Spectre
Over the past decade I’ve been critical of the Daniel Craig
Bond movies. The first one he did-Casino Royale- I actually liked and I had
high hopes for his run as Bond, though I wished he would have dyed his hair
black as it was supposed to be. But all in all, it was a good Bond flick and I
enjoyed it.
But then there was Quantum of Solace; which made no sense
and was a movie without any depth or feeling to it. I watched it a few times
and it seemed like nothing more than one long action sequence after another without
anything to tie it all together. I thought it was one of the more awful Bond
flicks.
A few years back we were treated to ‘Skyfall’ which was yet
another misfire to me. Overly long, the entire movie ended up with the villain
succeeding and killing M which was his main objective all along (Which I was
fine with, I hated Judy Dench as ‘M’. She was annoying as hell.) The story was
barely interesting and the whole ‘We’re not doing gadgets anymore’ annoyed the crap
out of me.
Also, Craig has never been the Bond who quipped. He never
had that slight humor all previous Bonds did. The wry smile, the sarcastic
comments, the fearlessness in the face of danger. He had none of that. He
always plays an angry man. His Bond is Stoic and humorless.
This new film is no exception to this.
But that’s the only similarity to the other Craig ‘Bond’
films.
This one had an intriguing storyline that began with one of the
best beginning action sequences in recent Bond films history. Not only that, but
the storyline kept my attention. As usual with the Craig movies some parts
seemed to make no sense, but at least in this movie they actually cleared all
of that up within a few minutes. This movie goes out of its way to connect all the
previous Craig era Bond movies, which was well needed and explained so much
with its common and very personal (For Bond) thread.
The fight sequence on the train was brutal and intense, and
very reminiscent ‘To Russia with Love.’ Dave Bautista is slowly becoming one of
my favorite character actors. Here he was brutal and relentless. A good foil
for Bond.
Not too much later Bond is captured and tortured in a way that
made me squirm in my seat. It was a very vicious scene and one where Bond was
saved by one of Q’s gadgets that had been sworn off of during ‘Skyfall’ but
they were back and they were back with a bang!
Oh yeah, there was a car chase scene in this one too,
because what is a Bond flick without at least one car chase? Also, cool car
with gadgets. All good.
The locales used in this film were all exotic, Mexico City,
Rome, Austria, Tangiers and London.
All in all I really liked this movie. Once again Craig is
too straight faced and stoic as Bond for me. He’s a robot, completely humorless
and focused on his mission. He was sort of the Dave Bautista characters mirror
image in many ways.
But also in many ways this was his most human Bond film,
with him stepping outside his self-image at the movies end (Which BTW, had a
cameo by a returning star of the series at the very end.)
I had a few quibbles along the way, but all in all I’d give
it 4 out of 5 stars. It was a little bit overly long (about 2 1/2 hours) but
overall I really liked it. He’s still far from my idea of Bond in almost every
way, so hopefully he’ll be replaced in the next film, which is the rumor. If he
is, he went out the right way in a movie that was the best of his Bond films. I
would be satisfied with that.
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