Watchable entry in the franchise which balances substance and spectacle with the odd stumble.

Rating: 6/10 (23 September 2019)

"Spectre" promises a tremendous deal from its opening: a long tracking shot through the Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico City, extravagant costumes and skeletal masks everywhere, and a low boring soundtrack as the instruments in the scene do battle with the music composed specially for the sequence. The film does not quite live up to these beginnings, in fact settles down into being somewhat of a strange experience which, I think, probably thought it was delivering something more powerful than it actually is, and ends up being a film which, despite the places it goes with a much-loved character, can only really induce a nod of approval when all has been said and done.
But to delve too deeply here into precisely what I am referring to would spoil the surprise. Indeed, an odd thing happened some years ago off the back of people close to me settling down to watch "Spectre" - I remarked how interesting it was that the character of Blofeld was back. To my immense surprise, I was greeted by a 'tut' and told, despite not actually having seen it at that time, that that constituted "...a spoiler".
Blofeld is indeed back - having last been seen during the opening sequence of "Octopussy", wheelchair bound and fluffy white cat in tow, wherein he was ambushed by Roger Moore's incarnation of the famous superspy and dropped down an industrial chimney in one of London's less glamorous areas. I am sure I read on the Internet Movie Database, some years ago, that the reason for ridding the franchise of the character had something to do with the dated feel Blofeld was weighing the series down with, and that the producers wanted to remove all doubt that he might make a return as a villain. What goes around comes around - 'the dead are alive', as it were. Funny how in "Skyfall", the franchise made a point to tell us that it was done with silly things like exploding pens, but here provides Bond with an exploding watch.
The crux of "Spectre" is essentially a political essay on surveillance; probably its most interesting character is Bond's boss, M, played by Ralph Fiennes, and the conflict chiefly derives from the on-going spat he has with a younger, more cock-sure version of himself played by Andrew Scott. Scott plays a character called Max, whose office is in a big new plush building with a postmodern glass exterior, whereas M's office appears older and more traditional with a lot of wood panelling et al.
There is bad news afoot for the Military Intelligence branch both M and James Bond (Daniel Craig) are, and have been, a part of for all these years: advances in surveillance technology are rendering Bond more and more obsolete; soon, the powers that be will have access to the intelligence information belonging to nine of the world's most powerful nations, simultaneously, completely negating the need for agents in the field. Later conflict over the issue is inferred early on when Max and Bond meet face to face in profile and James is told in no uncertain terms that this will change the double-0 section immeasurably. A spate of recent terror attacks around the world, often in the nations who are holding out against the legislation, are convincing people that this surrender to intergovernmentalism is the way forward. Eventually, Bond sets out to find out why.
The usual ingredients are there: the hero gets a nice car and a female accomplice enters the fray later on. Generally, the film lacks a villain; the hit-man the bad-guys employ to do away with Bond is a big, silent Jaws-like assassin called Mr. Hinx who even gets into a well-choreographed fight with Bond and the girl on a train. Unfortunately, character motivation on the villains' behalf does not entirely add up: why attempt to kill Bond at all if your plan ultimately involves shutting down his division? And why, if there is such an integral connection between hero and villain, and they are destined to meet one another nearer the end at a desert base, make all the attempts on his life?
More interesting to Mendes, and certainly to us, is the stuff on surveillance: the morality of it versus the fight against terrorism it seems vital to combatting. But how, as M points out, do you use it and who exactly has access to it anyway? The film certainly picks its side in the end, although it is generally all a bit of a strained attempt to remain topical - the franchise is essentially at war with its own beating core of depicting heroism and escapism: if Bond always saves the day, and the world can always rest easy in the knowledge he's out there to do so, what is the need for surveillance in the first place? Grown-ups know that in the real world, things work very differently. My mind drifts back to an article Christopher Hitchens wrote the day after 9/11, dryly beginning about how said spectacle is what happens when a hero like James Bond drops the ball, or doesn't make it in time to thwart the enemies.
Amusingly, much later on, a character is arrested on what is described as 'The Special Measures Act'. Despite actually having been incorporated into something else as far back at 2005, this Act originally caused much consternation in Britain through its attitude to civil liberties, the core of what "Spectre" is about. This name-drop, more interesting than the finale around which it is mentioned, gets the broadest smile; the rest of the film is generally amusing but unspectacular.