Movie Review: Spectre

No Bond movie is as good as the first ten minutes of this Bond movie. The problem is there's 140 additional minutes of Bond movie that follow.

Spectre is either the 24th or 27th outing to feature super-spy James Bond, depending on your appreciation for copyright law.

Though the lineage of the franchise is long, this one attempts to wrap-up the rebooted narrative that only began with Daniel Craig’s original outing in the tux: Casino Royale. Sure, references abound to instalments of another era, but for modern audiences, Craig is both the alpha and the omega (and that’s not just a reference to his watch of choice). What I’m saying is, if you only started paying attention around 2006, you'll cope.

Director Sam Mendes, returning from 2012’s billion-dollar grossing Skyfall, opens the picture with an (almost) unbroken shot of 007 snaking through Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico City, into a would-be conquest’s bedroom and through a window to ready a sniper’s shot on a mysterious mark. It’s scored by Thomas Newman’s flavoursome take on the legendary theme, complemented by Craig’s sleek, mountain cat-like movements and punctuated by a perfect moment of physical comedy.

This sequence is a feat of filmmaking bravado to match Mendes’ best sequence from Skyfall: the silhouette fight.

As for the rest of Spectre? It’s fine.

When the assassination attempt results in an international incident, new M (Ralph Fiennes) stands down Bond, who had been working off the books in this particular instance.

Not that a quaint suspension could ever keep Bond from starting international incidents. He draws in Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) and Q (Ben Whishaw) for his next clandestine task, assigned to him by Judi Dench’s late M from beyond the grave.

A brief video clip – likely filmed in front of Dench’s personal computer, at whichever location she’s getting her appearance fees forwarded to – instructs Bond, in the event of her death, to kill assassin Marco Sciarra. She hints that Sciarra’s funeral will be worth attending, and it is, given that it leads Bond to the shadowy organisation Spectre. Why M was sleeping on the identity of a known terrorist linked to the world’s most nefarious syndicate is just one of a number of plot holes diehard Bond fans will tell you not to worry about when you debrief after a screening.

After attending the burial in Rome, Bond infiltrates Spectre’s Stonecutters-esque conference of villainy. For a second, it seems as if he’s wandered into the Fidelio party from Eyes Wide Shut, but sadly it does not climax in a similar fashion. Instead, around a conference table, delegates report on their fiscal earnings for their quarter of evil-doing. Turns out even supervillains have KPIs.

The meeting’s sinister chair, Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz, at his Waltziest), spies Bond, tasking attack dog Mr. Hinx (a hulking, silent Dave Bautista) with taking him out. So begins 007’s mostly-thrilling race to different photogenic locales, all in an effort to outrun his assailant, unravel Oberhauser’s true identity and discover how deeply the tentacles of Spectre reach.

They reach about as far back as 2006. Spectre - authored by four screenwriters and, as the Sony leaks revealed, numerous studio notes - attempts to forge a grand unified theory for the Daniel Craig years, suggesting Spectre and Oberhauser have been there all along.

The movie’s fatal flaw (besides Sam Smith’s soggy theme song) is that it asks us to recall plot points and characters from Craig’s second effort, Quantum of Solace; a flick no one much liked or remembers. Our Bond girl, Dr. Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), is the daughter of that film’s overarching bad guy, Mr. White (Jesper Christensen). Blame Marvel for all the dot-connecting; before Iron Man, sequels – especially Bond ones - were occasionally allowed to stand alone. Now we have to reserve mental real estate for the entries that suck, in case future narratives attempt a callback?

At 150 minutes, Spectre’s a bit saggier than we’d like our Bond movies to be. It’s also not quite as visually stylish as Skyfall. (Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema is one of the most exciting out there, yet I don’t envy anyone who has to follow in the footsteps of Roger Deakins.) Did Mendes use up all his innovations last go round? The execution here is slightly more perfunctory than the director usually delivers.

It’s still entertaining however, and much of that can be attributed to Craig, who remains totally compelling as our sardonic, utterly broken, unstoppable hero. There’s nuance to the performance, just not to the movie, which shoe-horns a surveillance subplot to make this mothballed series feel timely in 2015. (Never mind that giving a fine actress like Seydoux a part actually deserving of her talents would have made Spectre not merely timely but practically revolutionary when compared with its predecessors.)

Of course, in Bond-speak, "timely" means 007 being injected with nanobot-enhanced, location-tracking “smart blood”, allowing 24 hour-monitoring by weaselly bureaucrat C (Andrew Scott). Seems extravagant. Couldn’t they just have asked him to fill in a timesheet?

3.5/5

In cinemas November 12, 2015. Rated M for action violence.