A missed opportunity.

Rating: 4/10 (19 September 2016)

When you have watched Skyfall - one of the best Bond movies to date, perhaps even the best Bond movie ever made, it is understandable to find that your expectations for the next movie are quite literally through the roof, right? Sky's the limit, if you know what I mean, and in the case of Bond's latest big screen premier, this metaphor is quite literally true.
The movie does begin in style, with the perfect rolling camera panning out over the day of the dead in Mexico, and a scene of perhaps over-dramatic action unfolding before the first five minutes of the movie have even played out. A scene this big at the start of a movie certainly gets you hyped for what is to come.
But really, this scene preempted what this movie really was - a Spectre - a ghost of bond's former movie prowess, clawing desperately to grasp onto the distant past and be something new at the same time, failing miserably to do either of the above.
Once this scene - a fading echo of the brilliance that was Skyfall - has passed, the movie fades into a repetitive pattern of underwhelming action scenes, such as the car chase around the midsection of the movie where the roads are nearly empty and the stuntmen clearly have no interest in doing any real stunts, (at least, if the lack of wheel-to-wheel action between Bond and his solitary pursuer is anything to go by, anyway) and meaningless, forgettable characters, including the first bond girl in the movie, whose name fades from memory mere seconds after her appearance, the new character at MI6, C.
Thematically, the movie is also just a hollow re-skin of Spectre. It raises the exact same questions - is MI6 outdated, do we need spies, can we trust the secret service - and doesn't dare to even venture outside of the shadows cast by it's predecessor, just like the ghoul it is, hiding in the darkness.
The actors in this movie did an excellent job of at least partially salvaging the sinking ship. Daniel Craig's Bond and Leia Seydoux's Madeline at least provide believable, multi-faceted characters, while background star Ben Whishaw's Q literally steals the show every single time he shows up on the scene.
In fact, up until the last hour of this movie, it seems perfectly reasonable to believe that, despite the slow build, a good climax will have this story conclude in style - that perhaps this movie might be less a timid, shy spirit, but more a shadow using it's stealth to sneak up behind you and take you off guard.
Sadly, the climax is where the film falls flat on it's face. From the moment Dave Bautista's Hinx leaves the screen for good, the movie loses all sense of pace, all sense of timing, and charges forward with no tension, no intrigue and none of the beauty, style or narrative prowess bond is famed for, straight into a climax that can only be described as rushed.
Despite being the main villain of the movie, Blofeld only secures about ten minutes of screen time. And understandably, most likely as a result of this blunder, Christoph Waltz's interpretation feels emotionless, hollow, and extracts no interest from audiences.
And once his famous introduction has passed, no scene at any point during the film from then on out is even slightly deserving of the massive budget the film was given.
In all, Spectre was a potentially good movie, but, doomed by likely over-exuberant spending on extras within the first five minutes of filming (think about it - they don't show up anywhere else), underwhelming scenes on every single front, and a fear to step out of Skyfall's shadow or make anything new for Bond. It is just barely held together by the talented stars until the final act, where the inadequacy of the writers really shines through with the most underwhelming climax in a Bond movie to date.
I do recommend you watch this movie, but only when prices decrease.
When you watch it, just turn it off about two hours in and let your imagination finish the movie for you. It'll do a better job than the writers did.