You know, I LOVE the Bond reboot. Daniel Craig is my James Bond now. But there are a few minor things that rub me the wrong way, and the biggest one is the regression in Bond’s firearms.
In CASINO ROYALE, Bond carries a perfectly serviceable Walther P99 in 9mm. But by the time we get to SKYFALL, Bond has downgraded to a Walther PPK. The PPK is a fine little pocket gun, but a single-stack blowback .380 with tiny sights is absolutely not a believable choice for a stone-cold secret agent killer type who routinely gets into gunfights with other stone-cold secret agent killer types.
I know the PPK has been Bond’s trademark gun since Connery, but they really could have gone with the times when it comes to his pistol. I mean, they updated everything else.
(Of course, one could argue it’s a sign of Bond’s badassitude that he can clean the clocks of his opponents with just a PPK.)
Craig wouldn’t know to bitch about it, since he is an anti-gun type.
If they are going to go back to a .380, I would have gone with a Colt Pocketlite Mustang. Or maybe a Pony. Seems to me Colt is missing a good deal here. Would really perk up sales if their gun was used in the next movie!
I agree on Craig being a terrific Bond. The sidearm regression is a shame.
Dunno, famously, good hit men use small caliber weapons at powder burn ranges.
.22LR!
I guess the venerable PPK is still a bad a choice, neither small enough to be truly discreet nor large enough to end fights fast
On the other hand I would give an extra dollar to a movie where the hero ( hell, even the side kick) would one or more of:
A. Eject and and reload in a smooth practiced manner in the middle of the gun fight.
B. Clear a simple malfunction as above.
C. If a modern revolver, use a speed loader
The Expendables. Stallone does some amazing magazine changes.
Hmmm:
“but the Public Housing Police doesn’t get excited about school hardware. When they do their sweeps, they only look for guns and drugs. I could keep the book reader hidden, but the cops gets suspicious if they find nothing illicit.”
For a minute I was going prepared to think that it was acceptable to treat the Police as singular but then I noticed that “cops” is definitely a plural noun, so I looked up some dictionaries.
Still, I guess for $2.99 I can overlook the grammatical issues.
Thanks for pointing out the typo. I’ll correct it as soon as I can.
Hey Marko, since someone else took over the comments to chat about your book, I’m going to join them.
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First off, I’ve been wanting to read it since you teased the first chapter or so a couple years back. So I’m glad I finally got the chance. Its an excellent first novel and I only have two minor complaints.
1. At 225 pages I feel the price was quite reasonable, but at the same time I wanted more long before I got to the end, so 225 pages may have been too short. Theres so much goodness packed in here that I just wanted more š
WARNING SPOILER!! DO NOT READ BEYOND IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK YET!!!
2. I do think it would be fun to find out where the welfare rats got that military hardware. Infact, I kinda expected some sort of TA investigation into that. Instead, you went elsewhere with the plot, and while I dug the change, I’m *still* wondering where the welfare rats got those guns.
Perhaps that will end up a subplot in a future book š
Overall an nice, quick read with good pacing and development. Definately harkens back to some of my favorite Sci-Fi, and I enjoyed the couple of Heinlein shout outs. Want MOAR! š
You are going to finish Lines of Departure soon, right? (I’ll throw a proper review on Amazon after work today :))
I couldn’t have pursued that particular storyline in this novel without doing some seriously unlikely plot contortions. It’s Andrew’s story, strictly from the grunt’s eye view, and we don’t see what he doesn’t see.
However, I have planned an in-between-quel that fits between Terms of Enlistment and Lines of Departure. It will be told from a new point of view, and it will explore exactly where, how, and why that hardware ended up with those people.
First up is Lines of Departure, however, and that one is once again told strictly from Andrew’s point of view.
As long as we’re doing editorial comments…
The EPub version, the ToC only has one chapter, and the author’s name in the metadata is only “Marko”
I thought it interesting that the recognition software worked through a glove in one scene, LOL. I too thought the PPK was a huge step back.
The “smart” gun bullshit was my biggest gripe with a movie. I mean, you’re sending a secret agent on a mission that may require assassinations into countries that have strict gun control laws, and the gun you send with him not only requires him to grip it without gloves in order to use it (the continuity mistake you pointed out aside), thus leaving his prints on the firearm, but is also able to conclusively identify him as the only possible user should the police ever recover the firearm and ask him to grip it?
That’s barking mad.
*with that movie
The first thought I had on hearing about the smart gun was: great, so when he’s caught with it, he’ll be immediately identifiable as an agent of a major government, because where else would he have gotten such a thing? Surely he should have a well-worn, 1950s-vintage PPK that he could have picked up at any cut-rate arms bazaar.
And, given that his opponents generally have guns of their own, there’s not much point in denying them use of his pocket pistol, absent some completely absurd plot gimmick (as seen previously in License to Kill; I haven’t seen Skyfall so I don’t know what contrived situation justifies the biometric doodad).
Ah. Well, it involves a Komodo dragon, so it isn’t really at all contrived.
Hopefully in the next one he upgrades to a PPQ. It’s my current carry gun and I’d love to see a boost in aftermarket support.
I think they did it solely for the Bond 50th. Maybe he’ll be rocking a PPX in Bond 24. Ha!
At least they didn’t go full retro and downgrade him all the way to a Beretta 418 in .25 ACP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_James_Bond_firearms
Hi Marko, How far back does your experience with 007 go? I remember the second movie where he encounters the “dragon” his service weapon was downgraded to a PPK in 32 caliber. At the conclusion he almost puts a ineffectiveness comment in his report. Of course you have to also read the books.