Not the best Bond film, but perhaps the most realistic

Rating: 8/10 (12 August 2016)

***Possible Spoilers Ahead*** My aunt introduced me to Bond films two decades ago with The Living Daylights featuring Timothy Daughton. I was way too young to comprehend the angst, complexity, or darkness of this Bond. Shortly after that, I started watching more and more Bond films. It was the mid-90s at that time. GoldenEye had just been released and Pierce Brosnan was my young generation's Bond. He was handsome, charismatic, and ultimately a caricature of the 007 character. I continued to watch the Brosnan Bond and took trips into the past to come across other renditions of Bond... Connery, Lazenby, and Moore. I could never appreciate any of these Bond characters because they were not conceivably real. None of these characters seemed like they were human. This brings us to my review of Spectre. Spectre has one of the more realistic plots. Some of the characters seem too goofy for the premise (Bautista), Walz has an idiosyncratic wardrobe, and the stunts were a bit ridiculous. Some folks may say that the aforementioned characteristics are quintessential to a good Bond film. I'm a realist. I prefer movies that have a more naturalistic feel to them if that's the intention of the director. The director of Spectre is Sam Mendes. Mendes is known for doing more down-to- earth films like American Beauty, Jarhead, and Road to Perdition. None of these films were necessarily flashy and showed a good bit of grit. This may explain the choice in the Bond girl not being the prettiest that we've seen, a climax that was more of a sizzle, and a resolution that seems to have left audiences wanting more. All of the previous Daniel Craig films lead us to Spectre's finale and the finale is not grandiose. It's plain. However, that's how life can be. We can work so hard to gain closure or reach a particular goal and ultimately be let down that there's not streamers, glitter, and balloons falling from the season. Keep your expectations to what could actually happen and you want be disappointed.