Spectre (2015)
Directed by Sam Mendes
A cryptic message from Bond’s past sends him on a trail to uncover a sinister organization. While M battles political forces to keep the secret service alive, Bond peels back the layers of deceit to reveal the terrible truth behind SPECTRE.
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The spectacular one-shot opening sequence during Mexico City's Day of the Dead celebrations recalls the voodoo of Live and Let Die while you could spend a lot of time googling things such as "fight on a train" and "1948 Rolls Royce Silver Wraith" to remind where you might have seen those things before.
With 007 (Daniel Craig) down Mexico way on the Day of the Dead, we get a brilliant tracking shot, a nod to Live and Let Die (there are plenty more classy tributes to other favourites to come), a hat on a bed, and a stunt to get even the sternest of set-piece scholars salivating.
Live and Let Die seems to be an inspiration for several winks – Bond’s carnival mask in the beginning is basically a riff on bond villain Baron Samedi and there’s a fight on the train taken straight from that movie as well.
Spectre opens promisingly (or wishfully) on a title card that reads “The dead are alive,” and then immerses itself in a handsome long take that roams around a Day of the Dead parade in Mexico City, evoking Live and Let Die as it finds Craig’s Bond—in the film’s most vivid image—dressed in a skeleton mask and matching tuxedo, en route to an assassination like the cold killing machine of Ian Fleming’s prose.
Even the better bits of "Spectre," such as a close-quarters fistfight on a passenger train between Bond and a thick-necked henchman ( Dave Bautista of " Guardians of the Galaxy "), and a mostly wordless, almost one-take stalking/assassination sequence set during a Day of the Dead parade in Mexico City, pale in comparison to their Bondian inspirations (respectively, "From Russia with Love," and " Live and Let Die " by way of "Octopussy").
We not only see Bond challenge the Big Brother mentality in the fight for significance, Mendes has him walking with the dead, literally, as he’s dressed as a skeleton (a nice nod to Live and Let Die ) walking the streets of Mexico during the Day of the Dead festival in the stunning opening sequence.
In a post- Austin Powers world, where either homage or parody can sprout in the same fertile soil, how do you make a James Bond film that plays it as straight as the line of flesh left unpainted for safety’s sake on the actress gilded in Goldfinger ?
The four (!) writers credited with the script have managed to use “Spectre” to tie together all the previous Craig efforts, with a nod to earlier Bonds with the appearance of not one but two Aston Martins, a car associated with the series since “Goldfinger.”
Fans will feel a giddy rush seeing a villain's lair in a hollowed-out crater, a silent henchman with a brutal signature kill (Dave Bautista's Mr Hinx) and nods to everything from Goldfinger to The Spy Who Loved Me , but they paper over the cracks of a script that's big on plot - 148 minutes of it - and thrifty when it comes to character development.
Director Sam Mendes, back for his second tour on the 007 beat, presents the story as a summing-up, a procession of elements that clearly echo the early Bond films—chiefly Thunderball , but also From Russia with Love (a fierce train fight) and Goldfinger (a funny riff on Bond's gadget-packed Aston Martin).
…the 1964 classic “Goldfinger” – but it was also just a great movie…
He's a rapist in Fleming's novels (and consider the conquest of Pussy Galore in Goldfinger)--literally in some instances, in others just given to taking advantage of women in extremis.
That confirms the title’s promised resurrection of a collective enemy that has featured in six previous 007 romps, though none since 1971’s “Diamonds Are Forever.”
(Anyone who can explain the plot of The Man With the Golden Gun is smarter than I am, and I’ve easily seen it 30 times.)
The train fight recalls Sean Connery's similar fight in From Russia with Love (1963), and the relentless, seemingly unstoppable henchman (Dave Bautista) that trails after Bond reminded me of Richard Kiel's "Jaws" character in both The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979).
Elsewhere, a drifty night-time car chase through the streets of Rome evokes memories of a much-loved child’s toy equipped with springy surprises and clip-on flames, while Dave Bautista’s Mr Hinx is essentially a latterday Jaws who gets to batter Bond on a train in a sequence that nods not only to The Spy Who Loved Me but also From Russia With Love .
Fans will feel a giddy rush seeing a villain's lair in a hollowed-out crater, a silent henchman with a brutal signature kill (Dave Bautista's Mr Hinx) and nods to everything from Goldfinger to The Spy Who Loved Me , but they paper over the cracks of a script that's big on plot - 148 minutes of it - and thrifty when it comes to character development.
Along the way they are both pursued by Mr. Hinx (Dave Bautista), a burly Spectre operative in the mold of Richard Kiel’s Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979)—only one of numerous allusions to the classic Bond canon.
Meet MMA fighter turned actor Dave Bautista as Mr. Hinx, a scary bruiser who rivals Richard Kiehl as Jaws in "The Spy Who Loved Me" or Harold Sakata as Oddjob in "Goldfinger."
The train fight recalls Sean Connery's similar fight in From Russia with Love (1963), and the relentless, seemingly unstoppable henchman (Dave Bautista) that trails after Bond reminded me of Richard Kiel's "Jaws" character in both The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979).
Along the way they are both pursued by Mr. Hinx (Dave Bautista), a burly Spectre operative in the mold of Richard Kiel’s Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979)—only one of numerous allusions to the classic Bond canon.
Bond could fight Blofeld in You Only Live Twice and then two years later they meet again for the first time in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service .
OMG! That's Ernst Starvo Blofeld's white kitty cat from "You Only Live Twice"!
There’s a health clinic atop a Swiss mountain like On Her Majesty’s Secret Service ; a romantic interlude and ferocious fistfight on a train like From Russia with Love ; an incredibly well-designed but highly impractical supervillain lair like You Only Live Twice or The Spy Who Loved Me .
The things include an Aston Martin with an ejector seat, as in “Goldfinger”; a boat emerging from MI6 headquarters onto the Thames, as in “The World Is Not Enough”; and a lunatic’s lair inside a crater, as in “You Only Live Twice.”
For one, a shadowy company meeting of SPECTRE agents seated at a long wooden table is more reminiscent of a parallel scene in Austin Powers than the original it parodied from 1965’s Thunderball.
Utterly devoid of surprise If you’re hunting for spoilers, I’m going to make it real easy for you: this review isn’t going to discuss Ernst Stavro Blofeld (the character that’s historically served as head of Spectre — and inspired Austin Powers’ Dr. Evil), nor will it address whether anybody in the film ends up being Blofeld or not.
Such blasts from the past risk comparisons to a cat-stroking Austin Powers parody.
There were actual thinkpieces 10 years back about whether James Bond could exist in a post-Austin Powers world.
In a post- Austin Powers world, where either homage or parody can sprout in the same fertile soil, how do you make a James Bond film that plays it as straight as the line of flesh left unpainted for safety’s sake on the actress gilded in Goldfinger ?
Sure, the earlier films in the series had gaping lacks in logic, many of which were gleefully exposed by Mike Myers in the Austin Powers movies.
The train fight recalls Sean Connery's similar fight in From Russia with Love (1963), and the relentless, seemingly unstoppable henchman (Dave Bautista) that trails after Bond reminded me of Richard Kiel's "Jaws" character in both The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979).
Elsewhere, a drifty night-time car chase through the streets of Rome evokes memories of a much-loved child’s toy equipped with springy surprises and clip-on flames, while Dave Bautista’s Mr Hinx is essentially a latterday Jaws who gets to batter Bond on a train in a sequence that nods not only to The Spy Who Loved Me but also From Russia With Love .
Given that, Mendes does know how to stage a fight (see his brutal close-quarters match with Dave Bautista, which recalls Connery’s fight with Robert Shaw way back in From Russia With Love), shoot a spectacle (CGI overkill aside, the Mexico City prologue is impressive an opening as the franchise has ever delivered), and design a modern supervillain lair.
The film contains some wonderful chase scenes and a couple of fight sequences reminiscent of the original Bond outings — a scene aboard a moving train harkens back to “From Russia With Love.”
Bond fans will enjoy playing spot the reference, with shout-outs including the From Russia With Love train fight and an alpine chase from innumerable 007 pictures.
He's the film's most emphatic nod to Bond's 53-year reign over movie screens: The character first appeared in 1963's From Russia With Love (even his Persian cat makes a cameo here), and in the ensuing years the uber-baddie has been played by a gallery of delightfully malign actors: Donald Pleasence, Max von Sydow and Telly Savalas, for starters.
For one, a shadowy company meeting of SPECTRE agents seated at a long wooden table is more reminiscent of a parallel scene in Austin Powers than the original it parodied from 1965’s Thunderball.
Director Sam Mendes, back for his second tour on the 007 beat, presents the story as a summing-up, a procession of elements that clearly echo the early Bond films—chiefly Thunderball , but also From Russia with Love (a fierce train fight) and Goldfinger (a funny riff on Bond's gadget-packed Aston Martin).
It just makes you wish you had those last two and a half hours back, so you could watch “Thunderball” and “Live and Let Die” and “Goldeneye” again, and at least enjoy the theme song.
Blofeld's plans for Bond once he's captured him isn't a Thunderball castration, but rather a partial lobotomy intended to render our hero incapable of...recognizing faces.
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(I counted nods to Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and there are surely others).
Then again, there's also a distinct On Her Majesty's Secret Service vibe as well.
After some business we needn't go into, Bond promises to find and protect White's estranged daughter, Madeleine (Léa Seydoux), now a doctor at a mountaintop clinic not unlike the one in On Her Majesty's Secret Service .
(In fact, she is four years older than Craig, which I think makes her the first “Bond girl” to be older than the actor playing Bond since Diana Rigg [born in 1938] starred opposite George Lazenby [born in 1939] in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.)
The scenes in the villa in Rome with Bellucci are shot as if something out of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist , with mirrors to the fore and the use of dark gilt furnishings.
And the Rome sequence, with Monica Bellucci as a mob widow who seems to have inherited the vintage lingerie style of Sophia Loren, in turn carries visual echoes of The Conformist , The Great Beauty , and The Italian Job .
Hoyte van Hoytema (who shot the very different espionage classic Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy ) films the Italian sequences with a shadowy indulgence that recalls Vittorio Storaro’s work on The Conformist .
Starting off at break-neck speed with a Mexican-based opening sequence that is grandiose, luscious and just downright absorbing (while also paying homage to Touch Of Evil ), Spectre then follows this up with a number of captivating action set-pieces that just about match the opener, but never top it.
There are echoes here of Orson Welles’ Touch Of Evil in a roving sequence which runs for minutes without cutting before culminating in explosive fashion.
Spectre opens in Mexico City — a Day of the Dead festival in full swing — streets crowded with partying skeletons, and director Sam Mendes celebrating the dead in his own way with a nifty Orson Welles tribute: A Touch of Evil-style tracking shot that has no obvious edits for at least five minutes as it follows Bond (Daniel Craig) and a gorgeous brunette (Stephanie Sigman) from the costumed parade route into a hotel, up in a crowded elevator to a well-appointed room where she settles seductively on a bed — only to watch him zip out onto a roof ledge with a quick shirt cuff adjustment, and murder on his mind.
This, after a promising start, when director Sam Mendes (“Skyfall”) delivers a terrific pre-title sequence straight out of Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil,” as Hoyte Van Hoytema’s camera tracks through Mexico City’s Zocalo square, where thousands dressed in skeletal costumes are celebrating the Day of the Dead.
With Spectre — the twenty-fourth James Bond picture and the fourth and probably final one to feature Daniel Craig as 007 — director Sam Mendes takes a tip, perhaps unwittingly, from Hitchcock, as well as from Orson Welles's Touch of Evil: The picture opens in Mexico City with a regal, ambitious, Wellesian tracking shot that begins in the midst of a Day of the Dead parade and eventually finds its way to Craig's Bond, standing in the crowd.
Their conception owed quite a bit to comic books and to serialized television like "24" (James Bond by way of " Die Hard ").
Some of the bigger plot elements feel reminiscent of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, and early scenes between Bond and the cantankerous M would not be out of place in Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, or any of a million other Rogue Cop flicks of the 1980s.
But the actors always cohere within strict limits to a template: a white British male (although rumors persist that he won’t always be white), taciturn but prone to the odd wisecrack, unstoppably athletic but unflappable, self-contained enough to go through hell without ever breaking a sweat, and always ready to slip back into a fresh tux (can you imagine Bond smeared with grit in a singlet, like Bruce Willis in Die Hard ?).
This goes far beyond the lengths he’ll go for sex and alcohol, but even to seeing Daniel Craig perform stunts including an Aston Martin sponsored parachute escape, or a plane crashing on a mountaintop that could easily be pulled from a new Die Hard or Transporter film.
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One sequence takes place in the Swiss Alps, which look a lot like the opening sequence to “Goldeneye,” and another takes places in a desert, which could be any number of Bond films but most recently recalls “Quantum of Solace.”
The events of Quantum of Solace and Casino Royale are referenced before secret identities are revealed, the daughter (Léa Seydoux) of a double agent is located, and a final confrontation between 007 and a Spectre mole in MI6 brings things to a close.
SPECTRE takes what was attempted in the spotty Quantum of Solace and combines it with the more aerodynamic Skyfall for a narratively satisfying film.
Craig breathed fresh air into the franchise starting with 2006’s “Casino Royale,” but “Spectre” is more “Quantum of Solace” than “Skyfall.”
It’s stated many times that 00-agents are worthless in the field compared to the might of the computer power of a surveillance network—it’s comparable to how the digitised age of bombastic digital effects driven blockbusters could make the Bond franchise obsolete; it’s similar to how Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation was sold on the fact that Tom Cruise is actually hanging off an aeroplane as it takes off.
At least when Tom Cruise offers similar defenses the " Mission: Impossible " movies (the latest of which has a plot not hugely different from this one's, come to think of it) it's meant to be ludicrous and frothy, not freighted with righteous woe.
Much like Ethan Hunt in the latest “Mission: Impossible” movie, Bond is forced to go rogue, albeit not without conning Q (Ben Whishaw) out of a nifty watch gadget and stealing an Aston Martin.
The rest feels tired and uninspired, a far cry from the last two installments of “Mission: Impossible,” a franchise – with the exception of “Skyfall” – that’s left Bond eating Tom Cruise’s dust.
Even the No. 2 plot, about the double-0 agency, is a leftover from this summer’s Mission: Impossible film.
THE LOCATIONS: One thing the Bourne and "Mission: Impossible" franchises learned from Bond is the importance of moving to a new exotic location every 12 minutes or so.