Film Review: Bond franchise keeps on ticking with ‘Spectre’
Like its hero, the James Bond franchise takes a licking, but keeps on ticking. “Spectre” — number 24 in the “official” Eon Productions series — is neither as good as “Casino Royale” or “Skyfall” (let alone “Goldfinger”) nor as bad as “Quantum of Solace” (let alone “Moonraker”). It’s Daniel Craig’s fourth time as Bond, and he claims that there won’t be a fifth. The producers must believe him, because “Spectre” feels like the fourth of a tetralogy, wrapping up the threads from its three predecessors.
Judi Dench’s M died in “Skyfall” and was replaced by a new M (Ralph Fiennes). If Bond was worried that the new M would turn out to be a petty paper pusher, it’s because he hadn’t yet met C (Andrew Scott), so sleazy a bureaucrat that M looks like, well, Bond in comparison. C is pushing for a scheme to pool the info gleaned from numerous countries’ satellites, cameras, microphones, and other snooping devices. It’s a plan that only an overprotective mother could love...or a sleazy bureaucrat with no sense of “unintended (or maybe intended) consequences.” C is certainly the latter, and you might also consider him a “mother” (if you silently mouth the two syllables that often follow).
C is also working tirelessly to shut down M’s entire division, including the 00 program. No one appears to be resisting, except M, Q (Ben Whishaw), Bond, and Moneypenny (Naomie Harris).
Meanwhile our hero still has more vengeance to wreak on those responsible for his true love’s death three films ago. (Talk about a grudge.) Somehow — and the details all fade into a stew well before the movie ends — everything from all four Craig episodes is revealed to be the work of one organization — Spectre, natch — and one villain (Christoph Waltz), whose name we won’t reveal, even though anybody enough into Bond to get the reference when it’s revealed will already know what it is.
The tone of these four Bond films is deliberately harsher and less humorous than most of the first 20. (The “Mission Impossible” franchise is closer to the old Bond tone.) Craig gets off a handful of one-liners, but he doesn’t exaggerate them to the point of camp (a la Roger Moore). Things have changed subtly during the Craig films. In “Spectre,” Bond is not quite the lone wolf of his previous entries; there is a surprising sense of warmth and camaraderie with Q and Moneypenny, who get pulled into the action.
Ah, we haven’t mentioned the action. 007 films have always included a series of action set pieces. In fact, detractors might argue that they’re nothing but action set pieces, with a thin gristle of dialogue and character development in the interstices. There certainly are plenty of chases and/or fights in “Spectre” — on foot, by car, by helicopter, by plane, on a train, et cetera. They are well-crafted without being particularly clever. By clever, I mean the intro to “Goldfinger” or the killing of Oddjob, both of which make you pump your arm and go “Yes!” The cleverness of exposition and payoff is their own aesthetic justification.
Craig now owns the role as surely as Connery did half a century ago. He delivers effortlessly. Waltz fares less well than usual; he’s perfectly adequate, but there’s never a touch of the energy and evil glee that animated him in “Inglourious Basterds.”
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ANDY KLEIN is the film critic for Marquee. He can also be heard on “FilmWeek” on KPCC-FM (89.3).