The name is Bond. James Bond.
He’s a lover of flash cars, hard liquor, and beautiful women – it’s no other than 007 cruising back on to our screens in the long anticipated Spectre.
Daniel Craig returns for the fourth (and rumoured final) time as our cool, stylist, and slightly arrogant James Bond. With a license to kill, it’s not long before buildings are being dramatically blown up and intense fighting scenes are breaking out. This is a fast paced, action packed movie that is full of amazing visual effects from beginning to end.
The film begins with Bond in Mexico City at the Day of the Dead festival, a popular Mexican festival that honors the dead. Bond calmly takes a woman back to a hotel suite but he is soon jumping out a window and sliding himself down to a building where his victim awaits and after firing a few shots at the windows, the building blows up and soon Bond is chasing a baddie through the city which ends in a dramatic fight scene in a helicopter. All in a day’s work for our beloved agent.
In the first five minutes we can see that the cinematography is beautifully thought out and constructed to make it as visibly astonishing as possible. Everything we love about Bond is reinforced in the opening scene; he’s slick, cool, calm, and nothing seems to phase him. And it only gets better from here.
After the fast paced scenes in Mexico City, we soon find ourselves back in London where we find out that MI6’s Double-0 program is under threat due to surveillance agent, C (Andrew Scott). There’s no rest for our Bond however as he zooms off to Rome, Austria, and North Africa, accomplished by Bond Girl, Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) in a bid to kill assassins, terrorists, and all round bad guys who are all run by Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz).
The action scenes in Spectre are fantastic, each one had me on the edge of my seat as I watched Bond wind up in a plane chase in Austria, a car chase in Rome, and beating up bad guys at every given opportunity. Spectre is a film full of action scenes that makes it impossible for you to tear your eyes from the screen for even a split second. And Daniel Craig brings in the humour, giving us a lighthearted Bond, whilst still oozing his cool and collected attitude.
With a running time of 148 minutes, Spectre is a long but enjoyable watch. At times I felt like not a lot was happening however and although it was entertaining to watch, I feel like they could have edited the film down without any real effect to the plot.
Good film? Certainly! But it wasn’t on the same level as Skyfall, and Casino Royale will remain my favourite Daniel Craig Bond film. Nevertheless, for all Bond fans out there, you will not be disappointed with this latest addition to the franchise.
Overall Rating: 4/5
Paradise Spice 