SPECTRE: Blow Feld

Spectre, the 24th entry in this 53-year-old franchise, is upon us. This review is the culmination of a week spent with Daniel Craig and his rugged take on Britain's most famous spy.

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Director: Sam Mendes
Writers: John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Jez Butterworth
Cast: Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Lea Seydoux, Ralph Fiennes, Monica Bellucci, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Dave Bautista, Andrew Scott, Rory Kinnear
Runtime: 148 mins.
2015

Spectre continues the trend of every Craig Bond film to somehow fumble or dishonor the genre-topping example set by Casino Royale. To be sure, Casino is a tough act to follow, but if any of the next three films had picked a unique identity and stuck to it, they would have fared better. Instead they feel like pale, wrongheaded imitations. Skyfall trailblazes better than the other two because it attempts to salvage Bond's psychological complexity from Casino; Spectre may come out the worst in this regard, because rather than stealing psychological or tonal cues from its predecessors, it merely siphons plot detail after plot detail into its own shambles of a story.

At its best Spectre is a film of moments. The film opens with a stunning continuous shot that follows James Bond and his quarry through a massive Day of the Dead celebration in Mexico City. The camerawork, choreography, and aesthetic are all thrilling, and the subsequent helicopter fight isn't too bad either. Moment.

James Bond and Dave Bautista's charismatically silent henchman character Mr. Hinx rumble in the confined quarters of a train. This is the only time the film packs a punch. Bautista's massive wrestling physique smashes Bond through walls and furniture in a stunning display of brutality. Moment.

James Bond has an unexpected, hilarious, and exceedingly likable conversation with a small animal. Moment.

It's when these moments are strung together into something resembling a narrative that it all falls apart. The connective tissue is forced and awkward. The pacing is glacial. All to eventually disappoint us with a plot that is trying so hard to be something exciting that it ends up being nothing at all. As long as the movie delayed that plot from kicking in (and it spends a considerable amount of time doing so), I was having a good enough time. But when Bond finally faces off with the villain, the movie reveals its idiocy and just sort of plods through to the end.

SKYFALL: Old Dog Old Tricks

Spectre, the 24th entry in this 53-year-old franchise, is soon upon us. As such I will be spending this week rehashing the Daniel Craig Bond movies in preparation. Skyfall is the most polarizing of Craig's Bonds, a movie that I like very much and also find myself wagging a stern finger at.

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: Sam Mendes
Writers: Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, John Logan
Cast: Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Berenice Marlohe, Ben Whishaw, Albert Finney
Runtime: 143 mins.
2012

When I claimed a few days ago that Casino Royale is and will probably remain the best Bond movie, I received in response an outpouring of love for Skyfall (for me an outpour is two people). I'm going to quote pieces of their responses without permission.

"Maybe in terms of scale, Casino Royale wins just because of the sheer amount of character creation. But there's a lot of humanity injected into the Bond character during Skyfall as well. In terms of his struggle with his past, family issues, and aging... Not believing he can be the same caliber of agent he once was. No other Bond movie approaches that level of analysis of his internal psychoses. You know, since when does James Bond have anxiety?"

"The real payoff of [Casino Royale] is in Skyfall, not in Royale itself. Skyfall is, at its core, about the trauma of loss & memory: the trauma of the Reformation (and you could argue this is really when the Empire started) and then the loss of Empire. What happens when England finally loses enough that they have to deal with the trauma they've been ignoring for centuries? . . . This is a new type of Bond. Still the markers of the one we knew before, but it doesn't shy away from the pain and violence that is inherently a part of being Bond. . . . Mostly I think the Craig Bond films can't be separated quite as easily, as they completely depend on one another."

These are two very similar and eloquent responses in defense of Skyfall's merits. Clearly there's a lot of Skyfall love out there, a love which I share. Skyfall was the movie that hooked me into the Bond franchise (when I first saw Casino Royale I was too young to care about much beyond the action). Moreover, they're absolutely right in pointing out that Casino and Skyfall are of a piece. One is an origin story about the man who became the agent, the other is a retirement story about the agent in danger of becoming the man. One recreates Bond for modern audiences, one investigates Bond's relevance for that audience. One reboots the series, one reestablishes the series regulars.