Daniel Craig's new adventure as James Bond is a cluttered and boring MESS

Rating: 4/10 (20 November 2015)

The latest Bond movie is in town, and after being suitably impressed by what Sam Mendes did in Skyfall, we expect him to shake things up a bit further in Bond's latest mission. However, things got a little too shook up in the case of SPECTRE, even with the presence of two Oscar winning actors!
First lets talk about good things. The film begins impressively with a long tracking shot of James Bond masquerading at the Day of The Dead festival in Mexico, to him accompanying an unnamed beautiful girl to her room from where he disappears to kill his target. The title sequences that follow is imaginatively done, though Writing on the Wall song by Sam Smith pales in front of Adele's song in Skyfall. Every stunt scene is the film, especially in the first half is impressive, be it the car chase sequence in Rome or the plane stunt. The cinematography is fabulous, and the background score is adequate (though it sometimes gives an impression that we are watching a horror movie) As for the performances, Daniel Craig is quite at home playing what he is best at – being James Bond. For a change, he gets to crack jokes, and almost pays homage to Roger Moore – Pierce Brosnan wala Bonds. Lea Seydoux is pretty and acts fine, though she never manages to do what Eva Green did in Casino Royale – being a three dimensional character, instead of just being a damsel-in-distress. Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw and Naomie Harris also lend good support, especially the quirky Whishaw who scores with his witty one-liners.
Now brace yourself for bad points. Let me make this shortthe plot sucks! That too, BIG time! It has all the tropes we have seen in every spy film till now – an agent going rogue, a disapproving yet supportive boss, corruption inside your own organisation, a villain who portrays himself to be very smart by knowing each and every move of the hero, yet can't kill him with ease etc. As each scene goes by, you will realise that logic is seeping out of the film every minute. The screenwriters unnecessarily insert various complications into the scenery, like that building trap in the climax to kill Bond (when a bullet could have easily done the job!), in what could have been a simple narrative. The biggest crime the movie commits is when it tries to link all the villains of the previous Daniel Craig's Bond movies to this one organisation called SPECTRE (which never even got a single mention in any of the previous films). As far as I can remember, every villain in the previous films had their different motives but none wanted to kill James Bond, till he tried to interfere in their activities. However, if we go by what Christoph Waltz's Franz Oberhauser aka Ernst Blofeld's version (Sorry, Sam Mendes! We already realised this twist the moment you cast Waltz in the film), everything was planned to hurt James Bond, making this entire slate of films just a personal vendetta. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you the reason why Blofeld happens to James Bond's foster brother, and he suffers from the same personality complex that Neil Nitin Mukesh did in Prem Ratan Dhan Payo! The forced love story between Bond and Madeline Swann also fails to convince us – One minute they are fighting, then they are bonding and suddenly they are in deep love! If it was so easy for Bond to be in love, why pine for Vesper Lynd for so long? There are a lot of continuity errors as well(In one scene, Lea dozes off wearing a white coat, but when she wakes up she is wearing a sexy silk lingerie!).
We expected a lot from Christoph Waltz, but I am sorry to say he is superbly wasted here. He fails to bring the menace a legendary Bond villain like Blofeld should have commanded, and even what the actor himself did in Inglorious Basterds. Major blame should fall on the poor characterization and scripting. Monica Bellucci is wasted in a thankless cameo, while Dave Bautista has a nearly silent part and is used purely for his towering frame. Andrew Scott should never have been cast as the top level Secret Service agent. How can a Sherlock Holmes villain turn out to be the good guy here? We easily sniffed out that twist!
By the way, those who were complaining about Censor Board chopping off lovemaking scenes, I finally realised why they did it – those scenes were quite forced and even creepy (Bond seducing the widow of the assassin he himself had killed on the day of his funeral!)!
It pains me to say this but this Bond outing is nearly as painful as Quantum of Solace (which is the worst film in the resurgent Bond franchise). If Pierce Brosnan didn't like the movie, and his last Bond film was The World Is Not Enough, you can realise what exactly to expect here! Watch it to see how Sam Mendes spoilt his own good work in Skyfall!