The latest James Bond movie, Spectre, is supposed to have cost $250 million to produce, and give it credit: Every penny of that seems to be visible on the screen.
A big orange-and-black explosion isn’t just a big orange-and-black explosion, it’s a pair of fair-sized explosions at the right and left edges of the screen, and then a couple of big explosions just a little closer to the middle, and then two big ones almost in the middle, and then a humongous blast of orange fire and black smoke blots out the whole screen. That’s an explosion in Spectre.
There’s a surprising amount of pistol fire when a machine gun would do, and when a car chase is impractical, a foot race will do, and if no car is handy, an airplane or helicopter can be crashed. To put it simply, Spectre dumps into your lap everything you expect of a modern action thriller that isn’t after all, science fiction.
Well, almost everything, as there’s almost no sex. But the James Bond movies are still stuck back in the '50s regarding sex, and at least they don’t linger over oozing flesh wounds and body parts flying about in the fashion of modern horror.
Characterizations are purely stock, except for whatever it is that Christoph Waltz is doing as the head villain, and all I’ll say about him is that he’s better than he was in Inglourious Basterds, but not as funny. There are bits of story line squeezed in between the set pieces of chases and battle, and there’s a feeble effort to persuade us all the later James Bond movies were one long serial, but they didn’t distract me into trying to follow the plot. I don’t remember the last time I saw so many false endings.
Those who like this kind of thing will love Spectre. It wasn’t made for people like me.
