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I agree, I was just playing the role of the annoying modern teen.
I watched GE in the cinema at 13, my first Bond at the cinema. Having seen all the prior films and owning them on VHS I remember being disappointed by both Brosnan and the film....it wasn't as suave or fun as the Moore era nor as perfect as the Connery films, nor as exciting as the Dalton films (I was thrilled by the LTK TV Sky première), even at that age I could see that OHMSS was also far superior. GE like all the 90's films was mediocre.
It was undoubtedly a defining film in my youth and, despite seeing all the others relatively soon afterwards and enjoying them, GE was always a favourite.
As I've got older I can see its flaws more but I've always considered it a very enjoyable film and its one I confess to having a major soft spot for.
Most Overrated Title Track: Goldfinger again! Not even Bassey's best!
Most Overrated Title Credits: Uh, the atrocious MK12 credits for QoS somehow have defenders... so that wins automatically.
Most Overrated PTS: Tomorrow Never Dies. It's fine but it's also pretty much just generic late-90s Hollywoodized type stuff.
Most Overrated Score: Probably Diamonds Are Forever, to be honest!
Most Overrated Villain: Drax!
Most Overrated Ally: Rik Van Nutter's Leiter is really flat, to me.
Most Overrated Bond Girl: Domino Derval.
Most Overrated Minor Character: Anyone with a pun or joke name can go here.
Most Overrated Henchman: Me thinks Oddjob.
Molly Warmflash resents that.
Yeah, I was about to defend Nutter, but you nailed it with the final bit. They're all pretty naff, Nutter no more so than some of the others.
@Mendes4Lyfe, I have basically written essays on the dilemma of the cinematic Felix. He never has a chance to be impactful, and he always changes (not in the good "character development" way, either). The handsome, smooth and lean Jack Lord becomes the short, pudgy, graying Cec Linder in two films, before then becoming even taller and more gray in the form of Nutter's Leiter. Then he's back to short and pudgy but no longer gray with Norman Burton. What?!
Like Blofeld, Leiter never had any on screen consistency in appearance, but it hurts him more than Ernst because Fleming wrote the villain to be a metamorphic shape-shifting man who could hide away under new faces, so in a way it adds to his character and danger, as you never see him coming. But with Felix there's no reason for the inconsistency and endless casting changes. Even worse than that, though, what do any of them really do? Lord's Leiter is in Jamaica because American missiles are being toppled, but he's not even a glorified errand boy yet, as he'd later become. Every time he shows up, aside from the ending, Bond and Quarrel have already accomplished an objective and no longer need him. Linder's Leiter spends the film just watching Bond do his job, and he doesn't even get to do anything cool at the Fort Knox battle but fake sleep. Nutter's Leiter is just an errand boy, piloting Bond around and having the important duty of suiting him up in underwater diving gear before commenting on how nice he looks. Norman Burton's Leiter is one of the saving graces, because at least in Diamonds Are Forever he actually does something, and there's a reason for him to be there, considering the diamonds are funneling right into Vegas. We get to see him managing agents and planning a scenario for Tiffany to think she's giving the diamonds to Bond/Franks' associates, and not CIA agents. This Felix also has a lot of interesting character details about him. He looks like a man who's been doing the agency job for a long time and by this point in his career he's exhausted by what he's done. The torpid, short-tempered take on Felix here makes sense at this point in the series, as both he and Bond weren't getting any younger and in some ways, were feeling their age (and looking it!).
I would have preferred to have just one actor as Felix throughout the 60s to the early 70s (if the role had to be recast then, I understand). If he was meant to be such an important, recurring part of the series like M, Q and Moneypenny, there should've been one actor locked in for the character for the long haul. I'd prefer Jack Lord, simply because I like what they tried to do with him in Dr. No, casting a man for the part that looked like the American doppelgänger of James Bond with a similar look. I also like that Bond and Felix meet on the big screen for the first time with their guns out, ready to kill each other. A crazy, high-risk start to a long friendship.
Ah well. Shoulda, coulda, woulda.
News to me. One of From Russia with Love's unconscious strengths as a film is that it didn't have a threat to American in it, and therefore escaped having a Felix to uselessly muck about the place for any reason.
You make a good point regarding Burton's Leiter, @Brady. I never considered that he probably has the big impact and involvement than any, and I think that has to do with the fact that he is delegating to a handful of other agents, like you mention. There's a sense that he has taken Bond under his wing during his visit to the US, helping him sneak the diamonds through customs, etc. He actually aids Bond when he's in a scrape, rather than just following him around, open-mouthed.
However, my personal favorite is still Lord. I don't feel like Bond should ever be markedly cooler than Felix. There's just something about the portrayal of a super cool, effortless British guy alongside a bumbling American which strikes one as somewhat apocryphal.
But thankfully, in Hedison and Wright's Leiters the scripts actually give them meaty things to work with, and both men are able to get in on the action. The DEA stuff in LTK is thrilling, as is Felix's part in it, not to mention the tragic nature of his character in the movie as he endures the same pain that Bond once did with Tracy, but even more gruesome. And Wright gets to do some interesting, conflicted things in QoS, working in an agency he doesn't feel much faith in and questioning just what his morals are when the CIA is willing to side with people like Greene from time to time. His choice to help Bond and cut his ties with the CIA deal results in a nice character moment and a carving of a loyal friendship between the pair (and a promotion for Leiter). Like most of QoS, the CIA stuff in the film and Felix's reaction to it grays moral lines and makes us think about right and wrong.
Felix is an all-in-one package when it comes to that. He's incompetent enough to make Bond look great and sets up enough one-liners. That's kind of the issue, though: his purpose isn't anything that makes him a strong, useful or relevant character, and he's always a slave to the story instead of the story serving him. If you cut him out of the 60s films and replaced him with a nameless agent, nothing would change. He adds virtually nothing.
Chances are that seeing it again I'll like it more than You Only Live Twice, at the very least, and like Connery in it more than his performances in his last two, even if the film itself isn't superior to Diamonds Are Forever.
I'll do a Bondathon-esque review of it once mine is over, judging it by the same categories I am now for the official films, then post it in a review thread (if there's one for it here).
Agreed.
I'd say they knew too much and changed their mind a lot.