[Spoiler Alert!]
There’s no nice way to say this. Spectre is a silly and rather dull movie. Which for a HUGE Bond fan – particularly of the Daniel Craig era – is grossly disappointing. They say Craig is hanging up his Omega watch and bespoke suits and that they’ll be passing the Bond mantle onto someone else. Maybe that’s because this film was so silly and dull.
Let’s Talk About Sex
Bond has sex with two women in this film – the film’s first-ever Bond Woman, Monica Belluci, who is like a saucier, bedroom version of Nigella Lawson. Their scene was rather sexy – especially when compared with the nonsense that came later in the film – but there is absolutely no reason for it. She’s scared for her life, which Bond has saved, but she doesn’t seem particularly grateful about it, and I got the feeling she would have told him what he needed to know regardless of whether or not he’d stopped to check out her (incredibly nice) lingerie.
In fact, the sex makes him late for a VERY important meeting, which is the whole reason he is even in that part of the world. He’s being stupid – and Bond is not stupid. Reckless, sometimes, but never stupid.
The Bond Woman thing is a big deal, by the way. It is the first time in Bond history that Bond has seduced an older woman. Okay, Belluci is only a few years older than Craig, but still. And she really did rock that lingerie.
The other woman he has sex with is some blonde lady. I confess that I have yet to learn the actresses name, because she sort of blended into the background in every scene.
And of course she hates him when she meets him and sends him away and then he saves her life and she hates him some more and then they’re on a train, inexplicably dressed in the most beautiful clothes even though they’re most likely going to their deaths (cue the evil lair), and then they nearly die, and then they have sex. In fact, they fight for their lives and then – both still impeccably dressed – they look at each other and say, “Now what.”
The ‘what’ is a cut-away edit to them tearing each other’s clothes off in a warmly-lit super spacious (i.e. non-existent) train cabin to SAXOPHONE music. Yes, really. And then of course she falls madly in love with him – not lust. Love. Good grief.
Bad Guys Always Lose
Christoph Waltz is the bad guy – this is a spoiler apparently, even though he is in the credits and all the previews, because for the first 15 minutes of his screen time, his face is hidden. This makes the big reveal – when Bond works out that the leader of this terrible faction is in fact his long-dead foster brother – a giant moment of tension and surprise. Only it isn’t. There is not ONE moment of tension or surprise in the whole movie – but I will get to that later.
Back to Waltz. I have seen him play one of the most horrifyingly evil basterds (sic) I’ve seen on films in years – (Inglorious Basterds, Nazi Officer), so he should be awesome as a Bond villain. Right?
Wrong.
He played the role as though he couldn’t have cared less. That’s not very scary. I’d say Waltz lost some credibility with this role – at least in my mind. And I adored him in Django – that performance leaves me in awe. Bleh.
Action!
There was some action, but nothing we haven’t seen done before – and better – in the Bourne films, the Mission Impossible films, Ronin, previous Bond films, The Italian Job, Fast and the Furious. Need I go on?
BO-RING! And having just re-watched Casino Royale, where that parkour chase scene at the beginning blew my mind again, I nearly fell asleep watching this film.
It was like watching Planes, Trains and Automobiles without the awesome script and terrific acting.
The plot
Is stupid. And makes no sense.
Fan Service
I heard that Spectre had a lot of fan service – these are juicy details there just because they will delight the fans. I was excited about this until I realised that most of it was directed at die-hard fans of the 1970s Bond films.
- The Bond girl wears ridiculously impractical clothes for breaking into the evil villain’s evil lair, even though she knows she will likely have to run/fight for her life
- Bond is strapped to some sort of torture device which makes no sense in the context of the plot (see above)
- The evil villain has a white fluffy cat – yes really
- The evil villain’s henchman doesn’t speak and he doesn’t die
- There is a beautiful building on the top of a very pointy mountain
- Bond never runs out of bullets but doesn’t carry extra ammo
Other Dumb/Annoying Things
- When they destroy the evil guy’s lair – after the Scooby Doo-style confession of his giant evil plan – the destruction seems to have no effect on the plan coming to fruition. This means that the evil plan needs to be stopped another way and that means the (stupid) trip to the desert on the train was pointless.
- The style – the look – the feel – and the pace of the movie shifted drastically throughout. Sam Mendes couldn’t seem to make up his mind what kind of film he was making.
- The (dumb) photocopied pictures of past characters in the finale. We’re supposed to believe that the evil villain is a BAZILLIONAIRE and he would stoop to using photocopied pictures? P-lease!
- There were two secret hideouts for the same peripheral character. Que?
- There were two bad guys and the second one was REALLY obvious from the outset. Why?
The good bits
- The clothes were nice
- The locations were nice
- The Aston Martin was nice
- Daniel Craig, nice to look at
- M and Q and Moneypenny got some cool spy stuff to do
- The theme song was rather nice
- There were two (intentionally) funny bits – I liked those
Sandy Barker | Author 