Spectre (2015)

While Skyfall was for a lot of us the fulfilled promise of the Bond update kickstarted by Casino Royale, a kind of “And we’re back” (as Mark Kermode has, as always, so eloquently put it) Spectre is the second half of that sentence, a sort of “...and we’re here to stay.” To be fair Spectre isn’t the triumph that Skyfall was – recall Skyfall made #2 on my definitive ranking of every Bond film ever, though it’s too soon to rank Spectre. But it’s a worthy successor, a fine if occasionally too personal 24th installment.

After receiving an order from the late M, James Bond (Daniel Craig) follows a trail of criminals to the den of a mysterious figure (Christoph Waltz), heretofore presumed to be dead, and his organization known as SPECTRE. An encounter with an old friend leads Bond to Dr. Madeline Swann, who will help Bond and Q (Ben Whishaw) take down SPECTRE, while the new M (Ralph Fiennes) and his aide Miss Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) work against the surveillance project of rising bureaucrat Max Denbigh (Andrew Scott).

I’m going to go so far as to label Skyfall transcendent – breathtakingly beautiful and tightly narrated, with all the action you’d want from a Bond film without the foolish frivolity toward which the franchise is occasionally prone. It’s so good that I daresay Spectre never could have lived up to it, in the way that Thunderball could never have been as good as Goldfinger. Taken on its own merits, though, Spectre is good enough.

Starting with the pre-credits sequence, a staple of any Bond flick, Spectre doesn’t disappoint. In a long-take opening (whose CGI trickery takes away none of the punch of seeing Bond really do his stuff), director Sam Mendes takes us into the heart of a Day of the Dead celebration, cuing up the thematic content of the film with a lovely bit of eye candy in the form of Bond’s effortless heroics. Like Skyfall’s opener, it moves through a number of sub-setpieces rather quickly, lacking only a snide one-liner to cap it all off.

The rest of the film’s action is top-notch: a car chase through Rome, a fistfight on a train, a ski chase in which neither participant is actually skiing, and then two variations on the escape-from-the-compound trope. All of these play very well within the narrative, striking a great balance between the Bourne-inflected realism of the Craig era and the gentle absurdity we’ve seen in older films, but they’re played to delight, not to strain credulity. Indeed, they serve as nice reminders of what film we’re watching; just when the film starts to take itself too seriously, we’re treated to a nice bit of levity, like Bond surviving the collapse of a building by landing on a sofa.

There’s the rumor – an evergreen, really – that Spectre is Craig’s last outing as Bond. Much as we’ve heard that one before, Spectre does feel in a lot of ways like the end of an era. It pays off a lot of narrative threads from the last three films, including the most delightful amplification of the roles of M, Q, and Moneypenny. Largely absent from the early Craig films, this supporting cast gets a great opportunity to shine in their own subplot, from which Bond is largely absent but which manages to be as compelling as his conflict with Waltz’s villain. If it’s Craig’s swan song, I hope Fiennes, Whishaw, and Harris stick around – the MI6 gang are as interesting as they’ve ever been.

On Waltz: he’s every bit the scenery-nibbler we’d want out of a classic Bond villain, a fine successor to Javier Bardem’s Raoul Silva. There’s an intriguing way that Waltz unites both the campy classicism of the Connery era with a very contemporary sensibility vis-à-vis surveillance and anonymous terrorism. And if this is the last Craig film, it’s clear that the filmmakers are eager to tie it all up in a way that I don’t actually think was necessary. It doesn’t detract from the film, though it is a little distracting how overt this move is. There’s a beat where those who hadn’t recently seen Casino Royale might be a little dizzied by the reappearance of that film’s Mr. White, and there’s an unconvincing move to tie Skyfall into a larger narrative (when it works just as well, if not better, as a Goldfinger-esque standalone).

There’s what I would say is my biggest critique of Spectre (aside from a disappointing show by the film’s soundtrack, with a forgettable title track by Sam Smith and a score by Thomas Newman, who phones it in a little too much, borrowing heavily from Skyfall both in motifs and, in a few moments, in what sound like actual edits from earlier musical cues): the film tries a little too hard, a little too openly, to unite the previous films together. Maybe it’s just the tenor of the earlier films, where there were loose and insignificant attempts to hold the films together; where the Connery era had SPECTRE as a shadowy bogeyman whom, we assumed, Bond was always already fighting, Spectre attempts to make that unifying thread the stuff of revelation, of narrative twists, but there are ways to do that which don’t show the filmmakers’ hand so baldly. Additionally, we’ve been glad to see Daniel Craig as a more personal James Bond, in that his Bond takes things more personally – mourns the dead more willingly, pursues cases more intensely, and even hooks up with Moneypenny (finally!). He’s been a more personal Bond, but Spectre tries to move that more-personal quality out of the realm of subtext and into the arena of the actual plot, with Waltz’s Franz Oberhauser linked to Bond’s past. While this isn’t a bad move for the franchise (and I suspect the filmmakers have their eye on ways to continue this narrative thread), it comes off as largely unnecessary; the subtext was already there, and excavating it to the surface doesn’t actually do much more for the film.

Here’s the thing, though – it doesn’t take away from Spectre. The move toward the much more personal Bond isn’t hamfisted or sloppy; it’s just not essential for this viewer, but what we have is still quite entertaining. There are a number of frankly breathtaking action beats, fascinating developments in Craig’s Bond, who continues to be the most compelling Bond (even if Sean Connery is still a fan favorite), and moments of pure exuberance that remind you why Bond has endured for more than fifty years and twenty-five films (counting, as we ought, Never Say Never Again). It’s no Skyfall, but then what is?

Spectre is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of action and violence, some disturbing images, sensuality and language.” There is the usual quantity of Bond heroics, including car chases, fist fights, and explosions. One character is facially disfigured in an unpleasant way, and Bond makes out with two separate women (the rest is left to implication). One or two S-words (no, Mr. Connery, not swords) are invoked.

Monday at the Movies - September 15, 2014

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  Continuing our string of bizarre coincidences, tomorrow is screenwriter Justin Haythe’s birthday, he of the largely ill-conceived Lone Ranger reboot.

Revolutionary Road (2008) – If you want to remember the postwar era fondly, the door to Turner Classic Movies is that way.  Director Sam Mendes helms this adaptation of the eponymous novel by Richard Yates, and you’ll find it astounding to believe this is the same director behind both Skyfall and American Beauty.  Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet play Frank and April Wheeler, a couple for whom the sheen of marital bliss is quickly cracking; the two deliver reliably solid work, and the tension between the two is divinely palpable.  As unfaltering as these two performances are, they’re also relentlessly depressing.  They’re fantastic performers, and we enjoy them on-screen for it, but good Lord – it’s very trying to watch two of your most beloved thespians berate each other for two hours in a self-destructive, mutually abusive marriage.  The goal here is a warts-and-all exposé on the darker side of the late-40s American optimism, with a heavy dose of Peyton Place thrown in for those who still held the suburbs as idyllic.  On that count, Revolutionary Road is a bleak success, but feel good it ain’t.  To lighten the mood, though, Michael Shannon wanders into the frame every so often, and – as is usually the case with him – it’s as though he’s in an entirely different movie, one I can’t say I wouldn’t rather have watched.  His supporting role as the son of the Wheelers’ realtor neighbor (Kathy Bates) comes with equal parts mental derangement and frightening outburst, a fine and effective complement to the repressed Frank and April.  The real treat is in watching him act, with an occasional tic or bizarre vocal inflection making his the only real fun performance to be had in a film that is creatively successful but otherwise oppressing to watch.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Skyfall (2012)

One of my favorite narrative devices is Chekhov’s Gun – that plot element that is introduced solely because it’s going to pay off later.  If you see a gun, you know it’s going to be fired (or used in some other meaningful way).  Skyfall, the 23rd James Bond film, is littered with many such rewarding moments, leading me to label it “Chekhov’s Bond.”

And oh, is that a good thing.  Skyfall is one of the best Bond films in recent memory, even surpassing Casino Royale in several important ways.

After a brush with death in a fantastic pre-credits sequence, James Bond (Daniel Craig) is called back into active service when a series of intelligence attacks puts the life of M (Judi Dench) in danger.  It’s up to 007 to stop Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) and find out just why he wants M dead – fortunately, Bond has the help of quartermaster “Q” (Ben Whishaw) and slinky secret agent Eve (Naomie Harris).

Since Daniel Craig was cast as the sixth (official) Bond, Skyfall is the film for which we’ve been waiting.  Sure, Casino Royale was breathtakingly realistic in its prequel treatment of the iconic superspy, but its plausibility lacked a certain Bond-iness.  No Q, no one-liners to speak of, and no martinis:  Skyfall restores all of these to the Bond mythos and, without spoiling anything, sets up an exciting fresh-but-familiar direction for the franchise. 

There is much about Skyfall that feels familiar.  There are nods to bygone Bonds – Goldfinger’s Aston Martin appears, the explosion at MI6 recalls The World Is Not Enough, and there’s a cryptic allusion to Jaws – but these feel organic rather than forced, acknowledging the long legacy of the series on this, its fiftieth anniversary (Dr. No debuted in 1962).  Yet these references are not what makes Skyfall such a return to form; rather, there’s a sense that this is, finally, a Bond movie and not a Bond prequel.  Silva is more a Bond villain than Le Chiffre or Dominic Greene, the return of Q’s gadgetry is unexpectedly welcome, and when Craig adjusts his cufflinks after a spectacular action sequence he brings to life a Bond worthy at last to stand beside Connery and Brosnan.

Craig isn’t the only one doing a marvelous job here.  Though Bond films haven’t always been renowned for their spot-on acting, Skyfall is filled with talented stars who are as compelling as anything this side of the Oscar season.  Craig maintains the gravitas established in the last two films but cuts loose enough to bring that Bond sense of humor to bear, wisecracking in the middle of an interrogation and punning his way through a final confrontation.  And Bardem is a suitably creepy foe, his blond locks and impeccable scheme distinguishing him from his “other” villainous role in No Country for Old Men.  Whishaw and Harris too are welcome additions to the series, with their roles set up for future appearances.

Let’s not forget Ralph Fiennes and Albert Finney, who play a government official and a helpful groundskeeper, respectively; they’re two reliable actors with long pedigrees, and they add that likely air of dignity they always bring.  But the “breakout” star of Skyfall is Judi Dench, in her seventh outing as M – “outing” being the operative word there, since she gets to step out of the office quite a bit, even more than she did as the hostage in The World Is Not Enough.  Dench gets plenty to do here, lending a hand in a few action sequences and layering emotional depth onto what has usually been a stuffy desk job.  While her talent comes as no surprise, we’re blessed that Skyfall takes full advantage of it.

Director Sam Mendes was perhaps an unlikely choice to helm a Bond film, known more for his introspective American Beauty than anything else.  He brings that same interiority to bear on Skyfall, but he does it without sacrificing any of the big-budget spectacle we’ve come to expect from 007.  Two separate train sequences, a great chase scene in the middle of London’s busiest tube station, and a thrilling shoot-out in a decaying British manor – Skyfall has enough major action pieces to tick off the boxes and more.  Mendes is surprisingly deft with these, controlling our perspective without resorting to any shaky-cam shenanigans.  These are smart, stable action sequences, reminding me once more how much I’d like a Christopher Nolan Bond movie (but then that’s me getting distracted).

Skyfall loses none of the Craig era’s approach toward relevance; Silva’s plot recalls Wikileaks and the worst of chickens coming home to roost, while M’s response is a reminder of how much the world has changed in the last decade (a wry wink, perhaps, to the satellite laser of death from 2002’s Die Another Day).  But Skyfall also emphasizes how much Bond still matters; there’s a very interesting comparison to be made here with The Dark Knight Rises, in that both took their heroes back to Square One to remind them that their true strength lies in their beginnings. 

With a return to form to match Bond’s revisiting of his roots, Skyfall is a great reminder that the sky (at least, post-Quantum of Solace) isn’t falling – rather, it’s the limit.  Whenever we see “Bond 24,” it’s already primed for greatness.

Skyfall is rated PG-13 “for intense violent sequences throughout, some sexuality, language and smoking.”  It being a Bond film, there are many action sequences, plenty of gunfire, and bloody consequences thereof.  Bond also seduces several women, though no nudity is seen.  An F-bomb, a few cigarettes, and several cocktails (including that famous martini) are included, as well.  Ultimately, Skyfall is no less appropriate than any other Bond film.

Stay tuned for Wednesday’s review of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, followed by a Thanksgiving surprise!  (P.S. – I’m aware this is the first Bond Film reviewed on this site – don’t worry, that’s an oversight that will be corrected before long...)