Where to begin....

Rating: 6/10 (4 November 2015)

This was supposed to be the movie. I enjoyed Casino Royale (I like poker, shove off), was wowed by Skyfall and managed to forget that there was a movie in between the two. There was buildup. The trailer was awesome. We had Waltz stepping out to become the new super-Bond- Villain Blofeld, we had the reintroduction of the indestructible hit-man cliché. We had Ralph Fiennes as M, we had Moneypenny, we had a new and not quite improved and yet not too bad Q.
How do you go wrong with all of that?
Despite everything, Bond is supposed to be a super-agent that does things that everybody else would be constrained from doing by the laws of physics, and he would do all this simply because he is motherf*cking James Bond. We kinda expect the villains to be the same, ya know? He's not Jason Bourne, whose stamp is credibility, and he's not Ethan Hunt, whose staple is high-tech gadgets. He's Bond. The Womanizing, Martini-drinking secret agent that still introduces himself by his first name.
DON'T MAKE HIM REALISTIC!
Breathe... breathe... okay. A few other notes. Despite the stellar quality of one Monica Belluci, they only have her on scene for the equivalent of one sex scene. Bautista is easily disposed of, and even Blofeld's plan for world domination errs on the side of caution. Your organization's name is Specter. You're supposed to be something more than a motherf*cking intelligence gathering service.
Okay... it's not a terrible movie, despite a long list of small nitpicks and failings, but this was supposed to be it. Bringing the heart of the Sean Connery Bond flicks into the 21st century. They've shown us that they can do it, with Skyfall as my witness. And yet...
Underwhelming. That's the word that describes this film. It's not bad by any means and one of the deepest as far as character development for one James Bond goes, but that's the only good thing I can say about it. The action is shoddy and underdeveloped, and while the acting is okay, you can sense that the actors don't really want to be playing these characters. And the plot is just so... I mean, I would go for it in a Bourne movie, Jack Bauer plot line, or any other intelligence flick, but this is James Bond. He's supposed to be better than this.
Shame on you guys. Shame.