Reviews

Having seen every Bond movie since Dr. No, I can say with absolute certainty they're getting progressively worse. First to go was Bond's sophistication and humor; there is no longer any sense of fun. Craig mumbles too much for my taste, and appears to play each scene as though someone off stage were whispering in his ear. "Run here, knockdown guard, squint at something, run up the steps, shoot somebody." Craig follows directions well, but in doing so he looks like someone trying to remember to separate the whites from the colors.

But even Craig is capable enough to handle decent material, which, unfortunately, is a very short supply in this movie. For instance, the climatic battle scene takes place in castle in Scotland, takes at least 20 minutes of screen time, involves weapons of all kinds, dynamite, various lesser explosions, and booby traps, and in the end, only one person has been killed. And he was stabbed.

Scenes change for no reason whatsoever, except to introduce someone Bond has to defeat, which he usually does handily even though the odds are sometimes 35 to 1.

I could go on, but to summarize, this is the worst Bond I've ever seen; worse, even that the one which used the invisible car.

Filmmakers need to remember that no matter how good the stars pecs are, there still needs to be a story wrapped around them. And I would suggest if you're going to make a movie, stop taking advantage of Daniel Craig's rapidly-aging pecs, and pay the writer to come up with a believable story.

This wasn't it. 2/10

For some unknown reason, Joe, 3rd mate on a merchant ship, is given a spot promotion to 2nd Lt, and given a squad of Philippinos with orders to attack a Japanese sugar processing plant. This is the last we hear of the plant.

Tagging along, again for unspecified reasons, is the snot-nosed scion of an unseen mogul who falls in love with the heroine. The heroine, alas, is something of an opportunist, and ends up in bed with Joe just because. Naturally, the green-eyed monster makes an appearance.

The only thing this film has to do with war are the 17 or so Japanese soldiers who occasionally make their appearance. Most of this movie deals with the angst felt by the snot-nosed kid in his never-ending attempts to pry the heroine away from Joe.

I found this film to be a grand waste of time.

For the most part, the bomb disposal and the attempt to discover the bomber was moderately interesting, if a bit disjointed. Richard Harris performed adequately, but, of course, he was playing himself. Omar Sharif was wasted as the captain, most of the other adults had no reason for being there, and there were the two requisite "adorable" children thrown in for God knows what. The children's mother never knew or cared where her darlings were; I can only assume that they were the children of the producer, thrown into the picture as an act of good will. The entire film dragged for the middle hour, trying to establish some chemistry between the players and failing utterly, before finally producing one short burst of excitement, then petering out entirely.

If you like Richard Harris, then, by all means, watch this. If not, don't waste your time.

With people today being so sensitive to practically everything, the tendency is to assume that "Beulah" was racist. This is simply not true.

Although a domestic, Beulah was never subservient. It was to Beulah that the family turned whenever there was a problem, and it was Beulah that always kept her cool no matter what was happening.

Its true that her boyfriend, Bill Jackson, was somewhat lazy, but even he owned a fix-it shop. It just that was never in a hurry to fix anything. He was more interested in Beulah's cooking.

Butterfly McQueen played Beulah's best friend Oriole. Oriole was scatterbrained, but sort of in the same way that Gracie Allen was scatterbrained.

None of the characters was ever demeaned, talked down to, or "dissed" (I hate that word.) Today the racism industry calls it racist simply because it depicted a black woman as a domestic. Actually, it was simply a light-hearted family comedy which reflected life in the early 50s.