Spectre

Casino Royale (2006) ushered in the Daniel Craig era of James Bond films and made its mark by giving the superspy a darker, violent edge while downplaying the humor that was abundant in the Roger Moore era and, to a lesser degree, during Pierce Brosnan’s run. The next two films took Bond into uncharted territory as their plots were interconnected instead of the usual stand-alone adventures and also shed light on the character’s background – something that some Bond fans felt was a betrayal of the franchise. Personally, it was exciting to see Bond fall in love only to have her die tragically in Casino Royale. Then, he sought revenge for her death in Quantum of Solace (2008) and dealt with the fallout of his actions in Skyfall (2012). With Spectre (2015), it turns out that the adversaries he faced in the previous films were all part of a master plan orchestrated by the shadowy terrorist organization known as Spectre, a famous nemesis of Bond during the Sean Connery era.

Returning director Sam Mendes hits the ground running with a bravura long take tracking shot of James Bond (Craig) in Mexico City during the Day of the Dead celebration as he walks through the crowded streets with a lovely lady on his arm. Hoyte van Hoytema’s (Interstellar) fluid camerawork follows Bond into a busy hotel, up to a room and out a window as he travels across several rooftops until he reaches the target. After the elegance of this sequence, Mendes and Hoytema switch to kinetic hand-held camerawork as Bond chases his prey through the noisy, chaotic streets, culminating in a white-knuckle intense fight aboard a helicopter. And this is just the film’s prologue!

After the Mexico incident, Bond is suspended by his superior, M (Ralph Fiennes), for acting on his own and told that MI6 is merging with MI5, which will result in the 00 program being scrapped. It turns out that Bond was carrying out the previous M’s (Judie Dench) last request: find and kill a man named Marco Sciarra (Alessandro Cremona) and attend his funeral in Rome. It is here that Bond uncovers a secret organization known as Spectre and discovers their connections to all the villains he’s faced in the three previous films.

Daniel Craig plays a much more competent Bond in Spectre than in Skyfall where several bad decisions that defied logic resulted in the deaths of key characters. In this film, he makes much better choices for the most part. Craig also does a fantastic job of continuing Bond’s personal journey to finish what he started in Casino Royale. The actor even gets to insert a little more humor, in particular, his interactions with Q (Ben Whishaw) and not play such an overtly grim Bond as in previous installments. That being said, Bond is still not someone to be messed with and Craig never lets us forget that his character is a ruthless assassin.

Spectre finally brings back the Bond villain henchman in the tradition of Oddjob and Jaws with the introduction of the burly Mr. Hinx played by Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy) whose considerable physical presence makes him a formidable foe for Bond. The film’s mastermind villain is played by Christoph Waltz who brings his trademark cultured panache to the role. The award-winning actor uses his distinctive charisma to command a given scene. All of the bad guys in the previous Craig Bond films have been leading up to Waltz’s villain who is the most powerful and evil of them all, even more so because of his personal connection to Bond.

Much was made this time out about how Bond was going to finally encounter a Bond girl (*ahem* woman) his own age and while this is true with the casting of the lovely Italian actress Monica Bellucci it is such a shame that she’s hardly in the film as Bond quickly moves on to the requisite younger love interest/sidekick played by French actress Lea Seydoux with whom Craig has very little chemistry with. At least Bellucci isn’t resigned to the same fate that befalls a lot of the initially introduced Bond girls in the films. A far more radical move on the part of the filmmakers would have been to swap the roles for Bellucci and Seydoux so that the latter has the glorified cameo and the former is given the bigger chunk of screen-time with her leading man but sadly things are played safe and Spectre suffers a bit for it.

Spectre continues the recurring notion of Bond’s apparent obsolescence in this modern age and how the powers that be within the British government threaten to shut down the 00 program because it is considered an antiquated relic of a bygone era in this post-Edward Snowden age where surveillance is omnipresent. This comes to a head in the film when a smug, young politician (Andrew Scott) openly challenges M, looking to replace Bond and the other 00 agents with drones and hi-tech surveillance.

However, as Spectre amply demonstrates, there is something to be said for the human component and looking at someone face-to-face that no element of technology can replicate. “Info is all, is it not?” says Waltz’s bad guy late in the film and while all of this state-of-the-art technology is supposed to make us feel safe it is really taking away our personal freedoms and making us paranoid and scared. During this film, Bond is often at the mercy of intense scrutiny by both the British government and by Spectre, prompting him to go to some very exotic and remote locations to uncover the truth.

While Bond uses technology in his missions in the form of fancy cars, etc., he still believes in getting his hands dirty via car chases, gun battles and hand-to-hand combat to the get job done. There’s a certain intimacy in going up against someone one-and-one and testing your skill against theirs. The big reveal in Spectre is that Bond finds out he was never in control of his own fate – it was all an illusion. He is a killer unbound by conventional relationships, like marriage, which makes the film’s climax a bit illogical and a betrayal of his personal ethos, especially considering what has happened to him over the course of these four films. I guess this was done to show some personal growth but it feels more like Mendes and co. leaving the door open for a sequel that we all know is coming eventually. That being said, with the exception of a weak third act, Spectre is a strong film and a fitting conclusion to a four-film story arc. It should be interesting to see where the producers take the Bond franchise from here.

For further reading, check out John Kenneth Muir's perceptive review and the Film Connoisseur's.

DVD of the Week: Revolutionary Road

Between The Reader and Revolutionary Road, it’s safe to say that 2008 was been a very good year for Kate Winslet. She won or was nominated for all of the major acting awards for either one of these two films. She also won the big prize that she’s been chasing for some time, the Academy Award. Although she didn’t win it for Road, there were several critics who felt that she should have. Based on Richard Yates’ best-selling novel of the same name, Road attempted to capitalize on popular culture’s recent fascination with retro culture as evident by the success of the television show Mad Men, about New York City advertising executives. There was also a certain amount of anticipation for this film as it was the first time Leonardo DiCaprio and Winslet were reunited on-screen since Titanic (1997).

Set in 1950s suburban Connecticut, Revolutionary Road examines dysfunction lurking under the picture perfect, all-American facade of the Wheeler family. Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April (Kate Winslet) have only been married a few years and have two children but the cracks are already starting to show. Their lives haven’t exactly turned out as they had dreamed: he works a boring 9-to-5 office job while she’s trapped in suburbia as a housewife. Frank and April are both very unhappy with their respective lots in life but they are locked into them because it is what society expects. They are supposed to be happy, after all they’re living the American Dream with two children and a nice house in an affluent suburb – so, why has the spark gone out of their marriage?

Ever since he started making films with Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio has really matured as an actor and only seems to improve with every subsequent film he does. Revolutionary Road is quite possibly his best performance to date. There is a scene, a flashback where Frank reveals his ambitions to April while they are courting. He says, almost wistfully at one point, “I wanna feel things. Really feel them, you know?” The scene is brief but very important because it provides fascinating insight into his character. Before Frank followed in his father’s footsteps, he dreamed of going to Paris where “People are really alive.” DiCaprio also displays the subtle nuances of his character in a scene where April and his two children surprise him after work with a birthday cake. On his face is a shamefully sad expression because, unbeknownst to his family, he has spent most of the day with another woman. Of course, they interpret his tears as that of joy but we know better.

DiCaprio still has dynamite chemistry with Winslet as evident in the scene where April proposes that they sell their house, he quit his job, and they use their savings to move to Paris like they dreamed of years ago. At first, it seems like an unrealistic proposition but her passionate reasoning, delivered with heartfelt conviction by Winslet, wins him (and us) over. She does an excellent job conveying someone who wants something more out of life and the impressive part of Winslet’s performance is how she conveys the arc of her character, how April gets more desperate and fed-up with her life with Frank. Winslet is not afraid to expose the raw emotional core of her character and this fearlessness is exciting to watch. She is also absolutely heartbreaking as a woman who feels trapped by the life she’s living. April doesn’t like what she and Frank have become.

Almost halfway through Revolutionary Road, Michael Shannon makes a show-stopping appearance as the son of the woman (Bates) who sold the Wheelers their home. His character went crazy and was subjected to electroshock therapy and now he’s a bundle of twitchy nerves but also seems to be the only person who understands why Frank and April want to drop everything and go to Paris. He also seems to be the only person who publicly acknowledges the problems between them. Shannon’s appearance gives the film a refreshing jolt of energy and lightens things up at just the right moments.

am Mendes also directed American Beauty (1999) and in some respects April is the female version of its protagonist Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey). Both are tired of their humdrum, predictably existence and desperately need some sort of change in their lives. However, both protagonists are products of their times: American Beauty is set in contemporary times while Revolutionary Road takes place in the ‘50s. Mendes shows how attitudes of society back then contribute to April’s sense of hopelessness. One of the hallmarks of Mendes’ films is the meticulous framing of scenes and the incredible attention to detail in terms of production design. This sometimes threatens to overwhelm the characters in his films. With Road, he wisely realizes that this is a character-driven piece and lets the talented cast do their thing. The result is some incredibly strong performances from his talented cast. This film really belongs to DiCaprio and Winslet and the way they bring their characters so vividly to life. Frank and April aren’t really likable characters per se but the two actors do their best to humanize them to a certain degree. Revolutionary Road depicts, with unflinching clarity, the reality of a married couple’s life versus the hopes and dreams they once had and how they reconcile the differences between the two.

Special Features:

There is an audio commentary by director Sam Mendes and screenwriter Justin Haythe. According to Mendes, the BBC owned the rights to Yates’ book and asked Haythe to adapt it four years ago. They shot the entire film on location and almost completely in sequence so that DiCaprio and Winslet really lived with their characters. Mendes says that the look of the film was not inspired by other films but a documentary about the suburbs and photographs from the era. Haythe talks at length about adapting the book to film – what was left out, changed and so on.

“Lives of Quiet Desperation: The Making of Revolutionary Road” is a very classy featurette on how this film came together. Winslet was a big fan of the book and really wanted to make it into a film. Mendes had just finished Jarhead (2005) and didn’t want to jump right into another film but Winslet worked on him for a year until he agreed to do it. It also took Winslet two years to convince DiCaprio to do the film and he loved the script and the chance to work with her again. This featurette also touches upon the challenge of working on location and how the fantastic look of the film was achieved.

Finally, there are five deleted scenes with optional commentary by Mendes and Haythe. There is a scene that was to reveal the Wheeler children earlier on in the film. There is also more footage of the Wheelers visiting with their next-door neighbours with DiCaprio delivering an excellent monologue that reveals more about his character. We see more footage of Frank commuting to work. There is also a flashback with the Wheelers seeing their new home. Mendes and Haythe talk about why this footage was cut and put it into context with the rest of the film.