Le Chiffre lied about Mathis
Monza860
USPosts: 501MI6 Agent
Why would Le Chiffre lie about Mathis working for him? I still don't get this.
Away at Boot Camp, won't be back until April the earliest.
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But really, how much of a shot would Le Chiffre have had if he told Bond that Vesper was his downfall? His slim chance of getting the password would be COMPLETELY gone rather than just "almost entirely." There was a moment that Bond was tempted to give in for the sake of saving Vesper. He'd have no cause to care if he knew she was working against Bond from the start. Bond suspected Mathis already, and Le Chiffre the calculating person that he is suspected that Bond gave chase after Vesper because of that probability that he had been duped from someone on the inside.
I hope that makes at least a little bit of sense.
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It was never resolved, simply because it doesn't make any sense. In CR, I came to the conclusion that Mathis was working for LC, and Vesper was working for Mr. White. I think there's a general assumption that LC was working for Mr. White and thus part of Quantum, but I don't think that's the case. Mr. White distinctly distanced himself from LC at the beginning of the movie. Anyway, with QoS's script saying that Mathis was cleared, then there's a good chance the LC was simply lying.
None of it was confirmed or denied in QoS, so who knows ?
This is a direct scene from the book, where it is explained. Though it's been a while since i read it, it is something along the lines of Mathis always being very direct, and would have come in person instead of sending a message. Also I don't believe that Mathis ever used a cell phone, so Bond realizes it is unlikely that Mathis would send Vesper a text.
*edit. Mathis uses a cell phone to alert the police of the bodies locked in the trunk after 'disposing' of them.
It was indeed a scene from the book, but the script had altered so much of the story's dynamics that the scene no longer functioned as it was intended. In the novel, Bond realized that Vesper was in danger. In the film, Bond realizes that Mathis was somehow a traitor. The conclusions are quite opposite. In the novel, there was no subterfuge about the 'tell'...Bond lost his hand with LC through sheer bad luck. For some reason, the CR script altered this
to make it seem as if Bond was betrayed by someone and, I guess to provide distraction to the audience, had LC point the finger at Mathis. The entire 'tell' thing should have been left out as all it does is muddle the plot with no acceptable explanation...Did Mathis betray him? If so, why? If not, why did LC say so? If not, who did? Was it Vesper? If Vesper was working with LC, then why did he dump her in the road for Bond to run over? How did he LC know that Bond would think Mathis was the culprit and pursue even if that wasn't the case?
Fleming avoided this entirely by following the classic K.I.S.S. adage and still crafted an engaging story.
You get the impression that White is LC's superior. The way White has to tie up LC's loose ends and try and smooth things over (I'm talking about White shooting LC, and White collecting the money after Gettler fails to do so).
Also, I don't think White distances himself from LC at the beginning, he introduces him. From that first meeting between LC, White and that military guy you get the impression that they're together.
Either way, it's very confusing.
?:)
You mistakenly quoted superado with my post...I just don't want supes to be forced to take my position on CR's plot.
I got the impression that LC's assassination was Mr. White's organization attempting to save Vesper and actually had nothing to do with Bond really. At first, I thought White and LC were of the same organization and I realized that was due in part to the book where SMERSH was it? stepped into take out Le Chiffre because of his bad behavior. But in the film, this doesn't hold up. In the book, LC needed the money because he didn't have it (Bond hid it at the hotel). In the movie, if LC was indeed part of Quantum, then there would be no need for Quantum to kill LC because the had account # with Vesper and the password in Bond.
And Mr. White distinctly says to the general at the beginning of CR that he doesn't make any garantees regarding LC - he only makes the introduction. LC was a terrorist financier, which seems a bit unlike the Quantum we're being introduced to. These are among the reasons why I suspect LC was not aware of Quantum.
The challenge is trying to divorce what Fleming wrote from what the screenwriters clumsily added to it.
It looks to me as if Quantum's main infrastructure is limited to the big hitters like the Tosca go-ers and on the periphery of that are the more disposable/replaceable people like LC providing the financing, the operatives like Yusef who are out there gathering intelligence and the general dogsbody henchmen like Mr Slate etc, typical hieriarchical organisation keeping the most important people furthest from the dirty work.
That does question why Mr White personally was so keen to get in contact with Bond given the fact that he'd already recovered the case full of money. However seeing as after shooting Mr White Bond's getting his ass chased it would certainly suggest that Mr White didn't come alone to the villa. Perhaps they knew as little about Bond as he did about the greater scheme of Quantum and assumed him to be as easily dispensable.
But in QoS they traced LC's money to a hitman hired by Greene, so this suggests a deeper relationship between LC and Quantum beyond that of a subcontractor to the organization's terrorist clients. That is, LC is part of Quantum --perhaps an in-house financier or accountant. At any rate, he and Greene met the same fate so it doesn't look like Q makes any distinction between "their men" and outsiders as far as discipline goes.
LC's losing the poker game sealed his fate --since the organization had Vesper to con the money out of bond, they didn't really need him anymore. Thus Vesper was working for Mr. White with LC knowing nothing about it, which also explains the crash-test dummy stunt. Since they didn't kill him right away after the stock market fiasco, LC must have figured the organization were giving him some leniency to make up the loss, which is why he wasn't so surprised when White showed up at the boat --he would've known Quantum had people everywhere, though he was kept in the dark about Vesper.
Overall, I'd say LC was a member of Quantum and knew how things worked. White was just protecting Quantum's reputation and trying to keep the reality of his company's reach/power a secret when he distanced himself from LC. So either LC didn't read the fine print about subcontractors being reated the same as regular employees, or Quantum just doesn't put much as stock in African "freedom fighters" as it does in South American generalissimos
Additionally, we go back to the conundrum of why LC would risk Vesper being run over by Bond, if he knew they were on the same team (she wouldn't willingly do that!) and if they didn't know, then he still needed Vesper alive for the account information. If LC didn't care about whether Vesper lived or died, and didn't care about the account information, then abducting Vesper was simply a ruse, and it was pure happenstance that Bond chased after her due to the conclusion that Mathis did something that we later find in QoS he really didn't do.
Bond movies a simple. The novels are well written and the plots are revealed in an ordinary manner. This latest installment is nothing but a confusing bunch of scenes.
Im hoping in Bond 23, they shed alot of this innuendo and double agents within double agent stuff and keep it simple.
This way, LeChiffre would have no problem with tossing Vesper in the road because he had no idea she was working for White, who was himself closing in for the kill; at the same time, Mathis could be a double agent after all but one who regrets what he did -- I still need to watch the death scene with Mathis again to listen to the exchange between them about forgiveness. If it turns out he really did betray Bond, his death in Quantum of Solace seems less meaningless than it did when I first saw the film. Even tossing him in the garbage takes on a different connotation as a result.
White, of course, needed both Vesper and Bond alive to get the proper code to recover the money from the Swiss banker. But his speech in Quantum suggests he understood the psychology of the players involved, which means he used Vesper as bait to lure Bond to the Venice house in an effort to get the agent to turn on MI:6 in exchange for Vesper's life -- but while his plans were thwarted when she committed suicide and Quantum's men were all killed by Bond, White still got the money. In the end, Quantum gets everything except Bond.
As an observation, I must say I found the references in QOS to CR's events lazy in two ways; they didn't offer very much in the way of additional information and elaboration for plot-point definition / clarity, nor did they seem to make much effort to assimilate one into the other, either for continuity's sake (for a movie set closely after the previous, there were a few harsh "jumps", Mathis' new life seeming fairly well established for such a short stretch of time being one of them - the ennui of retirement and longing for "the field" seemed to have set in rather prematurely) nor for the sake of illustrating for the benefit of some who may not have seen CR.
For starters, since Obanno was putting up the money -- which he had in cash -- one wonders why White couldn't have just taken it right from the man's camp, if that was his ultimate goal.
Also, he could have just planned to kidnap Vesper at the end rather than lure Bond to the Venice house. It makes sense that he would then contact Bond at a later date and use her life as the fulcrum to tilt Bond's loyalties to Quantum. Why Quantum's men in this case would want to kill Bond rather than subdue him is beyond me.
Mathis' speech about being able to tell good from bad when young makes more dramatic sense if he's really trying to defend his own actions. If so, rather than have MI:6 give Mathis a house, if it had simply been his in the first place the audience might get the sense that to keep up with a wealthy lifestyle and a much younger wife, the once-loyal Mathis had given into cynicism and become an agent for hire.
I had hoped that Quantum of Solace would explain more than it did -- all of the answers don't have to be spelled out, but more would be welcome.
But LC could've just contacted Bond at a later time to get him to give up the password in exchange for Vesper. Probably the only reason he threw Vesper on the road was because Bond was hot on his heels. It's all fanwanking to be sure, but it helps keep the plot sensical ...almost
Gassy, I never thought about Mathis actually being a double agent and then regretting it, but that would've been a much more interesting direction for his character in QoS than what we got onscreen --it might have saved us a lot of other nameless double agents, at least. With so many of them popping out of nowhere, it would have been nice to have someone explain why.
On the other hand, I like how kidnapping people and forcing their loved ones to become double agents is established as Quantum's M.O. --it makes you realize what a hopeless and Sisyphean task it is to fight such an organization, while also making the tragedy of Vesper all the more heart-breaking. The fact that they were attempting the same thing with Bond (I hadn't even realized that's what White meant by "We would've gotten you too" until you mentioned it, thanks!) hints at Quantum being a much more sinister and evil organization than SPECTRE could ever hope to be.
Coincidentally, this noir style lends itself very well to murky motivations and confusing plots that we are debating here. So I think a little style-over-plot can work as long as EON heeds our suggestions