Tag: daniel craig

Categories
Movie Reviews

Glass Onion is Indeed a Stupid Mystery

**Spoilers herein**

At the climax of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, master detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) makes an unusual complaint. Upon identifying the culprit, a reveal that shocks no one, he exclaims, “This is a stupid mystery!” He’s frustrated with the simplicity of the case, which any layman—or, maybe more importantly, any police officer—would have correctly solved in one guess.

I, for one, think he’s on to something. Just as Blanc implies, mystery movies are supposed to challenge and test us. They should be based on clever crimes committed by clever, unseen foes. Otherwise, why would an expert detective be needed? In fact, Blanc’s presence is the only reason that we don’t guess the villain: we expect that, since Blanc is around, something trickier must be at play. But, as it turns out, there isn’t.

Writer and director Rian Johnson is very pleased with himself for this fakeout. That’s because he has social commentary in mind: he wants to show us that our misguided reverence for tycoons like Miles Bron (Edward Norton) blinds us to crimes and misdeeds going on all around us. That our corporate oligarchy is one big “glass onion,” a collection of labyrinthian layerings that actually needn’t be peeled away, since they can easily be seen through, if only we thought to look. In other words, our emperors have no clothes, and our collective assumption that they do distracts us from society’s true crooks.

That’s a fine sentiment, but, again, it’s not the reason we fall for the misdirections of this particular film. The reason is that we’re watching a movie, and we therefore expect layers, because we expect filmmakers to reward our two hours of engagement with something interesting. We don’t expect a film without layers, because such a film would obviously be a huge letdown. Johnson promises us a great mystery, disappoints us (and Blanc), and then lectures us on why giving him the benefit of the doubt was foolish. He graciously explains that if we took the bait, that proves that we’ve allowed ourselves to be brainwashed by dumb tech bros.

Johnson also wrote and directed Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), and while I’m not one of that film’s many ardent haters, I can see a discouraging pattern forming in his work. He denies us the payoff that we came to the movie expecting, then he dares to use our surprise as a teaching moment. I support defying or even criticizing one’s viewers, but wagging a finger at them for wanting the kind of movie they were promised is priggish. You’ll notice that Johnson opts to direct movies with big budgets and big stars, thereby attracting a blockbuster Hollywood audience. Being so disdainful of Hollywood expectations, perhaps he should just…make a non-Hollywood film. (Less money in that, of course.)

It’s not only at the end of the movie that Benoit Blanc expresses frustration with a lack of intellectual challenge. A pensive sage in Knives Out (2019), he in fact spends much of this film grumpily complaining about the idiocy and banality surrounding him. That makes him the one relatable character in the film, and his awareness almost salvages the experience for us. But in the end, acknowledging that you’ve made a “stupid mystery” doesn’t mean you haven’t.

 

–Jim Andersen

For more reviews, see my review of Top Gun: Maverick

Categories
Commentary and Essays

The Problem All Along Was Daniel Craig

**MAJOR SPOILERS HEREIN**

No Time To Die marks the end of Daniel Craig’s tenure playing James Bond. There are some very good things about it, but unfortunately, smack dab in the middle of them is the movie’s worst quality: Craig himself. His version of Bond, we can now safely conclude, is the worst major portrayal on record.

The critics will contort themselves in knots to avoid acknowledging Craig’s aggregate failure despite the mountain of evidence in front of them. To be sure, they’ll have to admit that something is clearly off with this most recent film. It fails to leave any emotional impact whatsoever despite desperately blaring every possible cue to coax its viewers into tears. But the blame will fall anywhere but on Craig’s shoulders. The supporting characters are too thin. Too much action. Too much dialogue. Too confusing. Too generic. Too campy. Too serious.

Craig has accrued immense critical goodwill despite appearing in only one entertaining Bond movie: Casino Royale (2006). This abundance of establishment support stems from his dedication to playing the character as a dark and troubled individual. The narrative goes: whereas most of the gents who preceded Craig emphasized Bond’s suavity or comedic flair, Craig brought realism back to the character. And this, so goes the narrative, saved the franchise.

After all, the same exact about-face was applied successfully to another cinema icon at almost the exact same time for the exact same reasons. I’m referring to Batman. In 2005, the Batman character was rebooted in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins with a noticeably grittier tone compared to his last appearance, the infamously campy disaster Batman and Robin (1997). This change of course proved extremely well judged, initiating a critically and commercially successful trilogy that put Batman back on the map in the 21st century (although I have my gripes).

Just like Batman, James Bond in the mid 00’s was reeling after his previous appearance. Pierce Brosnan’s final film, Die Another Day, was, like Batman and Robin, heavily criticized for its campy tone and goofy set pieces. In fact, the similarities between these two flops run curiously deep. Both movies are remembered for barrages of bad puns, ridiculous action scenes relying on ice as a recurring visual gimmick, and plots that involve villains stealing diamonds to create lasers that terrorize the world. Yeah, they’re that similar.

And like Batman Begins, Daniel Craig’s comparatively dark Bond reboot, Casino Royale, was a critical and commercial hit. But this is where the parallels end. That’s because unlike the subsequent films in Nolan’s Batman trilogy, Craig’s ensuing Bond films mostly stumbled. Why the contrasting trajectories?

I think it’s because Batman is different than Bond in a crucial way that makes a dark, brooding style more appropriate to his films: Batman, originally, is fundamentally a loner. He works in secret in a cave. His identity is hidden from the world. He hunts criminals at night, avoiding detection.

Bond, on the other hand, isn’t like this. He can’t be; his job doesn’t allow it. When Sean Connery debuted the character in Dr. No (1962), he understood that an agent whose duties consisted of traveling the world, schmoozing with crooks, infiltrating shady agencies, and rendezvousing with key allies needed to be exuberant and outgoing. Plus, those traits were needed if he were to successfully smooth-talk gorgeous women.

On the other hand, a sad sack Bond can’t function. A prime example of this comes in No Time To Die when Bond must infiltrate a party with a pretty comrade (Ana de Armas).

This should be exactly the type of fun, sharp sequence that has always made Bond so entertaining to watch. And De Armas is up to it, but Craig can’t pull it off. He has placed himself inside such a small box of emotions by scowling through the entire first half of the movie (and all of the previous three movies) that when he inevitably attempts to flirt with de Armas, it comes off as weird: why is he smiling all of the sudden—did he forget his constant misery? And when he tries to make winking, witty quips to enliven the sequence, it’s suspicious: how can he joke around when he’s so tormented by loss and regret?

So while some may fear that criticizing Craig’s Bond implies a criticism of complexity, a vote against realness, in actuality this version feels less real than his predecessors because the character is so inconsistent. Just in this one film alone, Craig goes from attacking a prisoner, a la Jack Bauer; to a stately declaration of love, a la Mr. Darcy; to befuddled parenting, a la Ted Kramer; to a lovey-dovey death scene, a la Captain America. The ending falls eerily flat because it has no clear meaning: who has died? What was his identity? What were his character traits?

Successful character creation, after all, doesn’t require that we believe that the character could actually exist in real life. It only requires that we sense the humanity of the representation. Craig has reached to be more “real” as Bond, but it’s a futile effort; after all, his character is still performing impossible stunts and utilizing ridiculous weaponry. All Craig has done is confuse us.

The other reason critics have avoided and will continue to avoid condemning Craig’s Bond is the thorny issue of political correctness—especially regarding gender roles. The old Bond films are notoriously terrible in this regard. Most of their female leads (“Bond girls”) exist primarily as sex objects and have absurd names like “Pussy Galore” and “Octopussy.” The Craig films break with these traditions. Craig’s Bond can even take a rejection, as he does from de Armas’ character in No Time To Die without missing a beat—a skill Connery’s and Roger Moore’s Bonds never had much need for. Craig’s Bond, in fact, has spent much of his five films being commanded by women, bested by women, shot by women, in love with women, and replaced by women.

So this isn’t your granddad’s Bond. Critics, appropriately, have welcomed the change, but does this mean that Craig himself is above censure? Does bashing Craig’s portrayal equate to endorsing a return to the old ways, to macho womanizing and objectification? Critics seem to worry that they’ll be accused of exactly that.

This quandary has already been explored, actually, by someone who now seems like a sort of unlikely Bond prophet: Mike Myers. The movie Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) is an immensely underrated comedy, ostensibly a straight parody of the Bond franchise. The premise is that a 60’s secret agent and celebrity (Myers) transports forward in time to the 1990’s, where he finds that his preferred methods—especially seducing friends and foes alike and goofing around while the world nears destruction—are none too welcome anymore. As Roger Ebert summarized in his positive review: “Bond meets political correctness.”

Such a premise isn’t some farfetched notion. In fact, it was actually happening at that very moment, because, thanks to the magic of movies, James Bond had in fact been transported in time to the 1990’s, where he was portrayed by Pierce Brosnan for four films. And filmmakers were indeed forced to grapple with how to import the character’s sleazy tendencies into an increasingly hostile cultural and political environment. Consider a seminal 1990’s event: the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.

Brosnan’s films (perhaps until the aforementioned Die Another Day) thus predictably downplayed sex, preferring to focus on maniacal, disturbed villains. This element of the Bond formula was, by contrast, 90’s-approved (see: Hannibal Lecter).

Given these modern tweaks of Bond’s familiar shtick, one recalls the shouting-down Austin Powers receives from his offended new coed partner (Elizabeth Hurley) in the 90’s: “You can’t just go around shagging everyone anymore!” Brosnan’s producers, apparently, felt the same way, judging by relatively dry, prudish outputs like Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and The World is Not Enough (1999). And by the time Craig was through with Bond, the character was parting ways with the lovely de Armas with little more than a tip of the cap.

Myers’ premise in International Man of Mystery, then, is funny because it reflects the very real awkwardness of trying to shepherd the Bond moneymaking machine into an era in which the character doesn’t quite fit. The true object of the parody isn’t Connery’s old films, which were congruent to their era. It’s Brosnan’s newer ones, which are the first to reflect a palpable discomfort with some of the character’s qualities, even as the films continued to draw fans and succeed at the box office.

So we want Bond back, but we don’t like some integral features of his personality. I suppose we can’t blame Craig too much, then, for grasping at straws. What, given our collective indecision, is an actor to do? What is a screenwriter to do? One gets the impression, in No Time To Die, of a focus-grouped movie, but the focus group couldn’t make up its mind. Or broke out into a food fight midway through.

The problem is best captured, again, by Myers. At the end of International Man of Mystery, a cornered Dr. Evil makes a surprisingly insidious argument. He taunts Austin Powers by sneakily suggesting that, with the 60’s long gone, Austin has become a menace:

Isn’t it ironic, Mr. Powers, that the very things you stand for: swinging, free love, parties, distrust of authority—are all now, in the 90’s, considered to be…evil?

The problem with Craig’s five Bond films is that none of them have an answer to this challenge. They’re ashamed of their own protagonist: like Dr. Evil, they believe that the essence of the character is a problem in the modern age.

But this needn’t have been the case, as Austin eloquently proves in his retort to Dr. Evil:

No, man, what we swingers were rebelling against were uptight squares like you, whose bag was money and world domination. We were innocent, man! If we’d known the consequences our sexual liberation, we would have done things differently, but spirit would have remained the same. It’s freedom, man!

If only someone from Eon Productions had seen this film, and incorporated this message! If only Bond’s producers, screenwriters, and actors had recognized that the ways of Bond could change without sacrificing the exuberant “spirit” of Bond. Then the character might still be entertaining in the 21st century.

After all, people of all eras like exotic locations, action, roguish wit, and sex. Bond could still have appealed to that in all of us. But instead, for fifteen years Bond hasn’t liked anything. He gets no pleasure out of the fantasy into which he’s supposed to be inviting us.

I don’t know who the next person to portray Bond will be, but I hope it’ll be someone who can incorporate Mike Myers’ solution to “Bond meets political correctness”—embracing the character’s core traits while operating happily within 21st century mores. Daniel Craig and his collaborators weren’t able to strike that balance.

But Craig’s Bond, after all, is dead now: good riddance?

 

–Jim Andersen

For more commentary, see my takedown of the epic disaster, Cats.