The Spectacle that is Spectre

James Bond (Daniel Craig) kicks off his search for the elusive secret organization Spectre in the midst of the Day of the Dead festival in Mexico City. The search takes him across to Rome, where Ernst Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) engages him in a cat and mouse game that finally culminates back in London. Bond affictionados are in familiar territory (or are they?) - the title song (by Sam Smith, male), the Bond girls - Lucia Sciarra (Monica Belucci), and Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux), the latter highly accomplished in medicine and hardly a wilting violet by any stretch of the imagination, the gadgetry from Q - and Bond inevitably taking some liberties with them. In the balance of things, Spectre is an understated good watch, with Daniel Craig showing clear signs of ageing though. That for me was the only point of disappointment with what was otherwise a fine movie.

15/20

A Lesser Bond

 

 

Skyfall questions the need for a 007 almost from the word go. Knocks him off a train roof – a shot gone astray, and one that goes unrepented – on the outskirts of Istanbul. Dumps him in London, with his eponymous boss M under threat, and a world of clunky gadgetry replaced with the simple elegance of tracking devices and technology. Age and a declining constitution do not help either. Bond picks up his bearings and chases his quarry – agent gone rogue Silva (Javier Bardem) – into Shanghai, and then Macau. And finally back to good old England, where M liberally borrows from Ulyysses and frankly admits that “we are not the strength that in old days moved earth and heaven…” but promises to continue to “strive to seek to find and not to yield”… even as the climactic scenes drift towards the Scottish moors and the hints of a bleak history. Skyfall is interesting – disconcerting at first, because of its deliberate eschewing of flamboyance, but in the end fairly successful at keeping the franchise relevant

 

14.5/20

Raining Ninjas

Expect high octane hand to hand combat with ample servings of blood and gore – possibly the first movie that is singularly focused on the Ninja for a while (leaving aside cameos in Kill Bill and Batman Begins) in Ninja Assassin. The story is stereotypical – a trainingground for Ninja assassins tucked away somewhere, a set of orphans in captivity being trained to be the soldiers of one of the nine ninja clans. Protagonist Raizu (Rain) loses love and questions the autocratic ways of the master, and leaves the clan - a battle with the clan ensues in Germany (why Germany??) and later spills over to the homestead. An eminently watchable no-holds-barred action movie with some brilliant combat sequences and consistently good cinematography

14/20