punch above one's weight #2

「007シリーズ」で、わたしが好きな作品と言えば『サンダーボール作戦』『ゴールドフィンガー』『女王陛下の007』です。The Guardianの批評家は『ドクター・ノオ』が一番だと主張します。これも理由はわかります。記念すべき第一作でありますし、現在のボンドガールのイメージを作ったのもこの『ドクター・ノオ』です。今回は、この批評から表現を拾います。

赤字のpunch above one’s weightに注目します。これはすでに元ゼミ生が取り上げています。punch over one’s weight - 田邉祐司ゼミ 常時英心：言葉の森からこれは、「期待よりも高い成績を収める」という意味で、ボクシングを引喩したidiomです。さらにpunchはhitにも書き換えが可能で、同意語としてoverachieveを挙げることができます。weightは「体重」、すなわち「ウエート、階級」のことです。weightを含むidiomはほかにも、carry weight、pull one's (own) weight、throw one's weight around (about)など多彩です。

Throwing their weight around - 田邉祐司ゼミ 常時英心：言葉の森から

ちなみに紫で強調したpurpleもまた去年ブログ記事purple - 田邉祐司ゼミ 常時英心：言葉の森からで扱ったので、合わせてご確認下さい。(Othello)

Fifty years later, however – having seen all the Bond pictures and reviewed most of them – I'm inclined for several reasons, to like Dr No far more than any of its successors, though as I've suggested, I think Casino Royale is the best.

The first reason is that the Bond series was not then a franchise (a term that was not to be applied to the cinema for decades to come). Nor was it an institution, or a curious, outdated source of national pride, or an embarrassingly archaic badge of national pride, of a Britain continuing to punch above its weight on the international scene. Dr No is a modest thriller with a tough, stylish hero of some charm doing his job without the assistance of elaborate ordnance or eye-popping gadgetry.

He pursues women, but doesn't attract them as if he possessed some magical power or irresistible magnetism. In his first star role, Sean Connery is confident but not arrogant, a man comfortable in a dinner jacket but not born to the purple. Like Albert Finney and Peter O'Toole, whose careers took off at much the same time, he's a harbinger of a major social change in class, fashion and behaviour that seemed attractive at the time and was later to take less likable forms.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/sep/25/my-favourite-bond-film-dr-no?newsfeed=true