Bond number 24 starts with a bang and a half. The pre-credits sequence opens with a 5 minute Steadicam shot tracking an assassination attempt all set to a backdrop of The Day Of The Dead festival in Mexico City. It's stunning and audacious. Something never before seen in a Bond film. Absolutely epic in scale. It will leave you with you jaw hanging open.
But then the film itself turns into an absolute snooze-fest. 2.5 hrs is ridiculously long for a Bond film. The middle section could lose 30 minutes easily.
Bond has discovered a secret from his past and his investigation of it brings him into contacts with the upper echelons of the criminal world. Meanwhile MI6 is in danger of being made obsolete and M has his own battle on his hands to show that the humble Double 0 programme still has a place in the modern world. Sounds exciting right! Ya its not.
Critics of the last Bond outing 'Skyfall' (which i loved btw) accused it of being too different, of not following the Bond formula. Director Sam Mendes seems to have taken on board some of the criticism and bizarrely decided to add some of the older Bond staples to this story to create a bizarre mishmash of Moore and Connery style silliness and Craig style grittiness. It doesn't work. An airbag gag in a car chase would feel right at home in one of Moore's weaker outings but it doesn't work here. An eye gouging murder at a meeting of arch criminals. Nope doesn't work either. A baddie's lair in a crater in the desert? C'mon, that was old hat by the 70's. A very odd and creepy seduction scene of a woman we never see again afterwards. Even the addition of a proper henchman for the bad guy feels like the bastard child of Oddjob & Red Grant.
The film of course has its good points. That stunning opening 10 minutes. It looks fantastic. Craig is as always a great Bond, ruthless and funny. Ralph Fiennes is superb as M and Ben Whitsaw is good fun as Q.
The women in the cast do not fair as well. Naomie Harris & Monica Belluci especially are utterly wasted in bit parts. Lea Seydoux fairs slightly better but tbh she might as well not even be a character, just a reason for Bond to go from a to b to c.
I'm probably more disappointed than i should be but i can't help it. I'm a life long Bond fan. I don't care about the formula being changed. Do what you want but at least do it well. And keep it exciting. The one a Bond film should never be is boring and this one is boring in spades.
Hashtag sadface.
