Before you go out and watch the much-anticipated new James Bond movie Quantum of Solace , here is a quick recap on the evolution of the cinema’s most successful and recognizable stars.

James Bond has been portrayed, so far, by six different actors - Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig - and his movies have undergone even more change and variety than the people portraying him.

Thankfully, the movies are generally unrelated stories so you don’t have to watch each successive sequel in order to really understand and appreciate the newer installments, but it’s always good to know about the history of the series before watching the newest releases.

As you know, Quantum of Solace is the 23rd Bond film (although only the 22nd official one - Never Say Never Again is not recognized as an official 007 film), and I have gone back and reviewed the first 22 movies so you don’t have to spend 50 or so hours catching up. So here they are, starting with the Bonds of Sean Connery. Enjoy!

1. Dr. No (1962), PG, 110 mins.

Sean Connery introduced us to a much calmer and more collected Bond than we would see in later years. Oh and he drinks a lot more. If I didn’t know any better I would assume that the movie was bank-rolled by Smirnoff!

Bond is sent to investigate the killing of one of his fellow agents, and the course of his investigation puts him on the trail of Dr. No, who is not the most imaginative villain, but a suspensefully slow introduction keeps him effective.

Ursula Andress is Honey Ryder, the first Bond girl and arguably the most enduringly famous.

Austin Powers moments - One of the two inspirations for Dr. Evil’s name, outfit, and one of his classic lines - Dr No: “I’m sure the west would welcome a scientist of your…caliber?”

2. From Russia With Love (1963), PG, 115 mins.

Bond is sent to Istanbul, Turkey to acquire a Russian cypher machine called Lektor (as in Hannibal-, you ask? No, because Thomas Harris wouldn’t write Manhunter and introduce Hannibal to the world for another 20 years). Unfortunately, the Russians know nothing about a cypher machine called Lektor because it’s all a ploy by SPECTRE to lure Bond into a trap to avenge their lost agent, Dr. No.

Austin Powers moments - the coke-bottle-spectacled henchwoman #3 is clearly the inspiration for Frau Farbissina, as well as the first appearance of the desk-side death buttons, the probable source of Mr. Bigglesworth, Dr. Evil’s cat, and Dr. Evil’s insistence that he will “not tolerate failure.”

Daniela Bianchi stars as Tatiana Romanova, the second Bond girl. In retrospect (considering the sad fate of the next Bond girl…), it sure seems that she dodged a bullet with that character name, but nonetheless, this is one of the best of the series.

3. Goldfinger (1964), PG, 110 mins.

The Bank of England discovers that someone is stockpiling vast quantities of gold and suspects international bullion dealer Auric Goldfinger of being involved. His name did nothing to suggest his innocence! Bond is sent to investigate, and he soon discovers that Goldfinger plans to contaminate the gold reserve at Fort Knox, causing economic chaos throughout the west while at the same time causing the value of his own gold to skyrocket.

We see Q introducing a whole array of cool Bond gadgets for the first time in Goldfinger, and under new direction, Bond is clumsier and more human than he was before. He makes mistakes and doesn’t always know exactly what’s going on.

Austin Powers moments - British actress Honor Blackman stars as Pussy Galore, the clear inspiration for Alotta Fagina, and Bond tied to a table with a laser beam slowly creeping towards him had a clear influence on the International Man of Mystery. “Do you expect me to talk?” Bond asks. “No,” Goldfinger replies. “I expect you to die!” Austin Powers’ shoe-throwing character Random Task also comes from Goldfinger’s hat-throwing Odd Job.

Notable trivia - Goldfinger’s laser beam is the first laser beam ever to be used in a film.

4. Thunderball (1965), PG, 130 mins.

The evil SPECTRE organization returns, this time having stolen two warheads and holding the entire world hostage for $100,000,000. Bond is sent along with all of Britain’s other secret agents to recover the warheads before millions of people are killed.

The film’s underwater climax shows its years, but Thunderball might be the best film in the series. Claudine Auger also stars as Domino, who I think is one of the best Bond girls, along with Ursula Andress from Dr. No and Kim Basinger from Never Say Never Again.

Austin Powers moment - “One hundred…BILLION…dollars!” (why? because if a terrorist held he entire planet hostage for $100 million, Steven Spielberg, for example, could write a personal check to save the world, and still be personally worth about $2.9 billion).

(Omission notice - in April 1967, about three months before the release of You Only Live Twice, the first version of Casino Royale was released into theaters. It is not included in this list for the same reason that Austin Powers is not included. Both are spoofs of the series and therefore are not 007 films.)

5. You Only Live Twice (1967), PG, 117 mins.

An American space capsule is swallowed by what is thought to be a Russian spaceship, nearly triggering World War III. The British, however, suspect that SPECTRE is once again involved, and they send James Bond to investigate their mysterious motives.

The capsule went down somewhere near Japan, so Bond’s mission is to find out where the capsule is being held as America and Russia hold twitching fingers over the big red buttons that would end humanity as we know it. The situation is complicated when Russia also loses a ship, ultimately leading Bond into a calamitous confrontation with the formidable villain Blofeld.

Japanese actress Mie Hama stars as the curiously named Kissy Suzuki, the first Asian Bond girl, and also notable is the outstanding performance from Donald Pleasance as Blofeld.

Austin Powers moments - Blofeld is more inspiration for Dr. Evil. Definitely the facial scar but also the outfit, the look, and the ever-present cat. Also, Austin Powers takes place in the year that this movie was made…

Interesting Bond trivia - this is one of the only films in which he never introduces himself with the classic “Bond. James Bond.”

6. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), PG, 142 mins.

Enter George Lazenby in his only outing as James Bond. Strangely, the film opens with Bond saving a woman from “drowning,” I suppose as he frantically grabs her after she wades slowly out into calm water, and then he carries her back to the beach, where she has managed to become unconscious. It’s unclear what exactly happened to her, but nonetheless this goes on to be one of the best opening sequences of the entire series.

Once again, Bond is on the trail of Blofeld, who has a lethal virus that he threatens to unleash upon the world, endangering every living thing in the world.

No Austin Powers moments to speak of, but this installment is unique in more ways than any other Bond film. There is a whole line of Bond girls, Bond at one point impersonates a man who doesn’t like women, and at other points he utters the lines “I love you,” and “Will you marry me?”

Bond trivia - the title of The World is Not Enough originated in this film, and the main Bond girl in this movie looks like Shirley Manson, the singer of the band Garbage, who would do the theme song for that film 30 years later.

7. Diamonds Are Forever (1971), PG, 120 mins.

Sean Connery reprises the role of James Bond as British Intelligence suspects a world-wide diamond smuggling operation and sends Bond to investigate. Bond’s search leads him to a millionaire American casino owner, who turns out to be none other than Ernst Blofeld.

Closer inspection reveals that Blofeld plans to use the diamonds not to corner the jewelry market but for a deadly laser capable of destroying massive targets on land, sea and air. Bond sets out with the beautiful Tiffany Case to stop him, but first he has to deal with a series of other villains.

Diamonds Are Forever is not one of the best Bond films, but it gets interesting almost immediately and has a great story.

No Austin Powers moments, but in this installment are probably the best one-liners of the entire series. In particular, “That’s a nice little nothing you’re wearing, I approve!” And my favorite of all time, when Bond is introduced to the beautiful Plenty O’Toole, he responds without hesitation, “Named after your father, perhaps?”

8. Live and Let Die (1973), PG, 121 mins.

Roger Moore was not off to a good start in Live and Let Die, his first adventure as James Bond. No matter how you look at it, this is an unimpressive black sheep in the 007 family. It’s a good hour into the movie before anything resembling an action sequence appears, which is the movie’s biggest problem. It’s slow moving and plodding, and the story isn’t interesting enough to make up for the lack of excitement. A lot of the movie feels more like a soap opera than a spy movie.

Bond is sent to investigate the mysterious deaths of several secret agents from all over the world, who have all been killed within 24 hours of each other. Bond’s investigation leads him to a Harlem crime boss named Mr. Big who plans to flood America with billions of dollars worth of heroin. What a guy!

Central to the story is the beautiful Solitaire, Mr. Big’s tarot card reader, whose gifts are crucial to him but whose other, ah, gifts are particularly of interest to Mr. Bond.

Austin Powers moment - “Start the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism!”

Best one-liner - Rosie Carver: “But you wouldn’t kill me, not after what we just done…”
Bond: “Well, I certainly wouldn’t have killed you before…”

Get it? Get it?

9. The Man With The Golden Gun (1974), PG, 125 mins.

A contract killer named Scaramanga charges one million dollars for each kill, no doubt because of the trademark golden gun he carries and gold bullets he uses on his victims. Bond is sent to investigate until it turns out that he is Scaramanga’s next target.

M tries to relieve him of his duty until the danger passes, but Bond takes the case into his own hands, feeling that the mission is too important to leave alone. He’s surprised to find that Scaramanga holds him in the highest respect, and that, like himeself, Scaramanga is also seeking a device called the “Solex Agitator,” which is capable of directly harnessing the sun’s energy.

Bond girls Mary Goodnight and Andrea Anders are more central to the plot than in the usual Bond film, as is Scaramanga’s charmingly named and surprisingly dangerous midget sidekick Nick Nack. And there are also plenty of other amusing names, like one of Scaramanga’s associates, Hi Fat, and a naked asian hottie curiously named Chu Me.

Bond trivia - tragically, Herve Villechaize, the midget actor who played Nick Nack, committed suicide in 1993, not because of career trouble, as most people assume, but because he lived in constant pain due to the fact that, while his body was small, his internal organs were normal size. His ashes were scattered off Point Fermin in Los Angeles.

10. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), PG, 125 mins.

Not only has the British Royal Navy AND the Russiand simultaneously lost track of one of their nuclear submarines (one with sixteen nuclear warheads aboard), but it also seems that someone has developled a technology capable of tracking submerged submarines and is offering it to the highest bidder.

The British send James Bond to find out who is selling the tracking device and locate the missing vessels before any of the warheads are fired.

Karl Stromber, the movie’s villain, bears an astonishing resemblance to Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo, right down to the love of the ocean and the breathtaking underwater lair. He plans to start a war between the Russians and the British, knowing that global destruction will follow and pave the way, get this, for his dream of creating a whole new society under the sea!

Bond has a tense relationship with XXX (the beautiful Russian agent he is obliged to team up with), as he had killed her fiance in the movie’s opening sequence. She declares that she’s going to kill him as soon as their mission is over, and the daunting presence of Jaws, possibly the most recognizable villain of the entire Bond series, doesn’t help matters…

Pop Culture Reference - Homer: “Marge, kids, everything’s gonna be just fine. We’re gonna start a new life, under the sea…”
Marge: “Homer, that’s your solution to everything, to live under the sea. It’s not gonna happen!”
Homer: “Not with that attitude…”

11. Moonraker (1979), PG, 126 mins.

Surprisingly enough, I would argue that this is the best of Roger Moore’s efforts as James Bond. ‘Bond in space’ isn’t exactly a premise that inspires confidence that it will be a good movie, but this one was unexpectedly good.

A spaceship has been hijacked and it’s up to Bond to find out who’s behind it all. He is brought to a man named Drax who has a huge space station undetected by U.S. or Soviet radar, along with a deadly plot involving massive chemical warfare on the unsuspecting populations below.

Jaws is back by popular demand although he has a less than enviable role in the film. His character is constantly shrouded in ridiculousness, but is remarkably watchable as always, and while the naming of Bond girl ‘Dr. Goodhead’ is not quite as straightforward as ‘Pussy Galore,’ it’s no less descriptive…

Austin Powers moment - Austin’s tiny, tiny spy camera.

Bond trivia - the musical code played to get into the Drax laboratory is the tune played back and forth between the humans and aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

12. For Your Eyes Only (1981), PG, 127 mins.

A sunken ship off the coast of Albania sets off a frantic search for ATAC, Britain’s high-tech encryption device which will give it’s owner total control of the Polaris nuclear submarines. The Russians learn of the situation and Bond is soon in a race to find the device before they do, with the help of the beautiful Medena Havelock, whose parents were murdered by a person who is crucial to Bond’s mission to find the ATAC. He has to engage her assistance while at the same time preventing her from avenging her parents before he is able to retrieve the device…

Favorite 007 moments - Bond leaps off a tall fence, using a pool umbrella in true Mary Poppins form to coast safely to the ground below. There is also an underwater scene where he gives Medena what I imagine is supposed to be a heartwarming, romantic look, but unfortunately he looks like E.T. in a wetsuit. Pass the Reese’s Pieces!

Bond trivia - After numerous models falsely claimed ownership, the legs on the poster for the movie were ultimately revealed to belong to 22-year-old New York model Joyce Bartle. Also, it was during the production of For Your Eyes Only that Cassandra Harris, who appears in the film as Countess Lisl von Schlaf, introduced Albert R. Broccoli to her husband, a young, novice actor named Pierce Brosnan.

13. Octopussy (1983), PG, 131 mins.

It must be some kind of sign of the times that a movie could be released in 1983 with a title like Octopussy and still get a PG rating from the unpredictable MPAA. Either Howard Stern has taught me nothing, or that title contains one of the Seven Deadly Words!

At any rate, watching Octopussy gave me the feeling that Bond must get some kind of preferential treatment because, even now, after 23 movies, he has never been put in a position where he runs the risk of dying like one of his fellow agents dies in this movie - in a clown suit clutching a Faberge egg (I’m assuming this doesn’t happen in Quantum of Solace).

Bond’s investigation of his colleague’s death leads him to an elaborate smuggling operation involving counterfeit Faberge eggs and ultimately leading to World War III. Also interesting is that the main villain in the movie is a woman who calls herself “Octopussy” because that was her father’s pet name for her when she was a kid. No wonder she grew to be such a well-balanced adult!

And if that’s not enough, one of the villains in the movie has a buzz-saw yo-yo. You can’t get any more vintage 007 than that!

Bond trivia - in Texas Hold ‘Em, a hand with a pair of eights is called an “octopussy.” A hand with a pair of eights is actually seen in Casino Royale almost 25 years later.

14. Never Say Never Again (1983), PG, 134 mins.

Released less than four months after Octopussy, Never Say Never Again was heavily marketed as the return of Sean Connery in the role of 007 (even the title refers to it), but was less successful than Octopussy.

SPECTRE agent Ernst Blofeld has returned, this time having stolen two Tomahawk cruise missiles with plans to blackmail NATO and hold the world hostage (Dr. Evil: “Oh, hell let’s just do what we always do…). The influence of Thunderball is unmistakable, but Never Say Never Again stands on its own despite having dated badly.

Kim Basinger stars as Domino, arguably one of best Bond girls of the series, and Rowan Atkinson also has a hilarious cameo.

Austin Powers moments - Dr. Evil: “You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads!” inspired by the sharks with implanted guiding mechanisms in this movie, and Largo, the villain, leaves Bond alive with crucial information (”I’ll just leave him there without actually witnessing his death and just assume everything went to plan, what?”).

Bond trivia - Never Say Never Again is not recognized as an official James Bond film because it was really only made because of remake rights owned by producer Kevin McClory relating to Thunderball. Also, a young Steven Seagal worked as a martial arts trainer for Sean Connery in preparation for this film, and during training, Seagal broke Connery’s wrist!

Best one-liner - when asked for a urine sample - “If you could just fill this beaker for me…”
Bond: “From here?”

Note - Sean Connery is now 78 years old. I think it’s probably safe to start saying “never” again…

15. A View To A Kill (1985), PG, 131 mins.

I’m struck by the evolution of the 007 stories from the earlier films to ones like A View To A Kill, in which a classic Bond-style villain Max Zorin (a wonderfully nefarious Christopher Walken, looking like Lucius Malfoy) plans to set off an underground earthquake - get this - to sink the entire Silicon Valley.

You see, if Zorin sinks the Silicon Valley, he’ll have full control of the computer manufacturing market, and Zorin Industries are also in possession of a computer chip that can create a magnetic pulse that would shut down every computer operated machine that uses a similar chip, “from toasters to the most sophisticated computers.”

I didn’t know toasters were computerized in the mid 1980s, but if Zorin were to set off an explosion over England he could completely incapacitate the British national defense network. And on top of that, the entirety of the British population would be completely toast-less. You can understand their concern.

One of the villains is named May Day, played by Jamaican actress Grace Jones (who was dating an unknown Swedish actor named Dolph Lundgren at the time) and she is one of the rare examples of real character development and change in a Bond film.

Bond trivia - on the DVD audio commentary, Roger Moore reveals that this is his least favorite of the seven 007 films that he starred in, because it was too violent and because he felt he was too old for the role.

16. The Living Daylights (1987), PG, 130 mins.

James Bond had been in theaters for 25 years by the time The Living Daylights was released, and this is the first time Bond was played by anyone other than Sean Connery or Roger Moore, other than George Lazenby’s single performance in On Her Majesty’ Secret Service. Needless to say, Timothy Dalton had big shoes to fill in his first Bond outing, so which may explain why he was helped along by a steep increase in the movie’s violence and some much better action.

After a Russian officer named Georgi Koskov defects to the west he is abducted from a secret hiding place, leading Bond on a wild chase that reveals a massive global weapons scheme involving the Russians, the Americans and none other than the Afghan resistance, the Mujahadeen. The airborne climax is also one of the more thrilling of the series.

Bond trivia - the woman in the white negligee on the movie’s poster is an American model named Kathy Stangel. She was supposedly paid $600 for the photo shoot.

17. License To Kill (1989), PG-13, 133 mins.

Bond attends his CIA friend Felix Leiter’s marriage, but then an escaped drug lord named Franz Sanchez tortures Leiter, who had capturd him, and kills his wife. Bond sets out for revenge against Sanchez, turning in his 00 status wen he is prohibited from taking the matter into his own hands.

There is a tense relationship between Bond and his beautiful ally Pam Bouvier because of her suspicious relationship with Sanzchez. The film is noticably more violent than most other 007 movies and, while the story is good, it also has some of the more outlandish action sequences. A semi-truck, for example, does a wheelie in this movie. Nice!

Also watch for a short and unenviable role by a young Benicio del Toro!

Bond trivia - the movie was originally titled License Revoked but the title was changed in part because less than 50% of Americans surveyed knew what “revoked” meant.

Pop Culture reference - Bond’s ally Pam Bouvier has the same last name that Marge Simpson had before she married Homer, although Marge was actually named after “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening’s mother, Marge, and John F. Kennedy’s wife, Jacqueline Bouvier.

18. GoldenEye (1995), PG-13, 130 mins.

After a six year absense (the longest delay in the series), Bond blasts back onto the scene as Pierce Brosnan finally takes on the role (he was actually signed on to perform the role for The Living Daylights but had to back out due to contractual obligations to his other project, the television series “Remington Steele”), and he wastes no time. The movie starts out with one of the best and most exciting opening action sequences of the entire series.

Bond’s mission is to retrieve the stolen access key to the “Goldeneye,” which is a satellite that can shoot a laser to the surface of the earth and disable every electronic device  within a radius of about 30 miles. Sounds remarkably similar to A View To A Kill, but things really get interesting when Bond’s search reveals a stunning secret, a 00 agent that was supposedly killed years earlier resurfaces and he turns out to be behind the whole operation. Bond has to fight to stop an old friend, with the help of the cleverly named Xenia Onatopp, before he uses the Goldeneye to destroy London.

Note - This is Judi Dench’s first portrayal of the character M, and in the movie she addresses one of the most common public complaints about the character of James Bond, calling him at one point “a sexist, misogynist dinosaur.” Also, GoldenEye was enormously successful, it had the highest box office draw of any 007 film up to that time (more than $350,000,000 worldwide), despite the tagline “You know the name. You know the number,” which seems to me to be one step away from “You know the drill!”

Bond trivia - numerous changes had to be made to the script during actual production because the plot was almost identical to that of the Arnold Schwarzenegger thriller True Lies, which was released as GoldenEye was filming. A title like True Lies should have been attached to a 007 film anyway though, right?

19. Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), PG-13, 119 mins.

Enormously powerful media mogul Elliot Carver is attached to the disappearance of a British battleship in the South China Sea because of suspicions brought about by his inability to achieve broadcasting rights in mainland China and thus complete his global communications empire. To get past them, he arranges to create a war between them and the British by convincing each that the other is making hostile advances.

Bond’s way into Carver’s world is through his wife, who is Bond’s former lover. He joins forces with a deadly Chinese agent, Wai Lin, to stop Carver from creating worldwide pandemonium for the sake of the big headlines that will make him the most powerful media mogul in the world.

Note - License To Kill (1989) was originally meant to take place in China, but the Chinese government made so many restrictive demands, such as full veto rights over the script (demanding total control is not at all unusual behavior from the Chinese government, by the way), that the location was ultimately scrapped. Now, in Tomorrow Never Dies (the first Bond film with absolutely no references to Ian Fleming or any of his stories), we get a story about a media mogul whose only obstacle is restrictive problems created by the Chinese government. Coincidence?

Bond trivia - First Bond film released after Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (sorry, no more Austin Powers moments!), and Teri Hatcher was pregnant during her performance! Now that you know that, doesn’t it seem like you can tell just by looking at her face on the poster?

20. The World Is Not Enough (1999), PG-13, 128 mins.

This unusually talky 007 outing gives us Denise Richards in the role of the main Bond girl but the movie falters when it asks us to accept her as a nuclear physicist. I’m sorry, but Richards just doesn’t have the acting chops to pull off a role like that. It’s just a little too hard to take her seriously when she’s walking around in her cute little shorts and halter top and talking about plutonium and nuclear physics.

A British oil tycoon is killed in a bombing, leaving his oil empire to his daughter, Elektra King. Her new wealth affords her international attention, but also the attention of her father’s killer, Renard, a brilliantly effective villain portrayed by Robert Carlyle. It seems that Renard has a bullet lodged in his brain making him unable to feel physical pain (and slowly killing him), and revenge is the only thing that he has left to live for. Not a good combination for anyone hoping to stop Renard from destroying a new oil pipeline and destroy Europe with a nuclear bomb.

Note - This was Desmond Llewelyn’s last performance as Q. He died one month after the film was released.

Bond trivia - The opening sequence, the longest in any Bond film ever made at about 15 minutes, was filmed over a peroid of seven weeks, and the filming was broadcast live over the internet. Also, the Latin phrase Orbis non sufficit (”the world is not enough”), is the motto of the Bond family that is given in both the novel and the film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969).

21. Die Another Day (2002), PG-13, 133 mins.

After being captured and tortured while on a mission in North Korea (and then held prisoner for a substantial period of time), Bond is awarded his freedom in exchange for the release of Zao, a powerful Korean terrorist who knows the identity of the person who betrayed Bond in Korea, leading to his capture and imprisonment.

Bond’s search leads him to a mysterious billionaire, who’s involvement in diamond trading provides him with the means to build a diamond-encrusted satellite, a ’solar mirror,’ with the power to harness and concentrate the energy of the sun, creating a massive laser cannon powerful enough to destroy anything on earth in its path.

There is also a strange sub-plot about using DNA to transform peoples physical appearance, giving us one of the movie’s bizarre villains, a blue-eyed asian man who looks the way he does because he was interrupted in the middle of his transformation. But it is Toby Stevens’ performance as Gustav Graves, the movie’s main villain, that steals the show. His performance is so shadowy and sinister that he doesn’t need the slightest scrap of make-up or special effects to be an effective villain.

Bond trivia - production of Die Another Day was delayed so that it could have a 2002 release to coincide with the 40-year anniversary of the first Bond film, Dr. No, and the 50-year anniversary of the writing of the first Bond novel. For the true Bond enthusiast, there are references to every preceding Bond film hidden within this one. Happy hunting!

22. Casino Royale (2006),PG-13, 144 mins.

Daniel Craig is given a unique opportunity in his first adventure as James Bond. Casino Royale is a prequel to all of the rest of the Bond films, and Craig gives us a younger and less experienced 007, showing us some of the formative experiences that made him into the character that we have come to know and love.

Craig’s Bond is something totally different than anything we’ve seen before - he’s reckless and unpredictable, he allows his emotions to control him and he makes drastic mistakes. He is embarking on his first mission since being granted 00 status, and his learning experience is not without difficulties.

A man named Le Chiffre makes a living by bankrolling terrorists, and after losing $100 million of his terrorist investors’ money in a botched attempt to destroy a prototype plane that would revolutionize the air travel industry, he has to win back the money in  a high-stakes poker game or face their wrath.

Bond is sent to prevent him from winning, reminded in advance that if he loses, the British government will have directly financed terrorism. It is an astonishingly fast-paced entry in the 007 saga with many of the series’ biggest and most elaborate and exciting action set pieces. The movie shows how Bond became who he is, and while the closing shot in the movie seemed like a perfect place to end the series, the upcoming release of Quantum of Solace indicates that one of the cinema’s most famous characters is not going anywhere anytime soon.

Note - Casino Royale is one of only two 007 movies in which he says the words, “I love you.” The last time he said it was in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969).

Bond trivia - As of 2007, Casino Royale is the most commercially successful Bond film, and it’s a good thing too, because at one point, in a single afternoon of shooting, three Aston Martins (valued at $300,000 each), were destroyed for the car rolling sequence. Also, Daniel Craig is the first actor ever to portray James Bond who is younger than the series itself, and he’s also the first blonde Bond.

Best one-liner: Bond: “Vodka martini.”
Bartender: “Shaken or stirred?”
Bond: “Do I look like I give a damn?”

23. Quantum of Solace (2008), PG-13, 106 mins.

Quantum of Solace begins mere days after the point where Casino Royale left off, which is probably why Daniel Craig is in almost exactly the same position on this movie poster and dressed the same and holding the same gun as he was in the closing shot of the last film.

Bond must struggle to avoid making his newest mission too personal as he investigates Mr. White, who he captured at the end of Casino Royale, and the organization that led to what happened with the character of Vesper at the end of that film.

A case of mistaken identity leads Bond to the beautiful Camille, who in turn leads Bond to a ruthless businessman named Dominic Greene and a shady criminal organization called Quantum. He discovers that Greene is developing an elaborate plot to take control of South American’s water supply. Bond must get to the heart of his plan and stop him before he gets his way, all the while trying to find the man responsible for Vesper’s betrayal.

Note - in an interview with GQ Magazine, Daniel Craig mentioned that he was actively involved in selecting the film’s title, and he also revealed that, “in the great tradition of Bond movies, the films’ titles are often meaningless.”

Bond trivia - Quantum of Solace will be released on November 14th, 2008.

Check out my recent review of Quantum of Solace here.

It is undeniable that Quantum of Solace literally feels a bit small after the powerhouse of Casino Royale, and director Marc Forster has been criticized for a lack of uniqueness in his directing, and for relying too much on extreme camera movements and lightning-fast editing techniques in putting together his action sequences. But even though a lot of people complain that Quantum is not a true Bond film but just a regular run-of-the-mill action film, it is undeniably a solid entry in the new generation of 007 movies.

In some ways these complaints are justified. It’s true that the conclusion of the film is cut together at such a break-neck speed that the sheer number and speed of the cuts are a distraction from what’s actually happening, but I have to disagree with the idea that the entire movie only reveals the name of the evil organization and introduces a few new characters and so is really unnecessary. It takes place immediately after Casino Royale ended and gives a feeling that it’s tying up some loose ends, but if those ends were left untied and Casino Royale was not continued, we would certainly be missing a 007 film right now.

The movie starts out with a chase across rooftops that feels immediately uninspired, since we’ve seen it so many countless times before, but when we see one of the original action shots that was showcased in the trailer it turns into something much more. Like much of the rest of the movie, it has a sense of uncertainty, but ultimately proves itself.

Quantum of Solace continues the very sharp turn that Casino Royale took in the new direction of the Bond saga. We are now very firmly in the real world. Gone are the days of the super- villains that want to steal satellites and destroy continents and sink Silicon Valley and start their own personal societies at the bottom of the sea. Gone are the constant efforts to start World War III, the efforts to achieve some form of global destruction, the slow deaths at the hands of primitive laser beams and the villainous side-kicks with bizarre weapons like buzz- saw yo-yos and flying, razor-blade lined bowler hats.

Now, it’s all about economics and power, and to say that these are not some of the most important issues in the world society at this very moment would be quite a statement.

Casino Royale ended with Bond standing over an injured Mr. White, the man behind Vesper’s betrayal, and introducing himself. He is then the subject of the rooftop chase at the beginning of Quantum of Solace, and soon we learn the real meaning of “Quantum” itself. It seems that Daniel Craig’s hint that the title Quantum of Solace is actually meaningless might have been a strange marketing ploy, since it clearly is not true.

Quantum is an extremely powerful organization that, as our team learns early in the film, “Has people everywhere.”

M is amazed to discover that, while people use phrases like that all the time, this guy actually meant it. Her sense of security is shattered when she learns that her personal bodyguard of eight years was an undercover Quantum agent, and she begins to realize the power of the enemy that MI6 is facing.

Quantum’s main agent is Dominic Greene, whose goal is to help an exiled Bolivian governor retain control of his country, in exchange for turning over to them a seemingly meaningless piece of land. The exiled governor is unaware that this tract of land would give Greene power over a tremendous quantity of all of South America’s water supply and, get this, Greene plans to seek exclusive utilities provider rights! How’s that for a Bond villain? He isn’t interested in starting global warfare, he wants to become South America’s PG&E!

A lot of people were unimpressed with Casino Royale and Daniel Craig in general. Personally I thought both were outstanding, but what I can tell you about Quantum of Solace is that, if you hated Casino Royale you’re probably not going to love Quantum Solace either. But if you loved or even at least enjoyed it, then you are almost certainly going to have a similar good time in this one.

I have heard rumors that Royale and Solace are the first two parts of a sort of trilogy within the 007 saga, and it makes sense because the two are very unique among the rest of the films and, most importantly, this one closes without many loose ends but with a definite feeling that there is another movie after it somewhere.

We may do well to keep in mind that Casino Royale was a prequel, so those of you wondering if and when the franchise will ever come to a conclusive end might look for ways in which the newer movies start to lead into the beginning of Dr. No, the oldest one.

Personally it looks to me like there is no end in sight, but I love the new direction that the films have taken, so I am happy to see them continue. They take themselves much more seriously now (whether or not you like Craig’s two films so far, you can’t deny that they are more serious than their predecessors), and they have certainly generated more interest in where the films will go in the future.

Daniel Craig is under contract to do four films as 007, and I predict that he will do two more prequels and that the next actor to portray Bond will take over where Die Another Day left off. Until then, Quantum is not the biggest and not the best Bond film, but it is certainly a solid entry in the revitalized series.

So the tagline for Saw V is “You won’t believe how it ends.” Yeah, whatever. More like, “you won’t believe that it ends.” And you shouldn’t believe it, either. The grisly series has been a dead horse for three movies by now, but if the rumors circulating the internet are true, there will be at least two more.

In the movie’s defense, there are times when the premise is interesting and creative, at least more than I had anticipated. Eyes will glaze over throughout the audience when the movie starts out with Jigsaw saying Hello so-and-so I want to play a game, but the story that the movie tells is a lot more ambitious than you might think. It’s better than part 3 and 4, but that’s not saying a lot.

The vicious, brutal death-traps remain the centerpiece of the movie, but this one gets extra points because it goes behind the scenes into Jigsaw’s world. The problem is that the movie tries to tell a bigger story than the material can sustain. There is a series of flashbacks that jumps back and forth between past and present (and more than one previous Saw sequel), making the movie convoluted and confusing. You may find yourself wondering why Jigsaw is masked and kidnapping people one moment, and lying in a hospital bed struggling for breath the next.

There are three main stories going on in the movie. Five apparent strangers are forced to perform violent tests in order to get a door to open before it locks forever, and during each test, one person will be, ah, voted off the island. The whole scenario is remarkably similar to Cube, a far more interesting movie.

The other story is a detective named Mark Hoffman who is involved with Jigsaw as sort of an unwilling accomplice, and then there is an Agent Strahm that is investigating the killings from outside Jigsaw’s world, trying to figure out what’s going on while the five strangers are killed off one by one.

By this point in the series, hardcore Saw fans (which I am guessing make up about 90% of the remaining audience) will probably be mostly interested in the new torture devices, but the movie spends a huge amount of it’s relative short running time jumping around in flashbacks and side stories, including one about Jigsaw’s daughter, who has inherited a mysterious box, the contents of which Jigsaw explains are “of grave importance.”

Agent Strahm, early in the film, escapes a trap that was not meant to test him but to kill him, and he begins to suspect a copycat killer or that Jigsaw had an accomplice. Hoffman has a unique involvement in Jigsaw’s killings, and is forced to try to cover his tracks while at the same time overseeing the deadly game involving the five supposed strangers, while they themselves try to get to know each other enough to figure out why they were put there together in the first place.

As before, Jigsaw once again is taking on the laughable mission of trying to clean up where America’s shoddy legal system screws up. The movie opens with a stomach-turning scene involving a guy who slipped through the cracks, serving only five years of a 25-year sentence because of a technicality. I appreciate the effort of the movie trying to make a comment of the shortcomings of the American legal system, but it’s pretty hard to take it seriously when it tries to present the Jigsaw Killer as doing the Lord’s good work. He’s like a Boondock Saint with a violent imagination and a lot more time on his hands.

The performances are passable, given the movie that they’re in (which doesn’t really ask much of an actor except screaming), although there are a few moments of remarkably awful acting. Tobin Bell once again lends his creepy voice to a nice synthesizer and then to that creepy doll, but the look of the movie is pretty thoroughly boring. It’s totally lightless from beginning to end, a cheap horror technique that gets real old real quick.

Not much effort is put into having a good twist at the end of the movie, although the closing scene does have the element of surprise and, like mostly all of the movies before it, is pretty painful to watch. This is not the worst Saw film that they have sprung on us so far, but there is definitely nothing in it to make me look forward to any more sequels.

I’m guessing that we have running time restrictions to thank for British New York dentist Bertram Pincus being instantly irritated at the sight of the living dead, rather than ever showing the slightest hint of amazement or fear, as would be the assumed first reactions. But Ghost Town is such a clean switch from horror to romantic comedy using a standard horror theme that every last trace of scariness is cleanly and completely severed, often leaving a gaping hole in the logic of the plot.

The movie immediately presents itself as a shallow rip-off of what is now little more than a sound bite from The Sixth Sense, where Cole reveals his startling secret, but it’s another scene entirely that the movie extends from. Remember that scene where Cole finally decides to listen to the ghosts and see what they want from him, and that little girl gives him a videotape of her babysitter feeding her drain cleaner and making her sick? Ghost Town is that scene fleshed out into a full length romantic comedy with the curious addition of an angry British dentist thrown into the middle of it.

There are amusing moments and romantic moments, and even some emotional moments, but none as effective as you would think, given how tirelessly hilarious British aggravation is. There are twists and turns that have to do with the characters’ personalities rather than the plot, which is refreshing, but

the movie still leaves you with the feeling that it’s a lot of tired American themes with the arbitrary addition of a British dentist living in New York and desperately hating any kind of contact with any other human being.

It seems that during a routine surgical procedure, the unfortunately named Bertram Pincus (whose name itself sounds like something that needs to be surgically removed) actually “dies” for several minutes, leaving him with the ability to see and communicate with dead people.

We never really learn why he hates human contact so much, we only know that he lives his life in a perpetual state of annoyance directed toward other people, and the new ability to see dead people doesn’t make it any better. In fact, as soon as the dead realize that Pincus is a door through which they can communicate with the living, they converge on him, overwhelming him with a barrage of requests that range from delivering letters to killing people.

Enter Greg Kinnear, who plays Frank Herlihy, a recently deceased man who’s death opens the movie and is one of the film’s best and most cleverly orchestrated scenes.

By methods whose description is limited to “I’ll talk to them,” Frank promises to forever relieve Pincus of his harassment by the dead if he’ll do one little thing for him - his own widow is about to marry someone that Frank can’t stand, and he wants Pincus to prevent the wedding.

See what I mean about tired American themes? But what complicates matters is that Frank is not the greatest guy in the world himself, and his widow’s fiance, despite coming off as a massive tool, might not be the terrible person that we all expect our ex’s to date after we break up. And strangely, this is where the movie becomes highly predictable but also goes in new directions. It’s nice to see the expected personalities reversed, but the rest of the movie is still the same character transformation from a grumpy grinch into a singing ray of sunshine that we’ve seen a thousand times since The Christmas Carol.

Tea Leoni plays Gwen, the widow, and what a life she’s had. She lost her husband in a violent accident, fell in love and became engaged to someone else, and then became interested in someone else before the wedding. It’s a strange little detail that she is romantically involved, at various levels, with every male lead in the movie.

But what makes the movie frustrating is that they make Pincus such an effectively unlikeable guy - particularly in one of his first scenes, where he stares with shocked irritation at a co-worker who has the nerve to invite him to celebrate the expectancy of his first child - that it becomes impossible to understand or respect Gwen’s almost immediate romantic interest in him, after the obligatory acknowledgement and then dismissal of his spotless record of being a total ass to her.

And then there’s the comedy, which is wildly inconsistent. There are a few laugh out loud moments (including one where Pincus talks about the Chinese people being the odd ones out in the world because they name their kids things like Kwok and Pong and Wang, although I’ve lived in China for the last year and a half and have yet to run into a Kwok or a Pong), but others that fall completely flat and still go on and on and on with no end in sight. There’s a scene where Pincus and his doctor try to talk but keep interrupting each other that is so over-extended that it looks like a series of outtakes.

All of the necessary ingredients are here for a cute and clever romantic comedy, but a lot of people will be disappointed that the movie follows such a clear formula and never approaches topics dealing with Pincus’s character change that go beyond a simple ability to interact with other people. In a movie about salvation and the afterlife, I’m surprised that these are the deepest issues dealt with. The tear-jerking in the film’s conclusion almost becomes too cheesy, but it may very well get you choked up, too.

Incidentally, I’m not sure what this implies about Ghost Town’s target or potential audiences, but when I saw it today, I looked around the mostly empty theater and noticed that there were five other guys in the theater besides myself who were there to see it alone. Usually I’m the only one!

Last week was not a big week in DVDs, but this week there is a little more to choose from. In a conspicuous marketing coincidence, the theatrical release of the disappointing Al Pacino/Robert DeNiro thriller Righteous Kill is accompanied by the DVD release of last year’s disappointing Al Pacino thriller 88 Minutes, both of which were directed by Jon Avnet, who I am starting to think might be well advised to try a different genre. The Wachowski Brothers have adapted an old tv cartoon and Mike Meyers has teamed up again with Mini-Me for another 90-minutes of disappointment. George Clooney heads up this week’s new releases with Leatherheads, along with the Sex and the City movie and another comedy from the star of Shaun of the Dead.

LEATHERHEADS (2008), Comedy/Drama/Romance/Sport, PG-13, 114 mins.

George Clooney is back in the director’s chair for this sports comedy about the football scene of the 1920s, where college teams got all the fame and glory while the pro football players were all but ignored. Clooney stars as a veteran grunt trying to build up pro football into something big, and he recruits Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski), a war hero and college star to help him.

Renee Zellweger stars as a reporter who comes into the picture snooping around for a good story, but ends up becoming the center of the romantic subplot of the movie, which involves a love triangle that complicates the job of earning sports fans.

The movie didn’t find much of an audience when it was released in theaters in April but was not poorly received. Sports/Clooney fans are sure to be pleased.

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SEX AND THE CITY (2008), Comedy/Drama/Romance, R, 148 mins.

I have a small confession to make - Sex and the City is just not my thing. I don’t think I ever saw a single frame of a single episode of the tv show, and at a whopping two and a half hours, I am pretty sure I’m never going to see a single frame of this prodigious screen adaptation. But for the rest of you, here’s what you need to know -

After moving in together in an impossibly beautiful New York apartment, Carrie Bradshaw and Mr. Big make a rather arbitrary decision to get married. The wedding itself proves to be anything but a hasty affair–the guest list quickly blooms from 75 to 200 guests, and Carrie’s simple, label-less wedding gown gives way to an enormous creation that makes her look like a gigantic cream puff. An upcoming photo spread in Vogue puts the event–which will take place at the New York Public Library–squarely in the public eye. Meanwhile, Carrie’s girlfriends–Samantha, the sexpot; Charlotte, the sweet naïf; and Miranda, the rigid perfectionist–could not be happier. At least, they couldn’t be happier for Carrie. Charlotte still has the unrealized hope of getting pregnant. Samantha is finding a loving, committed relationship more grueling than she could have imagined. Miranda unwittingly lets her own unhappiness–created when Steve admits to cheating on her just once–spoil Carrie’s. After a heated encounter with Steve, she happens to spot Mr. Big and tells him he’s crazy to get married. She’s really only thinking of her own marriage. But her angry remark gets Mr. Big to thinking.

DECEPTION (2008), Drama/Romance/Thriller, R, 90 mins.

Ewan McGregor stars as an accountant enticed into an underground sex club and then later implicated in a heist and a woman’s disappearance. The movie is not hurting for star power, with McGregor starring opposite Hugh Jackman, but unfortunately, it does nothing new for the genre, mostly rehashing the tired themes of the seedy late-night thrillers that my mom used to never let me watch when I was a kid but did anyway. I was fascinated at the time because women were always running around in their underwear, but now it’s clear to me that this is going on so much because there’s not much else to the movie. It’s essentially another one of the type of thriller where smart people are doing unbelievably stupid things, and screwing up their lives in the process. We’re meant to be entertained by how far they go in creating problems for themselves and digging deeper while trying to escape from the holes in which they now find themselves, but no luck. The movie is just as stale and generic as this poster.

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RUN FATBOY RUN (2007), Comedy/Romance, PG-13, 100 mins.

Simon Pegg, of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame, is directed by David Schwimmer in his directing debut in Run Fatboy Run. Pegg palys Dennis Doyle, a slacker who tries to win back the respect of his fiance five years after leaving her standing at the altar pregnant. He discovers that she’s really his one true love when he finds out that she’s dating someone else, someone more responsible and respectable than himself, so he vows to prove to her that he is the one for her.

She doesn’t believe him, because of his tendency to start things and never finish them, so he sets out to prove himself to her, by starting something that he intends to finish. That thing, however, is a Nike River-run in London, in which her obnoxious new man (Hank Azaria), a skilled and practiced runner, is also participating.

I had high expectations for the movie because Shaun of the Dead was so good, but it’s essentially the exact same character as he was in that movie, a loser struggling to get his girlfriend back, without zombies or Nick Frost, both of which are significant losses. Cute date movie, but not the best work from anyone involved.

88 MINUTES (2008), Action/Crime/Thriller, R, 108 mins (not what you thought, but good guess, though).

Al Pacino plays Jack Gramm, a forensic psychiatrist who receives a threat that he has 88 minutes to live, saddling him with the task of analyzing a murder in advance. Complicating matters is the fact that he is also a college professor (like me!) with disgruntled students, he recently helped put a man on death row whose execution is approaching, he has a jilted lover holding a grudge (after a one night stand), and there is a copycat killer on the loose perpetuating the murderous modus operandi of the man Gramm has put behind bars. Needless to say, he’s gonna have his hands full to find out who it is that’s threatening his life.

I’m reminded of that Johnny Depp movie Nick of Time, remember that one? Depp plays this guy named Gene Watson who is in LA with his daughter to go to his wife’s funeral. His daughter is kidnapped and he is given a person’s itinerary and a note explaining that if he doesn’t kill that person within 75 minutes his daughter is going to be killed. What makes it more interesting is that it’s shot in real time, which could have been a good gimmick for 88 Minutes as well.

THE LOVE GURU (2008), Comedy, PG-13, 87 mins.

An American is raised by gurus in an ashram in India, until he finally returns to his home country to seek fame and fortune in the world of self-help and spirituality. His first task is to settle a marital dispute between a star professional hockey player Darren Roanoke and his estranged wife, who has begun dating L.A. Kings star Jaques Grande (Justin Timberlake). This new relationship creates havoc in Roanoke’s professional life, to the dismay of the team’s owner, Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba) and Roanoke’s coach, Coach Cherkov (Verne “Mini-me” Troyer). Oh, and if you don’t get the joke of the coach’s name, try reading it out loud.

The previews look like there are some laugh out loud moments, but I still can’t shake the feeling that the movie is the product of a lot of disjointed ideas that were swept up and tossed en masse into the same movie, making them fit in whatever way possible. It’s a sad follow-up to his success as Austin Powers…

MADE OF HONOR (2008), Comedy/Romance,

Tom and Hannah have been platonic friends for ten years, Tom dating haphazardly and Hannah always looking for her true love but thus far without success. Eventually Tom begins to see Hannah in a way that he never had before, and just as he begins to think that they would be good together, she gets engaged to someone else.

In a true illustration of how close and genuinely platonic their relationship has been, she asks him to be her maid of honor, and he reluctantly agrees, mostly just so he can try to stop the wedding from the inside and woo her himself.

If the plot sounds vaguely familiar the most likely reason is because you’ve probably seen this exact story a dozen times before. But enjoy! It does make a good date movie, after all. If you’re into this stuff, I recommend The Wedding Planner, My Best Friend’s Wedding, The Bachelor (my favorite), Runaway Bride, 27 Dresses (note: don’t watch 27 Dresses. It sucked. Trust me), Maid in Manhattan, and My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

SPEED RACER (2008), Action/Family/Sport, PG, 135 mins (!!).

Speed Racer has come along from that strangely animated old television cartoon that I never really got interested in. This live action adaptation is directed by the Wachowski Brothers, directors of the Matrix trilogy (and the underrated 1996 sex thriller Bound), and produced by legendary Hollywood producer Joel Silver, whose list of production credits is far too long to do justice to here. He has been involved in everything from 80s classics like Commando, Weird Science, and Predator to the whole Lethal Weapon series and the Matrix films.

The story seems a bit of a backdrop to the novelty of the film itself, but it’s about a young kid named Speed Racer who grows into the sport and ultimately finds himself in a moral position to save the integrity of the sport itself from becoming a cheap game wheeled by corporate interests who fix rig races for profit. Speed lost his older brother Rex to racing, and along the way he gets support from the rest of his family as he battles the corporate interests eager to get rid of his meddling with their wheeling and dealing as well as his opponents on the track.

YOUNG AT HEART (2007), Musical Documentary, PG, 109 mins.

Young at Heart tells the story of the Young at Heart Chorus, a choir of chaotic senior citizens who must battle various health problems and aging issues in order to prepare for a show that will include performances of songs by groups ranging from James Brown to Coldplay.

Their tireless musical coach leads the group through a series of charming and hilarious reheasals, showing us a whole new side of making music. They are more watchable than you would expect because they are a highly experienced team of singers, but the documentary focuses on the new challenges of learning new songs, many of which are made for a much, much younger generation.

It’s an inspiring story about life and music and their affects on each other, and culminates in a heartwarming finale that will leave you cheering. See this one.

“FRIDAY THE 13TH” (series, 1987-1990), 60 min/episode.

Related quite literally deliberately to the classic slasher film series, the “Friday the 13th” television series aired for three years from 1987-1990 and had nothing whatsoever to do with with the movies. In fact, Frankie Mancuso deliberately named the series “Friday the 13th” for no other reason than to call attention to it and make it stick out from the rest of the new shows coming out in 1987.

Each episode tells a different story about a young man and woman who have inherited a mysterious antiques dealership from their uncle, who had made a pact with the Devil to sell cursed antiques. The show tells of their adventures in trying to recover the already purchased antiques from customers before they can do any harm.

At first glance this seems like a safe one to avoid, but I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. The show has tons of fans, so may be worth checking out at least a few episodes. Season 1 is released this week…

Okay, before I tear into this movie, I should mention that I’m actually a pretty big Nicholas Cage fan. But like John Travolta, Nicholas Cage has a lot of die-hard fans and a lot of people who can’t stand him and relatively little in between. But love him or hate him, he’s just not a serious action star, despite constantly starring in action movies. He’s like a slighly more Hollywood-ized version of Jean Claude Van Damme (another of my personal heroes, of course), with slightly less punching.

Once again, Cage plays a role that doesn’t even remotely fit him - an ultra-lonely assassin who’s work carries him all around the world but prevents the development of any kind of social life, romantic or otherwise. Oh, and it also comes with all sorts of rules, which he is nice enough to narrate for us, such as “never get involved with anyone outside of work.” For those of you who can’t read between the smoking bullet holes, that means don’t get involved with anyone at any time ever. Because the only people he ever interacts with in person at work are the people that he kills.

That being said, it’s interesting the decision to cast Nicholas Cage in this role. He is known for playing

guys who are down on their luck or involved in some kind of criminal scheme but with a heart of gleaming gold. And he does that here, but he also viciously kills a lot of people, which is uncharacteristic for him.

On what he swears is going to be his One Last Job (which is not the only disappointing cliche that Bangkok Dangerous has in common with last week’s Righteous Kill), he is heading to Thailand to carry out four high profile killings in the same location, but for this particular job he needs some assistance, so he approaches a young man who displays the skills needed by cleverly stealing some tourist’s wallet. Reluctantly, the gutter punk accepts, after a bout of obligatory bargaining.

And by the way, I never understand why people in movies react the way they do when offered a job to do some little thing and get paid like $2,000 a day. They’re always raising their eyebrows and doubting and bargaining and squinting their eyes and thinking and hesitating and debating. Personally I would just pick myself up off the floor and ask when I start. Unless I had to kill someone. Then I guess I would ask for more. I mean hesitate. I would hesitate.

Anyway, through a series of contrived scenes, their tenuous relationship grows miraculously stronger as we watch in confusion as Joe (Cage) systematically breaks all of the rules that he explained to us at the beginning of the movie. At the same time as he is trying to train Kong, his Thai helper, he is also falling desperately in love with a mute Thai woman who works at a local pharmacy.

The girl is cute and has a powerful charm, but watching Cage transform into a babbling schoolboy whenever she’s around sort of takes a little of the conviction away when he tries to look scary later. The Thai love interest is played by Chinese actress Charlie Yeung, who gives a good performance despite the romantic subplot being wildly out of place. The movie halts in its tracks so abruptly and so completely every time she appears that you can almost smell the brakes burning. And you can definitely hear them.

The other half of the movie is the one about the killings and the Thai sidekick, with Cage quite literally zooming back and forth between the two plots on a cool BMW motorcycle. I’m guessing that the sheer badassedness of these bikes is supposed to be distracting enough so that we don’t wonder why this guy, who’s been in Bangkok for a matter of days, has a whole stable of them at his disposal. Oh, and he also gives one to Kong, who shrugs and offers a half grin when tossed the keys. I love the gratitude!

Similar to Righteous Kill, however, by far the most disappointing thing about the movie is the ending, which doesn’t stop delivering the disappointment when it culminates in a shootout that takes place - you guessed it - in an old abandoned warehouse. I’m at a loss to explain why this scene is still being tacked onto the endings of action movies. This is the 21st century, for god’s sake. Maybe the locations are free to use. Whatever the case may be, such a climax hasn’t been exciting in untold decades. In the last 30 minutes of the movie, I fell asleep literally like half a dozen times.

But wait, there’s more. Remember the astonishing forehead-slapper that closed Babylon A.D.? Well, if you read my review you probably didn’t bother with the movie, but Bangkok Dangerous also comes with a closing shot that comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere, serving no real purpose but to provide a bit of footage that can be run at slow motion and make for a nice fade out before the credits.

There are a lot of roles that Nicholas Cage can do really well. He was perfect in The Rock, he inhabited his roles in Adaptation and Matchstick Men, and he even played a good investigator highly disturbed at his subject in 8mm, but here we’re expected to identify with this guy who is having conflictions about being given an assignment to kill a politician who happens to be a good man. It creates a confusing feeling when we’re expected to aspire to the moral high-ground of a contract killer.

But most of all, for all of Cage’s strengths, he just can not do emotions and he can not do romance. Not ever. Remember that movie Next from last year? Holy crap. There was a scene where I thought I was wrong about the romance thing, it was incredible. He says to this woman something like, “The definition of beauty is that all things are arranged in such a way so that nothing needs to be added, changed, or taken away. And that’s you…you’re beautiful.”

That second sentence is a little obvious and redundant, I should think, but still not bad. But then he goes and blows it completely with this stupid magic trick. He woos her with these sweet words, and then he’s like, hey baby, wanna see me pull a magic rose out of my hat?

Dumbass!

In Bangkok Dangerous a good third of the movie is him with this goofy grin on his face, trying to think of something clever to say to this girl that can’t hear him or talk to him, and the rest of the movie he’s trying to get out of the assassination business while reluctantly training a young man to get into it as their relationship grows stronger. What? The numerous narrative directions are crazily inconsistent and incompatible. It commits the age old crime of trying to please too broad of an audience, and will probably end up pleasing no one.

Other than the immediate appeal of seeing Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino on screen together for the first time since Heat in 1995, there is very little special or interesting about Righteous Kill. And it’s too bad because there are elements of the movie that are so good and so fitting for each of them (like DeNiro grinning and threatening a child molester on his way out of the courtroom on a technicality) that it’s clear that the movie has a lot of what it takes to be a much better thriller.

DeNiro and Pacino play two veteran NYPD detectives who have been friends and partners for about as long as either of them can remember. Their latest case is lifted right out of The Boondock Saints - a vigilante killer who is systematically killing off violent criminals who have fallen through the cracks of the judicial system. This is, of course, a highly appealing premise - there are few things quite as satisfying as seeing a murderer or rapist or child molester getting shot at point blank range and then a four-line poem tossed onto their chest rhyming out the justification for their death. Well, it’s satisfying to see in a movie anyway. To be perfectly honest, I’m not all that into seeing anyone get shot in real life, poem or not.

But sadly, the movie falls completely flat in its handling of the mystery of who the real killer is. There is a strong implication early in the movie (from the first frame, as it were) that the killer is one of the two main detectives, and there are two other detectives, played by Donnie Wahlberg and John Leguizamo, who are also working the case and increasingly develop the same suspicions.

But there is a cheap method of maintaining tension and dramatic tension that lower level thrillers and mystery movies use, which is to plainly and deliberately lead the audience in the wrong direction before wildly swinging the plot around like a carnival ride near the end. Righteous Kill gives us clues that seem so obvious that they appear to be storytelling techniques rather than plot points, but it’s no use here to try to figure out the mystery, just try to enjoy the ride. Clever moviegoers will see through the constant misdirection like grandma’s underpants, as Bart Simpson would say, but any predictability is based on seeing through cheap film techniques, not figuring out an intricate story.

And most of the ride is enjoyable. There’s more talk than I like in an action thriller starring two of the biggest badasses in movie history, but the story never drags despite being so thin on substance. Curtis Jackson gives a pretty good performance as basically himself, a recording artist/nightclub owner/designer drug dealer (hopefully that last part is fiction) who becomes the focus of Detectives Turk and Rooster’s (DeNiro and Pacino) latest case.

But there are two conflicting stories going on here - there is the story of the two detectives trying to figure out who this killer is that’s killing off the people that the judicial system is too dumb to catch, and the story of us trying to figure out where the plot is going, because the movie presents itself as though it hands us the answer at the beginning and we have to figure something else out. There is some tension generated by other detectives getting closer to what we think is the truth, but don’t go assuming you know all the answers just because you’re told at the start of the film.

Director John Avnet also directed a recent action thriller starring Al Pacino called 88 Minutes, which was something of a critical disaster, not the least reason for which was because of its highly disappointing ending. Similarly, he doesn’t seem to know how to end Righteous Kill, so he gives us a massive cliche, the good guy and the bad guy in an old abandoned warehouse pointing guns at each other in what I suppose is meant to be a tense standoff, except that there is never for a second the slightest doubt about how it will turn out.

Despite coming at the very end of the summer, this is one of the more anticipated late-summer releases, especially among action fans eager to see the two film legends finally on screen together again. Unfortunately, there is more effort put into overcoming all of what must be the massive complications involved in getting two guys like DeNiro and Pacino into a movie together than there is into making it a good movie beyond their presence. They inhabit their roles, as is to be expected, but the rest of the movie feels like it is hanging off of them like a wet paper bag. It’s more fun than a swift kick in the ass, but to say that we should expect better than this from them would be something of an understatement.

Short list of new DVDs this week, but despite immediate impressions they all seem to be pretty interesting in their own way. Tina Fey, Jackie Chan and Jet Li head up the list of new releases this week, but there’s a new Indian film that looks far more fascinating than anything we usually see these days. And I might add that Special Editions of The Big Lebowski and Cool Hand Luke are also out.  Here are the rest of the details -

BABY MAMA (2008), Romantic Comedy, PG-13, 99 mins.

Baby Mama is an immediate turn-off to me at first glance, although I’m not sure exactly why. It could be that I’m just not into baby comedies anymore, if I ever was. But it should be noted that this is a Saturday Night Live comedy with an outstanding cast, including Tina Fey, Amy Poehler (with the Big Gulp), Sigourney Weaver, Greg Kinnear, and Steve Martin (who we also have to thank for Traitor).

Fey plays Kate Holbrook, a professional woman who has for years neglected her personal life in pursuit of a successful career. Now, at age 37, she suddenly determines herself to have a baby, only to discover that she has an infinitely small possibility of conceiving. Undaunted, she embarks on a mission to find the kookiest blonde imaginable to be her surrogate mother.

Middle-aged, ultra-organized Kate begins an intense self-preparation program for motherhood, reading books about pregnancy and infant care, preparing her home for a new baby, and researching quality schools in her area. Angie (Poehler), however, soon shows up without a place to live, and in classic sit-com mode, the movie combines the super-successful with the super-unsuccessful, and their competing methods of preparing for a baby create all manner of havoc.

Don’t expect a cognitive workout, but it’s actually a pretty heartwarming family comedy.

THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM (2008), Action/Adventure/Comedy/Romance, PG-13, 113 mins.

The long-awaited pairing of Jackie Chan and Jet Li, China’s most prominent ass-kicking movie stars, arrives this week on DVD with The Forbidden Kingdom. I’m going to go ahead and admit that at the time of this writing I have yet to see the movie, but I have to say that the premise gives me a deep feeling of unease at the future of the international kung-fu movie scene.

Jet Li plays the part of The Monkey King, while Jackie Chan plays an old pawn shop owner in Chinatown. One day an American teenager who is obsessed with Chinese martial arts cinema is in the pawn shop and discovers the legendary weapon of the Monkey King which soon sends him to ancient China where he teams up with some Chinese warriors from old lore on a mission to rescue the imprisoned king.

I have heard good things about the movie, but I also know that one of the most effective ways to ridicule any topic, genre, idea, or culture is to add cinematic versions of American teenagers. That just never goes well. Nevertheless, Jackie Chan has been pretty reliable with the cool combinations of action and comedy, and teaming up with Jet Li is reason enough by itself to check it out.

THE FALL (2006), Adventure/Drama/Fantasy, R, 113 mins.

This is going to be my recommendation for the week. It’s the story of Hollywood stuntman in 1920s Los Angeles who lands himself in the hospital while trying to perform a stunt to impress his girlfriend. While in the hospital, he becomes severely depressed and suicidal after his girlfriend leaves her, and he befriends his bedridden roommate, a young girl named Alexandria.

He entertains and enchants Alexandria with vivid, heroic stories about five people uniting to fight a common enemy, setting the stage for fact and fiction to blend together in the drug-ridden hospital environment. He has real affection for Alexandria, but is also gaining her friendship for the purpose of using her to get extra morphine so he can commit suicide.

Definitely a weird premise, but I’ve also noticed that weird premises are generally where the most interesting movies come from. Stories based on stories within stories allow for the most memorable and fascinating experiences, and Indian director Tarsem Singh’s The Fall presents a story that allows a total break from reality and an entrance into a complete fantasy world, reminding me of some classics like The Princess Bride, The Neverending Story, Labyrinth, and even The Cell. See this one.

Regardless of which party you support (if any), we live in dangerous political times in America. Anything remotely political is immediately labeled as right wing or left wing, and then accused by the opposite side of overtly pressing a political agenda. Traitor walks a fine line by approaching head-on one of the most pressing political issues of our time - terrorism - and presenting numerous different political and moral beliefs and perspectives on every side (both right/left and terrorist/non-terrorist), while still managing mostly to avoid directly supporting or condemning either side. This is not an easy task.

Don Cheadle plays a man living in modern Yemen with a complicated past and a morally corrupt occupation of selling detonators to the highest bidder (whether it be terrorists or the United States military doesn’t matter to him). He has been surrounded by violence all his life, and has developed an intense aversion to it, no doubt from having witnessed as a child his father’s violent death in a car bomb. But from these experiences, he has also developed an understanding of the world he lives in, an understanding of how to survive in it, and a whole list of personality contradictions.