Joseph Rossi for Curtains Up
I am not a James Bond fanatic. I never cared for most of the films. I’ll made a case for the Sean Connery ones and for some reason think Timothy Dalton was a great James Bond but no, I am not a 007 fan.
But that is until I saw Daniel Craig. He is a different animal. He’s like a charging bull. Where every other James Bond would take a vacation between gigs and lie on a beach sipping martinis, Craig’s Bond doesn’t seem to care. He’s a bitter pill and I love him for that. Being a spy in today’s tech thriller world does that to you, I guess. He’s a modern Bond, a Bond that gets hurt, who makes mistakes. He made one great film in the series, Casino Royal, one good one, Skyfall, and then there was (ugh) Quantum of Solace.
His latest, Spectre, is a good one. It caps off the Craig era and brings it to a fitting end. If he does one more after this one, it’s one more too many for him. Back to the drawing board, producers. Find someone else. You reinvented him for our cynical world and now it’s time to do it again with a fresh new face. You see, the story of Daniel Craig’s James Bond, after seeing Spectre, is told, is finished. You’ll understand why when you see the film and watch all the dominos, which have been toppling over since Casino Royal finally hit the ground.
Like all Bond films, our hero goes on a globe trotting action adventure to uncover mysteries revolving around an organization known as Spectre, run by the sadistic Franz Oberhauser (an oily and effective Christoph Waltz). I should mention that this film can be called Bond’s greatest hits because the villain, as well as the love interest (Lea Seydoux) has ties to the previous films. It makes for a serialized movie rather then it own individual entity and that may or may not sit well with everyone. It sat fine with me.
The film is beautiful. Hoyte Van Hoytema is the cinematographer and he manages to vividly capture everything from the majestic Austrian alps to the glory of ancient Rome with a painters eye. The stunt team deserves an Oscar. The film begins with a sequence that ranks with the best Bond openers. Taking place on the Day of the Dead festival in Mexico, director Sam Mendes uses his team to create a chase that will takes you from the streets, to the roof tops and up to heavens in a helicopter. And this is all before the opening credits. Wait until you see the plane versus car chase that caps off the second act. That one alone is worth the price of a ticket.
The film does run too long. A trim would have helped the sagging middle section of the movie but I guess the filmmakers wanted to give us more bang for our buck. And at 250 million dollars, that’s a lot of bang.
