Bond is back - and with a bang - in a movie that warrants ALL the hype with 007 returning to his murderous, glamorous best
The name's Bond: Spectre is downright playful in its multiple nods to previous 007 films
Does it warrant all the hype, the secrecy, the breathless anticipation? Indubitably, yes.
From
the exhilarating pre-credits sequence, against the backdrop of the Day
of the Dead festival in Mexico City, to a spectacular denouement in the
shadow of the Houses of Parliament, Spectre is a proper joyride of a
James Bond film.
It
features everything (with the exception of a really memorable theme
song) that most of us hope for in a 007 picture: great gadgets, stunts,
and a handful of laugh-out loud one-liners
Will
it overtake Bond’s last outing, Skyfall, which took over $1 billion at
the global box-office, to become the most successful British-made film
ever? Well, it stands every chance.
And
we live in record-breaking times. Spectre not only features the oldest
of all Bond “girls” in 51-year-old Monica Bellucci, it is also, at nigh
on two and a half hours, the longest of all 24 Bond films.
Just occasionally in that time, the narrative becomes muddled. Yet at no point does the action flag, or our interest sag.
It
is a pleasure, too, to find Bond back in control of his own destiny. As
good as Skyfall was, it was disconcerting to see him quite so
vulnerable.
Here,
even though the story follows on from Skyfall and has the same director
in Sam Mendes, Daniel Craig’s 007 seems more in keeping with Ian
Fleming’s original creation.
For
the most part he is the embodiment both of murderous ruthlessness, and
debonair glamour. It’s always good to see Bond in a white dinner jacket.
Fleming
would also applaud a striking super-villain in Christophe Waltz’s Franz
Oberhauser, who, intriguingly, knows Bond of old, long before the
licence to kill.
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