Spectre Movie Review

“She won’t let death get in the way of her job.” - James Bond

Spectre is a 2015 film directed by Sam Mendes, and is the fourth film to star Daniel Craig as James Bond.  In this film, Bond is led right to the heart of a mysterious organization known as Spectre.  He finds out that all of his adversaries from the previous three films all have ties to Spectre, and the leader of the organization has an important connection to Bond’s past.  Meanwhile, a man named Max Denbigh challenges M by claiming that MI6 is irrelevant, and decides that there is no use for the program anymore.

When it first released in 2015, Spectre didn’t get great reviews.  It received quite a bit of hate from fans, which in my opinion is completely undeserved.  I actually thoroughly enjoyed Spectre.  I think the problem that viewers experienced when the film released was that they were expecting another Skyfall.  Sam Mendes had so much success with Skyfall that he was brought back to direct Spectre.  I feel like people loved what Mendes did with Skyfall so much that they became over-excited.  Once Spectre was released, a lot of audience members were disappointed.  I was aware that the film wasn’t entirely well-received going in, so when I watched it, I came to the conclusion that people were exaggerating greatly when they talked about how bad the film was.  While Spectre certainly isn’t quite as great as Skyfall, it’s still a really good movie.

The film immediately opens with the famous “gun barrel” sequence, which is interesting considering that it’s the only Daniel Craig Bond film to do so thus far.  It then cuts to a shot of Mexico City on the Day of the Dead.  What follows is a riveting action scene set to the wonderful music of Thomas Newman that rivals the opening of Skyfall.  

After this comes my favorite thing about Bond movies: the opening credits scene.  This one is especially impressive, and it features visuals of fire which contrast nicely with the water images from Skyfall’s opening credits.  The song featured in this scene is “Writing’s on the Wall” by Sam Mendes, although this wasn’t originally the case.  Radiohead recorded a song that shared the same title as the film, but it was rejected, being deemed “too dark” by the producers.  There is a video on YouTube where someone put Radiohead’s song over the opening credits scene, and I think it fits even better than Sam Smith’s song.  While “Writing’s on the Wall” is by no means a bad song, I think the better choice was the one the producers ultimately threw away.

There are lots of intricate ties to the plots of the previous three films, which is something I really appreciated.  Spectre’s plot treads more along the lines of a mystery film than Daniel Craig’s other Bond pictures, and at the heart of the mystery is the villain of the film, expertly played by Christoph Waltz.  I think Waltz is an unbelievably gifted and talented actor.  He can go from playing a truly despicable and intimidating villain such as Colonel Hans Landa from Inglourious Basterds to playing a sophisticated, eccentric, loveable gentleman such as Doctor King Schultz from Django Unchained.  Here, he plays the villain in a way that is cold, emotionless, and sinister, and he absolutely kills it.

Also great in this film is Dave Bautista, an extremely tough and overpowered strongman who serves as Christoph Waltz’s bodyguard and assassin.  The fight scenes between him and Daniel Craig are violent, white-knuckled slugfests that are an absolute blast to watch. Oh, and let’s not forget about Daniel Craig either.  He’s great too.

The stunt work in this movie is spectacular, and each action set piece is meticulously crafted.  The camerawork is also worth mentioning.  It’s quite odd because it will show you a side view of a character walking, and then cut to another side view on the opposite side of a character.  It’s a little jarring, but it works and ends up looking really cool.

My only real issue with Spectre is that some scenes go by a bit too slowly.  The runtime could’ve been decreased just a tad.  Otherwise, Spectre was an extremely pleasant surprise for me, and it was a delight to watch despite what other critics have said.  As I said before, it’s not quite as good as Skyfall or Casino Royale, but in my opinion, it sure comes close.

Rating: PG-13

Grade: A-