With the shadow of 2012’s Skyfall looming, Spectre fully embraces the shade, nearly fitting into the formulaic and nearly breaking into greater territory.
Daniel Craig returns for a fourth time to the world of murder for hire, immensely beautiful women, and vodka martinis. But there is no joie de vivre in his portrayal of James Bond — there is a much deeper weariness, a loss of the younger, wilder agent that just as easily fought as he seduced.
His controlled, restrained performance fits the world-weary assassin that kills for pleasure as much as duty better than any suit. Vague threads of this near cynical obsoleteness run through the film — Bond’s apartment, never fully unpacked excepting his drinks; a quaint relic of a phone given to Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) as a gift; the 007 program walking the line between necessary and a ruin from the days before massive data gathering and intelligence programs.
Yet these memories from Skyfall never fully bloom — instead, they are traded in favor of, admittedly dramatic, explosions, high-stakes car chases, and the ever rare hints of humor that weave through the script.
Spectre cannot decide if it is the classic Bond film, with the wild hedonism of sex and booze and bullets, or some different beast altogether, with tugs at 007’s psyche and the place of heroes that are not morally pure. It mixes the near ridiculous — the uncomfortable, tentacle ridden opening theme, Bond girl Dr. Swann (Léa Seydoux) unironically ordering vodka martinis, served dirty — and the pensive — a spy’s growing obsoleteness in the data driven world, the measured megalomania of villain Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz) — with an uncomfortable ease that begs not to be examined too closely, for fear of failing both.
The pacing reflects this explosive restraint accurately; it’s not so much of a movie than it is a collection of moments, loosely strung together in some drawn-out fashion that heightens moments of tension until breaking. The movie prowls during its nearly three hour runtime, dusky and broody until the last thirty minutes, where it seems to remind itself that it is a Bond film, and needs a couple of explosions here and there.
Most of the film is spent running — jetting from one exotic locale to the other, never really stopping beyond what is necessary, never letting our eyes get accustomed to one vista for too long. It reflects this Bond — someone constantly running, running away from thoughts and true morality and an identity beyond 007.
If anything, Spectre does establish one thing definitely — it reminds us that Bond films can be beautiful. From the tense, dust ridden haze of the opening sequence in Mexico City to the luxuriously colored Moroccan skyline that stretches far beyond the horizon, the cinematography is nothing short of a feast for the eyes — a rare thing in action movies.
Like the smoky, intangible nemesis it is named for, Spectre doesn’t define itself to any one concept, never ties itself down to a corporeal idea or theme. It bounces equally well between a restrained, gorgeously shot scene of a beautiful black column of a widow (Monica Bellucci) surrounded by marble columns and a fast-paced Italian car chase, complete with an ejector seat and a car at the bottom of the Tiber. This duality, ironically, doesn’t seem to hurt nor help — it simply is.
Director Sam Mendes has embraced the shadow of Skyfall, and Spectre lives comfortably in the twilight.
