Looking back on the year 2015, one thing is clear: it was a good year for spy films – Kingsman: The Secret Service, Spooks: The Greater Good, Spy, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation and The Man from Uncle. But of course the big one that people were really looking forward to was the twenty-fourth James Bond film, Spectre.
Following the huge success of Skyfall in 2012 it was clear that anticipation was high for whatever would come next. For a while all we knew was that Daniel Craig was still playing Bond and Sam Mendes was returning to direct. But then as soon as the title of the film was revealed most people could guess where it was going to go and in some ways I think they were right.
Spectre gives Daniel Craig his first real gun-barrel sequence at the start instead of the end. After that, little time is wasted as the film proceeds right in the middle of a Day of The Dead parade in Mexico where Bond is on a mission to kill a man named Marco Sciarra (Alessandro Cremona), a final request of his old superior M (Judi Dench). I know it probably didn’t mean much when the film was first released but looking at it now, the way the camera moves at the start is made to look like one long continuous take – which is an approach Mendes would utilise to its full potential in his later project 1917. Bond accomplishes his mission and causes a great deal of destruction along the way, and in the struggle he takes Sciarra’s ring that has an octopus design on it.
Back in London Bond is grounded by his superior, the new M (Ralph Fiennes) but must still fulfil the request and go to Sciarra’s funeral in Rome. There he meets the widow (Monica Bellucci) who at the time was and I think still is, the oldest person to play a Bond girl. Bond saves her from assassins and briefly makes love to her (even though he did kill her husband) but as in Casino Royale he gets the information he needs and then he’s gone.
In due course we are introduced to the film’s henchman Mr Hinx (Dave Bautista) along with the man in charge of the organisation, Franz Obenhauser (Christoph Waltz). A car chase ensues that’s competent but not particularly exciting. Bond then finds Mr White (last seen in Quantum of Solace) in Austria who gives Bond one request – to protect his daughter Madeline Swann (Lea Seydoux). Soon we learn the name of the oganization that is responsible for poisoning Mr White and whose meeting Bond gate-crashed earlier. They call themselves Spectre, which of course is a very big clue as to what the name of Waltz’s character really is. But the audience will still be expected to see it as a twist when it’s revealed.
This is where the script (by four different writers, Neil Purvis, Robert Wade, John Logan and Jez Butterworth) really begins to feel too much like a conventional Bond film. Bond has to establish some kind of meaningful relationship with Swann, he has to go the villain’s main base and escape and of course fight off the main henchman on a train which he’s done before. But then there’s the supposed continuity that all of the recent Bond films share and how it ties all of them in with Spectre, with that organisation being behind all of the villains from the previous three films. Then there’s the ‘twist’ that can be spotted miles away where Obenhauser reveals that he now goes by the name Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Not much of a surprise when the film is called Spectre and right before the reveal the camera lingers on a white cat.
But here’s an odder twist. After his parents died, Bond was taken in by the Obenhausers where the father treated him like a son leaving his real son jealous. So in this continuity, Bond and Blofeld are foster brothers. I know it’s meant to be dramatic and raise the stakes of the story but this exact detail has already been used… as a joke in an Austin Powers film. Here it’s meant to be taken seriously.
Craig’s approach to playing Bond hasn’t changed much. He’s got the charm and ruthlessness that would be considered essential, but not too sure about the more human qualities that he was noted for in his earlier portrayal. Waltz had the potential to be a great Blofeld but, despite his best efforts here, he missed an opportunity to be the cast standout. Seydoux is fine as Swann but I felt she was just going through the motions. Fun fact: Seydoux and Waltz were both in the opening scene of the film Inglourious Basterds, where Waltz definitely stood out for the right reasons.
Fiennes gives his first real performance as M and he shows he can play the role of a stern but likeable superior; or maybe it’s just odd seeing him in a film where he’s both a good guy and has a nose. At one point when Wishaw was speaking, all I could hear was Paddington.
Cinematographer Roger Deakins has been replaced by Hoyte van Hoytema, who seems capable but the best he can do is make locations like Mexico and Africa nice to look at. I was much more impressed by the visually-arresting title sequence by Daniel Kleinman.
Thomas Newman retuned to compose the score but I was more interested in the theme song, Writing’s On The Wall by Sam Smith. This got a lot of praise but there were doubtless some detractors when it was revealed that Radiohead had actually recorded a song called Spectre that was rejected on the grounds of being too melancholy. Yet Sam Smith, whose voice can be a bit whiny at times, got in without a problem. It’s the only Sam Smith song I have really listened to; it’s far from the likes of Skyfall and You Know My Name but I hear there’s an instrumental version that makes for better listening.
Bond escapes with Madeleine from the charred remains of the old MI6 building, after seeing some odd pictures of himself and people from his past in a shooting range. Denbigh is dead, Nine Eyes is successfully shut down and now, thanks to an explosion, the new Blofeld is missing an eye and has a scar on his cheek. Bond doesn’t kill him but instead seemingly leaves MI6 with Swann in his DB5 and so ends Spectre.
It’s definitely entertaining in a lot of ways. I don’t think it’s as good as Skyfall but it’s much better than Quantum of Solace. I’m aware that isn’t saying much, but I like to think it counts. There wouldn’t be much talk about what would follow it for a few years, but now at the time of writing this, No Time To Die is hopefully less than a month away. Let’s see if Craig can leave the Bond franchise in a better place than he found it.
