November 17, 2015
Hello blog readers, it's Neil. My next review is of the most recent James Bond film, Spectre. My dad is a pretty big Bond fan. I understand why, but I think that there's something of a generation gap between older and younger people when it comes to Bond. Most of his actions, particularly what he does with the women of the Bond movies, come off as more like the actions of a creepy man with a rock in his chin rather than a suave action hero. That's not to say the movies are poorly made, it's just that they may be past their time.
The movie opens with a long-panning shot of Bond (played reluctantly by Daniel Craig, most likely for the last time) in a costume of a skeleton in a tuxedo during Day of the Dead festivities in Mexico City, using the costume to sneak through the masses, then take it off once he's reached a high-up hotel room, walk out on the ledge of the room's balcony, and travel across the rooftops to find and kill two people that were trying to blow up a stadium that the previous M (played by Judi Dench) wanted him to kill as a last request before her death at the end of Skyfall, the previous Bond film. This is just the first step in a global search to find and take down the shadowy global criminal organization known as Spectre, hence the film's title. Spectre has not been in the Bond movies since the early 1970s, and has returned in a more modern and menacing fashion. Their name stands for Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion, a name that might not work now like it did in the 1960s, but whatever. The group is led by Franz Oberhauser (played by Christoph Waltz), who almost feels like a Saturday morning cartoon villain in his maniacal delight in being evil. Meanwhile, the current M (played by Ralph Fiennes) deals with a would-be colleague codenamed C (played by Andrew Scott) that plans to overhaul MI6 with a new surveillance program, making field agents obsolete.
The production values are great, especially in that opening scene. Unfortunately, none of the other aspects of the movie are as good. Craig seems to be phoning it in with his performance as Bond because of how tired he's grown of playing him. Everyone else still makes the best of the script's painfully-average material, which actually does come with some good lines that I would appreciate more if they weren't in a Bond movie. The movie often tries to be self-referential about most Bond tropes, which works sometimes, but not every time. One of the good ones was how during his trademark scene of saying "Shaken, not stirred" when ordering a martini was turned on its head when the person serving drinks said that he was at a clinic that didn't serve alcohol. It shouldn't matter anyway, because in spite of his frequent drinking of fancy liquor, he still acts sober. The very idea of a "Bond Girl" is more disturbing than it should be. The idea of any women being able to fall in love with him, even the widow of a man he killed and the daughter of an old enemy with plenty of reason to mistrust him, may have been a charming fantasy in the Golden Age of James Bond, but now comes off as extremely disturbing. I only saw it because it was a big blockbuster that my dad wanted to see with me, and I didn't expect too much, but then I was reminded just how discomforting it can be to watch James Bond around women, and while I don't usually judge movies for reasons like this, you can't really not judge James Bond movies on that aspect. At least for me personally, I give Spectre a 4/10. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next week with a review of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay- Part 2.
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