See full version: The Best James Bond Scenes Set In London
The release of the latest James Bond film, No Time To Die, has been delayed until September 2021. To commiserate (or celebrate, depending on your predilection) we've picked some of our favourite moments of 007 at large in London.
Let's not forget that moment back in 2012 when Bond dropped in on Buckingham Palace before the Olympic opening ceremony (that Queen impersonator is REALLY good).
Aside from the requisite, high-energy introduction in Mexico City, 2015's Spectre film begins and ends with Bond in London. It starts sedately enough, a Notting Hill apartment here, a HM Treasury Building courtyard there. But by the film's kaboom-y climax, there's been a high-speed car chase through Admiralty Arch, and Terry Farrell's MI6 Building and Westminster Bridge have been well and truly battered.
THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH opens with the longest pre-credit sequence in 007 history lasting 14 minutes and includes Bond in the Q Boat in high speed pursuit down the Thames. The boat’s mid-air barrel roll was performed by stuntman Gary Powell using Vickers air mortars attached to the side of the boat — six cameras captured the stunt.
The Man With The Golden Gun with Roger Moore 1974
And don’t let him touch your Hovercraft either … from Die Another Day with Pierce Brosnan 2002:
In a series where heroines have been named "Pussy Galore", "Solitaire", and "Octopussy", you've really got to work hard to stand out. Yet the good Doctor Jones manages this feat by a) being called "Christmas" and b) being played by Denise Richards, the amply proportioned star of Wild Things and Starship Troopers. It's a casting decision as surreal as Daniel Day Lewis appearing in American Pie 5 or Paris Hilton playing the lead in the next Terrence Malick. More damagingly, the character isn't at all developed and does very little of importance - except for the final scene, when Bond cracks about 30 terrible puns in the space of ten seconds and Christmas fails to hit him. more
A rare female antagonist - From Russia With Love is the only other film which could claim to have a woman as its main villain. here
Brosnan muddles around Azerbaijan hunting a slowly dying terrorist, accompanied by an implausibly named (and just implausible) nuclear physicist, and shoots the breeze with M.
Pierce Brosnan became only the third Bond to make a third film with this interesting, slightly underpowered outing that has some great moments but not a coherent whole. While both Sean Connery and Roger Moore marked their third mission with classics - Goldfinger and The Spy Who Loved Me respectively -
While I could completely fill this list with chases from the James Bond films, which feature many incredible examples of these scenes, I will attempt to keep the list fresh by only using two chases from Bond films. Without further ado, here are some of my favourite boat chases in cinema history. more
The World is Not Enough was Pierce Brosnan’s third outing as James Bond and is often considered one of the weakest entries in the series. It does, however, have an absolutely stellar boat chase. In pursuit of an assassin who helped detonate a bomb inside MI6, 007 commandeers Q’s “retirement boat,” and embarks on a heart-racing chase on the Thames (the moral conundrum of Q using taxpayer money to make a boat for his retirement will be saved for a later article). This chase is on this list simply because it feels so dangerous. Bond is in a very small one-man boat that seems perilously close to flipping on several occasions throughout the chase. I couldn’t say if it is the fastest chase on my list but it certainly feels that way, with Bond’s boat bouncing along in the assassin’s wake attempting to catch up to her much larger vessel, dodging machine-gun fire and grenades from the driver. This chase also includes some of Brosnan Bond’s classic touches, including destroying people’s property and ruining their days for absolutely no reason, and adjusting his tie while completely submerged in the boat. You can get a feel for his character in this chase. It’s more than an incredible action sequence. here
Car chases in movies have existed since the beginning of cinema’s storied timeline. They are one of the staples of the medium, occupying a special place in the pop-culture psyche. However, that isn’t what I’m here to talk about today. This is all about the impact of boat chases on film.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love a well-shot car chase. Mad Max: Fury Road is one my favourite films ever, and that’s essentially a 120-minute car chase. My main reason for writing this article is I feel that not enough credit is given to boat chases as a part of film history. There are always specific chases that are pointed to (which I’ll get to in a moment). But as a part of the bigger picture, I feel they have never been given their time in the sun. It’s time for me to do my small part to change that.