Spectre (12A)
The main cinema release of the week is Spectre, which came out here on Monday night just fifteen minutes after its world premiere at the Royal Albert Hall in London. It was generally considered to have hit the jackpot by taking $6.4m at 647 locations in Britain and Ireland after showings started at 8.15pm. Spectre opened on Monday to take advantage of the mid-term break and while, at this stage, it is difficult to see it reaching the record breaking numbers of Skyfall three years ago, it is pretty certain to be huge.
At 2 hours 28 minutes Spectre is overlong (it has about four climaxes) and probably over-familiar in its treatment of a Bond adventure and it sacrifices a certain amount of its dramatic punch by giving us three principle villains (one of them is an Oddjob or Jaws-like figure who is relentless and genuinely scary), which is at least one too many.That said, it has so much swagger and polish, so much committed self-belief that it is impossible to resent it. Spectre begins in Mexico City, where Bond has gone, at the behest of Judi Dench’s old M, who in a posthumous assignment has ordered him to track down a vicious Italian contract killer called Sciarra.
The mission involves him in one of the most spectacular pre-credit sequences in the 53 year old history of the venerable spy franchise and when he later begins to question it, he discovers that it is a frayed stitch in a conspiracy that loosely knots together the events of the last three Bond films and ultimately leads to an intriguing confrontation with his past. He hops countries and continents, from Rome to the Austrian Alps, visiting a dusty Morocco and journeying by sleeper train from Tangier to Marrakesh, chasing and being chased, and looking convincingly weary as he bats of a varied selection of colourful enemies.
And director Sam Mendes has decided to shoot all this in luxurious 35mm film, giving it a marked change of texture from Skyfall’s gleaming digital palette and somehow giving each location a rich and colourful individuality.
I have to say I enjoyed it.
Every Wednesday on The Right Hook, Philip joins George to talk movies and TV. Listen back to the podcast below:
