cool but not great

Rating: 7/10 (9 August 2016)

James Bond (Daniel Craig) followed the previous M's instruction to kill Marco Sciarra. He only shows the message to Moneypenny (Naomie Harris). This leads to an embarrassing Mexico City incident for the new M (Ralph Fiennes) who suspends Bond. M is organizing a merger with MI-5 and C (Andrew Scott) is creating surveillance system "Nine Eyes" looking to shut down "00". Bond steals a car from Q (Ben Whishaw) to attend Sciarra's funeral where he meets his wife Lucia (Monica Bellucci). Using the stolen Sciarra ring, Bond infiltrates a Spectre meeting headed by Blofeld (Christoph Waltz). Dr. Madeline Swann (Léa Seydoux) is the daughter of a murdered Spectre agent and key to bringing down the organization.
With the return of Spectre, I was hoping for a great villain to take his place among the greats of Bond villains. Waltz barely gets up in his first scene and takes forever to return. He's a missed opportunity for a supervillain. Andrew Scott is the sleazy weasel but he's not that guy. This movie is exceedingly cool and filled with sharp action. It's missing something. It's missing greatness. It's missing the great memorable thing. The movie is sometimes a little slow with long expositions. The audience don't really need it. They already know who the bad guys are. They just need Bond to catch up and find them. This is a fine Bond movie but one that may be forgotten among the rest.