{"id":869,"date":"2015-11-06T23:46:45","date_gmt":"2015-11-07T04:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/2015\/11\/06\/film-review-spectre\/"},"modified":"2015-12-12T17:54:42","modified_gmt":"2015-12-12T22:54:42","slug":"film-review-spectre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/2015\/11\/06\/film-review-spectre\/","title":{"rendered":"Film review:\u00a0\u2018SPECTRE\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

SPECTRE<\/i>, the latest James Bond movie and the fourth to star\u00a0Daniel Craig as 007, offers many pleasures, especially a sense of fun missing\u00a0from Bond movies for too long and a certain evil organization that has been\u00a0missing even longer. About 90 percent of it makes for an ideal Bond movie.<\/p>\n

The other 10 percent frustrates. This 10 percent marks the distance\u00a0between SPECTRE <\/i>being an above average Bond and one of the best. The missteps are yank-your-hair-out kind of stuff, because director Sam Mendes and producers\u00a0Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli should not have got these things wrong.\u00a0Some of it comes down to a few characters and situations needing stronger\u00a0development, but some of it violates basic screenwriting wisdom. A major\u00a0character\u2019s motivation should not be reduced to a few lines of dialogue.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As noted, SPECTRE <\/i>is Craig\u2019s fourth Bond movie and shares a\u00a0trajectory with the fourth films of his most successful forebears, Sean Connery\u00a0and Roger Moore. The third film for all three actors\u2014Connery\u2019s Goldfinger<\/a><\/i>, Moore\u2019s The Spy Who Loved Me<\/a><\/i> and Craig\u2019s Skyfall<\/i>\u2014struck box-office gold\u00a0beyond even the producers\u2019 expectations. In each case the filmmakers decided to
\nfollow-up on these hits by doubling down on the elements that made them\u00a0successful and adding to the running time. The results were movies that were\u00a0bigger and more extravagant, but hollower than their immediate predecessors.<\/p>\n

Yet Connery\u2019s Thunderball <\/i>and Moore\u2019s Moonraker <\/i>would become\u00a0their highest-grossing outings. Don\u2019t look for this history to repeat. It would\u00a0take a miracle for SPECTRE<\/i> to top Skyfall\u2019s <\/i>billion-dollar box office.<\/p>\n

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But how does SPECTRE <\/i>rank alongside the other No. 4 Bonds? It is
\ncertainly superior to\u00a0Moonraker<\/a><\/i>, an oft-ridiculed Bond that is better than
\nits reputation. SPECTRE <\/i>is not quite as good as Thunderball<\/i>, despite\u00a0sharing some of its flaws. It also is too long (at 2 hours and 28 minutes, SPECTRE<\/i> is the longest 007 movie) and loses its way for a bit during a\u00a0protracted second act.\u00a0(I have not included Pierce Brosnan in this discussion, in case you\u00a0were wondering, because his third film, The World Is Not Enough<\/i>, is his least\u00a0memorable. I know I\u2019d rather forget it.)<\/p>\n

SPECTRE <\/i>marks the long-awaited return to the 007 series of SPECTRE,\u00a0the sinister organization that Ian Fleming created for the novel Thunderball <\/i>and that featured in every 1960s Bond film except Goldfinger<\/i>. SPECTRE and its master, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, have been absent from the\u00a0official series since 1971\u2019s Diamonds Are Forever<\/i> because of legal reasons\u00a0too complicated to explain here, but if you want the full story track down\u00a0Robert Sellers\u2019 excellent history The Battle for Bond<\/i>, where you will learn\u00a0how SPECTRE and Blofeld were able to make an unofficial return in Connery\u2019s abominable\u00a01983 Thunderball <\/i>remake, Never Say Never Again<\/i>.<\/p>\n

SPECTRE <\/i>begins with Bond ambushing assassin Marco Sciarra (Alessandro\u00a0Cremona) in Mexico City during the Day of the Dead in an action sequence\u00a0grander in scale and scope than Skyfall\u2019s <\/i>Istanbul opening without being as\u00a0exciting. Bond\u2019s prize is the killer\u2019s ring, which is adorned with an octopus\u00a0that will be familiar to longtime 007 fans.<\/p>\n

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Back in London Bond is harangued by M (Ralph Fiennes, who took over
\nfor Judi Dench at the end of Skyfall<\/i>) for causing another international
\nincident without orders. I worried this was another \u201cBond goes rogue\u201d plot that
\nhas become routine in the Craig films, but it turns out Bond did have a\u00a0legitimate reason to take out Sciarra. With a little help from Moneypenny\u00a0(Naomi Harris) and Q (Ben Wishaw) Bond is able to sneak out of London and\u00a0pursue his investigation in Rome, where he meets Sciarra\u2019s widow, Lucia (Monica\u00a0Belucci). Belucci has gained attention for being the oldest Bond woman (she was\u00a050 when she filmed her scenes) but she should be getting more attention for\u00a0being among the smartest and sexiest. Unfortunately, her role is much smaller\u00a0than the film\u2019s publicity would indicate.<\/p>\n

Bond\u2019s pursuit of the secret of the ring leads to old nemesis Mr.\u00a0White (Jesper Christensen), now near death and being targeted by the successors\u00a0to Quantum, the SPECTRE stand-in from Craig\u2019s first two movies. Mr. White\u00a0agrees to share information with Bond as long as 007 protects his daughter,gorgeous French doctor (of what I\u2019m not sure) Madeleine Swann (L\u00e9a
\nSeydoux), who is being hunted by the ferocious hitman Mr. Hinx (Dave Bautista,\u00a0Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy<\/i>).<\/p>\n

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Craig\u2019s last two films lacked a genuine leading lady, perhaps\u00a0because the producers figured they could never top Casino Royale\u2019s<\/i> Eva Green,\u00a0so why bother? Consequently the last two Bonds have been heavy on the action\u00a0but light on the sex and\u2014hallelujah!\u2014Seydoux brings sex appeal back to Bond.\u00a0She enters a luxury train\u2019s dining car (by the way, are there actually luxury\u00a0trains currently operating in the deserts of North Africa?) wearing a shimmering pale blue silk creation that is the series\u2019\u00a0most stunning dress since Barbara Bach\u2019s midnight blue evening gown in Spy Who\u00a0Loved Me<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou shouldn\u2019t stare,\u201d she tells Bond.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, you shouldn\u2019t look like that,\u201d he replies.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s that? Witty romantic banter back in a Bond movie? Again I\u00a0say, \u201cHallelujah!\u201d<\/p>\n

SPECTRE <\/i>offers\u00a0many such moments that had this longtime Bond fan\u00a0praising the lord, or at least Sam Mendes. The glories of SPECTRE <\/i>are all the\u00a0elements it restores to Bond, starting right in the first few seconds with the gun\u00a0barrel sequence back at the beginning. If you hear cheers and applause as Craig\u00a0strolls out in a white dot then spins to shoot the camera, you\u2019re in a theater\u00a0with Bond fans ecstatic to behold their sacred icon returned to its rightful\u00a0place.<\/p>\n

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<\/i>SPECTRE <\/i>lifts the scrim of angst that has been shading the Craig
\nera and allows a genuine sense of humor to flow throughout the film, not just
\nat moments that require comic relief. Don\u2019t worry. This isn\u2019t the slapstick and
\nbuffoonery of Diamonds Are Forever<\/i> or Moonraker<\/i>. This is the light,\u00a0sophisticated comedy of Goldfinger <\/i>or On Her Majesty\u2019s Secret Service<\/a><\/i>. SPECTRE <\/i>is the first entry in Craig\u2019s reign, plus the latter half of Brosnan\u2019s reign,\u00a0that truly feels like a classic Bond movie.<\/p>\n

The shift in tone allows Craig to ease up on his Broody\u00a0McBroodpants characterization of Bond. We already knew that Craig, the most\u00a0pugilistic of 007s, could muscle and punch and snarl his way through the films,\u00a0but what a joy it is to discover that he can quip with the ease of Connery and\u00a0Moore. The last two actors in the role never mastered the skill. Timothy Dalton\u00a0always seemed embarrassed by the one-liners and Brosnan\u2019s delivery was clunky
\n(although he was contending with dreadful scripts).<\/p>\n

Even more than Skyfall<\/i>, SPECTRE<\/i> returns to the premium of\u00a0global locations, all given the travel brochure treatment by cinematographer Hoyte\u00a0van Hoytema (who took a grittier look at the espionage world in Tinker Tailor\u00a0Soldier Spy<\/i>). After Mexico City, Bond journeys to places cosmopolitan (Rome),\u00a0wintry (the Austrian Alps) and arid (Morocco) and finds danger in each of them.<\/p>\n

Although action has never left the series, SPECTRE <\/i>brings the\u00a0outlandish back to the set pieces. A helicopter performs barrel rolls (filmed\u00a0at the same angle as the famous barrel roll car jump from The Man With the\u00a0Golden Gun<\/i>). Bond steers a gadget-packed Aston Martin DB 10 through the\u00a0nighttime streets of Rome pursued by Mr. Hinx\u2019s equally sleek Jaguar CX75. In\u00a0an amusing twist, the gadgets don\u2019t quite work as Bond expects.<\/p>\n

A return bout\u00a0with Mr. Hinx becomes into the best Bond fight scene in forever, at least since\u00a0Brosnan and Sean Bean whaled on each other at the end of GoldenEye<\/i>. The fight\u00a0takes place aboard that luxury train, and the battle combines elements of the train fights\u00a0from Spy Who Loved Me<\/i> and From Russia With Love<\/a><\/i>. To be honest, the obvious\u00a0tributes to highlights from previous Bond films become a bit trying. I hope the\u00a0next Bond director doesn\u2019t share Mendes\u2019 preoccupation with nostalgia.<\/p>\n

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Mr. Hinx is an honest attempt to resuscitate the Bond trope of the\u00a0invincible henchman, and the character clearly blends the DNA of Harold\u00a0Sakata\u2019s Oddjob and Richard Kiel\u2019s Jaws. Bautista plays the killer as an\u00a0unstoppable human wrecking ball, and he adds a powerful sense of menace. Yet SPECTRE <\/i>doesn\u2019t develop the character well. For starters, I\u2019m not sure he qualifies as\u00a0a henchman. That implies he has a boss. It is never clear whether Mr. Hinx\u00a0(whose name is not spoken) is working for SPECTRE or is an assassin\u00a0applicant still on his probationary period. And he just vanishes from the\u00a0story. You expect him to reappear as Jaws always did, but he doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Miss Moneypenny and Q, stalwart characters in the old Bond movies,\u00a0didn\u2019t make their Craig-era debut until Skyfall<\/i>. Harris and Whishaw are\u00a0already so comfortable in the roles that you would swear they have been around\u00a0since Casino Royale<\/i>. They help make SPECTRE <\/i>feel like a real James Bond movie.<\/p>\n

Fiennes\u2019 M is more of a problem. His acting can\u2019t be\u00a0faulted, that would be absurd, but his role in the film can be. When it became\u00a0apparent Fiennes was Dench\u2019s replacement, I worried the producers had made a\u00a0mistake in hiring him. After Dench won her Oscar for Shakespeare in Love<\/i>, the\u00a0MI6 chief gained more screen time in each film, following Bond into the film to harangue\u00a0him. I fretted that by hiring Fiennes the producers wouldn\u2019t just continue the\u00a0bad idea of turning M into Bond\u2019s costar, but compound it. You don\u2019t hire an\u00a0actor of Fiennes\u2019 profile to sit behind a desk and issue orders for one scene\u00a0at the beginning of the movie.<\/p>\n

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I was right to fret. In SPECTRE<\/i>, M gets not just his own subplot\u00a0but his own adversary, MI5 chief Max Denbigh (Andrew Scott, who plays Moriarty\u00a0on Sherlock<\/i>). Having arranged to merge MI6 and MI5 (which would be like\u00a0merging the CIA and the FBI, and just as unlikely) Denbigh has convinced the\u00a0British government to outsource its intelligence work to a multinational,\u00a0privately financed version of the NSA. \u201cWe\u2019re going to bring British\u00a0intelligence out of the dark ages and into the light,\u201d he says. Because\u00a0as the real NSA learned with Edward Snowden, nothing can possibly go wrong when you farm out secret work to private contractors.<\/p>\n

Aiming directly at the heart of the series, Denbigh threatens to\u00a0end the double-0 program. Unveiling his computerized surveillance network,\u00a0Denbigh says to M, \u201cYou can\u2019t tell me that one man in the field can compete with all this.\u201d Denbigh comes uncomfortably close to the politician\u00a0played by Alec Baldwin in this summer\u2019s \u201cMission: Impossible\u201d movie who wanted
\nto kill the Impossible Missions Force, but Denbigh\u2019s motives are more sinister.<\/p>\n

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Here is where SPECTRE <\/i>gets frustrating. The M vs. Denbigh
\nstoryline is a drag on the rest of the film, and Scott, who plays perhaps the most
\nannoying character in Bond history, receives more screen time than\u00a0Bellucci and Bautista combined. The resources spent on this ill-advised subplot\u00a0should have been reallocated to shore up the areas where the main plot sags.\u00a0Because they are sensitive areas.<\/p>\n

To face a hard truth, one of the things that SPECTRE <\/i>gets wrong\u00a0is SPECTRE. The script, credited to John Logan, the team of Neal Purvis and\u00a0Robert Wade (who have contributed to every Bond since The World Is Not Enough<\/i>)\u00a0and Jez Butterworth, is so concerned with keeping the shadowy organization secret\u00a0from the audience for the first two-thirds of the film that by the time its\u00a0purpose is revealed, SPECTRE doesn\u2019t seem like much of a threat.<\/p>\n

Look at how the classic Bond films, particularly From Russia With\u00a0Love<\/i> and Thunderball<\/i>, handled SPECTRE. The organization\u2019s plot is spelled\u00a0out to the audience early, before Bond learns what is going on, and thus\u00a0suspense is created instead of confusion. The new movie serves up a classic\u00a0SPECTRE boardroom scene (with a suspiciously large audience), but why do the\u00a0filmmakers insist on shrouding the organization in mystery? The title of the
\nmovie is SPECTRE<\/i>, for crying out loud.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

With SPECTRE, there must be Blofeld. Or must there? Christoph\u00a0Waltz, clad in a Nehru jacket and shrouded in shadow at the head of the\u00a0boardroom table, certainly has a Blofeld air to him in the trailers. But his\u00a0character is identified as Franz Oberhauser, and the script teases he may\u00a0not be Blofeld. Perhaps Blofeld is someone else, such as Scott. He\u2019s played\u00a0Sherlock Holmes\u2019 nemesis, why not Bond\u2019s? I won\u2019t reveal the script\u2019s big secret, but be prepared for an anticlimax.<\/p>\n

Waltz\u2019s character is the son of Hannes Oberhauser, a figure mentioned in Ian Fleming\u2019s short story \u201cOctopussy\u201d whom Bond describes as \u201csomething\u00a0of a father to me at a time when I happened to need one.\u201d Oberhauser was an\u00a0Austrian mountain guide who took Bond in after his parents died. This means\u00a0that Bond and the younger Oberhauser (who isn\u2019t mentioned in the Fleming story)\u00a0were like brothers.<\/p>\n

Yet after elaborately introducing this facet of Bond\u2019s past\u00a0that comes directly from Fleming, who revealed very little about Bond\u2019s\u00a0childhood, the filmmakers do nothing with it. Nothing! Craig and Waltz pay lip\u00a0service to having a shared past, but their performances fail to indicate they ever knew each other. Waltz commits his best to being silky and menacing,\u00a0but the script doesn\u2019t ask much more of him. Though not Waltz\u2019s fault, he is a\u00a0tremendous disappointment after Javier Bardem set new standards for Bond\u00a0villainy in Skyfall<\/i>.<\/p>\n

SPECTRE <\/i>gets a lot right. What it gets right accounts for the\u00a0purest Bond experience in 20 years, with another bulls-eye performance from\u00a0Craig (who will probably do one more Bond, no matter what he\u2019s been saying\u00a0lately). The two weakest links in the movie are SPECTRE and Blofeld. After\u00a0being out of the Bond producers\u2019 hands for more than 40 years, these should
\nhave been the movie\u2019s strongest assets. The Bond filmmakers may\u00a0get a chance to right the situation next time, but how they could get so many\u00a0classic elements right except the two that should have mattered most is unfathomable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 SPECTRE, the latest James Bond movie and the fourth to star\u00a0Daniel Craig as 007, offers many pleasures, especially a sense of fun missing\u00a0from Bond movies for too long and a certain evil organization that has been\u00a0missing even longer. About 90 percent of it makes for an ideal Bond movie. The other 10 percent frustrates….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[335,461,334,377],"tags":[499,481,497,102,386,289,242,474,56,77,15,16,390,385,498,70,500,241,213,239,485,12,20,480,369,501,11,502,373,226],"class_list":["post-869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bond-films","category-film-criticism","category-films","category-james-bond","tag-ben-wishaw","tag-casino-royale","tag-cristoph-waltz","tag-daniel-craig","tag-dave-bautista","tag-diamonds-are-forever","tag-from-russia-with-love","tag-goldeneye","tag-goldfinger","tag-ian-fleming","tag-james-bond","tag-james-bond-007","tag-james-bond-movies","tag-lea-seydoux","tag-monica-bellucci","tag-moonraker","tag-naomi-harris","tag-on-her-majestys-secret-service","tag-pierce-brosnan","tag-quantum-of-solace","tag-ralph-fiennes","tag-roger-moore","tag-sean-connery","tag-skyfall","tag-spectre","tag-the-man-with-the-golden-gun","tag-the-spy-who-loved-me","tag-the-world-is-not-enough","tag-thunderball","tag-timothy-dalton"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5foza-e1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=869"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1010,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions\/1010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}