Looking Backwards & Forwards With 007

Rating: 8/10 (8 November 2015)

It has been three years now since Skyfall opened to rave reviews and became the most successful James Bond film to date. If anyone had any doubts that Daniel Craig had what it took to be 007, chances are they were silenced by Skyfall. The only question then was how to top it? The answer would seem to be equal parts look backwards and forwards with the release of Spectre, the twenty-fourth Bond film from Eon Productions and Craig's fourth outing as the British secret agent with a license to kill.
Craig's performance here, his first in any film post-Skyfall, combines all the best elements of his Bond performances to date. There's his agility in the action sequences which suits him well but also a more sensitive side that remains buried most of the time but does surface, perhaps more here than in any other Bond film including Skyfall, where Bond's past comes back to haunt him in more ways than one. Craig also gets the chance, for the first time since Casino Royale, to explore Bond's romantic side as well. Overall, there's a more confident feel to Craig's Bond this time around that comes through that serves both actor and film well.
One place where the film perhaps improves over Skyfall is in its leading female character in the form of up and coming French actress Léa Seydoux as Dr. Madeleine Swann. Swann certainly fits the more traditional Bond girl mold though without many of the clichés that go along with the role as she's clearly intelligent but there's also a vulnerability to her when she, like Bond, is forced to confront elements of her past that have remained buried for so long. It is that element that Seydoux plays marvelously as the character's layers are exposed. It also helps that Seydoux and Craig share some excellent chemistry together which makes their relationship all the more believable.
Perhaps the most interesting piece of casting was Christoph Waltz as its villain. Waltz certainly didn't disappoint though the character's identity was easily figured out by simply looking at the film's title. What is more interesting that his identity is Waltz's performance which makes this perhaps the best iteration of the character we've seen thanks to a performance that is never over the top but cool and calculating. He's not a physical match for Bond but is every bit his intellectual equal, something that Waltz seems to instinctively sense. The result is a solid performance and one that works well within the film.
The film's supporting cast is solid as well. There's the returning cast of Bond's MI6 allies including Ralph Fiennes as M and Ben Whishaw's excellent Q who continues to make an excellent foil for Craig's Bond. Joining the supporting cast for this film is Andrew Scott as British government official Max Denbigh and Dave Bautista as the henchman Hinx who both do well with the limited amount of material they're given to work with. One minor disappointment is that after the hype of Italian actress Monica Bellucci joining the cast, her role is effectively a cameo with a grand total of maybe seven minutes worth of screen time for a sequence that has an uncomfortable air to it.
Moving beyond the cast, Spectre features some of the best production values of any film in the franchise which perhaps isn't surprising given reports that this is the most expensive Bond film yet produced. The production design from Dennis Gassner and the cinematography of Hoyte Van Hoytema are superb at evoking not just the look but the feel of the film's varying locations which makes it a visual feast. There is also an impressive opening shot of the film which lasts a couple of minutes at least and might well be, on a technical level at least, one of the most impressive shots ever put into a Bond film. All of which are admirable to say the least.
After the impressive action sequences of Skyfall, Spectre had a challenge ahead of it. While it never tops previous Bond action sequences, it is certainly a thrill ride. From the slightly overblown opening chase in and above the celebrations for the Day Of The Dead to a car chase through Rome and a series of gun battles, the film puts all of the best action tropes of the series to good use though it never quite manages to top the same type of sequences which have come before. In a way that sums up the film itself rather nicely, especially in regards to its script.
The script is where Spectre is at its most mixed. Despite the return of the same writing team from Skyfall and the addition of Jez Butterworth to the writing team, the script lacks a sense of polish to it at times. While it does an admirable job of tying together the entire Craig era, the basic idea is bringing back elements that the series hasn't used in over forty years and bringing them into the present day. As a result, the script does little more than retread old territory and attempt to give it a new face, something that has often produced less than stellar results in the past such as A View To A Kill or Die Another Day. That isn't to say, as some have said, that this is the worst Bond film as it definitely isn't that but it seems to lack the spark that made Skyfall especially standout.
At the end of the day, Spectre is a good Bond film. It has a solid performance from Craig as well as the rest of the cast along with impressive production values and good action sequences. Yet its script seems to largely play it safe, retreading old territory while also tying together elements from previous films. Spectre is a good Bond film but one that should have been a great.