to take “action,” he says, “okay,” for some reason and opens the center console of the car, where we find the production department spent more than ÂŁ.03 on effects this time around.

Compared to…

Definitely a marked improvement!

That’s when the mini-guns come out or as they say in Matera…

So now that the guns are out the producers decide to cash in on the Fast And Furious market:

By spinning “donuts” and:

Firing guns!

Of course all the requisite background fruit and news stands explode, but not much else.

Take that Corriere della Sera!

After blowing up every newsagents in the town square our heroes ride off to the train station where the Craig-Bond dumps his “one true love,” other than the one before and that other gal he was somewhat fond of and you know…

There was this girl in Philadelphia…

He tells her he’ll never see her again and she grabs her stomach:

Indigestion got you down?

I thought it was a meta play by the actor, commentary on how sickening this all is, but apparently this is some foreshadowing to her pregnancy.

Ugh, hooraaaay!

I would think taking this suspicious gal back to MI6 might be the more professional choice, maybe if you really love her as much as we’re being told and not shown, you’d bring her back for debriefing to see where her loyalties really lie? Nah, just dump her in a caboose and vamoose!

Get lost, my one true love!

The train pulls away with Swann staring lovingly out the window and we cut to the shmaltzy titles and more blatant theft from the francize, see you next time in: Temper Raising Titles.

 

 

  15 comments for “No Time To Digest: Part 3, Forgive Me Nots

  1. Not to be too caddy but when does Bond wear freaking corduroy. With freaking suspenders. The henley shirt is the worst. I wonder what the dude who does the Bond experience thought of these style choices.

    • Oh, don’t worry Jason old boy we’ll get to that fellow when the time comes! No spoilers here, of course he loves it all!

  2. Hi Dirty Benny, yes, the “we have all the time in the world” line is quite a cringeworthy homage to OHMSS. There’s obviously going to be in this movie none of the wit of that other Bond movie you mentioned – Never Say Never Again, which had some very memorable lines.
    I’m not sure there were “homages” in any of the Bond movies before Skyfall came along.

    • Yes Gareth, as bad as NSNA is it’s a hundred times more fun than anything we’ve gotten out of EON for the last decade or so and you’re right nobody is going to be quoting any witty dialog from this film, hell it can’t even come up with any original dialog of it’s own!

      The homages began with DAD, CR is mercifully devoid of any, but QOS came roaring back with the woman who was drowned in oil getting splayed out on the bed similarly to Jill Masterson’s “golden girl” in Goldfinger.

    • Hello Get A Life You Sad Chode (I do hope you gave your parents hell for that), they say a man is judged by the quality of his enemies, if all I have are the likes of you and the 3 randos who replied to a tweet that had nothing to do with this site, then I guess that doesn’t say much for me.
      I really don’t understand why the existence of people who are not enamored with Dan Craig’s era as Bond upsets you so, look I get it No Time To Die is a garbage movie, but lashing out at us won’t change that.

    • Just think – when Craig was cast and had his press conference Twitter (and all the morons spouting gibberish like capything) did not exist. Craig was busy making tv films for the BBC.

  3. Every Craig film is the same. He drives around/jumps off a building covered in dirt wearing a tight light coloured suit doing a series of ridiculous gurns and lemon faces.

      • Thanks for stopping by Percy and you’re right, these films have become too fatalist and nihilistic to be enjoyable, certainly not films people want to watch over and over again as the “classic” films are.

    • Hello Mario, These films have gotten too far up their own backside, we can only hope they make a course correction with the next actor, but that would require EON to suddenly come to their senses, not likely.

  4. Did anyone else notice that Vesper’s grave gave her DOB as 1983. So she was only 23 in Casino Royale?? She must have had some pretty sweet connections to get that accounting gig with MI6 right out of university.

    • That’s a good catch Dalton, it also brings up the strange dynamic of a young woman, nearly a girl, capturing the heart of the middle aged Craig-Bond who was 15 years her senior. In reality Eva Green was 25 at the time of filming, so it’s a curious choice to make her younger.

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