So last night my husband and I went to see Spectre. He has wanted to see all the Daniel Craig James Bond movies when they came out, but we never managed to. When I saw Spectre was coming out, I made a point of having a marathon of Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall so that we could see Spectre.
Warning: Spoilers
The opening sequence at the Day of the Dead festival in Mexico City was visually stunning. With the added effect of it being one long shot, it was rather impressive. I also liked the worlds slowest parkour as James walked down and across the rooftops for his assassination.
That is about where my enjoyment of the movie stopped. The chase through the crowd and the helicopter fight were too close and jumbled to be very exciting, and I wasn’t even able to suspend my disbelief that helicopters CAN’T turn over, (much less then come back under control) in order to enjoy the fight.
Then is James Bond getting in trouble for being off doing his own thing. (Shock.) He gets repercussions, and then they mean diddly squat. Not only that, but he steals a car he’s not supposed to have, somehow gets it to Rome (18 hour drive btw, in a rather unique looking car) so he can listen to people talk, have some shadowy guy realize James is there, and have an entirely lackluster car chase through the streets that I’m told was supposed to build tension but during which I simply got sick of him glancing in his rear-view mirror to see his pursuer in exactly the same spot as before. And then he dumped that beautiful car in the river.
Off he goes to get info out of a dying guy he somehow magically knows the location of so he can go find his Bond Girl. Ms. Assassin from Mission Impossible 4. Her dead-fish eyes really worked well for that role, but in this role I felt her just dis-likable.
Then sitting around and waiting in the hotel room before heading off to the middle of nowhere, punctuated by a fight with the ‘heavy’ on the train which wasn’t completely horrible, (He even hit the girl and she got back up and shot him.) before sitting around and waiting until a car came to pick them up. I guess we get a little tension because this guy knows all about them. He shows off his power a bit. Tortures James with a brain drill that is supposed to disable him and does absolutely nothing, nor does the explosion he uses to escape, since he then comes out of that building and drops the bad guys with a shot each.
All while Moriarty …pardon me, ‘C’ is running around being obviously evil while our secondary characters scramble to do something about it.
The walk through the old MI6 building was not bad.
I was impressed that James didn’t shoot the bad guy, and that they had foreshadowed that a bit. (Though this comes right after I saw Jim Gordan decide not to kill a bad guy in Gotham, who then kills a police officer on the way to lockup.) However, I was a little surprised that apparently James actually loved this Bond Girl (like run off together, love) because the actors had no chemistry.
I don’t think I’ve ever spent an entire movie thinking: “So it has to pick up soon since people have said it’s so good.”
So in conclusion, the best part about Spectre is that I saw Skyfall and Q was cute.
