Tuesday, October 27, 2015
'Spectre' (2015) directed by Sam Mendes
With Spectre Daniel Craig surpasses Connery and is now officially the best James Bond ever. Save for
the stumble of 2008's Quantum of Solace,
Craig's films have delivered CPR to an ailing franchise that was in
serious danger of disappearing up its own arse in a flurry of crap
jokes and crap CGI.
For
my money Skyfall was
an all-time series high; a critique on the very idea of James Bond,
not to mention being sumptuously gorgeous and brilliantly performed.
Three years later we're back with the same director, screenwriters
and aesthetic sensibility. So, is this as good as Skyfall?
No.
But
don't get me wrong, it's a very, very good movie. The conceit is that
the actions of the three previous Craig Bond villains have been
orchestrated by globe-spanning ultrasecret organisation SPECTRE.
Beginning with an astonishing set piece action sequence in Mexico
City, Bond travels to Italy, Austria and Morocco in hot pursuit of
the organisation and its shadowy director (Christoph Waltz).
Meanwhile
back in London M16 is facing big changes. They're being merged with
M15 and are now under the command of Whitehall wonk Denbigh. He's
masterminding a global, multinational surveillance network that will
combine the intelligence gathering resources of the world superpowers
into one system. The individual agent is, as Denbigh puts it,
"prehistoric",
arguing that whatever a lone gunman can do a drone can do cheaper,
safer and more efficiently.
This
is a post-Snowden critique of intelligence work; shrewdly pitting the
'old-school' of M, Moneypenny, Q and Bond against their modern
counterparts. Given how much quasi-illegal snooping these characters
usually do dividing everyone up into good spies and bad spies is a
teensy bit hypocritical, but seeing Bond essentially going toe to toe
with modern GCHQ is so fun so I'll allow it.
Naturally,
the globetrotting story takes us to some gobsmackingly pretty
locations; all shot with a compositional rigour that's the equal of
anything in modern cinema. It's a cliche to say that every frame is a
painting - but seriously - every single shot stuns. Whether it be a
monochrome Bond framed between Brutalist pillars and giant cross, an
abandoned desert train station, a low-lit Roman garden or a gently
jangling luxury train carriage - it's the movie-going equivalent of
sipping fine wine.
The beauty is evident from the first couple of minutes; Mendes orchestrating a
brainmeltingly complex, Scorsese-bothering one-shot that zips through
a busy Dia De Los Muertes parade, through a packed hotel, ducking
into a elevator, through a hotel room, out the window and along the
rooftop. It's a dizzying statement of intent; the film eager to
impress us the audience first with its cinematic credentials, then
with its explosions, collapsing buildings and easy sense of style.
A
cinematic bounty like this is nothing to be sniffed at, and in
combination with Craig's magnetic Bond, an excellent supporting cast
(with particular credit to Léa Seydoux's cool-as-ice Bond girl) and
a graceful yet tense score by Thomas Newman, makes for 148 minutes
that fly by in the blink of an eye.
Yet
it's not quite as good as Skyfall.
That film had something important to say about Bond; dissembling him
into his constituent parts and trying to figure out what makes the
character still popular 50 years after Dr No.
It boldly met the character's latent imperialism, misogyny and
establishment credentials head on, ending with a character boiled
back to his essentials and stronger than ever before.
But
you can only pull that trick once every couple of decades. Spectre
finds itself with comparatively little to add to on its central
subject. There's a thematic line that runs about three-quarters
through the film of Bond as the walking dead; a man thats immersed
himself in violence so long that he has become a figurative angel of
death.
After
all, he opens the film dressed as a skeleton, casually (and
repeatedly) states his profession as 'killer', is referred to as a
relic of the past and is continually shot in monochrome, Craig's
scalloped features lit to give the impression of a skull.
Disappointingly this imagery peters out in the final act with no
symbolic resolution - something Skyfall managed
in spades with its low-key Highlands church showdown.
This feeds into the nagging feeling that the final act isn't as it should be. Belief begins to strain a bit as Bond enters a bizarrely convoluted puzzle/bomb sequence that never quite gels as well as it should. It ends on a perfunctory note, quickly wrapping up its ambitious story of global surveillance networks and omnipotent crime gangs and zipping off in a swanky car as if everything's hunky dory. That said, it's never dull - it's only when you sit back for a moment that you spot the fraying in the narrative seams.
One
element of Skyfall
that Spectre does
successfully develop is exploring classic Bond imagery. Christop
Waltz' baddie has a genuine straight-up evil lair, complete with
needlessly complex torture device and legions of uniformed goons. He
even wears a Nehru collar and pets a white cat! You'd think that
Austin Powers would
have conclusively rendered this stuff laughable, but Spectre
plays it straight and pulls it off beautifully.
This
era of Bond is the best the series has been in 50 years. Craig has
surpassed Connery, delivering a Bond that's vicious, erotic and
empathetic; able to make us laugh and switch to utterly menacing at
the drop of a hat. In Mendes we have a director who can successfully
marry dramatic pathos and things going kaboom - who treats the
material with intelligence and style. Together they've made Bond a
series that's not just respected for its action credentials and
inbuilt cultural cachet, but a genuinely exciting cinematic event.
If,
as he insists, this is Craig's final Bond, then he's left the series
in better shape than it's ever been. This is top flight movie-making.
★★★★
Spectre is on general release now.
Tags:
Daniel Craig ,
film ,
James Bond ,
movie ,
review ,
Sam Mendes ,
Skyfall ,
Spectre
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