K-SCORE: 53
Director: Sam Mendes
Based on: James Bond by Ian Fleming
Writers: John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Jez Butterworth
Starring: Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Lea Seydoux, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Dave Bautista, Andrew Scott, Monica Bellucci, Ralph Fiennes
Spoiler Level: Major (skip first paragraph)
“Mendes is still weirdly averse to using gadgets”
“The problem is that now they’re trying to hit everything on a checklist that’s too long to complete while also telling a sensible story.”
The world’s most secretive organization has a very public board meeting about their success in human trafficking where someone has his eyes gouged out in front of many witnesses. A mastermind villain with surveillance coverage over the entire world creates several overly elaborate failing traps for his step-brother and arch-nemesis. The world’s greatest secret agent seduces a widow mere hours after her husband’s funeral and abandons her after she gives him a single lead even though they both agree there are endless waves of killers coming after her. The world’s greatest secret agent decides the best way to locate hidden information in a small house is by drinking himself to sleep and punching walls. An extremely successful Austrian psychologist follows around, sleeps with, and decides she’s in love with a man who gave the gun to her father right before he killed himself, led assassins to her home, who she said she didn’t want to see again, and who almost gets her killed on numerous occasions. The world’s most successful secret agent surrenders his gun and walks unsupported into an elaborate heavily guarded compound of the man everyone agrees is his most dangerous enemy yet with no plan and the girl he cares about in tow. The newfound government-supported worldwide surveillance system set to replace old espionage agencies has programming centralized enough that a single clever hacker can destroy it given a few minutes of work. The British government allows the demolition of one of their most prominent buildings on a summer evening without closing down nearby streets and bridges. A genius quartermaster installs an eject function into a three-million GBP prototype car before loading defensive ammunition. Cats and girlfriends are welcomed unrestricted into torture sessions. Also in torture sessions watches aren’t removed prior to loose wrist binding. No one scrambles jets or anti-aircraft forces even after plots are thwarted and rogue terrorists are flying through central London in a helicopter. Ditto anti-aircraft measures during Dia de Los Muertos parades in Mexico city. And the most dangerous terrorist network, a supernetwork of other terrorist networks, puts their leader into the field to taunt the one man, sets unnecessary timers for three minutes, makes their members wear identifying rings that can so easily be forensically analyzed it can be done on a gondola, and fails to teach taking-cover gunfight strategies to their guards. This is the best Daniel Craig Bond film yet.
That’s not sarcasm. I really think this might be the best they’ve done since the franchise went in a new direction. Quantum of Solace makes a run for it. Casino Royale is such a deterrence from the franchise’s base that it’s a disgrace to the Bond name, and Skyfall is a stinking bag of old farts. I’ll have to get into those at a later date. My views on the new Bond films are unpopular.
Spectre is tasked with reintroducing Blofeld, aka No. 1, to James Bond, and Spectre, the secret organization of world-domination evil to MI:6. It's a tough mission given that those elements and villains from older Bonds are absolutely ridiculous. They’ve already been thoroughly satirized by Austin Powers. So it’s tough to take Mr. Bigglesworth seriously when he makes his appearance. Thankfully, Spectre doesn’t ask you to take it as seriously as the other Craig Bond films ask you to take their plotlines. So you’re less frustrated when they deliver you a fairly stupid story. Make no mistake though, this is a stupid story, and it doesn’t flawlessly match the film’s tone. If they wanted to do this serious, gritty Bond thing well, they needed to hire Jonathan Nolan to write it and make it into a TV series.
What I’m looking for from a Bond film is for James Bond to be really cool, one-step ahead of anyone, never nervous despite high-stakes conflicts, and for a few gadgets, sexy women, chases, and action sequences. Spectre delivers a lot of those things. Mendes is still weirdly averse to using gadgets, even though they’re a character staple, so the best we get is a watch explosion and an ejector seat, but whatever. The problem is that now they’re trying to hit everything on a checklist that’s too long to complete while also telling a sensible story. Got to have him order a vodka martini, shaken not stirred, somewhere in there. He has to walk around Q’s workshop making a mess of things at some point. He has to have a will-they won’t-they scene with Moneypenny. He’s got to escape a blowing-up building. He’s got to get into a car chase. He’s got to have a fist-fight with a brute. He has to have sex with at least two women, one of whom he doesn’t care about. He’s got to say that his name is, “Bond, James Bond,” at some point, and likewise a villain has to call him, “Mr. Bond,” at some point when that villain expects to be killing him shortly, even though no one has ever succeeded at that. With so much inserted nostalgia and a story that’s essentially a remake, I’m wondering what Spectre offers that’s new. The answer is nothing, it just does a slightly better job of making the villains scary than movies of decades past.
Cerebral director Sam Mendes might not know he accidentally made a better film than Skyfall though. He might think he created some new-age gritty genius Bond, a smarter darker product for the modern age. If so, that’s concerning because basically he has Craig wandering stupidly from one locale to the next, just waiting for his contractually obligated torture scene. It’s almost as dumb a story, just more Bond-friendly. I’ll keep watching as they churn these things out, even with incompetent Mendes at the helm, if for no other reason than the title songs and weird hyper-sexualized opening credit sequences are still great. It’s just at this point I know that after I’ve watched them, it’s all downhill from there.