Visually immaculate lowest common denominator of Bond

Rating: 8/10 (27 November 2015)

After the (relative) subtlety and sophistication of "Skyfall", we are back here to a largely non-nuanced Bond stripped back to the bare essentials. For this (re)viewer - who first saw the memorable Donald Pleasance and Charles Gray versions of Blofeld in early-70s cinema re-showings of "You Only Live Twice" and "Diamonds are Forever" respectively - there is NOTHING new here among the clichéd lines delivered by most of the characters, with the possible exception of Max Denbigh or "C" - the new head of the Joint Security Services (played in the manner we might expect by Andrew Scott), who is bent on ushering in the brave new world of electronic intelligence-gathering at the expense of all other forms of espionage (double-Os not excepted). And here we come to the way in which "Spectre" seeks to emulate earlier Bond outings in proving that the genre moves with the times (even if that actually undermines its own pertinence). Indeed, this has always been ironic given that James Bond continues to serve Her Majesty as he did in the Cold War 1950s and is therefore by definition liable to be trapped in some kind of time-warp. The Denbigh character would have a tough and somehow melancholy message (about old-style and new-style intelligence work) to convey to audience and Bond alike, whether or not he was actually working for Blofeld and Spectre, so it seems rather a pity that this "obvious" (and highly implausible) plot twist was resorted to. The film would have said more without it. But then, this is a film of unsophisticated plot in which the descriptors "obvious" and "implausible" vie for attention in one's head during the entire 150 minutes! Which inevitably brings us to the question of: why bother? For the younger viewer there is less of a dilemma - if the genre remains relatively unfamiliar, then enjoy Bond in all his/its incredible (in every sense of the word) glory. For those who have been through the mill for a year or two as I have, and seen pretty much every Bond at one time or another, the treats remaining perhaps lie mainly in the gorgeous filming of the whole "Spectre" spectacle. This time as ever - but perhaps more than ever - this is simply a smoothly beautiful thing to watch, location-wise and in terms of the actual shots. Then there is Daniel Craig, who may or may not deliver lines with conviction, but does have a certain something, a genuine screen presence. His relationship with the Lea Seydoux character Madeleine Swann is also sweet as much as sexy, and rather nicely done. There are also certain special feelings or emotions raised by this film for the more veteran audience-member: if Bond seems somehow irrelevant in 2015, then the filmmakers absolutely do not shy away from that conclusion. Packaged together with "Skyfall", "Spectre" seems to be telling us that we need to finally understand what has made James Bond tick at the deepest level, given that this is his swan-song after all these long years. And there is no doubt that one leaves the cinema with some kind of profound and surprisingly tangible nostalgia that it was clearly one of the intentions of the makers of this film to imbue. And yet for this reviewer at least there is also the one abiding feeling amazingly present at a strength undiminished since those first childhood trips of the 1970s - that in my deepest and remotest of fantasies, I would love to be James Bond!!! Perhaps that goes for pretty much everyone who leaves the cinema, and perhaps that is no small film-making achievement in and of itself?