There is nothing that I could say in a review that would deter anybody who was remotely interested in James Bond from seeing “Spectre." That just speaks to the cultural touchstone Bond has become, not only in film, but in society as a whole. “Spectre” is the 24th Eon-produced Bond film, and it's indicative of where the franchise has been heading in a post-9/11 society through producing a brooding, overly long, psychoanalytical Bond that is, frankly, a bore. That still isn't going to stop anyone from going.
“Spectre” is the fourth in the Daniel Craig incarnation, second with Sam Mendes as director, following “Skyfall," about the M16 agent with an official license to kill and an unofficial license to carouse with any girl he lays eyes upon. But, Craig’s Bond films are different from all the incarnations before him. He is not as charming as Connery, nor as traditionally handsome as Brosnan, and not as campy as Roger Moore. No, Craig has been scarred through his adventures and past. He is Batman--a superhero.
For the first time, this series of Bond films have an overarching storyline. The events of 2006's “Casino Royale” are still essential to the character motivations of “Spectre." But with Bond, emotions never really mattered. Looking back at the amount of killing and sex the 60’s and 70’s Bonds did, he is a sociopath. Craig has enough chops to pull off humanity, but these movies are warped with so much cynicism and darkness, that there's no more fun to be had with them.
In “Spectre," James Bond, fresh off the events from “Skyfall,” is following a posthumous order from Judi Dench’s M to investigate a group of global terrorists. Like every spy movie in the past five years, Bond is not sanctioned by M16 and eventually goes rogue. The plot never really matters in a Bond film. All Bond films are convoluted. All you need are cool gadgets from Q, a beautiful woman, picturesque locations from across the globe and a scene-chewing bad guy.
But with Mendes, plot does matter. For two hours and 28 minutes, the audience gets the hallmarks of any 007 films, as well as a deep dive in the psychosis of Bond. He was an orphan. He has history with this film's residential bad guy (Christoph Waltz). During one of the most standard of Bond tropes in “Spectre," Bond finds himself clamped to a chair as the villain is drilling into his head. It’s almost self-referential, as if the movie is commenting on the way these films are treating Bond.
Mendes has to find a way to balance Bond’s self-discovery with the general tropes of the Hollywood film, and that's hard to achieve. In between the set pieces of Mexico City, Italy, Tangiers, and Austria, the film tries to shoehorn in Bond’s angst of not being able to balance "love" and his job. More importantly, despite its length, the drama does not warrant the action and the action does not warrant the drama.
Eventually, the movie just stops being fun. As a critic, it is a crutch to criticize a movie of this magnitude to not have enough character development and all action. But really, all this movie has to be is a good time. Watching Bond in an apartment with no furniture as a metaphor for his life is neither fun nor a meaningful deconstruction of the Bond genre.
When this movie went into production, the goal for Criag and Mendes was to make a film better than “Skyfall." For them, this meant deconstructing Bond and placing him in the realm of reality. But “Spectre” does not work because there is no way to place Bond in reality. Or maybe I just prefer my Bond shaken, not stirred.
Double 0 2 1/2 out of 005
