Spectre

Octopussy, is that you? Time and time again these days we are faced with reboots, or outright remakes of films from a few decades ago. In fairness I don’t have a problem with this, seeing as technologies change as does the calibre of actor, or just simply the presentation of a movie.

This film, for me, is like what ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ (2013) was for ‘Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn’ (1982) an out right remake yes. But designed to fit into the story ark. Unlike all the Bonds before ‘Casino Royale’ (2006) which were all standalone missions, or ‘go get the bad guy to save the world and then we shall call it a day’ jobs. So we find ourselves at what would appear to be the end of Daniel Craig (easily my favourite of them all) being Bond, the start of Bonds career as a double 0 in Casino Royale, through the mechanics of his mind and engineering, all to be dropped off at the end.

I’ve seen too many critics so far complaining that this Bond isn’t good enough or that Léa Seydoux is the only redeeming feature of the picture. Simply put, no. This must not be viewed in comparison to the 20 odd Bonds before but a self contained story ark from Casino through Spectre. Léa is indeed fantastic and isn’t just an arm decoration for Bond. Moreover the action cinematography is almost perfect, plenty of puns and quips, and most notably it feels like a Bond movie and plays like one too. The production team has done a sterling job throughout this segment to make them all visually the same, and taken the series from swashbuckling nonsense to the gritty, cunning man Bond is in the novels. 

All in all my rating is 4.3/5. Yes there is room for improvement and I felt as though there were some parts of the movie which were begging to return to the days of Sean Connery and Timothy Dalton, one word of advice there, don’t. So ignore the pretentious critics who do nothing but criticise because their age won’t let them do anything else, and by doing so have got me riled up and probably sounding pretentious here.. but hey we can’t all be happy. I’ve a strong taste of Octopussy.