Spectre (12A.)
Directed by Sam Mendes.
Starring Daniel Craig, Lea Seydoux, Christoph Waltz, Dave Bautista, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Monica Bellucci and Ben Whishaw. 148 mins.
Much of western culture is infused with a sense of regret at having misplaced most of the best things from the sixties. Spectre, the secret criminal organisation bent on world domination that vanished from the Bond films at the end of that decade, (actually 1971 with Diamonds Are Forever) probably isn't one of the bigger losses but its absence has been keenly felt; the Bond series has spent the last four and half decades trying to rediscover the glamour and peerless confidence of the Connery/ Lazenby era. In Spectre, Bond 24, they get it back; and then let it slip through their fingers.
The first hour of Spectre is magnificent; like a 21st Century Goldfinger. There's been much speculation about what a possible Christopher Nolan directed Bond film might look like and I would suggest it would be very much like this. It is beautifully shot (by Nolan's Interstellar cameraman Hoyte Van Hoytema) but mostly it is just so casually assured. Everything is seamless and perfect: even that Sam Smith song.
The Craig era, which was such a departure when it started out, such a break from the old routine, has now circled all the way back to embrace the classic Bond movie formula. Spectre has all the traditional elements we've come to expect from a Bond film and delivers them in more or less the traditional order. Having spent most of Skyfall introducing a new support cast – the new M, Q and Moneypenny – in Spectre they can actually start having a bit of fun with them. There's lots of humour, often very funny, and everything is done with more wit, skill, intelligence and zip than before.
And yes, just like classic Bond it is silly, very silly. Spectre is an absurd and outdated conceit yet the grace with which the film molds it onto contemporary fears about our surveillance culture is rather smart. The scene where they have a classic Spectre meeting, everybody packed around the long table is thrillingly audacious. Do they really think that in 2015 they can get away with having an international gang of criminal masterminds all turn up at a chateau in Rome for a board meeting, with all their sports cars parked up outside? Well, they can, and they do.
Right from Casino Royale they have been trying to sneak Spectre back into the pictures, starting with the Quantum organisation. It is always seemed like a counter intuitive move given the general mood was to ground Bond more in reality, but here Spectre becomes an all encompassing conspiracy theory, the Illuminati of espionage, a convenient blame-all for every crime. It's a way for Bond films to address the real world, but at a remove so it doesn't seem exploitative or crass. This Bond takes on the whole Edward Snowden story, with MI6 about to be undermined and replaced by C (Andrew Scott) who is heading up a new system that will see nine major countries pool, and have shared access to, their combined surveillance resources.
Something happens to the film around the hour mark though. It's not that this, the longest of all Bond movies, loses steam; but where it had previously seemed effortless, you can sense the energy being exerted trying to keep the thing moving. It is also the case that it stops being a modern day Connery Bond, and becomes more of a modern day Moore Bond. It starts out like it has a clear direction, that it knows exactly where it is heading, but then loses direction and allows casual globetrotting to replace plot.
And it may be entirely coincidental but the moment when you first feel that the movie is slipping is Seydoux's entrance as the Bond girl. Her character is working in a slick glass medical facility on a snowy mountain top (there are a number of these transparent buildings in Spectre; isn't there an adage about people who spy not working in glass buildings?) and almost immediately the film delivers its first weak gag, and a gimmicky and contrived chase sequence. Seydoux strikes me as the kind of woman that other women adore; that they would go on and on about how stylish and sophisticated she is, while men agree because it is not in their interests to disagree, while all the time thinking that if the producers are going to pick a Bond girl from the stars of a three hour art house drama about a lesbian relationship, best not choose the actress who played the butch one. Especially as Monica Bellucci, is dispensed with after a couple of scenes, a role so small it barely counts as second Bond girl.
The main issue is that all the best stunts and action sequences come early on, and that the climax is the film's least effective set piece. During the rest of the film Mendes has great fun offering up his own takes on traditional Bond standards – the helicopter fight, the train fight, the car chase, the destruction of the villain lair. For the conclusion of Skyfall, he came up with something bold and unlike anything seen before in 007 and it turned out to be the film's strongest element. Here the finale wants to seem bold and original but is a bells-on rehash of the opening of The World Is Not Enough.
Nobody Does It Better, according to the Carly Simon song, suggesting that in the bedroom Bond offers total satisfaction. The films though, even the best ones, always leave you a little frustrated, a little unfulfilled. Spectre may just be the pick of the Craig Bonds, but for a while it offers you a taste of something much more, something truly great, a Bond film that could put the whole world in its place.
Spectre (12A.)
Directed by Sam Mendes.
Starring Daniel Craig, Lea Seydoux, Christoph Waltz, Dave Bautista, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Monica Bellucci and Ben Whishaw. 148 mins.
Much of western culture is infused with a sense of regret at having misplaced most of the best things from the sixties. Spectre, the secret criminal organisation bent on world domination that vanished from the Bond films at the end of that decade, (actually 1971 with Diamonds Are Forever) probably isn't one of the bigger losses but its absence has been keenly felt; the Bond series has spent the last four and half decades trying to rediscover the glamour and peerless confidence of the Connery/ Lazenby era. In Spectre, Bond 24, they get it back; and then let it slip through their fingers.
The first hour of Spectre is magnificent; like a 21st Century Goldfinger. There's been much speculation about what a possible Christopher Nolan directed Bond film might look like and I would suggest it would be very much like this. It is beautifully shot (by Nolan's Interstellar cameraman Hoyte Van Hoytema) but mostly it is just so casually assured. Everything is seamless and perfect: even that Sam Smith song.
The Craig era, which was such a departure when it started out, such a break from the old routine, has now circled all the way back to embrace the classic Bond movie formula. Spectre has all the traditional elements we've come to expect from a Bond film and delivers them in more or less the traditional order. Having spent most of Skyfall introducing a new support cast – the new M, Q and Moneypenny – in Spectre they can actually start having a bit of fun with them. There's lots of humour, often very funny, and everything is done with more wit, skill, intelligence and zip than before.
And yes, just like classic Bond it is silly, very silly. Spectre is an absurd and outdated conceit yet the grace with which the film molds it onto contemporary fears about our surveillance culture is rather smart. The scene where they have a classic Spectre meeting, everybody packed around the long table is thrillingly audacious. Do they really think that in 2015 they can get away with having an international gang of criminal masterminds all turn up at a chateau in Rome for a board meeting, with all their sports cars parked up outside? Well, they can, and they do.
Right from Casino Royale they have been trying to sneak Spectre back into the pictures, starting with the Quantum organisation. It is always seemed like a counter intuitive move given the general mood was to ground Bond more in reality, but here Spectre becomes an all encompassing conspiracy theory, the Illuminati of espionage, a convenient blame-all for every crime. It's a way for Bond films to address the real world, but at a remove so it doesn't seem exploitative or crass. This Bond takes on the whole Edward Snowden story, with MI6 about to be undermined and replaced by C (Andrew Scott) who is heading up a new system that will see nine major countries pool, and have shared access to, their combined surveillance resources.
Something happens to the film around the hour mark though. It's not that this, the longest of all Bond movies, loses steam; but where it had previously seemed effortless, you can sense the energy being exerted trying to keep the thing moving. It is also the case that it stops being a modern day Connery Bond, and becomes more of a modern day Moore Bond. It starts out like it has a clear direction, that it knows exactly where it is heading, but then loses direction and allows casual globetrotting to replace plot.
And it may be entirely coincidental but the moment when you first feel that the movie is slipping is Seydoux's entrance as the Bond girl. Her character is working in a slick glass medical facility on a snowy mountain top (there are a number of these transparent buildings in Spectre; isn't there an adage about people who spy not working in glass buildings?) and almost immediately the film delivers its first weak gag, and a gimmicky and contrived chase sequence. Seydoux strikes me as the kind of woman that other women adore; that they would go on and on about how stylish and sophisticated she is, while men agree because it is not in their interests to disagree, while all the time thinking that if the producers are going to pick a Bond girl from the stars of a three hour art house drama about a lesbian relationship, best not choose the actress who played the butch one. Especially as Monica Bellucci, is dispensed with after a couple of scenes, a role so small it barely counts as second Bond girl.
The main issue is that all the best stunts and action sequences come early on, and that the climax is the film's least effective set piece. During the rest of the film Mendes has great fun offering up his own takes on traditional Bond standards – the helicopter fight, the train fight, the car chase, the destruction of the villain lair. For the conclusion of Skyfall, he came up with something bold and unlike anything seen before in 007 and it turned out to be the film's strongest element. Here the finale wants to seem bold and original but is a bells-on rehash of the opening of The World Is Not Enough.
Nobody Does It Better, according to the Carly Simon song, suggesting that in the bedroom Bond offers total satisfaction. The films though, even the best ones, always leave you a little frustrated, a little unfulfilled. Spectre may just be the pick of the Craig Bonds, but for a while it offers you a taste of something much more, something truly great, a Bond film that could put the whole world in its place.
