Spectre (2015)

It feels like I may be tempting fate to say it, but “No Time To Die” is released tomorrow. I’ve booked my tickets, I’ve completed my marathon of the previous Daniel Craig 007 films, I’ve watched each trailer a couple of hundred times and now I’m trying to contain my giddy excitement as I await my most anticipated movie in years.

I’ve been meaning to review “Spectre” for about 18 months, as I wanted to coincide it with the release of the 25th Bond film, but for obvious reasons, that plan has been scuppered multiple times. But at last, with Craig’s final outing as James Bond just a few short hours away, let’s go back 6 years (a third of my lifetime) and examine how “Spectre” has evolved over time. Was this an “All Time High”, or will we need “All the Time in the World” to forget it.

Regardless of the film’s overall quality, “Spectre” always faced an uphill battle as a sequel to “Skyfall.” After the 2012 blockbuster reached critical and commercial heights the likes of which the franchise has rarely seen, “Spectre” had a lot to live up to. As “Skyfall” has been one of my favourite films of all time since I was 9 (as of right now, it’s probably my number one favourite), I was obviously going crazy during the build-up to “Spectre.” Going into 2015, it was tied with “Avengers: Age of Ultron” as my most anticipated film of the year. Unfortunately, both movies let me down.

I don’t hate “Spectre”; unlike some Bond fans, I don’t consider it to be the worst film in the series. Certain cast members are terrific, some of the action is thrilling and the first two-thirds of the film balance the grounded tone of the Craig era with the escapism of the classic films fairly well. However, a few of the key actors are on autopilot, some of the action sequences (although visually striking), are tepid and the third act stands with 2017s “Wonder Woman” as one of the most crushingly disappointing finales I’ve seen. It has its moments, but the struggle to replicate the success of “Skyfall” is palpable in every scene.

First off, let’s start with the good.

The supporting cast are fantastic. Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris and Ralph Fiennes are excellent modern incarnations of the iconic MI6 characters. Dave Bautista doesn’t break the mould of silent, imposing and enormous henchmen, but he fills said mould extremely well. Monica Bellucci does the best she can with the 5 minutes of screen time she’s given and the underwhelming role she plays in the story. Jesper Christensen makes a welcome return to the series, providing a chilling, vulnerable and multi-layered performance, whilst also tying up a dangling plot thread left over from “Quantum of Solace.”

“Spectre” does a decent job of introducing the tropes of earlier Bond films. We finally get the gun barrel at the start of the movie again, the film’s antagonist resides in a huge lair and gadgets make a comeback. Whether the combination of the established Craig atmosphere with more old school touches worked is up for debate, but it was nice to see these aspects come back into the fold properly.

I love a handful of the action set-pieces, particularly the phenomenal pre-title sequence. From the incredible long-take (that gave us a small taste of Sam Mendes’ next film, “1917”) to the jaw-dropping spectacle of the Day of the Dead parade and the heart-stopping helicopter fight, this is my favourite scene in “Spectre” without question. The Austria plane chase is exhilarating and the “From Russia With Love” esque train fight is hard-hitting and exciting.

This feels like a good point to move onto my criticisms with “Spectre” because, whilst the above-mentioned action is noteworthy, the rest is pretty pedestrian. The Rome car chase looks nice, but as 007 is on the phone with Moneypenny throughout the pursuit, the sequence is more of an exposition dump than a pulse-pounding chase. Similarly, the base escape is a perfect example of overblown effects with no soul. Bond dispatches hordes of henchmen before igniting the biggest explosion in cinema history, but as a viewer, you don’t feel anything. Admittedly, the explosion is cool, but in comparison to the much smaller one during the climax of “Skyfall”, it lacks heft and feels perfunctory from a dramatic perspective.

The biggest crime “Spectre” commits from an action perspective is with its woeful climax. After 3 astonishing third acts (yes I like the exploding hotel in “Quantum”), “Spectre” fails. The film tries to recapture the magic of “Skyfall” by having the villain attack a building tied intrinsically into Bond’s identity, but it has none of the riveting character drama or mind-blowing action that film displayed. James wanders through a room full of pictures of characters from previous movies, finds a gagged person in a huge derelict building with only 3 minutes to spare and shoots a helicopter down with a pistol. That’s right, we went from Bond defending M and Kincade in his ancestral home with his “father’s old hunting rifle”, to a lacklustre trip through some still images and an immensely disappointing boat/ helicopter chase. Yay.

Obviously “Spectre” wasn’t going to feature the mind-bogglingly beautiful cinematography that Roger Deakins gave “Skyfall.” That film features some of the greatest lighting, staging, colour grading and visual diversity I’ve ever seen; simple dialogue scenes house creativity and splendour in every frame. This time around Sam Mendes brings in cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema, who had previously worked on “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” and other well-respected dramas. I’ll be honest, I find the cinematography in “Spectre” dull and drab. The entire movie is coated in a repetitive colour palette of browns and yellows, which may work in the incredibly slow “Tinker Tailor”, but in a 007 extravaganza, I want to see some colour! How can you make London, Rome and Tangier all look exactly the same?!

Having composed one of my favourite film scores with “Skyfall”, Thomas Newman returns in “Spectre”, crafting a score that is about 20% new material and 80% recycled music from the previous movie. Don’t get me wrong, I love the music from “Skyfall” and I enjoy the new tracks in “Spectre”, which also carry a propulsive, pounding energy. But whenever a piece of music from “Skyfall” drops in “Spectre”, I feel myself being yanked out of the film, because I associate those stupendous tracks with the previous film. That isn’t to say that reusing music in a film franchise is a bad idea (repetition helps memorable themes become memorable in the first place), but in this context, the score in “Spectre” feels plain lazy.

As previously mentioned, many of the supporting actors are tremendous in “Spectre”; sadly, the same cannot be said for a few of the leads.

Daniel Craig is an outstanding James Bond, he’s truly defined a generation’s view of this legend of pop culture and I for one will be very sad to see him go. That being said, it’s apparent that Craig wasn’t in a good place during the production of “Spectre.” Putting aside his notorious “I’d rather break this glass and slash my wrists” (then play 007 again) quote, he sleepwalks through this movie. He’s never sub-par, but there’s no spark, no light behind his eyes, in most of his scenes. It’s always entertaining to watch him as this character, but I’m crossing my fingers “No Time To Die” is a better swansong than “Spectre.”

Christoph Waltz is an incredibly talented actor who proved he could play an overblown yet creepy villain in “Inglourious B…”, so it’s a shame that he wasn’t utilised to his full potential as Franz Oberhauser. He’s slightly unnerving and has a presence when on screen, but he feels too restrained to make the impact he should have. I’m not going to get into the true identity of his character because it’s a spoiler and will send me into a 10 paragraph spiral about why this character’s relation to Bond’s past is a terrible executive decision. Here’s hoping Waltz can redeem the character in “No Time To Die.”

Speaking of characters I hope will improve, Léa Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann is a bland Bond woman. She has a couple of good lines, but her role as the new Vesper feels so contrived. She lacks the brilliance of Eva Green’s character in “Casino Royale”, who had authentic chemistry with James and felt like a real, complex human being. This made the romance between Vesper and Bond genuinely believable and thus caused the ending to hit us like a truck. Seydoux almost elevates the shoddily written character to something more, but the supposed love she shares with 007 doesn’t work.

Finally, one of the most frustrating elements of “Spectre” is how it manages to interweave all the Daniel Craig 007 films together in such an unsatisfying way. It’s no secret that the Bond movies look to their fellow blockbusters of the era for ideas, but “Spectre” is so obviously supposed to be an MCU-like interconnected story. This may have worked if the filmmakers had mapped out a trilogy of Bond movies with an overall arc in mind, but “Spectre” proves you can’t build an awe-inspiring tapestry of films after the fact. At the end of the day, whilst I love it when James Bond movies link back to previous entries in rewarding ways that serve the overall story, I don’t appreciate a potentially good story becoming bogged down with unnecessary call-backs.

In conclusion, “Spectre” is a film I really want to love, but I can’t help but be crestfallen that it isn’t better. Some of the cast are wonderful, moments of action live up to the calibre we expect from this monumental franchise and the stunts and pyrotechnics are clearly something to celebrate. But the poorly-paced narrative often feels like it’s going through the motions, with certain actors phoning it in. The film is crippled by the unfortunate decision to recreate the runaway success of “Skyfall” and the MCU. There are definitely things to enjoy here, but “Spectre” wasn’t exactly the best film to release right before the second longest-gap in Bond history. Nevertheless, that doesn’t reduce my excitement for “No Time To Die” as the laws of science dictate that, because it’s an odd numbered entry in the Daniel Craig James Bond 007 era, it must be a masterpiece… oh I hope it’s good.