LoginAlthough 'Casino Royale' is often considered the best Daniel Craig Bond film, my personal favourite is actually 'Skyfall'. That said, 'Casino Royale', after liking it well enough, fared much better on re-watch. 'Quantum of Solace' however was a major disappointment, and for me deserves its distinction as one of the worst of the series.
While the James Bond series has had its highs and lows, most of the films have been very enjoyable. At least three or four of Sean Connery's Bond films are among the best of the series (my personal favourite of the lot being 'Goldfinger'), with the only big misfire being 'Diamonds are Forever', despite one of the series' greatest theme songs. 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' is also very good'. Roger Moore's films are mostly entertaining enough, though for me the only great one was 'The Spy Who Loved Me', with 'A View to a Kill' and 'Octopussy' (an unpopular opinion though) being two of the series' weakest. Wasn't crazy about Timothy Dalton's two entries, 'The Living Daylights' is the better of the two but is only decent. Pierce Brosnan's are not very popular with some Bond fans, for this viewer they're not bad; loved 'Goldeneye' and 'The World is Not Enough', liked 'Tomorrow Never Dies' and while 'Die Another Day' has enormous problems (especially Madonna's theme song being in the top 5 worst Bond themes, some cringe-worthy puns, over-silliness in the second half and an overload of CGI that was also pretty awful), I don't consider it that irredeemably bad, because it started off strongly and most of the performances were good, especially from Brosnan, Dench, Youn, Cleese and Pike, the only real sore spot being Madonna's cameo.
Starting with what is good about 'Spectre' it is mostly very stylishly made with great use of atmospheric and beautiful locations. Some of the action sequences are exciting, particularly the train sequence and the supercar chase through Rome. The Mexico City pre-credits sequence is also pretty epic. Sam Mendes' direction has its moments, with evidence of style, elegance and thrills. There are also some good performances. Daniel Craig is as charismatic and debonair as ever, handling the dramatic and action moments well, though there was a slight sense of him starting to get bored of the role (nowhere near as bad as Connery in 'Diamonds are Forever' though). Christoph Waltz is very good- if also rather underused- as the main villain, a role that suits him to the ground, playing him with smarmy, sinister relish. Ralph Fiennes is enjoyably starchy, David Bautista conveys some menace as assassin Hinx and Ben Whishaw brings genuine spark to Q.
However, for me, and other viewers too, 'Spectre' does suffer from some major problems. It particularly suffers from a confused tone, with a mix of violent action, humour with in the in-jokes and spy clichés, thriller and romance. While there are moments like some fun to spot references, neither component come off consistently or even that successfully. A good deal of the action is overblown and cartoonish rather than exciting (only the Rome chase and train sequence are memorable), with some the violence gratuitous. The humour is misplaced and border on parody that would have been more at home in something like 'Austin Powers'. The thriller elements do lack suspense and tension, due to parts that feel too recycled which gave it a real over-familiarity. Lastly, the romance is not interesting or developed at all, and has no natural or obvious chemistry.
Léa Seydoux is a rather vapid Bond girl with very little to her, while Monica Bellucci is pretty much wasted in a too-brief appearance. Hinx is for personal tastes rather underwritten, but David Bautista does do what he can and as said conveys some menace. Andrew Scott's C is an obnoxious character and played every bit as obnoxiously. The film is far too long by half an hour, drags in the second half, ends ridiculously and anti-climactically and contains a muddled script with clumsy over-congratulatory in-jokes and hackneyed, dreary dialogue and feels very overblown in places. Mendes shows a gift for visual style and drama but forgets the suspense and tension unfortunately, while the editing (though not as bad as 'Quantum of Solace') is enough to make one confused and seasick. Thomas Newman's score is somewhat repetitive, and Sam Smith's theme song- like most- did absolutely nothing for me and one of the most undeserved Oscar wins in recent years, for me it is certainly the most undeserved in the category that there's been too and one of my least favourite Bond themes. It's ballad-like feel is at odds with the style of the rest of the film and feels like there are more than one climax that never happens when it's meant to. Smith's singing does not fit the song either, it's a song that sounds like it requires a more powerful voice and more emotional connection, the falsetto (a sound and technique that in all honesty I've never liked) was completely out of place as well and made Smith sound like a wimp.
All in all, not as awful as it has been made out, and it is a better film than 'Quantum of Solace' but disappointing (especially with 'Skyfall' having been so good) and Craig's second weakest Bond. 5/10 Bethany Cox
Spectre Reviews
The second weakest of the Craig Bonds
Posted : 1 year, 10 months ago on 2 July 2022 04:26
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Spectre review
Posted : 3 years, 2 months ago on 24 February 2021 12:00
I was thoroughly entertained by this movie. Not as entertained compared with my enjoyment of watching Skyfall and Casino Royale, but still worth checking out.
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Spectre review
Posted : 7 years, 7 months ago on 11 September 2016 04:34
After the little disappointment of previous Skyfall, Spectre was better and at least some secret weapons that made 007 famous returned, though in part .
I like the new characters of M and Q, also Moneypenny not bad, the prime minister was hateful, (well was his work) and at the end I was happy they stopped him.
Great action on Mexico, Rome car chase and in the snow of the Alps. Monica was very into the sad widow, maybe too much. Lea at the beginning I seemed she was not very confident but after she good companion for Bond.
I like the new characters of M and Q, also Moneypenny not bad, the prime minister was hateful, (well was his work) and at the end I was happy they stopped him.
Great action on Mexico, Rome car chase and in the snow of the Alps. Monica was very into the sad widow, maybe too much. Lea at the beginning I seemed she was not very confident but after she good companion for Bond.
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Spectre review
Posted : 8 years, 4 months ago on 26 December 2015 01:01
Total disappointment !
This movie brought down the 007 fever down to "0" .
Had real high expectations , but this movie was a turn down.
007 is very dull to watch in this flick , Christoph Waltz may have tried to keep up the bad-ass villain role but the role had no spark.
Love story was lame.
After the phenomenal Skyfall , Spectre looks like a substandard attempt .
Skip this and wait for next 007 movie .
This movie brought down the 007 fever down to "0" .
Had real high expectations , but this movie was a turn down.
007 is very dull to watch in this flick , Christoph Waltz may have tried to keep up the bad-ass villain role but the role had no spark.
Love story was lame.
After the phenomenal Skyfall , Spectre looks like a substandard attempt .
Skip this and wait for next 007 movie .
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A dull as hell action flick
Posted : 8 years, 5 months ago on 13 November 2015 08:59
"It was me, James. The author of all your pain."
After the disappointment of Die Another Day in 2002, the producers of the long-running James Bond franchise realised that they could not keep sticking to the pre-established formula, instead opting to hit the reset button for 2006's Casino Royale. However, they stopped short of actually finding something distinctively new for the series to become in order for it to be as unique and exciting as it was back when it started. Instead, the franchise is now more concerned with aping whatever is popular and successful at any given time. Royale is a visible clone of Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, Quantum of Solace was a Jason Bourne movie, Skyfall went back to the Nolan approach, and now Spectre is a Marvel movie. More specifically, Spectre is Captain America: The Winter Soldier, though the narrative also bears astonishing similarities to the far superior Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation. Once again helmed by Sam Mendes (Skyfall), Spectre may not be an unredeemable disaster, but it does fall towards the lower end of the Bond spectrum, a dull-as-hell action flick suffering from some of the worst plotting in 007 history.
It is a tense time for MI6, with the proposed merger with MI5 threatening to eliminate the "00" program in favour of employing high-tech surveillance techniques. MI6 is therefore under some intense scrutiny, putting M (Ralph Fiennes) on edge, who's keen to keep James Bond (Daniel Craig) on a tight leash after a destructive stunt in Mexico City. Setting off on a personal mission without permission, Bond seeks out old foe Mr. White (Jesper Christensen), who has information about a shady organisation known as Spectre, led by a certain Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz). Travelling to Austria, Bond meets with Madeleine Swan (Léa Seydoux), Mr. White's daughter, who has ties to Spectre's history. Back in London, M, Q (Ben Whishaw) and Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) are left to deal with all the bureaucratic business, with M wanting to bring Bond back in, but evidence comes to light that 007 may be onto something.
It's difficult to cover the gaping flaws of Spectre's moronic plotting without divulging spoilers, even though most/all of the surprises were either given away or strongly hinted at in the trailers in the first place, and the "twists" aren't nearly as exciting as the movie wants them to be. Nevertheless, a spoiler warning is in place.
Even though Spectre does incorporate elements of the long-running James Bond formula - with some gadgets, the gun barrel opening, an old-school henchman (Dave Bautista), and a beautiful love interest for Bond - the movie is still reluctant to return to the franchise's status quo, with Spectre another needlessly personal mission for 007. This series doesn't need such convoluted rubbish to justify action sequences, since killing people and wreaking havoc is literally Bond's 9-5 workday! He gets paid to travel to exotic locations and kill a bunch of bad guys, therefore the story does not need to be a personal vendetta, and if they had to do this sort of thing, can they at least put in some fucking effort? Worse, Spectre is not a standalone adventure. Whereas you could practically watch any other James Bond film out of order, this twenty-fourth instalment requires intimate knowledge of the last three movies, making it a 007 film only for franchise aficionados. You would think the producers would have recognised the foolishness of this approach after Quantum of Solace.
Following on from Skyfall and digging further into Bond's past, Spectre reveals that Oberhauser is the secret agent's brother, but this daft development only triggers Austin Powers flashbacks. (Except all three Austin Powers movies are much, much better than this garbage.) Worse, Oberhauser murders his father, becomes a global supervillain, and decides to set his crosshairs on Bond simply because his father loved James more than him. Oh boo hoo. Also, yes, Spectre pulls a Star Trek: Into Darkness on us; Oberhauser is the iconic franchise villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, having changed his name after staging his death. But it makes no fucking sense for Oberhauser to choose to be called Blofeld because the moniker has absolutely no bearing on the context of this particular story - Oberhauser just picked it out of a clear blue fucking sky.
Marvel-esque world-building has become the order of the day in recent years, and it's clear that MGM has taken note. Thus, Spectre wants its largely humdrum events to have the same kind of plot-threads-coalescing weight of the Avengers films, but they try to achieve it after-the-fact, without having actually done any of the prep work. In the most contrived way possible, Spectre ties together the events and villains of the last three instalments by revealing that Blofeld was responsible for everything, lurking behind the curtain and pulling the strings in secret. The problem is, this doesn't actually make any logical sense in the context of the previous movies. It doesn't even make sense in this context, given what his supposed endgame is.
Despite a gargantuan $245 million production budget, Spectre is not a particularly exciting or involving motion picture. The opening sequence in Mexico City is admittedly well-staged, but the succeeding action beats are strangely sedate, failing to raise the pulse. A car chase between Bond and Hinx has to be one of the most bland and uneventful vehicular pursuits in cinematic history, while a chase involving a plane and some cars is a total snoozer, which is a real surprise given director Mendes' past experience. Naturally, the film does look good, especially with the lush, stylish cinematography courtesy of Hoyte van Hoytema (Interstellar), and the sumptuous accompanying score by Thomas Newman, but such surface pleasures ultimately add up to very little. Despite being a watchable motion picture, there's no danger, dread or intensity, with vanilla, determinedly bloodless violence, and romantic/sex scenes that feel bland and perfunctory.
This is Craig's fourth go-round as James Bond, but he's clearly phoning this one in. Craig spent the press tour for Spectre whining non-stop about how much he dislikes playing Bond, despite the gargantuan paydays he keeps scoring. (When was the last time Craig headlined a film outside of Bond that was actually successful?) Waltz is a formidable villain, but his screen-time is seriously limited, while the well-publicised appearance of Monica Bellucci amounts to precisely nothing. Seriously, Bellucci is in the movie for less than five minutes and could have easily been cut from the finished film. The only one who seems to care here is Bautista as a silent, deadly assassin. Also worthwhile is Sherlock actor Andrew Scott, who makes a positive impressive as a rising British Secret Service leader. Meanwhile, the usual players do their jobs well enough, with Fiennes, Whishaw and Harris all perfectly acceptable as Bond's colleagues.
Spectre is plagued with serious issues, from its studiously forgettable main title song by Sam Smith (set to a laughably naff title sequence) to its underwhelming action scenes. There aren't even any memorable one-liners. It has been nine years since Casino Royale, and the 007 series is already in need of another major rethink.
4.8/10
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I've been here before
Posted : 8 years, 6 months ago on 5 November 2015 06:48
The Bond movies are noted for their pre-credits sequences and Spectre is no exception in that respect. The opening scenes in Mexico City are quite spectacular and technically brilliant, featuring a fantastic lengthy tracking shot which lasts for several minutes without any edits. The choreography is extremely accomplished and the action quite gripping. It's arguably one of the best opening sequences of any Bond feature.
A novelty this time is that one of the Bond girls is much older than usual. Played by Monica Bellucci, Lucia Sciarra becomes another notch on Bond's bedpost, which must be of record breaking dimensions by now. Bellucci was good in the part but her brief appearance serves mainly as a plot element to enable Bond to infiltrate the engimatic Spectre organisation. I couldn't understand why she was attracted by Bond either, as he is at his least charming at that point. Maybe she was supposed to be some kind of masochist, or maybe it was just bad writing. I'm not quite sure. Bond spends more time with the younger Dr. Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux) and his relationship with her was fortunately more involving. Seydoux was very good in the role and she managed to create a character with a certain level of complexity.
After that Spectre becomes somewhat of a business as usual effort. The themes of mortality and surveillance were quite interesting and certainly gave the film a contemporary feel but neither are explored in any great depth, which was disappointing. At one point Bond tells someone that he kills people for a living, following which it would have been interesting if he had reflected on his own mortality but the writers preferred to move him quickly on to the next action sequence. A shame. Spectre is certainly a well mounted production, the action sequences are exciting, the cast give strong performances and the exotic locations are as enjoyable as ever. Plot-wise however, it was all somewhat of a Bond by numbers and it all felt rather generic. I would have liked to have seen more innovation but this was a very self-referential film, with many scenes being simply pastiches of previous adventures; the costumes at the beginning echo that of Baron Samedi from Live and Let Die, there is a fight on a train, as in From Russia With Love and The Spy Who Loved Me, the bad guy has a massive base in the Ken Adam mould and is surrounded by the usual set of ineffective goons who serve as cannon fodder for Bond. It's an approach that is somewhat reminiscent of the final Pierce Brosnan outing Die Another Day and although Spectre was certainly superior to that weak effort, in terms of imagination it was far from what the series has achieved in the past. There are also some connections with the other Daniel Craig Bond films but these didn't really add anything to the story and stretched credulity. A couple of Craig-era motifs also reappear; Bond is a loose cannon (again) and he ends up in collapsing buildings at a few points. All of which is feeling a bit tired by now.
Christoph Waltz played the bad guy this time and his performance is a marked contrast to the larger than life one which was given by Javier Bardem in Skyfall. This was perhaps a wise choice in that it might have backfired to have more grandiose scene-chewing histrionics, but it did feel a little flat to me. There is a coldness to Waltz's characterisation reminiscent of Joseph Wiseman's Dr No, with Waltz underplaying every scene. It successfully conveyed a sociopathic personality but the script didn't give the malevolent head of Spectre much to do so the stakes felt a lot lower than they did in the last Bond movie, resulting in a less engaging story.
Overall Spectre is far from the best in the series, but it is a serviceable effort benefiting from the usual high production values of the series. I was never bored at any point and there are some exciting sequences to be enjoyed, but it was weaker than the brilliant Skyfall. I certainly want Bond to return, as he always does, but I hope that the script writers will have had a few new ideas about where to take the series by then.
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Writing on the Heart...
Posted : 8 years, 6 months ago on 5 November 2015 07:51
“You've got a secret. Something you can't tell anyone, because you don't trust anyone.”
James Bond investigates an enigmatic organisation and becomes involved in an action laden adventure with femme fatales, fancy gadgets, explosive weaponry and cars/planes/equipment. Spectre correlates the previous films Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and Skyfall with a deranged nemesis who has been pulling the strings as a twisted puppeteer from Bond's past.
Film making, effects, cinematography: Beautiful shots, idyllic locations such as Mexico, Austria, United Kingdom, Morocco for examples. The effects and chases really thrill and shock while give a tantalising taste of adrenaline pumping finesse. The audience is treated to visions of the wilderness or breathtakingly gorgeous and prominent landscapes. The title sequence is exceptionally beautiful accompanied by the Writing's on the Wall via Sam Smith.
Story, acting, character development: The characters and story have a particularly linear progression/approach. Cast is exceptionally high maintenance with Ralph Fiennes, Daniel Craig, Monica Bellucci, Christoph Waltz giving stellar performances. Ben Whishaw as Q was very funny and the humour/banter was rather a much needed accompaniment.
Music, score, sound: The sound was high quality as you would expect these days and the score/music by Thomas Newman is particularly emotional and effective. We have a range of powerful angry tones while for the more intimate scenes passionate parts of the sound spectrum.
Summary and conclusion: Sam Mendes whom directed Spectre has made a good effort with this latest morsel. It is also shows us a transition for James Bond into a less psychopathic agent and more a compassionate loving human being. In the face of evil love and empathy can be a refreshing change especially for those that deserve it. The film in my eyes teaches us that we have a choice to kill or not to kill, to love or not to love, to defend ourselves or when not to resist. Spectre is that meteorite that was in the shadows for what seemed like an eternity yet decided to impact our hearts with a journey of passion, action and psychological thrill seeking mixed with an uplifting climax.
Madeleine Swann: Is this really what you want? Living in the shadows? Hunting, being hunted? Always alone?
James Bond: I don't stop to think about it.
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An average movie
Posted : 8 years, 6 months ago on 31 October 2015 09:38
I already saw this movie, in fact I saw it in the movie theater when it was released and since my wife didn't see it yet, I thought I might as well watch it again with her. Back then, following 'Skyfall', it was another box-office hit for the oldest franchise, even if, this time, it didn't get much love from the critics. Well, as far as I was concerned, while it was fairly entertaining, it didn't really blow me away and I think it was even a slight step down from 'Skyfall' which was already overrated in my opinion. I mean, sure, it was quite spectacular, Daniel Craig was once again pretty bad-ass and completely convincing but I had a rather hard time to care about the story. Another thing that slightly bothered me was the fact that they kept having Q, M and Moneypenny popping up on a regular basis. Eventually, it is all nice that they have reintroduced those familiar characters but James Bond has always worked solo and, this time, it almost felt like 'Mission Impossible'. Furthermore, I thought that Monica Bellucci, who was prominently displayed in the promotional material, was rather wasted here as she showed up for just 10 minutes. Concerning Léa Seydoux, I thought she was a great choice and I was expecting her to play her usual ice queen but her performance and/or character was rather disappointing and you wonder why this woman had to actually tag along with Bond. Finally, even though 'Quantum of Solace' will always be considered as the weakest James Bond installment starring Craig, at least, it was the only one of the bunch lasting well under 2 hrs and I don't see any reasons why such spy action flicks should take around 150 mins (the fact that the final sequel is even longer and is almost 3 hrs long is a seriously daunting prospect). Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it was still a decent James Bond installment, above all thanks to Daniel Craig and Sam Mendes's fine directing and it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.
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