TLD - Does anyone else think it falls apart in the 3rd act?
#1
Posted 22 October 2012 - 10:18 PM
Up until that point, the film is a bloody terrific Cold-War thriller in the old-style. The action is brutal (but not gratuitously violent, like in LTK), Bond is a cold, manipulative (and yet human) killer and the SIS seems like a real intelligence organisation. The pacing is second-to-none and all of the actors (I love the guy who plays Saunders) perform admirably. I even love the Aston Martin chase and it never feels out of place with the rest of the film. The scene where Bond confronts Pushkin has to be one of the top 5 Bond moments ever.
The film just comes to a screeching halt for me when it gets to Afghanistan and plays like a cheap Cannon Chuck Norris film with lots of mindless machine-gunning, up until the plane fight with Necros, after which it dwindles once again. It just got very dull in what was designed to be the most exciting part of the film. Plus, the plot suddenly turned towards diamonds, followed by Opium, all wrapped up in weapons smuggling. It was difficult to keep track of what was going on and I don't think I cared anymore. Does anyone else have similar feelings?
I still really love TLD however and I don't think these misgivings truly take away from an astonishing open. After all, Goldfinger has a fairly flabby third act as well and I love that too.
#2
Posted 22 October 2012 - 10:31 PM
#3
Posted 22 October 2012 - 10:33 PM
But most Bond films do lose a little traction here. Goldfinger's possibly the worst for it: the action moves to the US and it all gets a bit bogged down.
#4
Posted 22 October 2012 - 11:17 PM
#5
Posted 23 October 2012 - 12:17 AM
#6
Posted 23 October 2012 - 01:20 AM
#7
Posted 23 October 2012 - 02:22 AM
Of course it helps that the PTS sucks and Sanchez's escape playing like a sequence from the A-Team (the TV series, of course!)......
#8
Posted 23 October 2012 - 07:58 AM
#9
Posted 23 October 2012 - 08:40 AM
And that's what makes the Bond movies so amazing for me. I mean, look at Octopussy. That film features a scene in which two stuntmen have a fist fight while standing on top of a private jet while it's in flight!
Incredible.
Anyway, I love The Living Daylights, despite the Afghanistan section being a bit on the boring side. It defined the summer of '87 for this 11 year old!
#10
Posted 23 October 2012 - 04:06 PM
Perhaps my least favorite bit is the confrontation with Whitaker. There is just something about that sequence that lacks a bit of luster for me. Maybe it’s just the dark lighting of the scene, it’s not a bad scene I just don’t enjoy it as much as the others.
All this aside, I simply LOVE TLD. It’s like a fine wine for me, gets even better with age and subsequent viewings.
Edited by IcedCamaro, 23 October 2012 - 04:10 PM.
#11
Posted 23 October 2012 - 04:33 PM
#12
Posted 23 October 2012 - 05:20 PM
After everything that's been going on - defections, kidnapping, arms dealing, assassination attempts - Necros announces that Puskin is dead and Whittiker says "I'll signal Amsterdam to ship the diamonds."
That pricked up my ears. Now what?
Then Bond is captured and wakes up en route to Afghanistan.
Now what? Do you prefer your Bond movies identical (and therefore predictable) in structure and pace? Not me.
There is that one slow moment as Bond and Kara (one of my all-time favorite Bond Girls) ride with the Mujahadin after escaping from the air base, then it's back to intrigue and action. Very satisfying. Bond was truly back, after an absence of at least four years.
As for LTK and its "satisying" climactic truck chase - I'd already seen The Road Warrior and AVTAK. If there had to be a truck chase, let it come before blowing up the lab (with more than just a few fire-pots, thank you). But, what's done is done. LTK is the one everyone unfairly compares to Miami Vice, while I compare it to Othello, Mission Impossible, Scarface and Smokey and the Bandit 2. Fortunately, LTK's truck chase was better.
#13
Posted 23 October 2012 - 09:32 PM
#14
Posted 23 October 2012 - 09:46 PM
TND is one of the few movies that, regrettably dates itself (TMWTGG with the 'Energy Crisis' and OCTOPUSSY with "Checkpoint Charlie" are others.) Other films (fashion & automibiles aside) could seemingly be timeless.
#15
Posted 24 October 2012 - 12:32 AM
Given the present climate of the Middle East (Afghanistan in particular), I find it necessary to remind myself that, in the eyes of Afghans, the Russians are not the bad guys anymore. Now it's the United States and her allies.
Er, um, no.
#16
Posted 24 October 2012 - 04:50 AM
Given the present climate of the Middle East (Afghanistan in particular), I find it necessary to remind myself that, in the eyes of Afghans, the Russians are not the bad guys anymore. Now it's the United States and her allies.
Er, um, no.
Actually, both sides are right. The mujahideen and the taliban are not the same. However, in the late 1980s Osama bin Laden was actually an ally to the United States and the U.S. did supply arms to the mujahideen and to the taliban to fight the Soviets. That was changed when in 1991 the U.S. set up bases in the middle east for combat operations in the first Gulf War. The agreement was that the U.S. would pull out after the job was finished. However, Bush 1 did not leave the middle east after the war and in turn created an enemy of bin Laden and the taliban. Which in turn, led to the 1993 and 2001 World Trade Center attacks and also the present day conflicts. So, as you can see, both sides are right.
Edited by seawolfnyy, 24 October 2012 - 04:51 AM.
#17
Posted 27 October 2012 - 08:35 PM
Glen just loses complete control of the plot once Bond/Kara get involved with the Mujahideen, it just becomes one great mess - the fight between Bond/Necros on the plane is the only highlight. The bookending fight with Whitaker is crap too.
#18
Posted 27 October 2012 - 10:42 PM
But I would argue that the film starts to fall apart before they get to Afghanistan, while they're still in Tangier. As soon as Brad Whitaker shows up, things start unraveling. It's always best to have one strong villain with a single motive, not two weak villains with intersecting motives. It's almost like they were trying for another Octopussy, with a Cold War plot and a duumvirate of villainy. God knows why. As with Octopussy, the result is a chaotic and unsatisfying third act. The climax, instead of proceeding smoothly from the villain's earlier scheming and resulting in his immediate and utter defeat, seems to come together accidentally and very late in the film. It results only in the failure of an irrelevant scheme we just learned about and the death of a couple of henchmen. Both villains remain alive and at large.
After that, Koskov and Whitaker are disposed of in a totally perfunctory manner. "We can just make dinner" is basically the end of the movie. The final Tangier scene is nothing but an epilogue. Whitaker is crushed by a stuffed polar bear or something, but it might as well have been auto-erotic asphyxiation, considering that Bond had less of a hand in it than Whitaker's own bumbling. And Koskov isn't even killed! What the hell is that? He just gets dragged away. And don't tell me that the "diplomatic bag" remark implies his death. We never see him die. If Pushkin is enough of a Russian hardass to have Koskov killed, then he should prove it by producing a gun and shooting him on camera. Anyway, Koskov's ambiguous fate always felt really weird to me. Koskov is the big bad, isn't he? If anyone should get the boot, it's him. Not Necros, not poor old Colonel Feodor, not the giggling fat buffoon who was introduced fifty minutes into the film. Basically, the problem with TLD is that they drowned the meat in the gravy. They got greedy and crammed in so much at the eleventh hour that they left themselves no time to wrap things up properly.
And I can't understand why they crammed so much in, considering the soundness of the basic "fake defector" plot. The film's third-act problems would have vanished if they stripped down the plot: Combine the characters of Georgi Koskov and Brad Whitaker into one character... named Georgi Koskov. Let his scheme be a straightforward plot to assassinate Pushkin and usurp his position. 100% Smiert Shpionam. No caper with diamonds and opium. The film would be much the same until Tangier. Bond would make contact with Pushkin, they would spend some time earning each other's trust and puzzling out Koskov's scheme. Then they would set up a sting together, using KGB and MI6 agents, and that would be the climax. That would leave the film with a strong and unambiguous villain, a bigger role for John Rhys-Davies, a tighter plot, and a more satisfying outcome. (In my opinion.) I've always liked TLD, but I would have liked it even better this way.
#19
Posted 28 October 2012 - 12:20 AM
And I can't understand why they crammed so much in, considering the soundness of the basic "fake defector" plot. The film's third-act problems would have vanished if they stripped down the plot: Combine the characters of Georgi Koskov and Brad Whitaker into one character... named Georgi Koskov. Let his scheme be a straightforward plot to assassinate Pushkin and usurp his position. 100% Smiert Shpionam. No caper with diamonds and opium. The film would be much the same until Tangier. Bond would make contact with Pushkin, they would spend some time earning each other's trust and puzzling out Koskov's scheme. Then they would set up a sting together, using KGB and MI6 agents, and that would be the climax. That would leave the film with a strong and unambiguous villain, a bigger role for John Rhys-Davies, a tighter plot, and a more satisfying outcome. (In my opinion.) I've always liked TLD, but I would have liked it even better this way.
Yes yes yes.
The film worked better as a Cold War thriller. Very little in the third act had anything (really) to do with the Cold War. The fact that there was a Russian airbase in Afghanistan could just as easily have been thrown into Moonraker.
#20
Posted 28 October 2012 - 01:57 AM
#21
Posted 28 October 2012 - 05:55 AM
The fact that TLD falls massively in the 3rd act and that I still think It´s one of the best Bond films (top five even) is testament to the degree of love I have for it. It´s just a brilliantly done Bond film with the best Bond you could get (in 87, that is )
That's exactly how I feel about it. I've always felt that the 3rd act is distinctly less interesting than everything that precedes it, but even so, the film is so strong up to that point that I can't help but love the whole thing.
On the plus side, I've always felt that John Barry's score really blossoms during the Afghanistan sequences, particularly during the "sunrise and silhouettes" scene.
Edited by Belmont, 28 October 2012 - 05:59 AM.
#22
Posted 28 October 2012 - 01:54 PM
#23
Posted 08 November 2012 - 07:34 PM
Not saying they should have excised it, but it could have used a bit more punch; as it is it feels like the exposition it is (as we finally really get an idea of "what its all about" at the expense of the exciting stuff until the very end, getting back on the plane stuff).
#24
Posted 08 November 2012 - 09:07 PM
I just finished watching TLD for the first time in a year or so and I absolutely adored every single second of the entire film up until Bond gets drugged and put on the plane with Kara, headed for the Russian Airbase.
Up until that point, the film is a bloody terrific Cold-War thriller in the old-style. The action is brutal (but not gratuitously violent, like in LTK), Bond is a cold, manipulative (and yet human) killer and the SIS seems like a real intelligence organisation. The pacing is second-to-none and all of the actors (I love the guy who plays Saunders) perform admirably. I even love the Aston Martin chase and it never feels out of place with the rest of the film. The scene where Bond confronts Pushkin has to be one of the top 5 Bond moments ever.
The film just comes to a screeching halt for me when it gets to Afghanistan and plays like a cheap Cannon Chuck Norris film with lots of mindless machine-gunning, up until the plane fight with Necros, after which it dwindles once again. It just got very dull in what was designed to be the most exciting part of the film. Plus, the plot suddenly turned towards diamonds, followed by Opium, all wrapped up in weapons smuggling. It was difficult to keep track of what was going on and I don't think I cared anymore. Does anyone else have similar feelings?
I still really love TLD however and I don't think these misgivings truly take away from an astonishing open. After all, Goldfinger has a fairly flabby third act as well and I love that too.
Hmmmm . . . I disagree.
#25
Posted 08 November 2012 - 11:02 PM
But I would argue that the film starts to fall apart before they get to Afghanistan, while they're still in Tangier. As soon as Brad Whitaker shows up, things start unraveling. It's always best to have one strong villain with a single motive, not two weak villains with intersecting motives.
Exactly! LTK has an advantage on TLD in that department. It's extremely important for the Bond movies to have a strong antagonist--since the Bond films are not strong on structure, they have to rise toward a climactic confrontation with a strong opponent whom we love to hate. That gives the film shape and an emotional charge. I was about to say that TLD suffered from the same villain problem as Octopussy, but then you continued with...
It's almost like they were trying for another Octopussy, with a Cold War plot and a duumvirate of villainy. God knows why.
Once again, exactly. And what Octopussy was trying for was another From Russia With Love. But in FRWL, Blofeld, Grant and Klebb are equally compelling monsters within a strict hierarchy, and when the film's plot deepened, it didn't make a sudden fork the way that TLD does. In the latter the arms smuggling, diamond/opium smuggling, and death-to-spies plotlines tend to obscure each other and cancel each other out, instead of creating a situation of rising alarm where you feel the villain must be stopped at all costs.
And I actually like parts of Afghanistan sequence--I love the shots of shrouded men on horseback riding out of the desert, just as I love the balls-out fight on the open door of the cargo plane. After all that, the next sequence in Tangier is a let-down. They could have kept the bits of the Afghan part but consolidated the plot.
I can't understand why they crammed so much in, considering the soundness of the basic "fake defector" plot. The film's third-act problems would have vanished if they stripped down the plot: Combine the characters of Georgi Koskov and Brad Whitaker into one character... named Georgi Koskov.
For the third time...exactly!
#26
Posted 08 November 2012 - 11:31 PM
#27
Posted 08 November 2012 - 11:53 PM
#28
Posted 09 November 2012 - 01:31 AM
Ah . . . now it's time for TLD to receive a lot of bashing. I wonder how long this is going to last.
???
What bashing? There's just discussion of the movie's flaws from people who otherwise like the film.
This.
Outside of forums like these I do nothing but sing the praises of Timothy Dalton's efforts to the uncultured Brosnan-or-gtfo pod-people of my Generation X(enia Onatopp).
Edited by Gothamite, 09 November 2012 - 01:31 AM.
#29
Posted 09 November 2012 - 12:57 PM
#30
Posted 09 November 2012 - 02:55 PM
Ah . . . now it's time for TLD to receive a lot of bashing. I wonder how long this is going to last.
If you aren't careful, you'll wag your finger clean off.