![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swehPeople have been saying that this film is quite true to the book, which is unusual for a Bond film. Mostly they have the title and maybe a couple of character names and not much else in common. It had been many many years since I read the book (possibly 20 years!) that I'd forgotten what it was about. I saw the film then reread the book. And, y'know, ....
Quick summary of the book... the first Bond book, written in 1953. The cold war is the background to this. Le Chiffre is the underground paymaster for a heavily communist French trade union, which is potentially a fifth column for "redland". Le Chiffre took money given to the union by Leningrad and invested it in a chain of brothels. Then the French changed their laws and his investment lost all value so now he's going to gamble big at cards to win back the money and so keep the KGB off his back. Bond is sent to beat him, thus bringing down the union and destroying a potential communist asset. The first 1/3 of the book is setting of the scene, getting the characters into place, discovery that the enemy already knows about Bond (bugs in his room). The next 1/6 of the book is detail of the game where Bond loses all his money at Bacarat to Le Chiffre, is rescued by Felix, threatened by a gun, and wins the last hand and all the money. Then we get a kidnapping scene, a chase scene, a torture scene and a rescue by SMERSH, of all people. The final 25% of the book is Bond worrying about his masculinity, his future (he gets very emotional about it) and then falling in love with the girl, with the last handful of pages being her getting scared and killing herself, with her suicide note revealing that she was the double agent that blew his cover. Bond hardens his heart and finds a will to go on with his job.
There is actually very little action in the book, with most of the content being scene setting or Bond being introspective and analytical.
Now to the film. I'm not sure when (in the Bond timeline) this is meant to have been set; we have flashbacks to his original mission but then back in the present the characters act as if he's a new double-O or something. I'm not sure if they're "resetting" the Bond universe or if this was meant to follow on from the previous films. It didn't seem to mesh in. Maybe I'm forgetting something from previous films, or missed a plot point. Ah well.
In Bond style we have a over-the-top chase scene. The villain of the chase is Sebastien Foucan, who appears to be a real-life Sonic The Hedgehog (he created something called Parkour). His moves are amazing, and the chase scene is great fun. I actually quite liked Bond in this chase; he wasn't super-man (well, not as much as he's been in other films; still OTT, sure) and cheats... uses bulldozers, misses jumps, and in the end is so adrenaline fired up that he shoots the baddie while in an embassy (much to the annoyance of M, when it appears in newspapers).
In this film Le Chiffre has changed into being a money man for terrorists; he is their banker. Bond was chasing the earlier bad-guy in order to find a lead to Le Chiffre. Le Chiffre is greedy and invests his clients money on stocks, planning on destroying a prototype of the company and cleaning up on the resulting collapse of their share value. In Bond's investigations (very implausable; no you can't get GPS co-ordinates of the other end of a phone call from a SIM card!) he stumbles over this plot and prevents it, causing Le Chiffre to lose all his money, thus requiring him to set up a high stakes poker game where the winner takes all.
So then we go through various moving characters into place (stupid dialogues on trains where Bond and The Girl analyse each other, argue in the hotel etc etc) and finally we get to the card game. Poker rather than Bacarat. He gets poisoned (requiring a dash to his car where he has an analysis kit and heart shock paddles) rather than threatened with a hidden gun, but he loses and needs to be refinanced by Felix, and wins in the end. Kidnapping, chase scene, torture all proceed. Essentially this part of the film does follow the book in essence (if not in detail). A rescue happens, he recovers in hospital, falls in love with The Girl, recovers etc etc. Details are different, but again follows the essence of the book. Just as he's about to quit his job he learns that the money hasn't been sent to the treasury and that The Girl still has it and she's actually working for someone else. Now we diverge from the book and a whole new set of players (unless I'd forgotten them from earlier) appeared who wanted the money and so more chase and action and the girl kills herself out of shame. The film ends with Bond having a new reason to do his job and starts tracking down the leads to these new players.
So, yeah, I can understand why people are saying this film is true to the book. In essence it is. Not in details, to be sure, because the book doesn't have enough in it to make a film. Changing card games (because poker is currently popular), terrorism rather than the Russians etc etc are all valid changes.
If you go in expecting to see a Bond movie then it's near the top of genre. The new guy isn't quite right (there seems to be a lack of emotion in him) but that might be first-film effect.
Quick summary of the book... the first Bond book, written in 1953. The cold war is the background to this. Le Chiffre is the underground paymaster for a heavily communist French trade union, which is potentially a fifth column for "redland". Le Chiffre took money given to the union by Leningrad and invested it in a chain of brothels. Then the French changed their laws and his investment lost all value so now he's going to gamble big at cards to win back the money and so keep the KGB off his back. Bond is sent to beat him, thus bringing down the union and destroying a potential communist asset. The first 1/3 of the book is setting of the scene, getting the characters into place, discovery that the enemy already knows about Bond (bugs in his room). The next 1/6 of the book is detail of the game where Bond loses all his money at Bacarat to Le Chiffre, is rescued by Felix, threatened by a gun, and wins the last hand and all the money. Then we get a kidnapping scene, a chase scene, a torture scene and a rescue by SMERSH, of all people. The final 25% of the book is Bond worrying about his masculinity, his future (he gets very emotional about it) and then falling in love with the girl, with the last handful of pages being her getting scared and killing herself, with her suicide note revealing that she was the double agent that blew his cover. Bond hardens his heart and finds a will to go on with his job.
There is actually very little action in the book, with most of the content being scene setting or Bond being introspective and analytical.
Now to the film. I'm not sure when (in the Bond timeline) this is meant to have been set; we have flashbacks to his original mission but then back in the present the characters act as if he's a new double-O or something. I'm not sure if they're "resetting" the Bond universe or if this was meant to follow on from the previous films. It didn't seem to mesh in. Maybe I'm forgetting something from previous films, or missed a plot point. Ah well.
In Bond style we have a over-the-top chase scene. The villain of the chase is Sebastien Foucan, who appears to be a real-life Sonic The Hedgehog (he created something called Parkour). His moves are amazing, and the chase scene is great fun. I actually quite liked Bond in this chase; he wasn't super-man (well, not as much as he's been in other films; still OTT, sure) and cheats... uses bulldozers, misses jumps, and in the end is so adrenaline fired up that he shoots the baddie while in an embassy (much to the annoyance of M, when it appears in newspapers).
In this film Le Chiffre has changed into being a money man for terrorists; he is their banker. Bond was chasing the earlier bad-guy in order to find a lead to Le Chiffre. Le Chiffre is greedy and invests his clients money on stocks, planning on destroying a prototype of the company and cleaning up on the resulting collapse of their share value. In Bond's investigations (very implausable; no you can't get GPS co-ordinates of the other end of a phone call from a SIM card!) he stumbles over this plot and prevents it, causing Le Chiffre to lose all his money, thus requiring him to set up a high stakes poker game where the winner takes all.
So then we go through various moving characters into place (stupid dialogues on trains where Bond and The Girl analyse each other, argue in the hotel etc etc) and finally we get to the card game. Poker rather than Bacarat. He gets poisoned (requiring a dash to his car where he has an analysis kit and heart shock paddles) rather than threatened with a hidden gun, but he loses and needs to be refinanced by Felix, and wins in the end. Kidnapping, chase scene, torture all proceed. Essentially this part of the film does follow the book in essence (if not in detail). A rescue happens, he recovers in hospital, falls in love with The Girl, recovers etc etc. Details are different, but again follows the essence of the book. Just as he's about to quit his job he learns that the money hasn't been sent to the treasury and that The Girl still has it and she's actually working for someone else. Now we diverge from the book and a whole new set of players (unless I'd forgotten them from earlier) appeared who wanted the money and so more chase and action and the girl kills herself out of shame. The film ends with Bond having a new reason to do his job and starts tracking down the leads to these new players.
So, yeah, I can understand why people are saying this film is true to the book. In essence it is. Not in details, to be sure, because the book doesn't have enough in it to make a film. Changing card games (because poker is currently popular), terrorism rather than the Russians etc etc are all valid changes.
If you go in expecting to see a Bond movie then it's near the top of genre. The new guy isn't quite right (there seems to be a lack of emotion in him) but that might be first-film effect.
