REVIEW: Spectre (James Bond #24)

     The dead are alive.

     So the opening of the new James Bond film, Spectre, the 24th official entry in the series, informs us.  It's a theme that runs throughout the movie.  Let's take a look - but be warned, there will be SPOILERS in this blog entry...given the film's whole premise, they'd be hard to avoid (or not to guess) anyway.

Gee...the bullet hole pattern looks kind of familiar...I wonder if that's on purpose???

     Two things I need to get out of the way right off the bat:  First of all, I rather enjoyed the movie.  It's James Bond, which is usually a big plus anyway, and they largely get it right.   Secondly, this movie is not Skyfall.  And I mention that just because Skyfall, the preceding film in the series, absolutely blew me away.  It raised the bar for the franchise, making that entry one of the top three in the series and establishing itself as not only a good James Bond movie, but also a good movie regardless of genre.  The problem with raising the bar on something is that everything else has to work a little bit harder, and I couldn't help but feel that Spectre didn't get to Skyfall's levels.

    That being said, that 'failing' isn't necessarily Spectre's fault, as it'd be tough to top Skyfall.  So I don't wish to be unduly fair to Spectre because it's not a different movie.  I did have a couple of issues with Spectre on its own, though.

    For one thing, Spectre has the longest running time of a Bond film to date, and it doesn't need to.  There are some pacing problems in the movie, especially in the second act, and there are a number of scenes that sort of sit there like an unkempt neighbor that you wish would just clean up or move away.  Several of these scenes feature Lea Seydoux's Dr. Madeline Swann, who is a decent enough character...no shrinking violet her...but whom I found lacking in chemistry with Bond.  Frankly, their whole romance seemed forced, even more so than by the standards of the usual formula, and I just didn't buy an emotional involvement.   As a result, a lot of her screen time with Bond dragged on the film - which is a pity, as Dr. Swann is otherwise a fairly well-written character.  Strangely, Monica Bellucci, about whom so much ink was spilled because she's the oldest Bond girl to date (which is kind of a silly thing to harp on, because she's gorgeous anyway), is dramatically underused, appearing for only about five minutes of the movie.

   Another issue I had was a kind of discord within the movie as to what it wanted to be.  Skyfall represented more of a return to form to classic Bond...despite the serious ramifications and terrifying villain, it went back to more of the elements that make Bond fun, that had been largely absent in Craig's first two outings.  Spectre continues on that, but I couldn't help but feel Craig was trying to play Bond more seriously than was warranted, at least at points.  It felt to me that the movie was trying to inject some levity into itself at points, and then kept swinging back to a more angst-filled reality.  Either approach would have been fine, but it struck me that there was a disconnect, especially with Craig, as to what the movie was supposed to be.  The whole thematic point of the movie - the dead lingering or returning - was heavy handed at times, and I couldn't help but feel Craig was trying to do an Ibsen play amidst the quips and explosions.  It made the movie feel uneven, and I think that contributed to some of the pacing problems, as well.

   One other semi-gripe - I wasn't crazy about Sam Smith's theme song, "Writing's on the Wall" - part dirge, part Lite-FM ballad, it's slow, boring and ponderous, and I find Smith's falsetto obnoxious.  I will say that the opening credits - featuring Bond amidst a tangle of inky octopus imagery and the shattered ghosts of his past - were very, very cool, despite the underwhelming musical accompaniment.

"To kill or not to kill, that is the question, whether 'tis nobler in the mind to die another day, or just beat the living daylights out of everyone..."

   OK, now that I've said all that - the movie has a lot going for it.  While I do think Craig does come across as ready to move on from the role, he's still a great Bond and has managed to make the character his own while still falling in line with what we've come to know, love, and expect from 007.  Spectre joins the three preceding entries as a definite 'series' - four movies telling one story about the evolution, or re-evolution, of a beloved character, with thematic continuity but a fresh take.  There are several solid action sequences in the film, the best of which is actually the film's opening, set in Mexico City during Dia de Muertos, with skeletons abounding (and handily setting up the 'dead are alive' motif) and culminating in an extremely well done fight aboard an out-of-control helicopter.  There are several visual or verbal nods to the classic films throughout - a fight sequence aboard a train highly reminiscent of  From Russia With Love, a torture scene that calls back to Goldfinger, an alpine location which evokes On Her Majesty's Secret Service - even a glimpse of Bond's living arrangement, which we've only seen once before - in an admittedly different style - in Live and Let Die.

  Craig is front and center, but the supporting cast gets some choice bits, and Bond's traditional allies - M (Ralph Fiennes), Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), Q (Ben Whishaw) and Tanner (Rory Kinnear) actually get some action time, contributing more to the plot then just office support, for a change.   (Felix Leiter is mentioned, but does not appear.)   Judi Dench's M, though sadly departed, does still have an influence on the film, her presence reinforcing the presence of the dead and setting up much of Bond's motivation.  Andrew Scott, perhaps best known as Moriarty on Sherlock, plays "C", a governmental rival of M's who also underscores the 'dead are alive' image, casting the #00 program as an ancient relic needing to be exorcised...and indeed, much of the movie's climax revolves around the ruins of the MI6 building in a physical exploration of this.  As mentioned, Lea Seydoux and Monica Bellucci are both interesting characters as the new 'Bond Girls', and Dave Bautista plays a hulking, largely silent Spectre henchman very much in the vein of classic goons like Oddjob or Jaws.

The director and main cast - Scott, Fiennes, Harris, Sam Mendes, Seydoux, Craig, Bellucci, Waltz, Whishaw

   However, the most interesting part of the cast for me, for two reasons, was Christoph Waltz.  I've become a fan of his...I think I'd actually be willing to watch him read the phone book, in that gleefully dry, slightly unhinged, sardonic-but-I-love-my-life way of his.   I was quite excited to learn that he'd be in the movie, though puzzled to hear that he'd be playing "Oberhauser", a character who's really just a footnote in the Fleming Bond novels - a now-deceased mentor of Bond's.

   The other reason I was interested, though, was more about a theory as to what was actually going on in the film.  Bond fans will of course remember the organization SPECTRE from Connery days, being the 1960s version of the 'ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world', with its secretive mad genius overlord, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, being the 'big bad' in three separate entries in the series, and appearing in the shadows in several other films.  Due to a legal battle, however, SPECTRE and its related characters were disallowed from the film series around the time of Sean Connery's departure from the series, and have not officially been seen since.  The organization Quantum was intended to serve as a modern-day stand-in.  However, not all that along ago, it was announced that the legal issues had been settled, so I assumed that Bond's old nemeses would be returning to the big screen...needless to say, when the title of this movie was announced, that was revealed to be a pretty safe assumption (though no longer as an acronym).

   Which brings me back to Waltz.  Because it became painfully obvious that "Oberhauser" was just a dodge, of a sort  (As I mentioned, SPOILERS, even if they're blatantly obvious), I suspected Waltz would in fact be playing Blofeld in Spectre.  The clues were all there - from Waltz's early appearance as a shadowy figure seated at a table around which the heads of Spectre reported on their activities, to his vaguely Nehru jacket, to the white cat, all before Waltz revealed his true identity.  That he ends up getting the same scar as the one Donald Pleasance bore was a nice touch, but yes - Waltz is Blofeld.  Fortunately, while his reveal as the mysterious "But who am I really?" villain of the piece is quite similar to Khan in Star Trek: Into Darkness or Talia in the Dark Knight Rises, at least here we don't have to play games.  It's an obvious development, but a welcome one.  So having Waltz play Bond's arch-enemy is a real treat.

   Of course, Blofeld's plot in the movie does strain credulity - we're given to understand that all of the bad events affecting Bond over the past three films in the rebooted franchise, including the plots of the villains Le Chiffre, Mr. White, Dominic Greene and Raoul Silva, and the deaths of Vesper Lynd and M, are all due to Blofeld's harboring a decades-old grudge that Oberhauser Sr. (Blofeld's natural father and Bond's guardian) liked Bond better.  So Blofeld puts together a master plan and a globe-spanning evil organization, which is currently also involved in gaining control of a master worldwide surveillance program for...reasons....all because Daddy apparently didn't love him as much.  It is a little silly...but frankly, classic Blofeld didn't exactly have all that much in the way of motivation beyond "MWA-HA-HA", so I can't really fault Spectre for this.  And it doesn't hurt that in classic tradition, Blofeld's super-secret lair is a technological marvel hidden inside an abandoned crater.  (Once again - the dead, in this case Oberhauser, is alive.  See?  Thematic consistency!)

This is classic Blofeld.  This is the character Waltz is re-introducing, and NOT, as one idiot teenager I heard stated, Dr. Evil.

 The movie ends with Blofeld in custody - wisely unkilled by Bond - M's unit still fully intact, and James Bond retrieving his vintage, newly-rebuilt Aston Martin to drive off with Dr. Swann.  The ghosts have been laid to rest, that which should be dead is buried and that which should be alive is all fine and dandy.  All of the classic elements have been re-introduced, and that bring us to the standard status quo...which in the universe of Bond, is as it should be.  We've gotten a four-picture span giving us the modern re-invention of Bond, and this is actually a pretty good stepping off place for Craig.  If he does choose to move on now, I think that'd be fine, as I'm not sure what more he'd really need to do with the character.  There's no need to reboot - a modern Bond is now well established, and the rest of the cast can remain and allow a new lead actor to take over the reins.

   So Spectre serves as a decent enough entry in the series.  It's probably on par with Casino Royale - not as good as Skyfall, but nowhere near the disappointment that was Quantum of Solace.  It's engaging, brings back classic Bond baddies, has all the proper elements, and leaves us with a nice tidy bow of a story, but still has somewhere to go, if needed.  It is very much a 'Bond film', even if it's not entirely sure what kind of Bond film it wants to be, but it's effective, entertaining, and fun all the same.

James Bond's skeletal disguise looms over his classic image, so I guess it's true what they say...You Only Live Twice, Mr. Bond.

    FINAL RATING: 7 PAWS (OUT OF 10)