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Spectre

Completely disappointing, a failure on many levels, and easily the worst of the Daniel Craig Bond films. Indeed, it is arguably one of the worst Bond films of all time. Am I too subtle?

A message from the immediate past sends James Bond (Daniel Craig) on an assassin's errand. The fallout of that unsanctioned action sees him suspended by M (Ralph Fiennes) but with the assistance of Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) and Q (Ben Whishaw), Bond inexorably pursues leads that will bring him face to face with the architect of all his pain (Christoph Waltz). In the interim, women (Monica Bellucci and Lea Seydoux) and henchmen (David Bautista and a parade of nameless thugs) cavort.

I felt ridiculous writing that because it's a ridiculous plot. It wants to have twists and turns but really it just meanders from exotic locale to exotic locale.

The film starts with a brilliant, long tracking shot during Dia de Muertos in Mexico City. It truly is a marvel. Right after, though, you can feel things falling apart because the subsequence action set piece is a marvel of nothing so much as repetition and dullness. From here the film proceeds in fits and starts, with too many scenes just dragging on. And on.

There's not a single performance that registers above adequate. Craig, up until now, has been such a brute powerhouse of a Bond. Here, he seems more annoyed than engaged. The debates M has with his potential replacement C (Andrew Scott) are probably meant to be topical, with M speaking about the dangers of a surveillance state (while running a surveillance organization, oh the irony) but not bothering with either its limitations or how it can never, ever replace a "boots on the ground" program such as the double-0's. At best it's lazy lecturing of a point the writers presume the audience agrees with.

The biggest failure of the film is in its handling of the villain. I'm beginning to suspect that Christoph Waltz only really shines when he's in a Tarantino film. Here, he's not quite as bad as in Green Hornet, but he's not much better. A lot of this is not his fault. Spectre is a doomed attempt at unifying the four Craig films into a single plot, to create a Bond Cinematic Universe a la the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It fails and in large part this is because of the machinations they make Waltz's villain go through. "Contrived" is simply an inadequate description.

Spectre, as a title, is clearly meant to have dual meanings, because everyone is haunted by the ghosts of their past, but neither the writers nor the director had the chops to pull that off. Spectre should have been SPECTRE, the Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion. That's what every Bond fan was anticipating from the moment the title was announced. Through the first three films, Craig was being trained to finally become The James Bond. Now was the time for the massive and villainous organization to make its entrance.

Instead, we got "architect of all your pain" nonsense. What a waste.

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