SPECTRE (review)

Review by Benn Robbins

Bond is back.  No really, James Bond is back.

Returning with him are all of the properties once held by Kevin McClory, including the organization that the film’s title comes from, SPECTRE, and it’s leader, Bond’s grand nemesis, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who has been absent in official Bond films since 1971’s Diamonds are Forever.

This, the fourth Bond film to feature Daniel Craig as 007, is his most “Bond-like” film of the quadrilogy for better or worse.

Major complaints from long-time fans have been that the “new” bond films both seem less “Bond-like” and the story carryover from film to film, starting with 2006’s Casino Royale, has gone on too long without the familiar tropes of the earlier films. Some of those tropes, however, are the very traps that spoiled the later Pierce Brosnan films, in my humble opinion.

I think that it is fitting that SPECTRE finds Bond “coming full circle”, as they say, story wise.

When producers EON regained the rights to Casino Royale, they finally made the first Bond novel part of the film canon.  Combined with the the casting of Craig as the new 007, the franchise was able to do a soft reboot of the franchise without having to disavow the previous films.

Fleshing out the character of James Bond and his sordid past allowed the film makers the freedom to create a whole new James Bond, while paying homage to the past with winks and “Easter eggs” for the long time fans. Continuing through Quantum of Solace (2008) and the last film Skyfall (2012) we finally got a sense of where Bond came from, who he is.

What I have been waiting for, however, is for Daniel Craig’s Bond to finally BE JAMES BOND 007. What better way to close out this chapter of the Bond Mythos then to have him be the James Bond I remember and love with the return of his greatest nemesis, SPECTRE.

SPECTRE finds Bond still trying to decipher and discover who is behind the recent past events that he has been embroiled in culminating in the death of the previous M, played by Oscar winner Dame Judi Dench.

A cryptic message has Bond going rogue once again to find out what kind of an organization could be so powerful as to dictate and shape world events and crises. All this while his very department, MI6 is about to be dissolved and merged with MI5 and a new Center for National Security created back in England. Familiar faces and new enemies lead him to the leader of the global cabal. This man from Bond’s past has a connection to Bond that Bond would rather keep hidden.

SPECTRE returns James Bond to the his grand splendor and spectacle.

Thankfully the humor is kept at bay and the one-liners are minimal. The gadgets are, for the most part, believable. Some of the tech is a little far reaching but still semi-grounded in reality. The nods to the past and “Easter eggs” are still there for the eagle-eyed stalwarts. The John Barry theme greets the viewer again as we look down the familiar gun barrel as Craig enters from the right to open the film. It all begins to feel like the James Bond of the past but with the present firmly in it’s sights.

Though the plot can be a little overly convoluted for no good reason, and the Sam Smith opening title song, “The Writing’s on the Wall” is pretty awful, SPECTRE delivers enough of what I wanted, both as a great action film and a James Bond film.

The balance sometimes teeters a bit towards the “over-the-top” but in the end the film remains more like Connery and less like Moore. So, in this reviewer’s opinion that is good enough for government work.

I had read that this was Craig’s last film as Bond though his contract says one more. If this remains the case, then I would be more than happy with his oeuvre.

JAMES BOND WILL RETURN.