Separated from his lover Madeline (Lea Seydoux), James Bond (Daniel Craig) is retired and hiding in Jamaica.
When Spectre steals a bio weapon, Bond heads back into the world to defeat the organisation once and for all.
This puts him on collision with Madeline, MI6 and a mysterious man (Rami Malek) with plans beyond any SPECTRE could have dreamed up…
I’ll get it out of the way: I did not like this movie. It is too soon to say I hated it, but I was frustrated by how little I was engaged by it.
First, the good:
The cinematography and the acting is good across the board.
Bond’s sojourn in Jamaica and mission to Cuba are the most enjoyable parts of the film.
These movies are not tied to the broader storyline, it is great to (briefly) hang out with Felix, and Ana De Armas has a great time as the green-but-talented agent Paloma.
But outside of these sequences, I felt the strain of this movie’s goals: give Craig a send-off and retrofit the film that came before in order to do it.
Otherwise this movie is a lot of interesting ideas which feel crowded into one movie. Like the movie introduces idea of M being unfit for duty and responsible for the villain’s weapon. It is an interesting, scary idea - however like Judi Dench’s M reckoning with her own actions in Skyfall, this movie is not that interested in resolving this idea.
Another idea which deserved its own movie is the new 007.
I was really looking forward to seeing Lashana Lynch play a new 007, but it feels like she barely gets anything to do.
Just as it looks like they will start working together, she tells M to give Bond the 007 designation. It comes out of nowhere and leaves her in limbo.
She gets some action in the climax, but that is about it - I thought there was going to be some kind of passing of the torch or something to show how she is worthy successor.
Lynch is good, but the script loses its nerve with the character, and she ends up feeling like window dressing.
Even the villain feels like a minor element of the story.
Rami Malek’s accent was something I noted in the trailers - I did not think it was that ridiculous in the movie, and I appreciated how he underplayed the character. But by the end of the movie I was wishing for something more.
I kind of liked the idea of Bond caught between two warring villains, but for this to work, Spectre and Blofeld need to feel like a legitimate threat. And they do not.
To give the filmmakers’ a scintilla of credit, Blofeld is consistent with his last appearance - I did not like the characterisation last time and I appreciated that he did not last long here.
Spectre was scarier when they were the faceless men behind Mr White.
Once again, Craig’s tenure is undermined by a lack of genuinely threatening antagonists.
As far as henchmen, we get a few scuffles with Primo (Dali Benssalah) but it never feels like Bond will lose. I left the movie wishing they brought back Dave Bautista’s Hinx, just so Craig could have a real opponent.
For a film filled with action, I had trouble getting invested in any of it - there is a lot of shooting but I cannot remember any of it.
The fight scenes and car chases seemed to be made up of a lot of repeats on the same moves (Bond manages to flip three cars chasing him), and not a lot of reversals to give the scenes a sense of unpredictability.
The one take battle up the stairs is kind of interesting but at no point does it feel like Bond will lose.
The underlying issue is that Bond's creatives are no longer focused on single stories. They want epic, multiparty narratives and character arcs.
This movie proves the folly of this approach.
They want you to be invested in the love story between Bond and Madeline. They want you to remember Vesper (Eva Green) from Casino Royale. The filmmakers have premised this finale on the emotional weight of previous episodes - it does not have anything of its own.
In a five-film marathon, it might work. But it is not how movies are supposed to work.
Maybe if the leads had chemistry, I would buy the romance. Chemistry is really important, and you cannot act chemistry.
Craig and Seydoux do their best and they do not quite get there.
It is frustrating because this film is putting all its efforts into making you buy it. The script's conception of Madeline is a shade better than in Spectre - we get a flashback and some more backstory but it still feels unfinished.
I liked the idea (this is a recurring theme with this review) of Madeline being involved in some kind of betrayal. It would have given her character some definition beyond the bland outline from Spectre, but instead we have a contrived conspiracy to fool Bond.
This movie is big, expensive, filled with concepts and things I should like. And I was not invested in any of it.
When Casino Royale came out it felt new and exciting. The films could go anywhere. It’s scope had no limit.
But after four sequels, the series feels smaller and more focused on its own history, lost in a struggle to find its title character’s inner life. It feels tired and out of ideas.
It is as if Casino Royale never happened.
If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour.
No comments:
Post a Comment