The potentially last Daniel Craig James Bond movie, Spectre, starts off with an amazing
screen set in Mexico City, where the music is pumping and the action is pounding
and there is a definite hint of the old cheesy 70s Bond humour in there as
well. It’s a great way to start the
film.
And then the theme song comes on. And it is long. And boring. And tedious. And uninspiring. And long. And then it carries on for a bit longer.
And for me, the film never really fully recovers. It does rebound somewhat, with action and
humourous touches and Bond uncovering a big conspiracy and internal team strife
and everything you would expect from a Bond film. However, there are small individual elements
that conspire against it becoming a great Bond film.
For example, there is a long and slow “Council of Elrond”
scene where the baddies get together in an insanely dark room to discuss wildly
boring conversations in preposterously reverential tones and then the head bad
honcho arrives and is hidden in well orchestrated shadows and then makes minor
meaningless movies that show power and evil and all sorts of nonsense that I
think are meant to provide sinister atmosphere but which are actually just
plunging the film into Austin Powers territory. And then, when they finally make it to the
bad guy’s evil lair and his minions snap to drone-like attention… are these
meant to be real people? If so, where do
they sleep and eat?
While the chase scenes and fighting scenes are very well
put together and executed, the convenience of the plot and some of the “twists”
were, for me, a bit ridiculous, and these too detracted from the otherwise
really well constructed story and rather great performances.
However, I know not everyone feels the same way. Some people adore this film; other people
really hate it. I fit more in the
middle, and from the looks on the faces of my fellow film goers, there are
other people who were also feeling rather ambivalent about Spectre. So a fairly
divisive film really, and, in my opinion, not really a great one either.
Verdict: Spectre
has amazing action, nefarious plots, lots of humour and exotic locations, but
fails to fire when it comes to bringing these all together in a story that
feels complete and fulfilling. A good
collection of great pieces of a film that for some reason just fail to come
together as a whole. 6 licenses to kill
out of 10.
