Films > DVD Reviews

Spectre

29/01/16

Spectre opens with an impressively long tracking shot, segueing effortlessly into an over-the-top action set piece in which Bond bungles an assassination, destroys a building, and has a fight in a helicopter above a carnival. Cue dreamy credit sequence featuring interspecies octopus porn - the climax of which is a gun barrel with all ink coming out the end - and we’re set for a face-full of classic Jimmy Bond. But it’s a bit too classic - and it’s very hard to swallow.

Skyfall, the first Sam Mendez-directed Bond installment, deftly redefined the franchise, being not just a great Bond film, but a great film film. With Spectre, Mendez’s second and last outing, he’s drawn Bond full-circle, reconnecting him with the Connery era, and presenting what is, in part, the timeline-straining origin story of a well-known villain. Unfortunately, this back-to-bollocks approach has reintroduced many of the franchise’s problems (simpering female “characters,” clunking dialogue, gaping plot-holes) which Skyfall so skillfully avoided.

Commendably, Mendez tries to keep things relevant by coupling the usual chase-fight-bonk-fight-chase-fight-bonk structure with a natty mass-surveillance-is-bad subplot, pitting Bond against an old enemy while “M” does battle with a new one. You see, there’s spying, and then there’s snooping, and snooping just isn’t cricket, what.

Spectre wants to be a serious comment on state surveillance while simultaneously showing Bond destroying entire underground bases with a single gunshot, seducing the recently bereaved, and downing helicopters with a pea-shooter. It just doesn’t work. I know Bond films are supposed to be a bit daft, but Spectre verges on the stupid.