Score: 3/5
The latest James Bond entry in the Daniel Craig era is not shaken, nor stirred. Instead, “Spectre” is more like a muddled, watered-down version of a drink we’ve had before.
After the fantastic thrill ride that was “Skyfall” and renewed hope and hype in the Bond series, “Spectre” dashed those hopes.
The film boasts a hefty cast, starring Craig as Bond, Ralph Fiennes as M, Naomie Harris as Eve Moneypenny, Ben Whishaw as Q, Christoph Waltz as the latest Bond villain Oberhauser and Lea Seydoux as the latest Bond girl Madeleine Swann.
After receiving a mysterious message, Bond traverses the globe, leading him to discover the existence of SPECTRE, a menacing organization.
While “Spectre” is no “Skyfall,” it’s still quite enjoyable at times. However, toward the end of the film, those enjoyable times come few and far between as “Spectre” crosses into “Taken 3” territory.
What starts off as an intriguing plot sending Bond to stunningly beautiful locales all over the world looking for clues, later becomes one action movie cliche after another. There’s even a “Dark Knight”-like moment in which Bond must choose to save his lover’s life or his own, lest she die in an explosion.
Craig does well as Bond, as usual, and the rest of the cast members play their roles to nice effect, despite a criminally underused Waltz as an underwhelming villain. However, there’s a clear emptiness to “Spectre” and it comes in the form of the missing gloriousness of Dame Judi Dench.
The best aspect of the Craig era is his relationship with Dench’s M. The lack of her snarky, fiery presence hurts “Spectre” in a number of ways. Craig’s Bond no longer has the anchor of the MI6 program to ground him and amusingly tell him when he’s about to do something stupid.
Frankly, Craig has had more chemistry with Dench than any other Bond girl in the series, other than “Casino Royale’s” Vesper Lynd, splendidly played by Eva Green.
In “Spectre,” Craig has the most chemistry with Q and Moneypenny, just as he did in “Skyfall.” Seydoux makes a fine Bond girl, but her romance with Bond is bland and becomes tedious after a while.
“Spectre” is by no means a bad film, but it simply doesn’t hit the marks some of the previous Craig era films hit. It still has some of the fun elements that made its predecessor “Skyfall” great, but ultimately it’s a clunky, generic action film.
With four Craig era Bond movies — two hits, the brilliant “Casino Royale” and the invigorating “Skyfall,” and two near misses, the lackluster “Quantum of Solace” and now “Spectre” — it’s not easy to determine how he will be remembered as the iconic Ian Fleming character.
If his performance as the character is ever doubted though, at least he’ll always have “Casino Royale” and “Skyfall” to fall back on.