![\"\"](\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-bzk5jGC5A80\/TmzxkAv_2fI\/AAAAAAAAD_I\/59VopuCwX5E\/s1600\/007tombstone+100.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A swooping shot through the roman skyline and more of the \u201cmusic\u201d or more accurately\u00a0the creepy, symphonic screaming which we heard in London. We know this is Rome because we can see the Coliseum and about half a dozen pizza shops (I kid, about the pizza shops I mean), also because Craig outright said in the previous scene\u00a0he was heading to that specific city, but most of all because Mendes felt the need to write \u201cROME\u201d at the bottom of the screen. I don\u2019t seem to remember Bond films labeling the locations as often as they have during the Craig era, I understand, if they were to go off, to say, Tuscaloosa Alabama without any context, such as saying \u201cI\u2019m off to Tuscaloosa!\u201d but Rome? It\u2019s a major international city, not to mention as I stated, HE JUST SAID HE WAS GOING THERE!<\/p>\n
Craig makes note of the \u201coptional extras\u201d Q added to the car, 4 of the cheapest, most poorly bodged together switches, marked \u201cAir\u201d, \u201cAtmosphere\u201d, \u201cBackfire\u201d, and \u201cExhaust\u201d with that puffy labeling tape from the 70\u2019s.
\nJust look at this travesty! Note the longer labels are hanging off the side!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/silodrome.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Q-Branch-Spectre-Gadget-Switches-Car.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
They could have duct taped the climate control panel from a 1988 Yugo to the dashboard and it would have looked more professional! You used to see the \u201cmoney on the screen\u201d in Bond films, now I don\u2019t think they try anymore. Couldn’t\u00a0they have scrimped with the makeup on some of the Mexico extras, standing way in the back\u00a0so they\u2019d have more than 50 cents to spend on vehicle effects? They spent a record $350 million on this picture, at least half of that must have gone to Sammy \u201cThe Scarf\u201d Mendes because it sure wasn’t spent on the little things like\u00a0effects, script, or story.<\/p>\n
Craig reaches the funeral of Mr. Sciarra and watches from afar, dressed in black coat and dark glasses, very much like the mobsters in attendance, shot with more pretentious exposition\u00a0(I\u2019m starting to detect a theme here). He eyes the widow Sciarra (Monica Bellucci in her much ballyhooed role) out in front of the procession and hones in. Craig walks closer to the action past columns and sarcophagi, showing they put far more effort and thought in to pretension than the story or script! Ten feet from Craig is a figure with an eggplant shaped head that looks eerily similar to Christoph Waltz.\u00a0Craig seems to recognize him as he spends an awkward amount of time leering at him. Waltz must have felt Craig\u2019s gaze boring a hole in to the back of his head as he soon departs, along with the rest of the congregation who disappear faster than Brosnan\u2019s Vanquish in Die Another Day.<\/p>\n
Of course we know Waltz is Blofeld, so this scene begs the question: what the hell is he doing there? Why is the reclusive head of a secret criminal organization attending the funeral of an underling? I don\u2019t care if this guy was second in command, Blofeld would not expose himself for such a trivial matter as burying a henchman, especially when you consider his contempt for human life.<\/p>\n
I must also ask, here is a man Craig recognizes, as we find out later\u00a0his long believed dead foster brother, a man who shouldn’t\u00a0be there, so why not follow him? His instructions were simply \u201ckill this man and attend the funeral\u201d so why, when something so obviously abnormal happens, such as the appearance of a \u201cdead\u201d man, doesn’t\u00a0Craig react accordingly? Couldn’t\u00a0that be why Mamma M sent you there? \u201cNope, she must have meant for me\u00a0to go hound this\u00a0widow!\u201d Look, if the Doppelganger turns out to be a dead end you\u00a0can always go hound her later.<\/p>\n
Craig approaches the widow in a cinematic juxtaposition similar to this scene in Miami Vice, compare and contrast:<\/p>\n
![\"Image\"](\"http:\/\/vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net\/miamivice\/images\/f\/fb\/Beachdream03.jpg\/revision\/latest?cb=20100913073306\")
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"Image\"](\"http:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/i\/pix\/2015\/02\/19\/25D6CCAD00000578-2960185-image-a-1_1424371440160.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Rather than do the obvious, tail the suspicious character he seemed to recognize, Craig makes contact with the widow and attempts to sell her life insurance. Craig looks like a waxen Muppet in this scene, more so than normal. His jowls hanging like a hound dog, skin sliding off his cheeks in to a pool of flesh. Bellucci asks \u201cCan\u2019t you see I\u2019m grieving?\u201d and Craig relies \u201cNo.\u201d Oh, you see, she didn’t\u00a0love her husband after all, so now he can\u00a0believably\u00a0bed her! She\u00a0storms off. I would too, after looking at that mug.<\/p>\n
The widow Bellucci arrives home, pops some opera on the Gramophone, pours herself a cognac and makes her way to the terrace. Due to her aversion to using electricity, or perhaps EON\u2019s insistence that all indoor shots take place in pitch black to cut the budget, she refuses to turn on a lamp. This\u00a0allows\u00a0two hit men to follow her unseen to the patio. As she\u2019s staring wistfully out over the fountain she becomes aware of their presence before hearing two pops from a silenced pistol. The widow turns to find a spectre in her yard, so that\u2019s where the title comes from! Oh no sorry that\u2019s Craig, the ghostly white ghoulish face threw me off for a moment!<\/p>\n
Upon retiring to the parlor they share some stilted dialogue about her being a hunted woman now that her husband is dead. Which like everything else in this film is confusing. She could be trusted when her husband was alive? Now that he\u2019s dead, and all his secrets with him, she can\u2019t? She wasn’t\u00a0a liability, and now she is? Why? Of course I forgot the first rule of the film Spectre: \u201cBecause we said so!\u201d that will pop up time and again before we\u2019re done.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s where it gets a bit shall we say \u201crapey\u201d. Bellucci slaps Craig, he throws the two champagne glasses he was holding to the ground, then walks her back\u00a0to and presses her up against a mirror. Craig begins to kiss her like a drowning mackerel\u00a0and questions her on her former husband\u2019s organization, between deep breaths she answers, and at one point she even literally sheds a tear, which really makes this feel awkward. She tells him the group is meeting that very evening to choose a replacement for her husband, as Craig removes her clothes. Now setting the rape aside I must ask this question\u00a0(I know so many questions, it\u2019s like I\u2019m wearing\u00a0my critical thinking cap or something), how does she know about this meeting? She knows where, she knows when, she even knows what’s on the agenda! Yet as far as the film has established she\u2019s not an operative of theirs, she holds no rank in the organization, her husband isn’t\u00a0around to tell her, she\u2019s just a glorified housewife who Spectre feels is a loose end, so how the bloody hell does she know all this?<\/p>\n
She begins to warm to Craig\u2019s not so gentle touch as they fade to black and resume the action in the bedroom where Craig is jotting down a note. Craig tells her, he\u2019s contacted an American friend named “Felix”, (Get it! You know who it is!) who will get her to safety once she contacts the U.S.\u00a0embassy. Now let me back up here. Last we hear in Quantum of Solace, Felix was made head of the CIA\u2019s South American operations, so for her to get to him she has to jump through a lot of hoops. I point that out because we know Felix is an undisputed \u201cgood guy\u201d and so he would definitely help her, but as pointed out in QOS: 1.) Spy agencies particularly the CIA are not to be trusted, as they will \u201cget in to bed with anyone\u201d and sell out their friends, as Felix\u2019s boss did to Craig, and 2.) The Quantum\/Spectre organization has people everywhere including Mamma M\u2019s very own personal body guard, not to mention the new head of the joint intelligence service (C),\u00a0with an army of surveillance cameras and pipelines to all the world\u2019s intelligence services! So how long would this gal really last. Not to mention\u00a0once it\u2019s been realized Luigi and Vito have not returned from their task for the obligatory post assassination round of high fives back at the clubhouse, others will be along to finish the job.<\/p>\n
As Craig leaves he wishes her good luck (as I pointed out she’ll need it) and we see her on the bed dressed in a fancy corset and stockings which were definitely not there when Craig undressed her. So she either dresses extremely provocatively post sex (at that point why?), or the continuity team were napping on the job, it won\u2019t be the last time we see a lingerie magic trick in this film.<\/p>\n
So Monica Bellucci\u2019s big role in this film was the \u201cdisposable conquest\u201d included to shove the plot along kicking and screaming in her 3 minutes of screen time, and to add another notch to the bed post. Usually this girl meets a not so pleasant fate; see Agent Fields (QOS) and Paris Carver\u00a0(TND) to name a few. I guess Monica was special because she got a \u201chappy ending\u201d. So much was made of her and her age, the \u201cBond woman\u201d as she was called, but there have been mature women in the series before, for example, Honor Blackman, Ms. Pussy Galore was 38 at the time of Goldfinger. Four years Connery\u2019s senior! But all that aside, why the hell does EON deserve a medal for putting a gorgeous woman in to a beautiful gown and forcing her to \u201ckiss\u201d a pale, wounded trout. What,\u00a0just because she\u2019s a little on the older side? So what! Shouldn’t\u00a0we as a society be beyond that now?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A swooping shot through the roman skyline and more of the \u201cmusic\u201d or more accurately\u00a0the creepy, symphonic screaming which we heard in London. We know this is Rome because we can see the Coliseum and about half a dozen pizza shops (I kid, about the pizza shops I mean), also because Craig outright…<\/p>\n