On His Excellency’s Secret Service

There must be infinite ways to watch a James Bond movie, but it is surely difficult to beat a black-tie event, sipping a martini (given a vigorous shake), and surrounded by well turned out spooks (more on that later). Last Wednesday, the great and good of Nairobi were invited for the premiere of the latest instalment of the Bond franchise, ‘Spectre’ by the British High Commissioner. The event, at the Sarit Centre in Westlands in Nairobi, gave us the chance to watch the film before most other people in the world. In fact, word was that, except for the premiere in London, we would be some of the first people to watch it (even before eager punters in Hollywood and other places).

An accomplished networker would have had whiplash trying to keep up with the crowd at the pre-screening cocktail, as everyone, from captains of industry, to diplomats, to government officials, to former bosses (two of them, in my case) put up with their best impressions of Bond and his various paramours over the years. (I wasn’t in black tie, seeing as I had rushed straight from the office, but in my three-piece suit and yellow neckwear, I was trying to pass myself off as the man with the golden tie).

The official preliminaries were mercifully brief. The speech by the outgoing British High Commissioner, the PhD-holding Christian Turner, was heroically pun-tastic (until he revealed that his attempt to make reference in his speech to all previous Bond films was met with a firm ‘Dr, No’).

So on to the film itself, where I ended up sitting next to an old friend of mine who is now a real-time spook. It would have been surreal, except for the realisation that he’s not one for the more gory scenes (I was tempted to laugh when he half-covered his eyes during particularly vigorous violence, but I thought that would just have been rude).

What would have been interesting, though, would have been to know his thoughts on the subject matter of ‘Spectre’. The twenty-fifth film in the series is an oh-so-current take on the debate between soulless spycraft – characterised by reliance on relentless data gathering, and killing the bad guys using pilotless drones; and old-fashioned spywork, with spies working on the ground in often hostile territory. (There was actually an essay in the Washington Post titled ‘Is James Bond More Moral than a Drone’?)

Daniel Craig has brought back James Bond from the campy, flighty character to a grittier, more thoughtful and altogether more physical 21^st-century action hero. His Bond, however, remains the office rebel, jousting with his putative boss (Ralph Fiennes in his second outing as ‘M’) and using his credulous, slightly hero-worshipping colleagues Q (Ben Whishaw) and Ms. Moneypenny (Naomie Harris, who appears far too briefly) to aid him in unauthorised adventures.

Bond has been left with one last task by the recently-departed M (Judi Dench), who died at the end of ‘Skyfall’, and the pursuit of the baddies takes him from Mexico, to Austria, to Morocco, to the desert in an unspecified part of North Africa, back to London. Christoph Waltz (as Blofeld) is the head of SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion), and the build-up to a denouement is more than just the usual crescendo to a climax. The constant reference to Bond’s backstory becomes clear as the movie comes to an end (I won’t spoil it for you, but you will let out a knowing ‘Aha’ when it hits you).

It is a good movie – not as entertaining as ‘Skyfall’, but it can hold its own in the canon. The one thing about it that irks (beside the too-long two-and-a-half hour runtime) is its gloominess. I don’t mean in subject matter. The film’s lighting is literally so dull that even events supposedly in the bright sunshine of Mexico City look like they were shot through a darkened filter. It may be director Sam Mendes’ attempt to telegraph the mood of the film, but it just makes it a strain to watch.

Did I have a philosophical discussion with my spook friend about the morality of surveillance? Sadly not, as everyone was in a hurry to get home at nearly midnight on a rainy Wednesday night in Nairobi. But maybe we will do so over martinis soon. In the meantime, he continues on His Excellency’s Secret Service.

Also published in the Business Daily's 'BD Life' on Friday the 13th November 2015