{"id":1824,"date":"2015-10-27T14:08:30","date_gmt":"2015-10-27T14:08:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1824"},"modified":"2015-10-31T12:31:43","modified_gmt":"2015-10-31T12:31:43","slug":"spectre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2015\/10\/27\/spectre\/","title":{"rendered":"Spectre"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"spectre\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Note \u2013 this review will contain spoilers. Proceed at your own risk!<\/p>\n

Production of James Bond films has slowed since the 1960s. When the series began, Sean Connery knocked out five in as many years. Roger Moore couldn\u2019t quite keep up that pace, but still managed seven in 12 years. Pierce Brosnan largely managed to evade the legal difficulties which kept Bond off our screens for six years prior to GoldenEye<\/i>\u00a0and so starred in four films over a seven year period. Poor old Daniel Craig has taken eleven years to create as many adventures \u2013 so each one needs to be worth waiting for.<\/p>\n

Prior to sitting down to watch Spectre<\/em> (at the BFI IMAX at midnight!) I rewatched the previous three movies. Briefly, Casino Royale<\/em> was slightly better than I remembered \u2013 the double-crossing at the end isn\u2019t as confusing as I thought and the mix of human drama and bonkers action works brilliantly. It\u2019s still a shame that the goons who retrieve the cash at the end are so anonymous, and we never meet Vesper’s boyfriend, but it\u2019s basically brilliant. Quantum of Solace<\/em> was even worse than I remembered \u2013 an unfunny, frantic, borderline nonsensical mess of a movie. And Skyfall<\/em> was every bit as good as I remembered \u2013 astonishing\u00a0action sequences, nifty plotting and fabulous performances. So Spectre<\/em> had a lot to live up to.<\/p>\n

One of the pleasures of Skyfall<\/em> was the way in which it reassembled the Bond \u201cfamily\u201d \u2013 installing a new more traditionally avuncular M, casting fresh young faces as Q and Moneypenny and returning rogue agent 007 to the fold. Whereas the first two Daniel Craig movies were about the new rookie finding his feet and the third was about a damaged agent returning to the fold, Spectre<\/em> just has to be business-as-usual, which is potentially slightly trickier to make interesting, although it should make it easier to get straight on with the thrill-ride. It\u2019s disappointing then that early on, we\u00a0spend so much time replaying tropes from the earlier Daniel Craig movies, Skyfall<\/em> in particular. Bond is going rogue, again. Bond\u2019s bosses are unable to track his movements, again. The double-0 programme is under bureaucratic threat, again. A shadowy organisation has people \u201ceverywhere\u201d, again and so on.<\/p>\n

The other major feature of Spectre<\/em> is its desire to turn the four Daniel Craig movies so far into a coherent saga. Quite why this was felt necessary is not clear to me. Casino<\/em> wiped the slate clean and started from scratch and everybody loved it. Quantum<\/em> attempted to turn the Casino<\/em> villain\u2019s plan into part of a grander conspiracy and everybody hated it. Skyfall<\/em> totally ignored the previous two films and everybody loved it.\u00a0How Michael G Wilson and co. drew from this the lesson that what the public wants is for the films to all connect up is anyone\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n

The plan starts early with glimpses of Eva Green, Mads Mikkelson, Judi Dench and Javier Bardem floating past in the opening titles \u2013 which, by the way, are spectacular, rendering even Sam Smith\u2019s wailing dirge of a theme song acceptable, which is quite a feat. The problem is that reminding us of characters from past adventures is all the movie ever really does to build its multi-part saga. We are apparently meant to think that if Christoph Waltz only mentions Raoul Silva then we will forget that every single thing Javier Bardem\u00a0does in Skyfall<\/em> is connected with his being an embittered ex-secret service agent with a personal grudge against M, and we will instead start to remember that his actions were a carefully calculated part of a masterplan being developed by a vast international conspiracy. Sorry, movie. No dice.<\/p>\n

The problem is even more significant when it comes to Dominic Greene and the already fairly muddled events of Quantum of Solace<\/em>. Possibly the Eon team attempted to get back the rights to the name \u201cSpectre\u201d in 2008 so that they could identify the villain\u2019s organisation with that moniker, and when that failed, they used the word \u201cQuantum\u201d instead, tying it in with one of the few remaining Fleming story titles. But we are now meant to believe that the all-powerful, all-encompassing Quantum is itself a mere subsidiary of the even more all-powerful and even more all-encompassing Spectre \u2013 Google to the new film\u2019s Alphabet Inc. I for one don\u2019t buy it.<\/p>\n

And in fact the problem is even worse because we also have Andrew Scott running around trying to create his own all-powerful and all-encompassing secret organisation \u2013 so we have three<\/u><\/em> independent grand conspiracies, all of which overlap and intersect in poorly-defined ways. I long for the days when all we had was one mad man who wanted to blow up the world.<\/p>\n

The general feeling that the people trying to stitch these films together haven\u2019t actually watched them recently is compounded when Q makes a tart reference to the mess 007 made of his Aston Martin DB5 in the previous movie, and the beaten-up vehicle is shown undergoing renovations in his workshop. But the point<\/u> of Bond switching to the DB5 in Skyfall <\/em>was that it wasn\u2019t <\/u>a \u201ccompany car\u201d and therefore MI6 couldn\u2019t track him. And again, when Christoph Waltz chortles that every one of Bond\u2019s women has died \u2013 he is apparently forgetting Camille who walks off at the end of Quantum<\/em> perfectly intact.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s talk about Christoph Waltz as Franz Oberhauser<\/span> John Harrison<\/span> Ernst Stavro Blofeld \u2013 complete with white cat! Waltz is marvellous in the part, and most of his evil plan makes some sort of sense, although it\u2019s a lot of bother to go to to make one already fairly gloomy agent a bit frowny. But I didn\u2019t really buy his back-story at all. When we can\u2019t see the young James and Franz (and, to be clear, I wouldn\u2019t want to), the notion that they were briefly step-brothers doesn\u2019t really resonate. He\u2019s just another cackling maniac, which is fine \u2013 just what a film like this needs in fact \u2013 and even better if he can be played by a two-time Oscar winner. So why bother with all this psychodrama if the film isn’t prepared to really commit to it?<\/p>\n

But to be honest, as unsatisfactory as all this stuff is, it\u2019s in the margins. When the film concentrates on the present-day storyline instead of dwelling in the past, and when the action starts, it works brilliantly well. The opening sequence, if not quite topping the extraordinary car, train, foot chase in Skyfall<\/em>, is very rewarding, beginning with a gorgeous long tracking shot \u2013 which was no doubt stitched together from half-a-dozen-or-more set-ups, Birdman\u00ad\u00ad<\/em>-style, but is still a very, very stylish way to open the movie. Daniel Craig is on blistering form throughout, his wry grimace as the ledge he\u2019s scrambled on to starts to give way beneath him is just perfect, and he continues to absolutely nail the part to the wall. If he does bow out before his fifth contracted film, he will be an amazingly hard act to follow.<\/p>\n

Other action sequences also meet if never quite exceeding the high bar set by recent outings. The car chase in Rome, where 007 discovers that not all of the gadgets in the new DB10 are quite up to scratch is very funny and exciting, the plane\/car chase in Austria is novel and works very well indeed, and the bone-crunching train fight tops even From Russia with Love<\/em>. Some of the quieter moments work well too. What a pleasure to see a new version of the Spectre boardroom, also from Russia<\/em> and others, and \u2013 look! \u2013 a bonkers villain\u2019s lair in the depths of a crater which blows up absolutely spectacularly towards the end. Monica Bellucci is criminally underused but makes the most of her seven or so minutes of screen time, and Lea Seydoux works miracles with a very thinly drawn character, fleshing out Madelaine Swann into something approximating a real human woman.<\/p>\n

The only real disappointment, apart\u00a0from all my grousing about saga-building above, is the final show-down in London. The chase through the wrecked MI6 works well, but as nice as it is giving Bond a family again, what Ralph Fiennes, Ben Wishaw, Naomie Harris, Rory Kinnear and Andrew Scott are up to is just far, far less interesting than Bond vs\u00a0Blofeld. Even the movie seems to lose faith or interest (or both) in the frankly rather artificial count-down associated with the Nine Eyes system, and Rory Kinnear seems to run out of lines entirely about half-an-hour before the end, so he just stands around looking concerned. And it does suggest that not everyone is paying very close attention when the opening action sequence and the closing action sequence both require an out-of-control helicopter, but nobody ever mentions this fact to make it seem deliberate.<\/p>\n

So very good, then, rather than great. Casino <\/em>and Skyfall<\/em> are, in my view, stone cold classics up there with From Russia with Love<\/em>, Goldfinger<\/em>, The Spy Who Loved Me<\/em> and GoldenEye<\/em>. While Spectre<\/em> is certainly far from being as awful as Quantum of Solace <\/em>(or A View to a Kill<\/em>, or The Man with the Golden Gun<\/em>), it\u2019s stuck slightly in the good-solid entry stakes, both because there isn\u2019t a single action sequence which completely redefines what\u2019s possible, and because some of the plotting is simultaneously overly complicated and somewhat half-hearted.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s really important though is that it starts with the gun barrel (for the first time since Die Another Day<\/em>) and ends with \u201cJames Bond will return\u201d. You betcha.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note \u2013 this review will contain spoilers. Proceed at your own risk! Production of James Bond films has slowed since the 1960s. When the series began, Sean Connery knocked out five in as many years. Roger Moore couldn\u2019t quite keep up that pace, but still managed seven in 12 years. Pierce Brosnan largely managed to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25,11],"tags":[431,55,19],"class_list":["post-1824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-the-cinema","category-culture","tag-birdman","tag-james-bond","tag-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s5JY5l-spectre","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1824"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1838,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824\/revisions\/1838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}