Specter (2015)

Before last week the last James Bond move I'd seen was The World is Not Enough, in the theater, in 1999. It's not that I don't like James Bond, it just that I'd only seen three of them in their entirety, the first three Brosnan ones. Watching all the Bond films in order has long been on my cinematic bucket list, but I kept not getting around to it. It was the prospect of Christoph Waltz playing the villain that was finally enough to pull me out of Bond movie retirement. So I'm sad to say that I was a little disappointed.

The opining action sequence in Mexico City is as good as anything you've ever seen in a Bond movie. It was remarkably well staged, the scale just massive, it felt like there we tens of thousands of people in it, it alone is worth seeing the movie for and got my expectations for the rest of film fairly high. Sadly the rest of the movie did not live up to that opening. It's not a bad movie, it's quite watchable, for the most part I enjoyed it, but it just felt a little weak, especially given the high marks I've  heard accorded to the earlier films in the Daniel Craig cycle. Perhaps this movie would have been more satisfying as the (presumed) conclusion to the Craig cycle (there certainly were a lot of references to the early films that I couldn't get) then as a standalone, but again from what I hear that is not the case.

Craig is a fine Bond, Lea Sydoux, this outings Bond girl is just gorgeous and more then adequately talented, and I liked the new Miss Moneypenny and Q (I can't believe I'm the same age as Q). Christoph Waltz is more then game, but he lacked enough good speeches and his evil plan could have been better, I mean playing as he did the 'he-who-must-not-be-named' villain. Oh yeah, Ralph Fiennes is in this, he's good to. But the story felt tired, we've been here before, it was almost shockingly paint by numbers, none of the big reveals were big reveals. The whole thing seemed very workman like, you got the requisite Bond thrills, but nothing deeper, I was hoping for, and felt that I had been lead to expect, more. Again I enjoyed it, I'd say its worth seeing, but the more I reflect the more I feel a little let down. ***