Film Review: Spectre (2015)

Oh, James, how could you do this to me? I forgave Roger Moore's safari suits and Inspector Gadget gadgets. I overlooked Timothy Dalton's incongruous Royal Shakespeare Company gravitas. And I even tried to pretend that On Her Majesty's Secret Service never happened. But I draw the line at being bored senseless for over two hours.

For this entry in the Bond franchise, 007 is up against Ernst Stavro Blofeld, played by Chrisoph Walz. Blofeld's madcap scheme this time out is to tap into the databases of all the world's leading intelligence agencies, which will enable him to...I'm not actually sure what will happen, but it's probably quite naughty. To combat this dastardly plot Bond has only one option: he must travel from London to Rome to Austria to Morocco in a series of increasingly stylish and acutely-tailored outfits. Once Bond turns up in a white dinner jacket on the dining car of a Moroccan train, we, and SPECTRE, know the game is up. Blofeld has nothing to match Bond's sartorial supremacy, and he even makes the ghastly faux pas of wearing loafers without socks. Seriously, how can a man who's still using Miami Vice's Sonny Crockett as his menswear muse hope to defeat Bond?

To be honest, plotting has never been the strong suit of Bond films. They're a bit like Christmas trees: essentially just scaffolding for lights, decorations and presents. And what we like to find on and under the tree is dry humor, jaw-dropping stunts, one-of-a-kind action set-pieces, outlandish villains, and a bit of very softcore porn. Spectre fails spectacularly at all the traditional Bond elements.

Things get off to a reasonably good start with a fight aboard a helicopter above a packed square in Mexico City, but after that it's all downhill. A car chase in Rome is the definition of perfunctory. Any old episode of Top Gear does something more exciting with cars than this sequence does. Next up is a car/plane chase in the Austrian alps that has some of the ridiculousness of the Roger Moore films, but none of the raised-eyebrow humor. The humor is crucial because without it sequences like this just feel silly. A well-placed gag lets us in on the joke. Bond then proceeds to Blofeld's base inside a huge meteorite crater in the Moroccan desert. This looks promising, I thought, preparing myself for an all-out battle akin to the climax of You Only Live Twice. No such luck. Bond basically walks out of the base whilst shooting some obligingly stationary henchmen ("Shoot me, Mr Bond, shoot me! I'm standing over here! Oof! Gosh, I've been deaded by James Bond 007. My mum will be proud...urghh."). The actual finale happens in London, and it's an unimaginative piece of business that I thought had died out with silent films: Bond's love interest has been tied up in a building that Blofeld has wired to explode, and James must race through the place to find her before time runs out. The only thing missing is a loyal canine to lead James to his girlfriend.

This also has to be the worst Bond film for overall sexiness. Lea Seydoux as Dr Madeleine Swann is, alas, far too young for middle-aged Daniel Craig and they have zero chemistry together. Roger Moore also had problems with the age gap, but his awful puns seemed to take the sting out his love scenes with women half his age. Monica Bellucci makes a brief appearance in the film in what must be the most awkward and creepy sexual episode in any of the Bond films. James backs a seemingly reluctant Bellucci against a wall and disrobes her as though he was unwrapping a Ferrero Rocher chocolate he'd been saving for a special occasion.

I enjoyed Daniel Craig's Casino Royale, but it marked the beginning of an attempt to make Bond more nuanced, human, and believable. It's as though the producers and directors felt slightly ashamed to be associated with a film franchise that had such a sexist and puerile history. But who the hell wants a real world James Bond? If I want that I'll rewatch any of the Jason Bourne films. And as each of Craig's Bond films has come along, his performance have become stiffer, more laconic, and increasingly humorless. Sam Mendes, the director, seems happiest when he's filming lush interiors and Bond's wardrobe. Now, I expect James Bond to dress well, but this film takes it to the next level; so much so that at times he seems to be wearing body art rather than anything made of wool or cotton. The surest sign that the people at the top end of the production team feel that they're too good to be making a Bond film is the name given to Lea Seydoux's character. Madeleine Swann? Really? Is a laboured and witless A la recherche du temps perdu reference supposed to convince us that some very tall foreheads were involved in the making of the film? Sorry, but dragging Marcel Proust into a Bond film is something I can never forgive.

Film Review: Skyfall (2012)

I don't get it. From the reviews Skyfall's been getting I'd expected something pretty damn special, a new standard in Bond films. What were the critics seeing? It's not bad, not at all, and it's better than Quantum of Solace, but it's not as good as Casino Royale. This is an OK film, but by a narrow margin there's more that's wrong with it than right with it.

Plot has never been the strong suit of Bond films. The high point in that regard was From Russia With Love and it's been downhill ever since. But even by the weak standards of this franchise, Skyfall gets demerit points. In a nutshell, an ex-agent played by Javier Bardem feels he was betrayed by M (Judi Dench) and decides to humiliate and kill her. And to accomplish this he sets up a vast criminal organization that's entirely devoted to offing her. It really doesn't get much more complicated than that. The plot is simplistic, but it also becomes annoying because various key plot points revolve around the villain's genius at hacking computers. This has got to stop. Filmmakers have to stop using hacking and hackers as plot devices to explain away the success or failure of complex schemes. They might just as well  hand one of the characters a magic wand and have them solve problems with that. What's worse is that the audience's intelligence is usually being insulted at the same time. Most people are intimately familiar with computers, but filmmakers seem to think they can getaway with showing computers doing all kinds of unlikely things, and this film features a giant computer display that even the most computer-illiterate person is going to find fatuous.

The other problem with Skyfall is that it neglects Daniel Craig. Craig is the best actor to have held the 007 license, but in this outing he seems to have been shorted in the dialogue department. What a waste of talent. Bardem and Dench get the longish speeches while Craig is left with nothing but quipy or stoic one-liners. Admittedly, Bond and one-liners go together like bacon and eggs, but this isn't Roger Moore we're dealing with.

On the plus side, the action elements are up to snuff, and the finale in the Scottish Highlands has a moodiness that's a first for a Bond film .Although when Bond and M head into the Highlands for the showdown with the villain, for a brief moment the scenery made me think they were heading to Hogwarts. Bardem is a good villain, far better than that anonymous, weaselly-looking French baddie in Quantum, and the overall look of the film is pleasingly sleek: just what we expect from a Bond film. The massive success Skyfall is enjoying is probably due to it being an action movie for grownups. The screening I attended was a sea of silver hair (mine included) and everyone seemed to be enjoying a movie devoid of superheroes, cartoon characters and Adam Sandler.

Finally, I have to mention that this has to be the most English of the Bond films. In fact, it seems to make a point of wrapping itself in the Union Jack. There's a shot of M standing in front of a row of coffins convered in Union Jacks; a poem by Tennyson is quoted that has a very patriotic tone; M has a china bulldog on her desk that's emblazoned with the flag; and, most interestingly, one of the last shots of the film shows Bond, looking very stalwart, standing on a rooftop staring out over the rooftops of Whitehall. A number of flags are waving from the rooftops in the background, and their positioning against the sky is meant, I think, to bring back memories of barrage balloons flying over London during the Blitz. In sum, this is the most Rule Britannia of the Bond films. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's certainly worth noting.