Review of Spectre (2015) by Bo L — 15 Aug 2016

It is hard to ignore that SPECTRE feels more like a random action thriller with a lot of Bond tropes plastered on to allow for it's "James Bond"-label.

While it starts out quite awesomely in best Bond style and there is alot very good ideas and elements in there, the film gradually losses its momentum and everything Bond about it is down to a name, a theme, another name, a reference to a previous films and so on, and the story is driven forward by very obscure and silly plot devices. By the end, Bond literally walks/drives off camera with the girl, twice, in a scene like any other cliched film ending from the last 50 years.

Like in Skyfall SPECTRE tries to dive into Bond's past, but does so in a clumsy and unimaginative way straight out of Hollywood's current Bestseller: "Idiot's Guide to creating drama and tension in Soap Opera's and dying film series".

Craig feels dry and unmotivated but still looks good in the action sequences, Seydoux is almost irrelevant, the films major scoop for a Bond girl Belluci is almost non-present, Waltz channels his typical odd ball soft spoken cynical villain, Fiennes is constantly looking out of place and henchman Bautista is definetly as menancing as Jaws and Red Grant but his gimmicky "trademark" killing style is hardly used (once).

The sets wary equally in success from the awesome location of the villain lair, the throwback to a chic beautiful mountain top clinic (underused) and a cliched but satisfying train ride with following fight sequence and over to the top dull interior of the villains lair, yet another trendy yet oddly not so secret underground hide out for Q and the new overly designed but all too familiar fully glazed headquarters of the intelligence services in London (filmed in Mayor of London's City Hall). The sheer amount of locations leaves most of the sets underused and irrelevant to the story.

The action makes up for some of the downfalls of the films which sees the action style from the three previous Craig's films mixed up with same historical bond sets and sequences, although the film hardly seems to care to show Bond in much jeopardy.

And then there is the song which like the film starts out beautifully with a strong melody as it should, but then leaves that behind and becomes just another Sam Smith song, which happens to have a very bizarre bondesque title sequence.

A second viewing might be in order to see the film simply as another action thriller rather than a Bond film.