Mendes directs like a man determined to enjoy his last hours with the Bond toys. Like anything at the age of 68, it’s a bit baggy round the middle. We’ll leave it there, but it gets very complicated, sometimes impenetrably so. Simultaneously, 007 is tracking the mysterious Spectre syndicate, which appears to be behind every bad thing that’s happened to both the world and Bond. To explain even the basics of the story may spoil too much, so we’ll just say Bond’s entire division is under threat of downsizing, with an odious arse (Andrew Scott) brought in to unify Britain’s security agencies. By the end we’re in a very 2015 world with a very 1995 Bond. In come gadgets, disposable girls, villains with plans as diabolical as they are logistically unlikely. Then as we progress it harks back more to the old days with, probably deliberate, echoes of Connery, Moore, Brosnan, even Lazenby. The opening, a ravishing sequence set amid the Day of the Dead festival in Mexico, is pure Craig era: brutal, practical, casually witty. The thing with opera, though, is that while in its most powerful moments it can shake an audience in their seats, it does have a propensity to go on a bit.Īlmost a decade after Casino Royale stripped 007 back to his barest essentials, Spectre is the gradual layering back on of the old garb. Spectre is, mostly, operatic, in scale, emotion and frequently in choral soundtrack. Following his own Skyfall, he opts for…grander. Where do you go after the most successful Bond in history? Strive to be bigger, meaner, slicker? Not quite for Sam Mendes.
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