Movie Review: "Spectre" (Sam Mendes, 2015)

BOND REDEEMED by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Daniel Craig and Léa Seydoux star in the latest James Bond movie.  Photo ©Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and Columbia Pictures

Late in the James Bond movie “Casino Royale,” Bond (Daniel Craig) sat on a sun-coated beach, almost liberated from his life of lying and spying.  But it was not to be.  Soon, he was emotionally gutted by his paramour, Vesper Lynd (Eva Green).  And without the anchor of selfless love, Mr. Craig’s 007 drifted into a coldly heroic sea of violence, fighting for Queen and country with only flimsy aspirations of nobility.

            That was back in 2006.  Ever since, Bond has vaulted across the globe, armed with gadgets, guns, girls, and barely a trace of goodness.  Yet “Spectre,” the said-to-be conclusion of the Craig-Bond cycle, vigorously fans the fire of its hero’s humanity, thrusting him into a life-affirming battle that dares him (and us) to tear into a nagging question: what if Ian Fleming’s “beautiful killing machine” were deprogrammed?   

            The architect of that query is director Sam Mendes, who flourishes his gift for screen poetry in the film’s opening shot—a near-ceaseless take of Mr. Craig strutting through a Day of the Dead parade in Mexico City.  The image is a prelude to a fistfight in a helicopter and a small shot a silver ring branded with an octopus—the symbol of SPECTRE, a nefarious secret society in Bond’s crosshairs. 

            SPECTRE, like most movie-villain cabals, schemes in the shadows of a lush lair (early in the movie, its members sit around a gleaming office table, like studio executives plotting world domination).  The organization’s reach is vast, so much so that it encompasses old Bond adversaries—the blood-weeping Le Chifre (Mads Mikkelsen); the grotesque grinner Silva (Javier Bardem); and the chilly Mr. White (Jesper Christensen), who returns in “Spectre,” reduced to a bearded husk staring dead-eyed at television screens.

            Mr. Christensen’s screen time here is brief.  Yet his grizzled skin and frail body are a premonition of the decrepitude that awaits Bond, should he continue to beat and kill with impunity.  And that threat claws at our hero in “Spectre”—Bond may still look like a spade commissioned by the Sharper Image (he’s still Mr. Craig), but the weight of experience hangs over him.  You feel it, in the midst of both Mr. Craig’s subdued delivery and the climax of the movie, during which Bond races past booby-trapped rooms lined with photos of his dead enemies and friends, hanging on battered walls like strung-out pieces of his psyche.

            As the end of “Spectre” nears, those shattered pieces fuse together as Bond begins to heal—and finds someone who just might love him enough to follow him along the road to recovery.  It’s a sublime twist that echoes the words Sam Smith sings in the film’s opening song: “For you, I have to risk it all.”  That line matters, because it is friendships that make this 007 not Bond, but James.