EVERYTHING OR NOTHING

CONTAINS SPOILERS, MR BOND

Well, as many spoilers as you could expect in a documentary about the history of the James Bond books and films. It touches base with most of the major players (except miseryguts Connery) but to be honest it doesn't really tell you very much you didn't already know. Backed near constantly with music from the scores and illustrated with clips, neither of which necessarily come from the film under discussion at the time, it ends up as kind of fun in that Terror In The Aisles kind of way, where you're tempted to shout out the titles as three seconds of You Only Live Twice or Octopussy whizz by. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Everything Or Nothing (which is apparently what EON, the Bond production company, stands for) isn't much concerned with the making of the films themselves - that's dealt with in the Behind The Scenes documentaries in the DVD extras - as the history of Saltzman and Broccoli, their relationship and partnership over the years, and how they eventually parted company. If there's a Blofeld in the tale, it's Kevin McClory, whose favourite tactic was not as spectacular as hollowed volcanoes or lasers from space, but endless lawsuits following his collaboration with Fleming over Thunderball (which still easily ranks as the dullest of the official Bond films, even surpassed by its own messy remake, the unofficial Never Say Never Again).

Sam Mendes is the only director actually interviewed (and then only briefly, and not even about his own film); Robert Davi (in a hat) and Christopher Lee are the only villains. Lee is only there as Fleming's cousin anyway and he's not even interviewed when his own film, the underrated The Man With The Golden Gun, rolls around. With the iconic music mentioned once with no names given, and only Ken Adam on screen from the entire tech department of half a century's worth of film-making, much of the time is spent with current 007 stewards Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli - so there's little in the way of critical argument concerning issues like Bond's alleged sexism, racism or whateverism through the years, the increasing levels of screen violence, 007's fantasy relevance in a post 9/11 reality or Eric Serra's inappropriate score to Goldeneye.

Everything about Everything Or Nothing has been ruthlessly filtered through the publicity machine and it's really less of a documentary about the James Bond films as a lightly disguised corporate video. It's not uninteresting, but it tells you more about the deals struck in boardrooms than how they did the car chase on the ice in Die Another Day which, let's face it, is a hell of a lot more important. I just wish Sean Connery would chill out and join in.

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Red wine with fish: