Review: Dreadful
Cool cinematography with a disappointing storyline and average acting.
Review
James Bond (Daniel Craig) disobeys M’s (Ralph Fiennes) orders to track down the organization named ‘Spectre’. With the help of Q (Ben Whishaw) who manges to buy him some time, Bond manages to track down Dr. Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux) who’s father (Jesper Christensen) had ties with the organization. The hunt for the organization leads Bond to discover that Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) is still alive. On the other end, MI6 is having trouble keeping the double O program alive, as the head of the Centre of National Security, Max Denbigh -otherwise known as C (Andrew Scott) is pushing for its extinction. Directed by Sam Mendes.
I think I may start boycotting Bond films. It is just so misogynist! There are approximately two/three female characters in this and like almost 100% end up sleeping with Bond. How is he so irresistible? I think the film noticed the absurdity of this too and added in what seems to be a ‘troll’ scene, in which after surviving a fight, Bond looks at Swann and she asks “What now?” or something along those lines. The next shot cuts to them making out on the way to do the inevitable. That scene was just too absurd and laughable.
Anyway, if we put that misogyny aside for a second (what else will you get from a Bond film?), the film itself is pretty disappointing because the story was poorly developed. I just spent the last few minutes watching trailers of the previous movies (Skyfall, Quantum of Solace and Casino Royale) and they weren’t actually so bad. From what I can remember anyway. Four Bond movies in less than 10 years! That is a bit too much isn’t it? Because of its success, Bond films have been formulaic and repetitive. I wonder if it will ever stop. As long as there’s money there’s production no? This is a prime example of overdoing something, if we weren’t so concerned about making a profit, poverty might be a smaller problem in the world. There is my little rant for the day.
So, yes the story is not well developed in Spectre. It didn’t capture my attention and I was just sitting there because I felt like I had to. If I were more inclined, I probably would have walked out halfway. I had no interest in the plots at all. Perhaps I forgot a lot of detail from the previous films, and so felt lost as to who the characters were and what their background was.
However, they obviously have a lot of production value, so the visuals, effects and cinematography was great. What stood out for me, is the beginning scene which is one very long take. That was very well done. There are a lot of aerial scenes too and that added some nice scenery and landscapes to the picture. Visual effects of destruction of property and whatnot is pretty generic because this happens a lot in Bond films, but was still well done.
The action though, did not feel very Bond like. It felt like the film focused more on ‘story progression’ than fighting as there didn’t seem to be as many action scenes as before. I put story progression in quotation marks because the story was progressing but quite slowly and as said above, did nothing for me.
As you can probably see, I feel cheated for spending my time and money at the theatre for this. There was good visuals, all right acting, and cool cinematography but the story was dreadful which made the film terrible.
To sum-up:
PROS: Cinematography, visual effects
CONS: Story, action
I give this a 6/10.
Have you seen Spectre? Rate it out of 5 stars above or leave a comment below!
P.S. Just read my review for Skyfall, I predicted the decline of the storyline! Go me!
championangels 