Wednesday 4 November 2015

Stirred. But Not Shaken.


Spoilers? Much.

On the whole 'Spectre' is effective, superbly crafted entertainment that gives you everything that you would want from a James Bond film. So why then is it so peculiarly unsatisfying?

Let's try and break it down into its constituent parts:

Pre credits sequence. A bravura opening - bold, confident, technically brilliant and jaw dropping to watch. It's all downhill from here.

Bond theme. Sam Smith. Not the worst (third from worst) and it works in context but still rubbish. Forgettable even as you are listening to it.

Title sequence. Didn't really work for me. Naked Daniel Craig and lots of Octopus appendages. Surely they should have run with 'Day Of The Dead' imagery (that being the theme of the whole film). It's not 'Octopussy' and it's not H.P. Lovecraft. One for fans of Japanese tentacle porn and/or Octonauts fans only.

Bond. Dour, sullen and insubordinate hitman. Does very little actual spy stuff. They've spent four films trying to make him a rounded, psychologically convincing, actual real-world character. He isn't.

Bond girls. Monica Bellucci. Oooh look .... its a "Bond girl" in her fifties....how revolutionary. Yeah and then she's summarily fucked and chucked after just two scenes. Bond hits on  a recent widow, says 'I'm here to protect you", they shag, he leaves the number of "someone who can help you", Bond disappears.
Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux). The weakest, least convincing "capable of looking after myself" Bond girl in years. A bland Bond blonde. Zero chemistry between her and Daniel Craig. The film fails to establish enough meaningful romance between them. This becomes a major problem later on when we're supposed to buy into his emotional need to save her.
Miss Moneypenny. Built up as a character in the previous films only to be wasted in this (but we know she's a person in her own right because she sleeps with someone other than Bond).
Judy Dench's absence is very noticeable in this film.
It's just a bit disappointing. I mean, it's not as if anyone's expecting Bond to pass the Bechdel test... but really.

M: Excellent. You could argue that he dos more to save the day than Bond. Ralph Fiennes is strong in all his scenes.

Q: Ben Whishaw is very good but it feels like a whole part of his story hit the cutting room floor in this one.

The Villains. Disappointing. Dave Bautista is an imposing adversary for Bond to fight. Andrew Scott is excellent but you just want him to reveal himself to be Jim Moriarty. I do love Christoph Waltz but his polite, charming, psychopath schtick is becoming a little overfamiliar by now. He's chilling in the impressive Spectre boardroom scene, but as soon as he steps out of the shadows it's apparent that the great and powerful Oz has been revealed to be nothing more than a pathetic little man behind a curtain. Hans Landa had coiled menace, Blofeld is just a weirdo wearing slippers and no socks. Rubbish.

The Plot: Quite linear but I'm okay with that (Bond isn't suited to complexity - see 'Quantum Of Solace' where they foolishly attempted it) but there are no surprises. Unconvincing motivations and a misguided attempt to link Bond and Blofeld's back stories and make their conflict personal seems unnecessary and contrived. There's an attempt to join the dots by implying that the previous Daniel Craig films were linked as part of a master narrative. Retroactive Continuity the geeks call it. I don't care for it. I don't have a problem with plot holes in Bond films (it's the flow of the thing that's important) but I do take issue with a film that is full of stuff that serves no purpose and has no consequence. Even though the film is two and a half hours long it still feels as if chunks of it are missing and that it is leading us towards something much greater than it delivers. As an example of the former look at the sequence where Q is tailed and trapped on an Alpine cable car by some heavies, thus preventing him from meeting Bond at a pre-arranged rendezvous. We cut to some action with Bond, who escapes trouble and then makes it back to be greeted by Q at the prearranged place. We expect a trap, a betrayal or at least something that will pay off later. Instead there is just a flippant comment along the lines of  - "Oh I was tailed but I lost them" and nothing of consequence happens. The film is riddled with moments like that, as if another draft of the script or a more critical edit was needed. And what was going on with Bond's microchipped blood? This was a neat idea that could have raised the stakes on Bond's action by having him under constant surveillance (the big theme of the film) and render him incapable of being one step ahead of the bad guys ..... but within the very same scene that it is injected into him he basically just asks Q to turn a blind eye to it.

Locations. Excellent. Mexico City, Rome, Austria and Tangiers, but then then way too much time in miserable, drab, grey, subterranean London. Instantly takes us from the high glamour of Bond to an average episode of 'Spooks'.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles. All of those - including an iconic Aston Martin car chase that goes form mundane, to Mr Bean, to Batmobile. 'Fury Road' it isn't.

Gadgets. An exploding watch is the deus ex machina that gets him out of trouble. Ffs its 2015 not 1965. Surely they could have come up with something better than this.

"I expect you to die." Prolonged torture scene with precision needle insertion. Very nasty and straight out of 'Colonel Sun' (Kingsley Amis' attempt at a bond novel). It would have been more effective if Christoph Waltz had played it with more tactile sadism and hadn't been just a grinning monkey pushing the buttons on the torture machine.

Fisticuffs. Good fight on a train sequence. It needed to be a little more violent if anything but it is a well executed sequence.

Memorable lines. M has all the best lines

Bond Villain's Secret Lair. Solar powered desert residence seems to be protected by a handful of temp agency henchmen. Security check doesn't run to taking watches off people. One gas tank outside - hit it and the whole thing goes up in flames. Truly spectacular explosion though.

Themes. The dead are alive. On the money stuff about surveillance, data protection and leverage on governments by shadowy organisations.

Subtext. Theresa May thinks she is M, everyone else knows she is C. London is the best place in the world to obtain personal information. Data is a commodity. Intelligence services are complicit in manipulating governments. The past will return to haunt us.

Overall 'Spectre' is much better if you view it as a celebratory overview of fifty years of Bond rather than as a film in its own right.  Fifty years of any mass market entertainment is likely to provide moments to cherish as it well as flat periods full of frustration, and the history of Bond is no exception. We all have our own favourite Bonds, films and eras. 'Spectre' seems to knowingly condense all of that history into one film. It's bound to be an uneven ride. After a confident, bravura opening (easily the best pre credits sequence the franchise has ever provided) it all builds to a whimper not a bang, which is a shame, but it is solid entertainment and top tier Bond.

If this is Daniel Craig's last outing as Bond, then he is going out on a high (certainly compared to those other "last" Bond films - 'Diamonds Are Forever', 'A View To A Kill', "Licence To Kill', and 'Die Another Day') but it does feel like we've gone through a revolving door over the past decade. The re-invention, the tonal shifts, the psychological probing, the stripping away of all the surface trappings all seem to have been for nothing. Every "tired" element seems to have crept back in.

I'm not saying this is even necessarily a bad thing. 'Spectre' is the most Bond-like film of the Daniel Craig era and ultimately the most entertaining because of it. Like I say, for all its faults, this film does deliver everything you think of when you think of Bond.

I think Bond 25 is going to be fascinating. Will the creative team go for a complete re-boot again, will they move towards a more crowd pleasing formula, or will they try and play off on the tension between both? Will they tempt another credible world class director into the fold ( I can't see Mendes returning), will they go with a "visionary" director or will they just go with some MTV twat who's seen a lot of Bond films?

Whatever lies ahead it has to be said that Bond at fifty years old is in very good shape indeed.



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