Spectre: James Bond takes a beating in the US reviews

You might think it is time for 007 to hand in his licence to kill, if these latest reviews are anything to go by.

James Bond has always had a complicated relationship with America. Ian Fleming’s character reacts angrily in an early book when a breathless Russian agent him that he looks like an American film star.

“For God’s sake,” he splutters. “That’s the worst insult you can pay a man!”

Perhaps, then, it was only a matter of time before Americans repaid the compliment.

• David Stratton’s Spectre review

While the British reviews for Spectre, the 24th film of the Bond franchise, were little short of ecstatic, across the Pond the reception has been somewhat chilly. The supervillain played by Christoph Waltz is “a bore”, The New York Times said. Sam Smith, who sings the theme song, “sounds as if he had flicked the ejector switch but forgotten to undo his seat belt”, The New Yorker added.

The Wall Street Journal said: “Spectre is full of not-good things, and some oppressively bad things that may come to feel like drill bits twirling in your skull.”

The Daily Beast’s scathing review was headlined: “Why it’s time to retire James Bond”.

Bond, according to several US cultural pundits, is a tired symbol of Britain’s post-empire feelings of inadequacy. On the Metacritic website, which aggregates film reviews, Spectre has a score of only 60 per cent. The previous Bond outing, Skyfall, achieved 81 per cent.

The critical reception, combined with competition from other films, has hit Spectre at the box office. In the US it took $73m between Friday and Sunday, falling short of forecasts. Skyfall took $88.4m in the US during its first weekend in 2012.

The iconic Bond girls

In certain respects, this feels like payback. Fleming’s Bond could be cutting about the US, a country that 007 once suggested had “progressed from infancy to senility without passing through a period of maturity”.

In another of Fleming’s stories, Bond remarks that “you can get far in North America with laconic grunts. ‘Huh,’ ‘Hun,’ and ‘Hi!’ in their various modulations, together with ‘Sure’, ‘Guess so’, ‘That so?’ and ‘Nuts!’ will meet almost any contingency.”

Daniel Craig, who plays Bond for the fourth time in Spectre, recently said that he would rather slash his wrists than reprise the role.

The Austin Chronicle is unlikely to be leading calls for him to reconsider, appearing to have another British actor in mind. It called the film a “drab, anaemic machine ... Someone get Idris Elba on the phone.”

Some have criticised the film for its efforts to give Bond a backstory. Others suggested that Spectre is too formulaic. “There’s a fine line between paying homage to the past and merely repeating it,” the New Orleans Times-Picayune said.

For some Bond fans in the US, however, the formula still satisfies, like an expertly mixed martini.

The Chicago Sun-Times said that Spectre was only a mid-ranking Bond film — “which means it’s still a slick, beautifully photographed, action-packed, international thriller with a number of wonderfully, ludicrously entertaining set pieces, a sprinkling of dry wit, myriad gorgeous women and a classic psycho-villain who is clearly out of his mind but seems to like it that way.”

The Times