Review: Spectre

"The dead are alive" are the four words that kickstart the 24th installment in the Bond series, a franchise that has resurrected itself time and time again from the throes of extinction. Titled Spectre, the latest offering is replete with ghosts of Bond films past but, more specifically, with the ghosts of the previous three films in which Daniel Craig has reigned as 007.

Spectre begins in Mexico City during the Day of the Dead procession with Hoyte van Hoytema's camera weaving in and out of the congested crowds, pausing to take note of a man dressed in white before following a masked couple into a hotel, up three floors, into a suite where Bond reveals himself beneath the skeletal mask, leaving his latest dalliance in bewilderment as he casually steps onto the window ledge and makes his way across the rooftops to take his position across the building in which the previously seen man in white is discussing a pending bomb explosion. It's a remarkable opening scene - a minutes-long tracking shot that pays homage to Orson Welles' legendary long take in the south of the border noir Touch of Evil - but it is only an amuse bouche as returning director Sam Mendes follows it with a decimated building, a foot chase through the sea of paradegoers, and a fistfight in a helicopter hovering uncontrollably above the heavily populated main square. Bond, as always, gets the job done, pulling a ring with an octopus symbol off the man in white's finger before the tentacular opening credit sequence commences.

Craig-era Bond has been re-establishing the character in the modern world and, though Skyfall effectively reset that particular clock, Spectre grapples with Bond's seeming obsolescence in a world where his job could be conducted by a machine. Certainly a machine would be easier to control - Bond's penchant for unauthorised missions has ruffled M's successor (Ralph Fiennes), who is in the midst of a power struggle with the ambitious C (Andrew Scott), the newly appointed head of the recently merged M15 and M16 who means to deactivate the '00' program. M not only grounds Bond, but orders Q (Ben Whishaw) to implant a microchip in the wayward agent to keep track of his whereabouts.

Naturally, Bond disobeys M. As he explains to Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), the Mexico mission was ordered by M (Judi Dench) in a videotaped communication before her death. The man in white was Marco Sciarra and Bond travels to Rome to attend his funeral and seduce the dead man's wife (Monica Bellucci) into revealing the meeting place of the clandestine organisation of which her husband was a member. Bond discovers the organisation is a shadow conspiracy responsible not only for a recent string of global attacks but also directly involved with the deaths of Vesper Lynd and M, the two most important women in Bond's life. The cabal's mysterious leader, Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz), has a most personal connection and agenda with Bond, and has long lain in wait for their fateful encounter. Waltz, muting his jolly menace with blank serenity, is terrific and a most worthy successor to Javier Bardem's unforgettable Raoul Silva.

Léa Seydoux shines as the deliberately Proustian-named Madeleine Swann, a psychologist working at a medical clinic in the Austrian Alps, the daughter of an assassin (Jesper Christensen), who holds pivotal information about Oberhauser and the organisation, and a strong-willed woman who arguably understands Bond's inner workings better than anyone. If there is a quibble to be made about Spectre, it is the relationship between Swann and Bond, which is posited as his most stirring connection since Vesper Lynd. Despite Seydoux's seductive presence and the actors' chemistry, their union (which could be Bond's salvation) never fully registers. The problem may lie in the long shadow cast by the bewitching Eva Green, undoubtedly one of the best Bond girls in the history of the franchise. One could well understand how his doomed romance with Green's Vesper turned him into an emotionally armoured killing machine. Vesper has haunted him through Quantum of Solace, Skyfall and now Spectre and woe to any woman for competing with her memory for Bond's heart.

Spectre pales in comparison to Skyfall, which set a gold standard for the series, but, in and of itself, Spectre is an excellent entry. It does well to integrate the supporting characters of M, Moneypenny and especially Q (the tremendously endearing Whishaw) into the framework of the narrative, and continues with the Craig-era tradition of tweaking Bond's classic "shaken, not stirred" mandate for his martini. The action sequences are superb - aside from the breathless opening set piece, there's a tense throwdown on a North African train that pits Bond against Dave Bautista's Mr. Hinx, a secondary villain very much in the tradition of Richard Kiel's Jaws and Harold Sakata's Oddjob. Continuing with the film's reworking of past Bond moments, our man James is bound and sadistically tortured; instead of a laser inching towards his manhood, it is the thinnest of drills threatening his memory.

Then there is Craig himself, a British bulldog whose swagger has deepened with each film. There have been rumblings that Spectre may be his swan song, which would be a massive shame. His Bond is second only to Sean Connery's, restoring the cruelty beneath the imperturbable demeanour. Craig brought a complexity to Bond and his portrayal has been pivotal in restoring the franchise's standing in the past decade. More than anyone since Connery, Craig's will be the most difficult shoes to fill.

Spectre

Directed by: Sam Mendes

Written by: John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Jez Butterworth; based on characters created by Ian Fleming

Starring: Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Ralph Fiennes, Léa Seydoux, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Dave Bautista, Andrew Scott, Rory Kinnear, Monica Bellucci, Jesper Christensen