Kill James Bond! - Episode 2: From Russia With Love

Episode Date: March 3, 2021

It's Sean Connery, Timothy Dalton, and Daniel Craig's favourite bond movie. It's the last movie JFK ever saw. But is it any good? Join your favourite all-trans triumvirate as we ask: Who is Bond, co...mpared with Kronsteen?   Follow us at https://twitter.com/KillJamesBond Bonus episodes at https://www.patreon.com/killjamesbond

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome back to Kill James Bond, and we're doing Sean Connery's favorite Bond movie, Daniel Craig's favorite Bond movie, Timothy Dalton's favorite Bond movie, the Bond movie that Bond movie producers always set out to make, and the last movie that JFK saw before the deep state got him. It's from Russia with Love. That's true. I had that written down as one of my facts. JFK saw this movie at a private screening in the White House on November 20th. He was watching it on a PSP in the car.
Starting point is 00:00:39 JFK was getting cited up by Oswald as he was watching this on his Nokia N-Gage. Yeah, no. getting cited up by oswald as he was watching this on his nokia engage and um yeah no so this this is why jfk was killed was i guess not liking from russia with love which offended the cia so much that they uh just decided to to have him killed major bond fans yeah also the first bond movie was wearing a hairpiece because sean connery like uh obviously very bald man uh but went bald in the like six months between filming dr no and filming this and so he's just he's wearing a rug this whole time i did notice that actually because in dr no sean connery looks like shit and in this they've obviously upped the budget a little bit. And he looks great. They've cleaned it up a little bit.
Starting point is 00:01:25 Yeah. But we've got to talk about our favorite Bond villain in a hot minute, Red Grant. This was one of the best that we've ever had. Homicidal, paranoid, superb material. Those methods were a little crude. His response to our training and indoctrination have been remarkable. So we have a beautiful opening sequence this time.
Starting point is 00:02:06 Because frankly, after this one, we can just go home, right? If you turn off from Russia With Love... Yeah, we did it! We did it! Short podcast, everybody! If you turn off from Russia With Love at about two minutes in, we can just go home, podcast's over, because we see Red Grant, this enormous blonde man... He's a very, very jacked man. Murder James Bond. He pursues our boy through a maze in the gardens of a stately home. And he fucking garrots him with a fiber wire.
Starting point is 00:02:37 He pulls out of the bezel of his watch and he's fucking done. Dead. A hundred percent. Ladies and gentlemen, we got him. We got him. Easy. Donezo. James Bond killed. Thanks for coming along. As a response to killing their operative, Dr. No, Spectre has
Starting point is 00:02:53 decided to have James Bond clapped. And they succeed just like that. Instantly. Very, very effective work. Unfortunately, then they pull the reveal on you. The lights come up and they pull the fucking perfect rubber mask
Starting point is 00:03:10 of Sean Connery off of a totally dead-ass man. The makers of Mission Impossible are somewhere spitting out their breakfast cereal like, what? Because they apparently expect to just have the ability to make perfect rubber doubles of people's faces and they never use that again it seems like that would come in handy but well i'm sporting wouldn't it that's just for training yeah takes off sean connery
Starting point is 00:03:36 makeup to reveal goon underneath and the entire fucking specter training facility groans at my shit so i am i am convinced that this guy after the lights come up i'm convinced that this guy gets up and they all go and have a drink with him because there's no way they just dress up a henchman in a tuxedo every time and just there's no there's no there's no way they just have a pile of henchmen bodies all with sean connery's rubber face i think they do i think they're grabbing people off the street. No, I think they take turns playing James Bond. I think they're putting them into the tuxedo and putting the rubber mask of Sean Connery on them
Starting point is 00:04:10 and just setting them loose in the maze. And giving them a real gun. Like, what if he'd gotten lucky and killed their best operative? Well, then he deserved to die. Failure is not tolerated, Inspector. Yeah, I've got thoughts about that. We'll be getting to that later.
Starting point is 00:04:24 My favorite detail, right, is that after we see our boy grant kill bond the guy comes up to him and he tells him his time like he's doing a speed run and he's like ah like five minutes 30 seconds excellent oh but you used items so i'm afraid we're gonna take time we're gonna take points like the implication there seems to be that they're running this same maze over and over again, with presumably either the same or different Bonds. And like, what if you try to have to kill James Bond but he's not in a maze? Yeah, what if he's somewhere else? What if the situation is in any way different from this?
Starting point is 00:05:03 Well you're done for then. They only train Spectre agents to kill James Bond in a garden. Why would you time him on this anyway? Are you paying him by the hour? Yeah, Red Grant is actually a freelance contractor. Spectre, that was their first and most banal kind of evil,
Starting point is 00:05:21 is they don't have employees, they just have independent contractors. I badly want a picture of red grant wearing a fucking deliveroo outfit with a giant box backpack just throttling bond oh but anyway then then my notes just say tits. Yeah, that's right, because that's our setup. Our setup is Bond has killed Dr. No, this has made Spectre very angry, and so Spectre has sworn revenge, and they've been training this large blonde man to murder him. And then we get our opening sequence, which is powerfully horny this time. Yeah. powerfully horny this time yeah yeah what if what if instead of like just having a sort of
Starting point is 00:06:09 animated credit sequence like dr no or like a full full like music video like in laser bonds what if we just projected the names onto a belly dancer it's a good idea i mean it's nice and low budget and it looks kind of stylish i mean i guess i don't know that i ever needed to read the director of photography's name off of a woman's abs before but um i have a second note here that just says ass yeah there's a lot of ass there's a lot of tits it's a very um it's very like horny movie in general from russia it is extremely horny i mean we'll get into it well it's about to get incredibly horny because we're about to meet the sexiest character in all of james bond my favorite guy our boy boy our Huh? Who is Bond compared with Kronstein?
Starting point is 00:07:08 Kronstein fucking rules, man. We see him, he's introduced playing chess at like an international chess tournament, and he gets a message hidden under a glass of water saying, you're needed immediately by us, Spectre. And he just fucking pulls out the perfect rook sacrifice he plays uh the moves are actually boris spasky's that he's playing
Starting point is 00:07:31 but he just instantly ethers this guy who he'd i guess been toying with before now and the guy congratulates him too it's such like it's such a cock move he's like ah well done sir brilliant play and he's like get out of my way bitch the fuck out people are trying to shake his hand and he walks past them yeah he's such a dick it's it's the joke answer for how do you introduce a character and
Starting point is 00:07:55 make sure the audience knows they're smart is you have them win games in a single move and they're like yeah cronstein yeah but like the thing is right like you're supposed to hate Kronstein right but like we don't how can you we don't because he's actually as cool as James Bond believes himself to be
Starting point is 00:08:17 and Kronstein always acts like he's had about like three drinks already three drinks deep he's got that kind of like three drink confidence and also like slightly slurred attitude i love him kind of like hooded eyes and he's just like very like his his deal is smart right that's his whole thing but like he he outlines this this beautiful plan to lofeld isn't Isn't Lofeld yet? Or don't see of him, as the case may be. Yeah, we see the back of his head.
Starting point is 00:08:50 And his hands. He's stroking a white cat. We get the classic. We get the cat. He also has a very, very cool ring, which I have tried to find. It's got the Spectre logo on it. I'm trying to find my own version. It's very, very cool. It's on his pinky finger, too, which means it's a's got it's got the specter logo on it i'm trying to find my own version it's very
Starting point is 00:09:05 very cool it's on his pinky finger too which means it's a signet ring and i want to know what's what like wax seals he's impressing with a big fucking octopus in this secret organization that he's whatever he wants i imagine oh that is true but like like, Blofeld gets his little speech where he outlines sort of the ideology of Spectre, and he uses, as a pedagogical tool to demonstrate this, Siamese fighting fish.
Starting point is 00:09:36 He's got a tank full of fish, and they fucking hate each other. And those fish, like, they're real fish, they're really killing each other. They didn't get, like, CG fish in there, these weren't models, they those fish, like, they're real fish. They're really killing each other. They didn't get, like, CG fish in there. These weren't models. They just had, like, actual fish ripping each other up in this
Starting point is 00:09:52 fucking tank. And Blofeld says that they're brave but on the whole stupid, which is a very funny thing to say about a fish. Fucking idiots. But occasionally, occasionally a very funny thing to say about a fish but but occasionally occasionally you get a smart one and what a smart siamese fighting fish does is wait for two other siamese fighting fish to exhaust
Starting point is 00:10:16 each other in fighting and then strikes and kills both of them and that's what Spectre's gonna do to the superpowers. Mmm. Also in the room is a woman who's referred to as Number Three, who is like, she's a Soviet, but she's now working for Spectre. And she always, whenever she's in the room with Blofeld,
Starting point is 00:10:38 is always like sweating profusely and looking very nervous. So we really get a sense of like, Blofeld will fucking kill you if you cross him but anyway in comes Kronstein not a fucking freight of anything he's like stumbling in
Starting point is 00:10:53 like who is Kronstein walks right in and then Blofeld's like yo okay so Kronstein have you got the plan and he's like who the fuck do you think you're talking to, big man? I'm gonna explain my theory of the Anglo mind to you.
Starting point is 00:11:13 Which he does! And he's right. He says this, right? By reading of the British mentalities, that they always treat a trap as a challenge. Yeah, because he outlines his plan, and Blofeld's like, well, this, I mean, that clearly sounds like a trap as a challenge. Yeah, because he outlines his plan and Blofeld's like, well, I mean, that clearly sounds like a trap. And he's like, yeah, absolutely, it's meant to. Shut up. No way. I have anticipated
Starting point is 00:11:33 every possible counter move. Like, he's more or less just laying his dick out on Blofeld's desk here. And Blofeld's just like, yeah, okay, you, number number three go do the smart guys thing so Kronstein's plan is he's setting
Starting point is 00:11:50 up this very very obvious trap and what they're gonna do is they're gonna have this Russian agent try to defect shag James Bond and kind of bait the British intelligence in by saying we've got this lector decoding machine
Starting point is 00:12:05 that she's going to bring with her when she defects and all you've got to do is like come and pick her up and that's them they're laying this trap for Bond yes and as as we heard Blofeld was like this is obviously a trap yeah of course it is the Brits are going to fall right into it anyway
Starting point is 00:12:22 which spoiler alert they do Eb even has a line where he's like well of course it's a trap but honestly a lector decoding The Brits are going to fall right into it anyway. Which, spoiler alert, they do. Yeah, yeah. Eb even has a line where he's like, well, of course it's a trap, but honestly. A lector decoding should come on that. The pussy's too good. Sinus? Oh, God.
Starting point is 00:12:36 But we have to properly introduce our nemesis, Red Grand, which requires us to go to a place which is honestly called... It's honestly called... Welcome to Spectre Island, great honor. Why did you call it that? Yeah, man, Spectre Island. My hidden secret base is called Spectre Island.
Starting point is 00:13:01 That's not even the funniest thing about it. So Colonel Klebb number three she goes to pick up Red Grant who is the guy who's going to actually you know do the nasty on Bond and she goes to pick him up and they walk through the specter training area
Starting point is 00:13:17 to meet him it's so good because they've got people doing live firing, some with machine guns, some with flamethrowers. They've got actual live henchmen running behind the range, like dodging between the targets, whether they're being paid or what, I don't know.
Starting point is 00:13:38 And then like five feet away, they've got people doing judo and like karate chopping through boards. Chopping through boards boards it really seems like like specter island was a lot smaller than they were expecting and you just have to do all the training here 10 meter by five meter training area and i just try to get everything done and they also can't afford good dubbing because everyone on specter island is overdubbed and they all sound terrible the guy is quite clearly saying the word lake, but they dub him over to say pool,
Starting point is 00:14:08 like Red Grant is by the pool. So anyway, they go and meet Red Grant. Then they go to it, and it's a lake. Let me tell you, that's not a fucking point. Yeah, Red Grant is just getting his biceps jerked off by a woman in a bikini, which I'm not sure that's what a massage is, but that's what she's doing, she's fucking going to work on one of his massive biceps.
Starting point is 00:14:32 And Rosa Klebb decides to interview him for this role of killing James Bond, for the position of James Bond murderer. And her technique for this is to put on a fucking knuckle duster and sucker punch him in the solar plexus and i was quite surprised when you did that to me and dev when you when you interviewed us to have us on the podcast alice but i'm glad you've got the main standards i i did i suffered it completely normally the best thing about when grant comes over like the guy's like grant get over here and he comes right over and he just puffs his chest out so hard. Yep.
Starting point is 00:15:08 If you take, like, a fucking screenshot of him, he's doing, like, slightly overweight man pretending to be thin pose. It's so good. And Grant's background, right, that we're given is just murderer, right? That's his deal. that we're given is just murderer, right? That's his deal. Spectre fucking broke him out of prison and
Starting point is 00:15:28 recruited him in Tangier. And, like, I played this as the opening, but I really want to hammer on this drop, right? This grant's one of the best men we've ever had. Homicidal, paranoid, superb material. Those methods were a little crude. His response to our training and
Starting point is 00:15:44 indoctrination have been remarkable. And I want to, like, explore the ideological consequences of the fact that those sentences are also a perfect description of James Bond as played by Daniel Craig. Yeah, with the exception
Starting point is 00:16:00 of the prison, yeah. Well, I would go as far as to say obviously what's his name red grant obviously obviously donald grant donny as i call him is is being set up to be like the anti-bond like he's clearly being put there as like this is bond but like in a mirror in a shattered mirror with a big crack down the middle but and but he doesn't really live up to that particularly well no because the thing is right like what they're going for is bond but evil but he's not that evil and he's also better at being bond than james bond is yeah i mean they do in later films they perfect
Starting point is 00:16:41 the kind of bond but evil villain uh this is the sort of first version of the alec trevelyan and the the bad guy from die another day who we see much later on but yeah they are trying to go for this interesting james bond but evil he even looks a little bit like daniel craig actually yeah you can kind of see like the sort of really close cropped very blonde hair and the like very very large physically imposing man but yeah he was also a fun fact on this he was also he's four inches shorter than sean connery huh but he's required to be taller than him in all of the shots so he was always stood on a wooden box every time next to each other hell yes so shocking we've got so then we have this scene oh boy do you want to talk us through capital t capital s this scene yeah we have a few of these and this is definitely the
Starting point is 00:17:36 first scene where you're like oh christ oh god we see tatiana who works in the consulate general of the so Union in Istanbul. And we see her say goodbye to her work friends, walk across a bunch of really uneven cobblestones and kitten heels, which, queen. Yeah, freaking hell. And then goes to report to her new
Starting point is 00:17:58 boss, Colonel Kleb, in an apartment, I guess. And we know that Kleb is working for Spectre, but no one else knows that yet. She doesn't. As far as she's concerned, Cleb is, like, in uniform, too. So she's like, yeah, no, this is a colonel of state security
Starting point is 00:18:14 who has a secret assignment for me. And what that secret assignment turns out to be is some fucking T for T ass lesdom ass. Like, this scene, man, I swear swear to god could have been filmed in the fucking armory that the point that they want you to get from this is that rosa kleb is a lesbian right and they are not subtle about that it is more subtle than it is in the books so so when
Starting point is 00:18:40 tatiana comes in uh colonel kleb basically performs a milf check she's like can you please take your jacket off and turn around this is the soviet state milf check uh and then and then she basically says so you're a slut like she's like how many you've had you've had three lovers and she's like what is the significance of such a personal question and then club's like nothing it just turns me on uh and then club like touches her knee in a in a way that clearly makes tatiana uncomfortable club also has some kind of big like it's like a stick or a writing drop something halfway between shut um and she smacks the back of her chair with a really aggressive sound effect too and she basically says this is a photo of
Starting point is 00:19:25 james bond if for mother russia we need you to fuck him and do whatever he says like she's she's setting tatiana up to be this kind of honeypot um and it is this i mean i'm going to use the word again it's hauntology because we have this scene where the the villain colonel Klebb, is coded, not explicitly, but very obviously, as a lesbian. And this is not presented as titillation for the audience, as it might be in a more modern film. It's portrayed as, she is a lesbian, and this is bad.
Starting point is 00:19:56 This is evil. It's sinister. It's predatory. She's creepy for this. She is, as they used to call lesbians, the lavender menace she is like she is the kind of woman about about whom women would and did say they should not be allowed in our changing rooms so there's this weird like as a tram as a trans woman watching this scene it's very very haunting um but anyway very funny because colonel klebb right she's she's older she's not like
Starting point is 00:20:26 do you want to say conventionally attractive to the imagined audience of this movie no that's why that's why i fucking called it t for t right it's because it fucking is you have a woman who's like hyper femme who's literally being dubbed by another woman because her voice doesn't fucking work for the role because her accent's too thick being seduced by this frankly kind of mannish older woman rules yeah i mean i wouldn't say that it's seduced i don't think i wouldn't say that's my reading of the scene i mean it's not portrayed upon definitely it's preyed upon yeah this is portrayed i think it's quite homophobic scene actually um but anyway then we cut to the sex that we're allowed to be okay with because james bond is shagging in a boat yeah which i just want to pull up that's 18 minutes into the movie that we get
Starting point is 00:21:16 our first shot of bond because that it's first of all it's the lowest stakes of any any bond movie or basically any spy movie of all time. They want to steal a code decoding machine, right? It's not there's a nuke going to go off. It's not the world's ending. It's not even rocket fall down. Rocket's not even falling down. It's just a code machine.
Starting point is 00:21:38 And it sort of serves only to set up Spectre in more detail and as more of a threat. serves only to set up specter in more detail and as more of a threat so they spend the whole start just focusing in on all the auxiliary characters because we know what bond's like we understand bond yeah and then for the previous 18 minutes he's been shagging we can't do it after having been shagging with sylvia trench the lady from the first film yeah he's with he's with sylvia With Sylvia Trench, the lady from the first film! Yeah, he's with Sylvia! They genuinely wanted to make this a recurring character, and like, she would constantly be getting cockblocked by Bond having to jet off to such and such another like, exotic destination.
Starting point is 00:22:18 And it just doesn't happen, this is the last time we see her in the franchise. Uh, sorry! But once again, Bond gets called away from Sylvia to go and see M. Bond gets called away on a gigantic pager, which then requires him to, like, use the car phone in his open-top Bentley. Again, this is like... Because that's in the books! And this is the first Bond car, is this ridiculous 1920s-looking-ass car.
Starting point is 00:22:48 That massive phone was on a... The huge phone in a car was a state-of-the-art gadget. Oh, yeah. That was supposed to be something where you saw that and you were like, holy shit, look at all the cool shit Bond has. But it's this massive fucking handset. Now it's just sort of my charming... On the dashboard of your car yeah yeah
Starting point is 00:23:05 kind of nice and so but bond does the same thing twice where he's just like yeah i'll be in an hour and then sylvia trench is like but you won't have sex with me and he's like we're fine hour and a half so i can have sex with this woman which he does 10 minutes yeah yeah i'm sorry what hump inefficiently what he says is that as he's closing the fucking like canopy of the bentley over them is now about that lunch which implies he's gonna eat her pussy for half an hour i don't believe that bond has ever eaten a pussy no i'm willing to put a pin in that i don't think he does that no i genuinely do not believe we can this is the rest of the podcast by the way we're just gonna be talking about where Fonat Bond eats pussy.
Starting point is 00:23:46 He doesn't. Like, fully no. No, he thinks it's gay. He won't do it. He comes and he's like, well, that's enough of that, and just leaves. 100%. My god. So after having done that, he goes back to the same shitty office as last time, meets M, and M is like, yo, this girl in Istanbul, she wants to bang you. And also bring a cipher machine. And fucking, once again, ableist James Bond. I have a drop for this.
Starting point is 00:24:15 Of course, girls do fall in love with pictures of film stars. But not a Russian cipher clerk with a file photo of a British agent. Unless she's mental. Unless she's mental. Sounds like an ad-lib. Yeah, it feels like he got to the end of his line and then he was like, no, this isn't offensive enough, hang on. Yeah, that's right.
Starting point is 00:24:39 Which is such a Connery move in general. So something I want to bring up, right, is that allegedly the story is that Tatiana has fallen in love with James Bond from his file photo, wants to defect, but will only defect to him in person, and to sweeten the deal will provide the Lector decoding machine to the British. So this implies that the Soviets have a file photo of James Bond, a British secret agent.
Starting point is 00:25:09 And M doesn't see this as a reason for Bond to immediately retire. Like, Bond, you're our main guy. They know exactly what you look like. You are sacked, you fucking idiot. It gets better, right? Because there's some reciprocity. There's some reciprocity here, because M then says, the head of station T
Starting point is 00:25:28 in Turkey managed to snap a photo of this woman, and he hands Bond fully a glamour shot. Yeah, like, this is not a fucking surreptitious photo that's been taken. No, it is very, very posed. She posed for it. He's like, excuse me, madam,
Starting point is 00:25:44 I'd like to spy on you. And she's like, oh, please go ahead. Yeah. Please go ahead. And now here's my thing. I'm just going to nip in here and say, Abby, how dare you say shit about Cronstein's plan? This is a masterwork.
Starting point is 00:25:59 I'm not talking shit about Cronstein's plan. I'm talking shit about M's ability, M's apparent inability to realize that he's got a massive security breach on his hands. They know what Bond looks like. Ah, the British. He's meant to be a secret agent. World's greatest spy. That's right.
Starting point is 00:26:17 James Bond. Well, one moving in and they already know what you look like. You don't. We also, we get to meet Hugh. They know it so well, they made a rubber mask of his face yeah they fucking did that like 360 degree photos of your face my man they could put a mask on someone and just walk into M's office and shit him.
Starting point is 00:26:46 Like, that is how compromised MI7 is. Ah. Ah, the British Isles. But we have to get another gadget, which Bond does. We meet Q for the first time. Desmond Llewellyn.
Starting point is 00:27:02 Yeah, and what he gives Bond is an attache case which contains a bunch of hidden coins, gold sovereigns, a concealed knife, a gun, which, again, fucking rules that you could just
Starting point is 00:27:18 get on a plane with a rifle in a suitcase. Well, it was in his carry-on and he was just like, yeah. Don't worry about it. in in a classic example of the like hue format for explaining something watch very carefully an ordinary tin of talcum powder inside a tear gas cartridge and if you open the case wrong the tear gas canister goes off in your face. Clever. Remember that for later. This is a technique called foreshadowing, and the Bond movies don't do it often,
Starting point is 00:27:50 but when they do, it fucking lands like an anvil. He's honestly like, he's like, oh, they spend a lot of time talking about this case, and at that point I was like, he's gonna win using the case. He's gonna win using the tear gas case, yes bond bond flirts with money penny on the way out and money penny is like you never take me
Starting point is 00:28:12 to istanbul and he gives her the photo of tanya which for some fucking reason he signs from Russia with Love as a title drop. He doesn't even fucking go to Russia! He's not going to- there's no Russia in this movie. She's defecting from Russia. I guess, but she's defecting from Turkey. It's also not clear why Moneypenny would want this photo anyway. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:28:39 No. Moneypenny's the only good female character in any of these so far. She's so good. And I mean... And that's because she isn't an object of desire, right? I went into this a little bit. I like Titania.
Starting point is 00:28:55 No, no, no, no, no. Sure, what I mean is... I mean, I like Titania and I like Titania. I said this on the past one, is that every single James Bond character is thought of first and foremost, like how do they interact with Bond? And then after that, they build a character.
Starting point is 00:29:15 And Titania suffers from it as well, is how does she interact with Bond or Bond wants to fuck her? And then they build the character after that. With Moneypenny it seems like they actually started with an actual character in that she's not supposed to be just like a fucking forget
Starting point is 00:29:32 she's actually like going to be recurring she needs to have some sort of staying power so she comes across as basically the only woman in a Bond film that you're supposed to understand as a person she's the only one who doesn't have the mind of a child which we'll get into oh god yeah but before before we do that brain later we have we have we have a classic in the in the genre of airport
Starting point is 00:29:57 scenes right where bond bond shows up meets a guy uh who like literally just grabs a martini off a tray in the airport and the world's most spy-looking man The world's most suspicious-looking motherfucker This man with a fucking painted on moustache wearing a beret
Starting point is 00:30:21 starts following them. But we do get one crucial piece of information here, which is that Bond has learned from Dr. No, he has learned not to just immediately get into the car of a man who's going to kill you at the airport, and he has a code phrase. Can I borrow a match? I use a lighter. It's better better still until they go wrong exactly which sounds like such a fucking proposition in general right yeah like it doesn't sound like the same thing was with quarrel it sounds like bond is picking these guys up but yeah and i mean anyway they use this one code phrase throughout the entire movie. It is laughably insecure, but this time it works.
Starting point is 00:31:09 As with all of MI6's meshes! Yeah! It's more secure than his face! Would you care to, like, pretend you haven't seen this movie. If I told you, uh, yeah, the fucking MI7 station in Turkey, in Istanbul, operates out of a front business, what would you guess that that front business would be? It would either be carpets or olives. Those would be the same. It's in back of a rug shop.
Starting point is 00:31:39 There you go. A big rug over the door. Tricky ice cream man. Yeah. And we meet my second favorite character in this movie after Kronstein, Ali Karim Bey, the head of Station T in Turkey, and a man whose only job in this movie is to lay maximum pipe at all times, in all situations. He's so cool. He's very cool.
Starting point is 00:32:03 He's fun. He's like our man in istanbul he's very cool yeah wearing wears a lot of like linen white linen suits um and like as as a means of telling you how much he fucks right we get this exchange so i gathered from your chauffeur he's a rather intelligent young man by the way he should be he's my son coffee medium sweet two medium sweet he also is my son all of my key employees are my sons and he has so many of them yeah they going, it's like a recurring gag. Also, something else I pulled out, which made, like, when I was watching and I paused the video to yell about for a second or two,
Starting point is 00:32:52 Karim has a framed photo of Churchill on his desk. Yeah, and a giant one, too. It's so good. Yeah, it's very weird. It's so good. Because it's like, for what purpose can you possibly have this? I guess he just has too large of a family to have just family photos there. Yeah, take up the whole desk.
Starting point is 00:33:15 And we also find out that Bond has been followed, which he observes. Like, everybody knows everybody's following everyone else. By a pair of Bulgarians working for the Russians. And that's who that incredibly spy looking man is. And also Donald is following in a, in a car. Yes, that's right.
Starting point is 00:33:34 And we get into some interesting sequence, right? Because like we get an excruciatingly long scene of bond checking into his hotel. And the thing, the thing about this one, right, is that, like, in the early Bond movies, they really paper over the cracks with the Bond theme.
Starting point is 00:33:51 Like, you know that once they finish composing it, they're like, okay, we've got a thing here, right? But, like, whenever there's a slow moment, they'll just fucking crank that shit up. And so Bond inspects his hotel room for bugs and then asks for another hotel room and like tips the bell hop and stuff and in the background you have the extremely epic bond music and you kind of you get the sense that like bond has this running on a loop in his head as he just does mundane stuff like he's just going about his day doing... I'm going to argue with you on this one.
Starting point is 00:34:28 I think the hotel scene is masterful, if anything. The music, terrible, like bad. If you watched it silently, it would be good. Because again, I want to go over it. This is not a leitmotif. It's not like different music on the same tune. It is the Bond theme. It is what you think about as the Bond theme.
Starting point is 00:34:45 But the hotel scene is great because he shows up, he finds a bug in the hotel and he asks them to move to a different room and they go, okay, tell him they've only got the bridal suite. So they tell him, he swaps to the bridal suite. He now thinks he's safe, but in reality he's now in the room
Starting point is 00:35:03 that they wanted him to be in from the start it's a way of showing that he's being completely outplayed by spectre that's a good point i hadn't actually realized that they put a very obvious bug in there he finds it and then he he thinks he's like i'm james bond i found the bug and then he moves room and then he doesn't care about security from that point onwards i mean all i can I can say is... You're right, Dev. Compared with Kronstein. Kronstein wins again, motherfucker! Kronstein fucking wins again!
Starting point is 00:35:33 Yeah, that's right. He has anticipated every move. Damn, good work, Kronstein. That's right. And so, Grant kills this Bulgarian dude, and he leaves his body outside the Soviet consulate, prompting an act of revenge. They try to kill Karim, and the reason this doesn't work... Is because Mrs. Karim is horny.
Starting point is 00:35:58 Mrs. Karim is so fucking horny, man. He is trying to work on some papers papers and she calls his name like six times she's like writhing biting on her own necklace she's like i need the pipe immediately this second no it can't wait i don't give a shit what kind of secret bullshit you're doing. And his line, which I quite like, is, well, back to the salt mines. And as he's taking off his jacket, the Bulgarians try to kill him by setting off a disco ball in his office. Yeah, it's a purple explosion, which is very funny. Yeah, just a flashing purple light goes off and the fucking roof comes down. That's just how Karen Bay fucks, that's just how he does it. That happens every time.
Starting point is 00:36:53 Well that's kind of what Bond implies when he shows that. Yeah, that's what Bond says. Bond just straight up asks him, hey, are you a rapist? He's like, hey, did you do this with your dick? Like, wow, good work. Genuinely, this is the exchange, right? Good fortune, I was relaxing on the settee for a fewist. He's like, hey, did you do this with your dick? Like, wow, good work. Genuinely, this is the exchange, right? Good fortune, I was relaxing on the settee for a few moments. The girl left me hysterics.
Starting point is 00:37:12 Found your technique too violent? Yeah, it's really like, ooh. Fuck me, dude. It's kind of creepy. But anyway, then we get some racism. Not quite yet. No, a little bit.
Starting point is 00:37:26 First, we have to, like, swim across a reservoir, and Bond has to use a periscope to, like, look into the Soviet consulate for some fucking reason. And he sees a pair of women's legs, and he's like, this is the horniest I've ever been. Do you want to know what else? That's not Titania's legs she had a leg double the director decided hot enough and swapped her out for a different one in that scene good lord just why you never see her face in that because it's a
Starting point is 00:37:56 fully different woman because again these movies are horrendously misogynist how would the periscope work like does it come up through the floor and a pot plant lifts up like i imagine so like it's they've got like i don't want to stress it this is not like two mirrors set up this is a full fucking naval yeah it's like a submarine periscope yeah but uh now now we got to talk about the racism. Now, yeah. I think we should do some stall setting out here, right? Yeah, good idea. I think what we are going to say when we're talking about these people is Roma, right? That's not what they say in the movie. Yeah, that is not the word they use in the movie.
Starting point is 00:38:40 I have it in a drop, so I'm gonna have to mention it. But the word that they use is gypsy, right? Kareem takes him to an encampment that he has. And he just quite flatly says, yeah, I use these guys. Like the Russians use the Bulgarians. Yeah, the verb is use. Use. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:38:59 Yeah, yeah. He calls them filthy. Like they are portrayed as sensual and tribalistic. And they're going to see these people that Kerim uses. It's not really clear why. But also, when they get there, apparently two women are going to fight to the death over a man. Oh, I have the drop for this.
Starting point is 00:39:20 That's in a moment. It seems we've come on the wrong night. Two girls in love with the same man have threatened to kill each other when this happens he settled it away i want to just explain why they're they're there because while they're while they're looking through the periscope into the russian embassy they see a guy who's like a spooky killing man is how they say krillenku krillenku he really enunciates it he here, he probably did the mine outside my room. We need to go somewhere else overnight so we'll be safe. And they go there and immediately Kralenku is alerted.
Starting point is 00:39:51 He just finds them. Yeah, he just knows. His MI7 leaks like a sieve anyway. We're not concerned with this right now. What we're concerned with is the sensual ways of these people's women. That's right. The movie, we're about halfway is the like are the sensual ways of these people's women right the movie we're about halfway through now right and the movie just has a striptease in the middle of it in case you get bored basically yeah it's got a belly dancer and then bond is just watching this and then the belly dancer comes out and bond turns around in his chair with such fucking speed and alacrity that you could like almost hear the Metal Gear Solid exclamation.
Starting point is 00:40:29 Because he's talking to Kerem and then you just hear like the rattling of a belly dancer and he just rotates fully on the spot. Yeah. He's like an owl with the special ears on the side of his head that just like channels the noise of pussy to his brain. Full eyes bulge. Yeah. His head rotates 180 degrees yeah it's it's then time for the uh let me say ultimate surrender portion of this movie which is just two partially closed women wrestling for the affections of an unseen man
Starting point is 00:41:01 yeah yeah the the roma catfight that every movie has to have. Of course. And it's very uncomfortable because there's these two scantily clad women having this fight and then partway through Kralenko and the Bulgarians
Starting point is 00:41:14 and also Red Grant attack. And there's this really weird gear shift between the violence that we are supposed to find sexy and entertaining, which is the violence of these two women killing each other, and then the violence that we're meant to find sexy and entertaining, which is the violence of these two women killing each other, and then the violence that we're meant to find is,
Starting point is 00:41:28 oh, like, now peril, now danger. And now there's real danger. Yeah, so it's this really bizarre gear change between these two kinds of violence that's very odd. But anyway, the Bulgarians attack. And then we get a slightly weird moment because all these people in the encampment are being attacked by the bulgarians and as bond is running through the camp trying to kill people
Starting point is 00:41:50 at random but he saved someone's life he actually stops and he saves a man's life which is like the first unambiguously heroic thing we've seen him do yeah he saves the chief who says thank you in the most heavily accented way i've ever heard there's also a point in the fight where bond comes across two men who are fighting and just throws them both into a pond yeah and it's like he's just not taking sides i guess yeah but he does do something unambiguously heroic and also um red grant saves his life at one point he's about to be stabbed and red grant shoots the guy but one point he's about to be strapped and red grant shoots the guy but like he's just sort of wandering from place to place occasionally
Starting point is 00:42:30 pistol whipping a guy in the middle of his back uh like pressing heavy attack like setting a covered wagon on fire throwing a guy into a pond and eventually the bulgarians have had enough and they leave and this leads to one of my favorite lines, which is in relation to the chief whose life he saved. Labrador thanks you for saving his life. You are now his son. Yeah. Like he's made an honorary member of the tribe.
Starting point is 00:42:59 Yeah. He is asked to dances with wolves here. Yeah. To adjudicate the fucking girl fight by, I guess, fucking both of them and deciding which one is a better wife. I started a stopwatch when these women appeared on screen. Yep. Because we do a thing here where we measure how long it takes
Starting point is 00:43:20 for a woman to first appear on screen to the time Bond has sex with them. The record from the last was Miss Taro, a white woman in yellow face that took 8 minutes and 40 seconds. And this one? To the best of my knowledge, non-Roma women playing Roma. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:43:39 Two women, 5 minutes and 40 seconds apiece. So he's impressed by three minutes. He's blasted through that record. He's cutting time down. This is, to my mind, and I don't know if this is or not, but I feel like this isn't a faithful representation of Romani culture. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:43:55 Is there a cultural mechanism in Turkish Roma culture that requires or provides for a sort of semi-naked wrestle in order to marry a dude. I don't think that there is, but the movie insists, and so that's that. And then they just leave. Then they just fucking leave. Yeah, in the morning they just go.
Starting point is 00:44:17 That was the scene. Alright, next scene. Next scene. The next scene is my favourite. Oh, please, take us through it through it so bond gets back to his hotel room which as we've established is exactly the hotel room that cronstein wants him in and he finds a blonde woman in a choker in his bed that fucking choker it's a black velvet choker i think all of us currently are like doing the sort of like eyeballs bulging out of face uh siren noise i mean yeah other than the fact that she is russian rather
Starting point is 00:44:53 than american like oof like this is i'm i'm very jealous of bond in this scene um and and anyway this this scene is a stock audition for Bond actors and Bond girls. Really? Which is remarkable, because it's not a particularly good scene. No, it's not. But when they've been casting Bonds, that's one of the auditions that they make them do. Really? Bond discovers this woman in his hotel room. He's actually taking a bath, and he forgets to turn the tap off.
Starting point is 00:45:20 So presumably the room is just flooding at this point. turn the tap off so presumably the room is just flooding at this point and he falls face first into the honey trap with another truly transcendent line you're one of the most beautiful girls I've ever seen thank you but
Starting point is 00:45:35 I think my mouth is too big no it's the right size for me that is I mean that is is mean that is go to jail go to prison go to fucking prison
Starting point is 00:45:51 I mean I would also fall into the honey trap if the honey trap looked like that but this is Tanya she's played by an Italian actress being dubbed again because I don't know why that's just how we do it because she had a really thick Italian accent apparently and it would have been a bit weird if she was like
Starting point is 00:46:08 I think in my mouth it's too big but anyway welcome to Istanbul greatest city in the world I love the communism hey you ever heard of a bodega no um yeah she's meant she's very much meant to be russian so they couldn't have a heavy italian accent but anyway they fuck they fuck but like we get a really well done shot of the other side of the mirror where there's a bunch of guys with like uh really advanced
Starting point is 00:46:45 cameras just like filming them in close-up i i paused it on this to tell who the two of them were because the british film censors said that they had to make that shot very very quick because apparently fucking on screen is fine but not voyeurism on screen and they're not doing it for sexual purposes. Whoa. It's Grant and Cleb in there. Huh. Oh, I didn't even realise that. Yeah, I didn't spot it until the second watch. I guess it is voyeurism if Cleb's there
Starting point is 00:47:14 because she's getting off. Yes. Grant, yeah, that's right. Grant, as far as we know, yeah. There's also a scene where they deal with the guy, Krilenku. They finally deal with him. And it's a beautiful scene where Bond sexually harasses a woman,
Starting point is 00:47:32 sort of in the abstract. Hmm. He sexually harasses a poster. Yeah. He sexually harasses a poster. So to set this scene up here, what they're doing is they they know where kralenko is they know where his base is so they're hiding nearby with with bonds folding sniper rifle from
Starting point is 00:47:51 his uh his case um karim bey sends two of his sons who are policemen to go and knock on the door and then uh you can't just run out the back he opens an escape hatch which is on on the wall where there's a massive poster and it is the woman's mouth of the poster just opens up and he starts to climb out karen bay shoots him and then as a sick line bond says she should have kept her mouth shut doesn't bear any resemb, what are you talking about, dog? Yeah, this one line is in this film, I'm not actually that very good. There's a very bad one later on. Yeah, we'll get to that one.
Starting point is 00:48:31 Anyway, they get Kralenko. Yeah, we have a brief scene in the Ayasofya, the now mosque, then museum, in Istanbul, where Bond manages to extract a floor plan that he does not need from a woman that he has already had sex with, like, for no real reason.
Starting point is 00:48:52 And the reason this scene exists is so that our, like, obvious Bulgarian spy man can get fucking murdered by Red Grant, who, like, with the simple expedient of punching him in the side of the head twice murders him stone fucking dead. Sort of slaps him twice. Yeah and then they get the floor plan of the Soviet consulate in order
Starting point is 00:49:16 to steal the cipher machine and then they already have a floor plan they're just checking if it matches for some reason there was no reason to like do this um and but kareem like kareem and bond are immediately like yo this is a like the biggest trap this woman is clearly playing me james bond however the pussy too good so i i don't care about this i mean going again like if the honeypot looks like that I mean yeah
Starting point is 00:49:46 Kareem says something to the effect of she's got you whipped Bond it's a very nice choker it is nice yeah and then we get a what I call the horny machine talk the horny machine talk section where Bond is trying to
Starting point is 00:50:04 extract technical details about this cipher machine and she oh i like this bond bond is trying to like extract technical details about this cipher machine and she's just like i'm so horny you just fucked me already like instead of talking about this boring boy stuff so bond bond is recording her talking about the lector decoder machine to try and establish that it's genuine and he's sending this recording back to mi6 but she tries to embarrass bond in front of his boss by just talking into the recording about how goddamn horny she is and that was my read on it is that she's trying to annoy him and wind him up which i thought was quite cute but like the thing is right but bond this is the only moment where bond outplays her
Starting point is 00:50:42 because he kicks that embarrassment up at the chain one level by embarrassing his boss himself with this very curious line. Dushka, tell me the truth. Am I as exciting as all those Western girls? Oh, once when I was with them in Tokyo, we had an interesting experience. Thank you, Miss Moneypenny. That's all. That's all. I mean, fill in the blanks yourself.
Starting point is 00:51:11 But all I have to say about that and the implications there are this drop that I used already. My reading of the British mentality is that they always treat a trap as a challenge. Again, you know, who is Bond compared to Kronstein? Who is Bond? The other funny thing, right, is how horny this makes Moneypenny, of all people. Like, she's listening in on the intercom and she's fucking sucking off a pencil, listening to another woman be horny. I don't... Yeah, it's not a great portrayal.
Starting point is 00:51:40 Yeah, this movie's really giving me mixed messages about lesbianism. Yeah, it's good, but also it's not good. It's good when it's not communist, I guess? Anyway, Bond gets the actual cipher machine stupidly easy by the simple expedient of fucking blowing up a diplomatic mission with a bomb. Yeah, it seems very easy to do that it's not really very exciting i just done that didn't need to do the whole honeypot thing could have just blown up a wall and then like karate chop one man steal the thing run out that's right um and then we get to the fucking denouement they get on the orient express um jesus christ unfortunately long scene yeah god yeah it takes for fucking ever unfortunately
Starting point is 00:52:27 30 minutes one of one of the soviet dudes who is also an extremely sweaty man you can correlate like sweatiness to evil here uh manages to get on the train with them prince of the world's least evil man yeah that's right allegedly what does that even mean i'm saying he's not evil allegedly a very nice man yeah yeah i'm saying allegedly he's a nice man yeah so bond and kareem like do some fucking boy zone adventure shit they easily capture this man and then what they do with him to restrain him is they pull his jacket lightly down over his shoulders and he's like well my well you got me um yes unfortunately grant then kills both of them because grant's the only person in this movie who's good at his job yeah and he's bloody good
Starting point is 00:53:19 at his job as well like he's frequently just seen in the background of of scenes yeah he's so fucking good at this it's like a really well done menacing villain he is also that the actor who plays him really gives him this sort of menacing presence he's very good the only the only downside to it is that a lot of what he does that is supposed to actually be menacing is done off screen so like we only see him walking towards the room where kerem is with with this other guy and then later on some other guys like my god they're both dead as almost all of what grant does is off screen and i don't know that it really helps yeah in the meantime though we get some character development for tanya which is to say bond buys her some lingerie. And this is the most 1963 lingerie you can imagine.
Starting point is 00:54:06 Oh, is that what that was meant to be? Yeah, it's like a negligee. It's not even that, it's like an ankle length! It's got a fucking pain ure on it too. It's ankle length, it's like, oh god, it is not sexy at all. And I don't know how much of that is like, film classification, and how much of it is just like, this was made before free love, even. This was made before women were sexy.
Starting point is 00:54:29 That's right. I don't think it was, having seen Tanya. Yeah, that's correct, you got me there. Calm down. I'm gonna get a spray bottle. So... I wanna highlight very quickly, when they get on the train they're given false identities
Starting point is 00:54:45 Mr and Mrs Somerset David and Caroline Somerset tells Tanya that her name is Caroline and then immediately and loudly with the door open as he's leaving calls her Tanya King James Bond, world's worst spy
Starting point is 00:55:02 here he is but then sadly we get a scene James Bond, world's worst spy. There he is. But then, sadly, we get a scene... So Kerem is dead. Kerem's been killed. And Bond suspects that Tanya is a double agent or something. How does he get information out of a woman?
Starting point is 00:55:19 1963. Violence? Sing along at home if you know the words. It's literally like he grabs her by the arm and then he slaps her a couple of times yeah our hero ladies and gentlemen like yeah and and she's like in tears she's crying it's very sad she's reduced to tears but also she's like yeah no but she's protesting that she loves him and that she doesn't want him to leave her it's real fucking grim man she's like i love you and bond says sure and just fucking leaves and this this woman has left her friends and presumably her family her country behind
Starting point is 00:56:00 and is now considering really defecting and all she has to look forward to is this violent bastard it's a heartbreaking scene time marches on I'd also like to point out that Bond fucking hits her even when they're supposed to be you know
Starting point is 00:56:19 not hostile let me just give you this now listen just do as I say will you yes jams and i mean that i mean well that was that was him that was a slap on the ass slap on the ass uh just yeah just do as i say smack um and you know we know that sean connery's own views about women and like uh relationships with women were not too different uh this i don't think audiences at the time would have seen it as being anything aberrant in the slightest um and it's just it's a really grim thing like it hasn't
Starting point is 00:57:02 grim thing like it hasn't aged oh god no it has not aged well my words but then Red Grant makes his move yeah we get to Zagreb and because MI7 uses the same laughably insecure
Starting point is 00:57:17 code phrase all the time apparently everywhere as well everywhere in the world do you have a match? I use a lighter, better still, until they break down. So Grant knows this. You'd think because he'd been standing directly behind Bond the last time he used it, he would know it that way, but no. He later says that Spectre's world reach sweated it out of a guy in tokyo which is so funny because that implies that that code phrase is used every single mission again mi6 security is state of the art
Starting point is 00:57:54 um it's not this is also when we when we hear red grant's voice for the first time and it's really not what i expected yeah red so red grant hitman's his way into like, he gets further increasing the vibe of this as a pickup line, he gets the guy who M has sent to meet Bond to follow him into the toilets, murders him, takes his hat for some fucking reason, and then adopts his persona, Captain Nash. And he adopts the voice too so it's very plummy it's very upper class and at this point I'm struck by the fact that Red Grant is already on the train and has already committed
Starting point is 00:58:36 two murders on the train why not just kill Bond? Why this subterfuge? Because he needed to toy with him I guess It's all part of Kronstein's plan Why this subterfuge? Because he needed to, like, toy with him, I guess. Oh, I guess. It's all part of Kronstein's plan. Why not just kill Bond is gonna be a sentence we say maybe ad absurdum over the course of this podcast.
Starting point is 00:58:55 Yes, true. Because Bond, like, takes him to dinner, and Red Grant orders, in the persona of Captain Nash, he like, first of all he drugs Tanya with chloral hydrate, which Bond is later repulsed by, which is fucking hypocritical of him. And then he orders a Chianti with his soul, he orders red wine with fish. Which is fucked up. Which is fucked up. It certainly was then, I mean you could get certain red wines now that would work, but back then it was like, what? Not a Chianti. This is the kind of thing that, like, you had to use to show that someone was jokified in 1963, because we didn't have the kind of advanced
Starting point is 00:59:36 jokification technology that we have now. Instead, you just had to, like, be like, yeah, I'll drink a red wine with a fish, I don't give a shit. That's life. The waiter is like, yeah, do you want a white Chianti? Which, first of all, isn't a thing. There are white wines made in the Chianti region, so I just imagined the waiter was like, have you fucked up here? Give me a red Chianti.
Starting point is 01:00:01 Insanity. Yeah, and so Tanya gets back to the room collapses and uh nash pulls a gun on on and reveals himself to be red grant and bond being bond does not miss a fucking trick does not miss an opportunity to be a fucking snob so the first thing that he says is Red wine with fish. That should have told me something. You may know the right wines.
Starting point is 01:00:32 You're the one on your knees. Which is, again, fucking roasted. Red Grant's really, really good in this scene actually. Red Grant fucking owns. This is a good scene. Bond seems to be in genuine real peril in this scene but at the same time grant is grant reveals all of this very sensitive
Starting point is 01:00:51 information that he really shouldn't like he reveals that he works for specter he tells bond what specter's plan is but he does it in a way that yes is goofy because he should have just killed bond but it's clear we're seeing here now that red grant is a little bit unhinged well he's like enjoying this as soon as he drops the act and he pulls the gun his voice goes down about two full social classes and so when he's giving him the monologue he sounds like this oh i don't mind talking i get a kick out of watching the great james bond find out what a bloody fool he's been making of himself we're pros mr bond we sweated your recognition code out of one of your men in tokyo before he died which again you didn't need to do that but it is to us that does sound a bit fancy still but, it cannot be stressed how fancy this bastard was making his voice before.
Starting point is 01:01:46 Yeah, and like, it's clearly like, there's some fucking class character going on here, there's some class anxiety about this guy who disguises himself as someone more upper class and then the facade drops, and he's much meaner than that right um and so he bond tries to pay him off as a member of the lower classes you must like money right yeah and you get this this sort of beautiful beautiful thing where it just does not work at all. How much are they paying you? What's it to you? We'll double it. Your word of honour?
Starting point is 01:02:33 As an English gentleman? The first one won't kill you. Not the second not even the third not till you crawl over here and you kiss my foot yeah it's so good the whole time in this scene
Starting point is 01:02:57 he's just really like there's this really pursed sort of tense anger yeah there's no music at all there's just the sound of the train it's genuinely so so good right robert shaw was the name of the actor playing red grant and he really does make him this like stone cold killer it's very good yeah and this sort of contempt towards bond like he comes by it honestly is is the nice thing. There is some real sort of class
Starting point is 01:03:28 animus here. Well, he's a big fan of the podcast, Red Grant. I mean, he just wants to kill James Bond, as do we all. Honestly, Red Grant, come on the pod. Come on the pod. Anytime, you're welcome. Yeah. Unfortunately, for our boy, though, the hook is in, right? Bond realises
Starting point is 01:03:44 that the thing that gives him pause is, like, greed, is in, right? Bond realizes that the thing that gives him pause is, like, greed, is money. And so Bond is like, yeah, no, there's a bunch of money in this case, and of course, through a technique known as foreshadowing, we know that when the case is opened in the wrong way, a bunch of tear gas goes off. And this happens despite the fact that Red Grant takes a bunch of precautions, right? Like, he has Bond open the case, and then he, like, opens the second case himself. And it's just, like, it's actually quite deftly done. You get the sense that this is not an easy man to trick, and that Bond having done it and maintained a poker face the whole time is something quite impressive.
Starting point is 01:04:24 Yeah. And sadly, Red Grant gets, uh, he gets fucking done he gets got he gets fucking done he gets done fight that last like two to three minutes first the first good fight scene in the entire franchise bond has learned some new moves not just heavy and light attack he has learned the grapple feet and as such uh due to the invention of fight choreography this looks like two guys in a train car with a light shot out trying to kill each other. Like Bond fucking stamps on his back at one point. It's really brutal, and it's brutal in a way that, again, I don't think you see until the
Starting point is 01:05:00 Craig movies even. And yeah, no, it's really quite striking unfortunately the movie goes on for another 40 minutes after yeah this is the point at which like if that had been the last scene in the movie i would have been like fuck this is a great movie actually this is legitimately a good movie but it overstays its welcome so hard we're gonna blast through this last bit right they they get off the train uh bond gets in a fight with a helicopter a guy in a specter helicopter who looks a lot like simon peg tries to drop grenades on them which is very unusual because we've established that specter are trying to get the lector decoding machine and it feels like you damage it that way but
Starting point is 01:05:43 at this point i think spectre are taking the piss. There's actually some very impressive stunt flying. Which still manages to be boring from a plot perspective, but like, they try and run Bond down with the helicopter, like north by north west. And um, like, they actually got a lot closer to Sean Connery than they intended to. So the actual filming of this, Bond is diving out of the way of this helicopter that absolutely shoots through the frame. Unfortunately, of course, Bond
Starting point is 01:06:11 wins in the end. He shoots the guy, the guy drops a grenade in the helicopter. It's a very, like, Hemingway- Hitchcock-inspired, like, crop duster kind of scene. Of course, Bond does have a line, which is one of their aircraft is missing which is topical at the time because it's the name of a movie but like now is just like you're what
Starting point is 01:06:32 now it's yeah not a good line yeah very weird um and then then then the saddest scene then we cut back to to specter's boat Lofeld, Kronstein and Klebb. Kronstein now a little bit hungover, maybe? He's kind of starting to sober up, not feeling good about it? As smug as he was at that point, he's saying, look, it's Klebb's fault she fucked up. Which is true. Which is literally true.
Starting point is 01:07:00 He set everything in the right place. And it was Grant's fuck up. But neither of them had just shot bond like cornstein there's an extended sequence where like grant is robbing bond and he has a gun to his temple and he could have just fucking killed him but like he does not he chooses not to in order to obtain more gold sovereigns and for this he pays with his life but blofeld does a classic what is to become a classic blofeld move he does the fake out right where he puts a button on his everything summons big man big man this is the big man but we all wish we had a big man somebody he
Starting point is 01:07:38 summons a flat nose geezer he somebody does and and he's laying everything at Cleb's door. And then, at the last second, the big man fucking murders our boy. Our special man. Kronstein. With a poison knife in his shoe. Kicks him right in the shin.
Starting point is 01:08:00 Yeah, it seems like you could have gone for poison or knife in the shoe, but they decided to go for both. And Kronstein, like, lunges over the desk with this, like, really well-done expression of, like, confusion and affront and bafflement. Like, why would you do this? Like, for fuck's sake, man, my plan was good.
Starting point is 01:08:21 Like, Kronstein's actor, Vladek Schabel, is phenomenal. The plan worked. You could have fucking like, I don't know, dock the guy's wages or something. But instead, what Blofeld hits him with is failure is not an option. The punishment for failure,
Starting point is 01:08:39 Inspector, is death every time. Which presumably explains why they never win yeah which is why there's three of them there and they're called numbers one, three and five yeah numbers two and four could not make it on account of having
Starting point is 01:08:55 been fucking murdered they failed and are dead and so he Kleb is sweating buckets at this point and Blofeld is like, fix it. So, we get through a boat chase, which is very boring, right? Yeah, very bad. There's a boat chase, it's fine.
Starting point is 01:09:14 Bond gets another line where he's like, where there's smoke, there's fire. Which is funny, because he's just set a bunch of men on fire. Also, it doesn't make sense in context. Yeah, it's pretty bad. It does not make sense Tanya's still there but she's just basically an object at this point she's fully clocked out
Starting point is 01:09:31 she never really recovers from being roofied after this that's something I wanted to point out because after Bond kills Grant he fucking finally does it he needs to get off the train
Starting point is 01:09:46 because they're basically at their stopping point and uh tanya is still under the effects of roofies so what bond does is tries to threaten the drug into wearing off i'm leaving you he does this a couple of times and it works. It's so good when he's trying to threaten a drug. And so, yeah, we get a scene of them in the hotel in Venice, having made it to safety, and then fucking Rosa Klebb comes in disguised as the maid and tries to pull a gun on Bond. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:10:23 And then at the last second, Tanya finally remembers that she, you know, is an agent of change, and fucking lunges at her, which gives Bond enough time to fight her off, while she's trying to kick at him with this poison knife in her shoe.
Starting point is 01:10:37 Very inefficiently as well. Yeah. Until Tanya finally shoots her, and Bond cannot stop himself from saying she's had her kicks Cleb doesn't die well either it seems like she's in a lot of she dies bitterly
Starting point is 01:10:54 it's not a kind of quick haha end of the James Bond film she really suffers she puts it through how Tanya doesn't fucking murk Bond also and then just take the coding machine to the highest bidder i will never know but yeah well because she's not a character they they they get in a vaporizer and uh there's always one plot point that i forget when i'm
Starting point is 01:11:19 retelling these and the plot point that i've forgotten this one was the sex tape right the tape that they made of them grant tells bond that cronstein's plan is to make their deaths look like a murder suicide and leak this sex tape and so disgracing mi7 in the world because like this agent has just been having sex with a woman on the job fucked up in 2021 they have just passed a bill that has made that explicitly legal retroactively but back in 1963 that was a genuine
Starting point is 01:11:56 threat I guess and so Bond tosses that film in the canal because no one can know that James Bond is anything other than chaste there's also a very funny shot so that the camera
Starting point is 01:12:10 pans up to indicate that the film has ended but because they're in this gondola against a green screen it just looks like the gondola's sinking and Bond just does like shadow puppets too good lord what a time that's the movie
Starting point is 01:12:27 James Bond will return in Goldfinger a movie I'm genuinely looking forward to watching hi everyone Devin here sadly at this exact moment during the recording of our podcast our dear leader and fearless showrunner Alice was silenced by the deep state,
Starting point is 01:12:49 and we lost the remainder of her audio. Regretfully, we have had to cut the final 10 minutes of deep, interesting, funny and insightful analysis that you know and love. Fortunately, I am at liberty to disclose the results of our patented scum spectrum. For smarm, we rated this movie a 3, since Bond largely spoke to Kareem, and so didn't have the time to be as smarmy as we expected. For cultural insensitivity,
Starting point is 01:13:23 one scene in particular single-handedly raises this score to a 5. Once again, Bond was very light on unprovoked violence, giving us a 2. And as for misogyny, Bond's treatment of Tanya gives us a 6. Thanks for listening, and my deepest apologies for this. With any luck, this will be the first and last time we ever have to do this. New free episodes every other week, but if that is simply too long to wait, we have a Patreon where we upload bonus episodes on those interim weeks. That's patreon.com forward slash killjamesbond
Starting point is 01:14:05 all one word. Kill James Bond will return in Goldfinger in two weeks time. Thank you, take care and I love you. Romantically. Is that it? Should we cut that actually?

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.