Ralph Fiennes is a fine, very likeable M, Naomie Harris is a sterling Moneypenny (sorry) but the great Christoph Waltz is wasted in the big villainous part.
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Mr Mendes is the real monocled villain of this piece, perhaps, making sure both Bellucci and this picture’s other fine actress, Lea Seydoux, get silly, stereotypical lines - about where Papa kept his Beretta 9 millimeter, for instance - while Bond gets the zingers.Ĭraig appears game for anything, ridiculous lines and all, but they don’t fit him or this dark and gritty Bond world. She looks sensational, as always, but why cast Le Grande Bellezza and not spend more time on her? Why give Bond - and us - such a fleeting taste of the goddess, a taste made even more fleeting by Indian censors? 'Cameo?', you might here ask, outraged, and I must sadly confirm that there is hardly any Bellucci in this picture. all those marvellous switches are flicked on in rapid succession, leaving barely anything for the tedious last hour of the film. The pre-credits scene, the banter with M, the Aston sequence, the villain’s reveal, the Monica Bellucci cameo. This is more of a problem because there is a lot of film to go.Īt 148 minutes, I’m not certain Spectre is the longest Bond film of all time, but - and here’s the rub - it certainly feels like it, and it doesn’t help that Mendes exhausts his bag of tricks very early on. It’s a glorious sight gag and a gorgeous start (even though the background score is a tad on-the-nose) and the rest of the film, post sofa, can’t quite measure up. Somewhere in the middle of this beautiful instrumental sequence, Bond shimmies up a staircase shaking his bottom with Beyonciffic grace, and later, even more gracefully, Sam Mendes lets him fall from perilously high onto a. It’s mesmerising how well Hoytema manages to keep the main characters in focus by manipulating them seamlessly toward the middle of the frame, forcing us to look at them even as they wear masks just like the distracting crowd around them. Spectre starts off almost too beautifully.Ĭinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema - who shot the sublime Her and the gigantic Interstellar - kicks things off with a long, muscular tracking shot that takes us through Mexico’s dance of the dead, the danse macabre. Roger Moore he (thankfully) ain’t, but it feels creepy to watch Craig pour a smile onto a feeble pun. This is Daniel Craig’s fourth outing as 007, and while Sam Mendes tries to give him old-school punchlines laced with a few grams of innuendo, it jars coming from Craig’s hitherto tortured, brooding Bond. Thing is, well-dressed spies can’t quite cut it anymore.Ģ015 alone has given us two immaculately-clad secret agent comedies - Kingsman and The Man From UNCLE - both armed with the right accents and jawlines and cheekbones and gadgets, and both of which commit to gags with more loony glee than is possible for a Bond film. Instead, all the ‘Atmosphere’ button does here is turn on the stereo.