Spectre (2015)

Preceeded by: Skyfall (2012)
Succeeded by: No Time to Die (2021)

See our full list of James Bond films.
 

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
James Bond	Daniel Craig	½
Ernst Stavro Blofeld	Christoph Waltz	½
Dr. Madeleine Swann	Léa Seydoux
Q	Ben Whishaw	½
Eve Moneypenny	Naomie Harris	½
Mr. Hinx	Dave Bautista
Max Denbigh	Andrew Scott
Lucia Sciarra	Monica Bellucci
Gareth Mallory	Ralph Fiennes	½

Review

If James Bond had avoided becoming an anachronism over the course of the first 50 odd years of the 007 series, he certainly has become one with this latest installment entitled Spectre. Now Bond is fighting progress with tooth and nail, like a bitter old snob who's lost all sense of humour and certainly all his charm. Whereas James Bond once was known for being more sophisticated and advanced than his adversaries, he is now a crude and irresponsible prick working on autopilot with few other discernible interests than basically the same cars and women he craved 50 years ago. And in a desperate attempt to make his outdated persona relevant, the filmmakers has made organized intelligence and networked technologies the enemy.

All of the above are structural and directional problems. The James Bond series have had those before, but often Bond's charm and antics have been able to gloss over them. In Spectre, the already out-of-place Daniel Craig is more weary and uninspired than ever. Not to mention uninspiring; his acting is painfully wooden and pose-based. He drains any life Bond had left in him, soaks him free of charm, and – as far as I'm concerned – gives the entire character the coup de grace with this performance. It's a performance which makes Roger Moore seem realistic and Timothy Dalton seem spirited.

Craig isn't at fault for Spectre's idiotic script, however, which is so uninspired that you almost feel sorry for him. Now, there's always an element of going through the motions in all Bond movies, but this time it's ridiculous. When Bond steals the latest supercar in order to drive to Rome overnight, where he most awkwardly seduces Monica Bellucci and then attends one of the most laughable of "evil society meetings", you realize that there's nothing left linking the cartoonish nature of the plot to any real-life conditions. The filmmakers seemed to think that the sombre nature of the first three installments of Craig's 007 needed some sort of balancing, but goofiness isn't the same as wittiness, and as such the film is an insult to the best Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan installments. Spectre is just plain dumb, funless pseudo-entertainment. It has nothing of value to offer.