The dead are alive
Spectre (2015): 6 out of 10: Spectre is the 24th film in the James Bond franchise, released in 2015, and directed by Sam Mendes. It stars Daniel Craig as the iconic MI6 agent James Bond. The movie continues the narrative arc established in Skyfall (2012), providing a deeper dive into Bond’s past and linking previous films through the shadowy organization known as Spectre.
The film begins in Mexico City during a parade for Day of the Dead festival. A parade that does not exist in real life but that Spectre (The movie not the fictional terrorist organization) made up out of the whole cloth. What we do get is a fantastic fictional parade. Camera tracking shots that would not be out of place in Goodfellas, and incredible stunt work by a helicopter pilot or two.
Bond is on an unauthorized mission to assassinate Marco Sciarra, a terrorist plotting an attack. After an explosive chase, Bond kills Sciarra and retrieves his ring with a cute little octopus on it, which opens a lot of doors and provides a lot of exposition.
Back in London, Bond faces scrutiny from his superior, M, played by Ralph Fiennes. MI6 is in turmoil as it merges with MI5 under the new security head Max Denbigh (Andrew Scott), who aims to replace the 00 program with a global surveillance network called “Nine Eyes.” M grounds Bond, but Bond disregards this because he is James Bond.
Bond travels to Rome to attend Sciarra’s funeral, where he seduces Sciarra’s widow, Lucia (Monica Bellucci). (Kinda creepy no matter how you dice it.) Through her, he infiltrates a clandestine SPECTRE meeting led by Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz), where he learns the organization is orchestrating global terrorism. Oberhauser recognizes Bond, forcing him to flee.
Following a lead, Bond finds Mr. White, a former Quantum operative, in Austria. (This is the guy from Quantum of Solace. Yeah, I didn’t remember him either) dying from poison. White directs Bond to protect his daughter, Dr. Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), who holds vital information. After White’s death, Bond and Swann team up, evading assassins sent by SPECTRE’s henchman, Mr. Hinx (Dave Bautista).
After a couple of chases, Bond and Swann visit the bad guys’ headquarters. Seriously, they just show up. Shenanigans ensue and James blows up the bad guys’ headquarters after the bad guy tells James the entire plot up until now. (He is his brother. His actual name is Blofeld. James’ new creepy boss is a double agent. It is a lot)
The Good
The Good: Dave Bautista has a habit of making everything he is in a little better. Spectre is no exception. When he leaves Spectre (With a great Jaws reference. The movie, not the Richard Keil character.) Spectre seems to lose a bit of its mojo.
Daniel Craig is solid as always and Léa Seydoux is a great Bond girl always available to get kidnapped in a moment’s notice. I am not sure I buy thier romance mind you, but this is a Bond film. That is a landing that the series almost never hits for me.
The direction and cinematography are also top-notch even in the sequences I criticise below. This is a gorgeously shot film.
The Bad
The Bad: Christoph Waltz as Blofield is okay… He is not Donald Pleasence and honestly comes across as if he just walked over from the set of The West Wing. Waltz is nowhere near as entertaining or charismatic as the film seems to think he is. Spectre really needed a much more energetic antagonist such as A View to a Kill’s Max Sorin (Christopher Walken).
The other “Bad Guy” new security chief, Andrew Scott, is as dull as his strawman story line. We have seen this storyline so many times before in James Bond films. Yeah, he is a dinosaur. Yeah, surveillance by computers is better, yada yada… Look, somebody has to sleep with all these unattached blondes scattered around Europe.
Okay, this makes no sense.
There are a couple of real plot mysteries in Spectre outside of what is the range of a small helicopter in the middle of the Sahara and why drilling holes in James Bond’s head had no effect.
One of the main (and boring) plot threads is the double agent “C” is trying to start up something called Nine Eyes that will combine the surveillance and intelligence of nine spy agencies allowing Spectre to control the world. Since Spectre’s main source of revenue per thier own meeting is sending trafficked working girls to bawdy houses, this would be a step up.
People with a working knowledge of MI6, the C.I.A. or other James Bond films, for that matter, might recognize “Nine Eyes”. Mainly because there is a very real Anglo sphere intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States called Five Eyes. Amazing it is older than James Bond itself, having been in effect for 83 years. And I assume talks to expand it to more countries are not the works of Spectre.
The other mystery is did the nine writers (Really nine? That explains a lot.) not see Austin Powers in Goldmember? Let me quote from the Wikipedia Plot section of that film. “The three infiltrate the submarine, where Austin is captured. Before Dr. Evil can activate the tractor beam, Foxxy steals the key and frees Austin. Austin prepares to shoot Dr. Evil, when Nigel appears and reveals that Austin and Dr. Evil are actually brothers. Confused, Dr. Evil explains that his parents died in a car accident and he was raised by evil Belgians, but Nigel reveals that the explosion came from an assassination attempt and he though that only Austin survived.” Does this sound familiar to anyone? Honestly raised by evil Belgians is a lot better explanation than what Spectre came up with.
The Ugly
The Ugly: Pacing. It is hard to quantify in a review. It is a more of you know it when you see it. Or perhaps you know it when you pause the movie and exclaim holy shit, there are still a forty-five minutes to go. Spectre is two and a half hours long and it feels it.
There is a torture scene near the end that simply should not have made the final cut. Bond is strapped to a dental chair and Blofeld drills needles into his brain. Bond is told this will scramble his brain and make him unable top remember his friends and he will lose his basic motor skills.
Bond, of course, escapes because the super intelligent bad guys have much looser standards for prisoners than say a local sheriff arresting someone for a DUI. (Good luck bring your laser exploding watch into lockup in county)
Bond then blows up the bad guys’ headquarters with a well-aimed pistol shot. (Bond’s pistol does a lot of heavy plot lifting in this film. Later on, it shoots down a helicopter from quite a distance.)
So since we all watched Bond get a lobotomy in a slow, glare filled sequence, I am sure this affects his ability to finish the film? No, of course not. It has zero effect on Bond. He is shooting helicopters and leaping off tall buildings into conveniently placed nets less than twelve hours later. A few minutes after his lobotomy, he steals a fueled up helicopter with its keys in it conveniently located a short stroll from the exploding bad guys’ headquarters.
One other thing, Blofield and Bond are brothers. And Blofeld was responsible for all the events of the previous movies. This revelation prompts the same confused yawn as when Benedict Cumberbatch revealed he was Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness.
In Conclusion
In Conclusion: The idea that Blofeld is James’ brother is… what is the word I am looking for here… Oh yes stupid. That Blofeld who apparently teleported to London after being blown up, spent hours with a team to create an arts and crafts project to trap Bond in, is beyond stupid. I enjoyed Spectre overall but the movie really goes off the rails after Dave Bautista barrels out of the train.
This outfit is not the same kind of mystery. It is given to her when she visits the bad guys’ headquarters. Where Spectre got it in her size is however, a query since everyone else in the headquarters is wearing matching jumpsuits as is Bond bad guy headquarters tradition.
