Review 1
James Bond films are, and always have been, more imitative than innovative. Even in the 1960s they were essentially superhero movies starring an indestructible character who wore street clothes (and the occasional wet suit) instead of tights and a cape. He ran, jumped, drove and flew through loosely connected setpieces that borrowed whatever cliches happened to be popular in action cinema at that moment and amped them up with more beautiful locations, bigger explosions, cornier jokes, and lush, loud music by John Barry. Given the franchise’s lineage, it was only a matter of time before the producers went the extra kilometer and started modeling the Bond films on the Batman and Marvel franchises. The new superhero films featured fussy world-building and onion-layered subplots doled out over many films and many years. Their conception owed quite a bit to comic books and to serialized television like “24” (James Bond by way of “Die Hard“). The last three Bond films drew on all of those traditions, plus Bond’s own distinctive set of cliches, and set the stage for this fourth Craig outing, “Spectre.”
The movie feels like a culmination of everything the franchise has been building toward since Craig stepped into the part in “Casino Royale.” The most recent incarnation of Bond doesn’t just have stunts and quips and gadgets and curvy women with porno names. Courtesy of “Skyfall,” it has a mythology that turns Bond into Batman minus the cape and cowl, and boasts a Bond version of Stately Wayne Manor; an Alfred-the-butler figure (Albert Finney in “Skyfall”); a tragic orphan back-story (repeated via the death of Dench’s matriarchal figure, who’s even called “Mum”), and a Joker-type bad guy (Javier Bardem’s fey torturer).
If you loved all that stuff, you’ll adore “Spectre,” which revives the titular organization from theSean Connery era Bond flicks. It has subplots, characters and incidents that amount to what genre fans would call “ret-cons.” And it introduces us to a new big bad, Franz Obenhauser (Christoph Waltz)—aka Ernst Stavro Blofeld; please don’t act surprised, neither of us were born yesterday! This new (old, really) villain makes Bardem’s character in “Skyfall” seem like a junior Joker at best, if that. He even lures Bond into a ruined building that he’s transformed into a combination haunted house and gallery installation, and by the end, he acquires a scar whose gruesomeness rivals the Joker’s mouth disfigurement.
If “Spectre” were a great movie, or even a consistently good one, this might be wonderful, or at least intriguing. But this is a weirdly patchy, often listless picture. The Craig Bonds are so expensive and expansive that they can’t help but impress with sheer scale. And every now and then they come up with bold images, like the silhouettes of Bond and a foe grappling in front of neon signage in “Skyfall,” and the overhead shot of Bond entering the bombed-out ruins of MI-6 headquarters in “Spectre” preceded by a shadow four times as long as he is tall. But an hour or two after you’ve seen “Spectre” the film starts evaporating from the mind, like “Skyfall” and “Solace” before it. It’s filled with big sets, big stunts, and what ought to be big moments, but few of them land.
What’s the problem? Maybe it’s the script. It’s credited to a murderer’s row of gun-for-hire writers, but it can’t seem to come up with anything but undistinguished chases and fights and quips pasted together by exposition that’s half baked even by Bond standards. Like Christopher Nolan’s Batman, Bond shows up wherever he has to be and escapes certain death as needed, without a hint as to how he pulled it off. And even by Bond’s damn-the-rules, full-speed-ahead standards, the character is such a suitcase nuke in a cable-knit sweater that it’s hard to see him as England’s (or the West’s) disreputable protector, which is how you pretty much have to see Bond if you’re going to root for him. (Omelets, eggs.) In the pre-credits sequence, Bond wreaks destruction on Mexico City, creating an international incident that gets him suspended for the umpteenth time; when he argues that the terrorists he was trying to foil would’ve caused more damage, he sounds like a parody of the sort of hero who would say such things. At least whenTom Cruise offers similar defenses the “Mission: Impossible” movies (the latest of which has a plot not hugely different from this one’s, come to think of it) it’s meant to be ludicrous and frothy, not freighted with righteous woe.
Or maybe the problem is the production itself. The crew teams “Skyfall” director Sam Mendeswith production designer Dennis Gassner and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (“Interstellar“) and fills the screen with deserts and lakes and forests and mountains and historic skylines and converging perspective lines and tastefully arranged rectangles-within-squares and shallow planes of focus (the movie often seems to be in 3-D even though it’s not), but too often ends up looking rather like a SuperBowl ad for cell phone service or cologne.
Or maybe—blasphemy alert—the problem is Craig’s performance. He might be the most drop-dead-serious actor to play Bond, and he probably comes closer than anyone to making the character seem plausibly human (Pierce Brosnan had his moments, even though the scripts were even less inclined to support his efforts than Craig’s). But as the character has become increasingly opaque and recessive—so much so that Mendes and company seem less interested in Bond as a cold but complex person than as a sculptural object to light and pose—you may wonder what the point is. This Bond is a sinewy husk of a man, pursing his lips and staring into the middle distance. He’s turned into the narrator of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” but with a sidearm. The actor and the writers give us so little to grab onto that it’s hard to sense Bond’s feelings, much less feel with him. Late in “Spectre,” we’re supposed to believe that Bond is truly attached to his love interest, Lea Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann (nice double Proust reference there). She reciprocates the craggy killer’s affection even though, as she rightly observes, she was living in hiding for years until Bond led the bad guys straight to her. But there’s little in this film’s writing of Bond, or in Craig’s performance, to imply that the character is capable of investing in anything more emotionally fraught than a martini mixed with house vodka.
Or perhaps the problem is historical fatigue. Even the better bits of “Spectre,” such as a close-quarters fistfight on a passenger train between Bond and a thick-necked henchman (Dave Bautista of “Guardians of the Galaxy“), and a mostly wordless, almost one-take stalking/assassination sequence set during a Day of the Dead parade in Mexico City, pale in comparison to their Bondian inspirations (respectively, “From Russia with Love,” and “Live and Let Die” by way of “Octopussy”). We’ve been assured by the producers that “Spectre” contains homages to every previous Bond picture. That’s great if you go to films mainly for Easter egg-style trivia in the form of situations and props. But it’s not so great if you’re inclined to take the makers of these films at their word, and expect a Bond film like “Casino Royale,” something with more brains and nuance than the usual, as opposed to a film that purports to be that kind of movie but is content to posture and strut rather than doing the necessary dramatic spadework.
Whatever the explanation(s), “Spectre” is the third Bond film in a row to write conceptual and dramatic checks that the movie itself can’t cash. We’re at the point now where these films are consistently more fun to anticipate than they are to watch. The media campaigns tend to be more cunning and surprising than anything that ends up onscreen. This film won political correctness kudos for casting Monica Bellucci as Bond’s first age-appropriate lover (she’s two years older than Craig), but “Spectre” itself squanders her in two scenes, then ditches her for the 30-year old Seydoux. Blofeld’s chief henchman is a bust, just a muscleman in a suit; he makes a memorably nasty entrance blinding a rival with his thumbs, but from then on, he’s all sneers and punches and kicks. Blofeld fizzles, too. Waltz, who tends to give the same performance over and over with minor variations but at least has the decency to be a hoot each time, is in “Spectre” only slightly longer than Bellucci, and has been drained of the glee he displayed in Quentin Tarantino’s films. The payoff of his character’s storyline is so dumb that it makes the “twist” in “Star Trek Into Darkness” seem sensible and heartfelt. Stupider still is Bond’s reaction when he finally gets the drop on his nemesis. Bags of Scrabble tiles make more sense.
Even the look of “Spectre” makes promises that the film won’t keep. Between the copious mirror and reflection shots, the surveillance screens and wall-mounted cameras, and Waltz’s all-seeing, all-knowing baddie, we’re tacitly promised the first James Bond horror movie: a creepy Cubist study in voyeurism and fear, powered by nightmare logic and silhouettes and moments of physical violation; Bond by way of “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” or Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse films. Beyond novelty, such an approach would have made the film’s instances of slipshod plotting feel all-of-a-piece, like the “because I said so” storytelling in Nolan’s Batman pictures.
But of course “Spectre” can’t give us that, because Bond films are products before they’re anything else, and products aren’t allowed to challenge or upset people. If Mendes didn’t keep finding original ways to stage unoriginal moments, this film’s star rating would be lower than it is. Even by the generous standards of Bond pictures, which have been graded on a curve since 1962, “Spectre” has to be considered a missed opportunity.
Overview
This review can definitely be considered as a bad review, the reviewer firstly makes comparisons between the batman films and bond, highlighting the conventions that they both have, for example, James being orphaned from a young age, additionally the film having a joker Esk type villain. He then starts to deconstruct the film by picking out topics as to why the film by his standards is so bad compared to other bond films, he suggests it could be things like the script or the sets.
Review 2
Having handled Skyfall, the 50th anniversary entry in the 007 series, Sam Mendes is back for Spectre, a direct sequel to the earlier film — a vital clue is found in the burned-out ruins of Skyfall, Bond’s childhood home — which also picks up story threads (and the odd character) from Casino Royale and Quantum Of Solace and retcons Daniel Craig’s run as James Bond into one slightly wonky super-saga. Since it’s part of the Bond remit to evoke the franchise’s past, this does for Craig what You Only Live Twice did for Sean Connery, down to the welcome return of the evil white cat stroked by the head of Spectre throughout the 1960s.
After three films more rooted in real-world worries than Pierce Brosnan’s mostly fantastical vehicles, Spectre relaxes a little (even if it debates the ethics of surveillance and the relevance of licensed-to-kill boots on the ground in an age of drones). Craig doesn’t get Connery-Moore quips, but allows much more wry humour to sneak into his hardman-in-a-suit hero. When a beautiful woman mentions that the astonishing scenery (and art direction) of her mountaintop clinic can be a distraction, Craig’s smooth throwaway as he focuses intently on her (“Really? I hadn’t noticed”) is typical of the kind of laugh only he can get. Roger Moore would have arched an eyebrow, but Craig is funny because he doesn’t wink at the audience — but can also turn off the charm when it’s time to throw someone through a window.
Other elements are too rote — the tentacular title sequence is cool but the song is a dud; Dave Bautista’s Oddjob-like silent, smirking thug, Mr. Hinx, is a formidable opponent in a From Russia With Love fight-on-a-train, but is otherwise a formula goon; Léa Seydoux works wonders with thin material as one of the more passive Bond girls (her job is to be imperiled and rescued) and Monica Bellucci is in and out with little chance to show her fire. A couple of the car chases — through weirdly depopulated nighttime cities — are oddly frictionless, and the one major gadget turns out to be a get-out-of-certain-death-free card on a par with Bond’s silliest habits.
Even if this is less satisfying overall than Skyfall, there are sequences that rank with Bond’s best. The pre-credits set piece, with a skull-masked Bond in Mexico City during the Day of the Dead, opens with a Touch Of Evil-style tracking shot that’s a stunner (Daniel Craig just walking briskly across precarious rooftops with style is a thrilling spectacle) and delivers a definitive struggle-inside-an-out-of-control-helicopter climax most films would save for a finale. After such things have been out of fashion for a while, it’s great to see Spectre back in business — with an evil business meeting in Rome and a spectacular desert lair in Tunisia, inhabited by a mercurially nasty, whimsical, overconfident chairman (Christoph Waltz) who wipes the taint of Dr. Evil away from the part and matches the amusing menace of Donald Pleasence or Gert Frobe.
Craig had a less tough job at the start than Fiennes does here, taking over from perhaps the most-beloved M in the series (Judi Dench) and entering the superspy arena without reminding you that he was in the Avengers film we don’t talk about. With his own subplot, clashing with a slick new spymaster (Andrew Scott) whose wrong’un status is affirmed when it’s mentioned he was “at school with the Home Secretary”, Fiennes is so convincing in and out of the action that his M could probably carry a series on his own. If this is to be Craig’s last bow as 007 (the credits at least promise James Bond will return), he’ll be remembered as the man who brought Ian Fleming’s grit back to one of the great British film franchises.
Overview
Review 3
From the gun barrel opening to the gadgets in Q’s workshop, everything is back where it belongs in Spectre, an everything or nothing, kitchen-sink Bond that goes to epic lengths to deliver all you could conceivably want from this invincible and indefatigable franchise.
Buoyed and emboldened by the worldwide success of Skyfall, the tireless Sam Mendes and the fearless Daniel Craig go hell for leather in a film that practically fizzes with brio, even at points when its circuitous plot comes perilously close to unravelling. If, as many suspect, it will be the last Bond for both of them, they can at least depart confident they have left it all on the field and are leaving the series stronger than how they found it.
Mendes sets his stall out early on with a stunning Touch Of Evil-style tracking shot that begins high above the heads of a gargantuan Mexico City Day of the Dead parade before zeroing in on a skull-masked 007. Weaving in and out of the legions of ghoulishly made-up revellers, incoming DoP Hoyte Van Hoytema follows Craig up stairs, down hallways and out on a ledge in a sequence so fluid you can barely spot the joins.
Then the fun really starts: a deluge of falling masonry sends Bond and his quarry back onto the streets and into the air in a loop-the-looping chopper. As pre-titles sequences go, it’s the equal of any that has gone before it – and that includes the ski-jump gotcha from The Spy Who Loved Me.
Back in London, Bond’s rogue mission has set the cat among the pigeons. M’s MI6 is at risk of being subsumed by an umbrella outfit run by the oily C (Andrew Scott) and can ill afford to let its chief assassin go AWOL. Bond, however, has other ideas, not to mention a Tolkien-esque ring whose octopus engraving points to some seriously sinister shenanigans. So off to Rome he pops, there to seduce a widow (Monica Bellucci, age-appropriate yet criminally underused) with information to impart on a certain acronymic syndicate…
Mendes’ film is at its most atmospheric here. A clandestine gathering of Spectre bigwigs in a gothic Roman palazzo exuding all the brooding menace of an Eyes Wide Shut sex orgy. Oddly, though, the nocturnal car chase that follows fails to stir the blood, hampered as it is by an incongruously jaunty tone and the sneaking suspicion that, even with man-mountain Dave Bautista at the wheel of the Jaguar chasing Craig’s Aston Martin along Rome’s cobbled thoroughfares, there isn’t much at stake.
Things quickly improve when the action moves to Austria, where Bond has a chilly encounter with old adversary Mr White (Jesper Christensen, finally making good on the promise of his all too fleeting cameos in Casino Royale andQuantum Of Solace). From this point on there’s nary a let-up. A dust-up on the slopes involving one wingless plane and three 4x4s leads seamlessly to train-based fisticuffs straight out of From Russia With Love, an explosive desert confrontation, and a denouement involving a familiar place in unfamiliar shape.
Ok, so sparks don’t exactly fly between Craig and eventual leading lady Lea Seydoux – or, for that matter, between Craig and Christoph Waltz, dismayingly bland as an overly genteel adversary whose primary beef, once revealed, verges on the petulant. (It does lead to a doozy of a torture scene, though.) Dovetailing Spectre’s plot with those of Craig’s previous Bonds is a dubious move, while the edifice that houses Scott’s Centre of National Security resembles nothing so much as Stark Tower.
The influence of Marvel is felt elsewhere too: a plan to combine the world’s intelligence capabilities into one all-seeing, all-knowing supersnoop bears striking similarities to Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Only Bautista makes the crossover unscathed, this Guardian Of The Galaxy projecting the kind of brutish physical threat that – like the Rolls Royce Phantom that pops up in one scene – brings back happy memories of Goldfinger’s Oddjob.
Craig, for his part, tempers his customary steely determination with a welcome lightness of touch (a scene in which he interrogates a mouse – the idea, one suspects, of co-writer Jez Butterworth – would have been unimaginable back in the doleful days of Quantum), while Ralph Fiennes’ M has some ace bants with Scott over their respective code names. The real delight, though, is Ben Whishaw, whose donnish Q is given much more to do this time around and inflects his scenes with a deliciously offbeat energy.
Overview
Review 4
Spectre opens in Mexico City — a Day of the Dead festival in full swing — streets crowded with partying skeletons, and director Sam Mendes celebrating the dead in his own way with a nifty Orson Welles tribute: A Touch of Evil-style tracking shot that has no obvious edits for at least five minutes as it follows Bond (Daniel Craig) and a gorgeous brunette (Stephanie Sigman) from the costumed parade route into a hotel, up in a crowded elevator to a well-appointed room where she settles seductively on a bed — only to watch him zip out onto a roof ledge with a quick shirt cuff adjustment, and murder on his mind.
At some point, the director starts cutting as 007 dispatches bad guys, collapses buildings, and wrestles with a villain in a suddenly pilotless, upside-down helicopter. As showoff-y starts go, this one ranks with the best in the series. And if the prize Bond is after — a ring with an octopus-y Spectre symbol — seems kind of minor for all that mayhem, it does lead nicely into the film’s titles, Sam Smith’s melody-challenged, but suitably sultry “Writing’s on the Wall” backed by gorgeous women writhing with octopus tentacles, bullets trailing inky jets. It’s everything a Bond fan could wish, and then some.
Which seems to be the operating aesthetic this time out: everything you could wish, and then some, for an epically overstuffed 2 hours and 28 minutes. Enough time to pack in a whole bunch of bad guys from pencil pushers to bodybuilders to Christoph Waltz, an extravagance of exotic locales, from Moroccan meteor craters to a Rome-the-eternal-city that feels like a racetrack with palazzos, and — of course — a bevy of beauties, who do what Bond beauties do.
Monica Belluci, whom Bond divests of widow’s weeds as he’s introducing himself as “Bond, James Bond,” is easily the most compelling (though she’s accorded the least screen time). Petulant, obstreperous shrink Léa Seydoux may be the least compelling (perhaps because she’s accorded the most screen time).
We are not, in other words, tilling a lot of new ground in Spectre. In fact, the screenplay is pretty consciously tilling old ground, with shout-outs to all three of Craig’s 007 movies, and also to those of his predecessors, including a compartment-smashing fistfight on a train that echoes camera angles and even a couple of Sean Connery’s punches from From Russia With Love. (For more on the shout-outs to earlier 007 exploits, check out my colleague Chris Klimek’s ruminations.)
There are hints that the filmmakers aren’t just going for nostalgia but would also like to be of the moment — talk of “smart blood,” drones and online surveillance to drive the plot — but none of it feels especially urgent, even when red digital readouts are counting down to imminent explosions.
It might feel more urgent if the writing were tighter. But I suppose if you have lots of villains, locales, homages and explosions, it’s only natural to have lots of words. Naomie Harris’ dutiful Miss Moneypenny, for instance, says early on, “You’ve got a secret” and should really leave it there. Instead she continues with “something you can’t tell anyone because you don’t trust anyone,” an explanation so unnecessary you half expect Bond to call her on it.
He, however, is too busy being tortured by Waltz, dressed down by new “M” Ralph Fiennes, dressed up by costumer Jany Temime in form-fitting formal wear, and put through his sharply staged and shot action-hero paces by the director.
They are familiar paces — how could they not be the two-dozenth time — updated for different cities, different women, different tuxes. And fans will doubtless find them pleasantly diverting, though even the most rabid will have to concede there’s been a falloff in emotional resonance since Bond’s last outing. In that one, this same director, star and writing team (augmented here by writer Jez Butterworth) managed to outfit the action with all sorts of feeling — feeling that made Skyfall feel more substantial than most Bond pictures.
Which perhaps set expectations unreasonably high for this instalment. It remains a decently robust and entertaining midlevel Bond movie — just one that’s haunted by the specter of its predecessor.
Overview
Review 4
When we last left 007 (a weary Craig, clearly over it) in Skyfall, he was mourning the death of one M (Judi Dench), while reporting for duty to another (Fiennes), in a throwback to the bread and butter of Bond mythology: Greet Miss Moneypenny (Harris), enter those plush leather MI-6 doors, and receive a new assignment that sends him on some global killing spree. 2012’s Skyfallwas a deft mix of that old-school Bond aesthetic mixed with the dour and serious standards with which the franchise has been dealing since Craig signed on for Casino Royale in 2006. It’s been a hit-and-miss affair to be sure, but Skyfall flirted with an ironic self-consciousness that let a bit of air out of those Aston Martins’ tires with enjoyable results (Roger Deakins’ stunning cinematography must also be noted here). But Spectre, which has the lofty aim of tying a bloody bow on the last three films and connecting the dots to the title organization, alas falls short of its aims and runs aground well ahead of its excessive running time.
Cold open to a breathtaking sequence in Mexico City during Día de los Muertos, in which Bond kills an Italian assassin (an unauthorized assignment given to him posthumously by Dench’s M, it turns out), while toppling buildings and wrestling around in a helicopter spinning out of control over Zócalo square packed with revelers. Unfortunately, the film never advances past that giddy high. Bond extracts from that man a ring engraved with an octopus symbol (not Hydra, btw), which leads him on a MacGuffin-fueled travelogue to Rome (Monica Bellucci), and then to Austria (Léa Seydoux), with an extended stay in Morocco, touring and destroying enemy strongholds and henchmen who call back to classic Bond tropes (Dave Bautista has Oddjob’s style, but Jaws’ strength!). The paper-thin plot rests on Bond’s eventual meeting with Blofeld – er, Franz Oberhauser (Waltz, doing that menacing jocularity thing he does so well), who, as the head of the titular Spectre, seems to have been behind all of Bond’s woes (I will not expound on the cringe-inducing monologue that posits the two as enemies since childhood, as I am still trying to forget it). There’s a subplot concerning MI-6 being consumed by MI-5, and the dissolution of the 00 program by upstart Max (Scott, who you may recall as Moriarty in BBC’s Sherlock), and a controversial initiative for a global intelligence-sharing system that is ripe for some sort of commentary on the Sony hack that leaked this very script, but either decides not to go there or is too inept to recognize it.
So, where does it go? All the old familiar places, of course. The third act is all ticking time bombs and damsels in distress, which is a contractual agreement preordained by the cosmos for this series. Leaving the theatre, I couldn’t help but wonder that if this film were screened without subtitles to a non-English-speaking audience, they might think the story concerned an angry middle-aged man traveling the world, destroying old buildings while being shot at, and in between, sleeping with women half his age (the exception is Bellucci, but her role is little more than a cameo). A drab, anemic machine, Spectre, may bring the spectacle, but it lacks a soul. Someone get Idris Elba on the phone.
Overview
Review 5
I’m hard-pressed to think of one, and depressed to report that James Bond is alive and not doing well. Watching Spectre unfold, lumbering and slumbering, on the heels of a franchise high is a shock, so much talent coasting this time.
Spectre appears to wrap up Daniel Craig’s era of Agent 007 fame; four films, now two disappointments counting Quantum of Solace. WithSkyfall, Oscar winning director Sam Mendes set the myth on a new course that Spectre attempts to drag the first two Craig vehicles into. It isn’t a nifty fit.
Mendes seems to have listened to anyone believingSkyfall didn’t showcase enough Bond stunts. Spectre features several such set pieces, that Mendes hasn’t displayed the chops for staging. Whatever plane, train, automobile or boat Bond can board (often without explanation) is ripe for a chase, crash or fisticuffs.
Just like every other soulless blockbuster, this one more head-shaking than usual.
Spectre sets its customary big-bang opening in Mexico City, teeming with Day of the Dead celebrants. One skeletal reveler is Bond on an unauthorized mission, filmed in an extended tracking shot as he seduces his way into a woman’s bedroom for a clearer view to a kill. One target escapes, leading to a foot chase then fist fight inside a helicopter spinning too long and gimbal-smooth for thrills sake.
A promising start, although that impression lasts only as long as it takes to strike up Sam Smith’s falsetto dirge Writing’s on the Wall, appropriately played over the worst opening credits in 007 history. Craig glowers at the camera, shirtless, muscular arms folded, while gloomy under-dressed women writhe around him, and octopi ripple like Rockettes. The sequence is beyond bad, bordering on stale Austin Powers parody.
Between the limbs and tentacles viewers will spot Spectre’s villain, played by two-time Oscar winner Christoph Waltz. Take a good look. Four screenwriters couldn’t figure out a way to get Waltz further involved in Spectre until far too late and infrequently for an arch villain to matter, even with a spoilable secret identity.
Spectre is about the ghosts of Bond films past, specifically Craig’s era. The movie is chock full o’ callbacks to stunts, gadgets and emotional and bureaucratic scars left by Skyfall’s MI-6 apocalypse. Judi Dench’s M is dead, and her successor (Ralph Fiennes) is on career support, his Double-Oh spy program deemed obsolete by a hot shot (Andrew Scott) derisively nicknamed C.
Bond’s Mexico escapade was a prequel vendetta, leading to his suspension from duty. That doesn’t stop Bond, still driven by grief over Vesper Lynd’s drowning inCasino Royale, and MI-6’s destruction. A message from beyond the grave sends him globetrotting, with hesitant assistance from Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) and Q (an invaluable Ben Whishaw).
Revenge will require an encore by Craig’s least interesting adversary (Quantum of Solace’s Jasper Christensen), the introduction of a rare Bond girl who doesn’t entice (Lea Seydoux), and another who’s actually a 50-year-old woman (Monica Bellucci), a first in maturity for the franchise.
Bellucci’s sequence is among the movie’s low points, not for her presence but how Mendes and the writers abuse it. She plays the widow of Bond’s Mexico City victim, with information the spy needs. Within hours of the funeral Bond has her backed against a wall for what amounts to a date rape interrogation. She gives in, gasping what Bond wants to hear.
We last see Bellucci perched in bed, satisfied in lingerie like countless starlets before, and the objectification of women in Bond films gains another facet.
Another clumsy moment occurs after Bond brutally dispatches an assassin (Tampa’s Dave Bautista) and Seydoux’s minx asks: “What do we do now?” Jump to she and Bond playing tonsil hockey, in contrast to every humorless moment before.
In moments like those Spectre might pass for parody, except Mendes raised the stakes so high with Skyfall that lowbrow isn’t becoming on 007, and might spell his end. Like Sam Smith sings, much too shrill for a James Bond movie: The writing’s on the wall.
Overview
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