Director: Sam Mendes
Screenplay: John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade; Jez Butterworth
Story: John Logan, Neal Purvis; Robert Wade.
Starring: Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Monica Bellucci; Naomie Harris.
An entertaining Bond classic with great acting, brilliant cinematography (Hoyte van Hoytema) and a neat story.
This is the second Bond film directed by Sam Mendes, Skyfall being the first. Who can forget the terrible oversight of casting Kincade, the groundsman of Skyfall, up in the Scottish Highlands, with an American accent?! Myself and the attending audience heaved a huge sigh of disappointment, tainting the rest of an otherwise good film. Besides this oversight, I found SPECTRE to be the more entertaining.
Bond’s childhood is once again the subject of this movie, his upbringing drawing Bond into the world of SPECTRE and its world domination through Orwell’s nightmare – Big Brother watching us all. Information is power, and being the classic Bond, M wasn’t having any of it – indeed! Yes, a classic – Bond battling the hi-tech villain, Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz), the Bond girls, with Monica Bellucci still such an elegant, beautiful woman. And I just loved the car, an Aston Martin DB10, yum, yum.
There was a quiet section where I then noticed the young teen kicking the back of my seat, and then the young guy next to me chewing his fingers off… It’s a long movie for some (2 hours 30 mins), as are all the Bond films. But then it was back to the action and I was absorbed again. ‘You’re like a Kite dancing in a hurricane’, is one piece of dialogue that stuck in mind.
There’s certainly a formula to the Bond films, and yes, there was a bit going on here… But I found SPECTRE to be an entertaining movie, shown with a wry sense of humour.
And you’ve just gotta love the sincere look of Daniel Craig as Bond.