You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Bond. James Bond.
He’s shaken, not stirred, in this latest installment of the spy series.
SPECTRE.
The film attempts to tie up the previous 3 Daniel Craig films; Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and Skyfall.
Spectre reintroduces Bond fans to the evil organization that Sean Connery 1st battled in the 60’s.
From Russia with Love and Diamonds are forever.
Spectre was the evil syndicate that bought evil together from all over the globe.
Is Spectre the best Bond film?
No.
Is it academy award fodder?
No.
Is it must see cinema?
No.
But is it fun?
You Betcha.
It’s big screen fun.
It’s dance in the aisle, throw pop corn at the screen, squeeze your honey’s hand fun.
It’s fights and car chases and global spectacle.
Some James Bond films are big picture but story line deficient.
Spectre delivers cinematically, and the actors are polished pros.
And the plot, unlike many Bond narratives, is linear in a logical way; meaning one scene seems to lead to the next scene.
The film begins with Bond going rogue. It becomes clear to the audience what he is doing once he gets a posthumous video tip from M imploring him to kill a Spectre assassin.
Bond is a mechanism. He is an emotionless spear that stabs forward at the heart of evil. Despite being put on the Double O bench, Bond finds a way to poke Spectre in the eye.
And like any Bond extravaganza, this film, is a big picture spectacle, dancing across global borders as easily as flood waters overflowing a visual river bank.
From Austria to Rome to England, We track James Bond across the globe thanks to a new blood technology that allows MI6 technical guru, Q, to know Bond’s every step.
Fast cars. Beautiful women. Unimaginable action.
Daniel Craig is a great James Bond.
He’s less about gadgets and more about cinematic toughness. He’s less about ejector seats and more about making love to his glamorous co-stars. Craig is tough and inventive and unafraid.
Is Spectre Fun?
Of course.
It’s animated over the top action with a few laughs sprinkled in.
Only Bond can drive through narrow streets at high-speed in a million dollar Aston Martin pushing a button for rear machine guns and getting loud orchestral music.
Spectre opens in Mexico City during day of the dead.
The viewer is immediately drawn in as revelry and intrigue dance hypnotically to a percussion beat.
Hidden in the masked faces and gyrating body there is mystery and evil.
The movie opens with an aerial fly by over the scope of the celebration.
It’s a fantastic cinematic feat with seemingly a million people in the streets dressed in skull masks and costumes.
Bond follows an attractive woman to an apartment.
She has bedroom eyes and a perplexed look on her face as Bond pulls off his mask and ducks out a window with a sniper rifle.
“Where you going?” she asks.
“This wont’ take long,” he smirks.
He casually walks across roof tops and sets up across the street from his target.
He snipes 3, the building explodes, and he chases the Spectre assassin through the Day of the Dead celebration.
It is layered in visual explosiveness.
It concludes in a helicopter battle hovering hundreds of feet above the crowd.
Bond and the assassin fight as the chopper does 360 degree flips in the Mexican sky.
This new Bond is a good bond, some say the best Bond.
Every Bond film is a cinematic leap of faith, but what’s great about this 007?, the audience always believes that this Bond could be hurt, or killed.
And Bond is only as good as his nemesis.
Christoph Walz is a good bad guy.
He’s not Moonraker comical.
He’s quietly evil, cinematically believable.
Some of the back story between Bond and Walz lis garbled and not well illustrated. Like a Bond smokescreen it’s sprayed at us in a rhetorical aerosol that we must somehow assimilate in a fast-moving story line.
In the murky story bog? An enigmatic connection between the orphaned Bond and the Spectre leader. If it was obvious, I missed it between love-making, bullets splattering bricks, and perhaps the most intense scene where a drill is boring into Bond’s skull.
In my opinion, the story concludes weakly. It ends because after 2.5 hours, in a steamy mess on the carpet.
Bond stands over his nemesis and decides not to kill him.
Hurray. James Bond has a heart.
Couldn’t it have been more poignant, more dramatic, more memorable?
Yes.
SPOILER ALERT!
It ends in a tepid belch of contrived story telling.
Does Bond Live?
Yes.
Will he retire?
Who knows.
Bond is Bond.
It is a tried and true, tested movie mechanism that fans will always spend their money to see.
At the end of the day, It is a fun 2.5hours.
In a real world dominated by bombings and ISIS and tragedy, any time you can pencil in 2.5 hours of fun, I say that’s time well spent.
Spectre is good Bond fun!
Life’s Crazy™