Review of Spectre (2015) by Adpirtle — 10 Jan 2016

Serving as the final act for Daniel Craig's rebooted Bond, "SPECTRE" does everything it has to. It delivers terrific action sequences and, thanks to returning director Sam Mendes, looking great doing it.

Its premise is a clever one, that all of the trials and tribulations that 007 has faced over the past three films were orchestrated by the film's eponymous shadow organization, headed by Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

After MGM finally settled the legal wrangling around the rights to the classic supervillain, it was inevitable that he'd make his appearance in Craig's swan song, and Academy Award winner Christoph Waltz delivers a predictably wonderful performance in the role.

But it's what the writers of "SPECTRE" chose to add to Blofeld's characterization which is the movie's biggest flaw. It's a big enough leap to expect audiences to buy into the retconning of the drama of the last three films as being due to a heretofore unmentioned (at least in this particular iteration of the franchise) secret organization.

To make its leader James Bond's heretofore unmentioned 'brother' is a retcon too far, and in my opinion a needless one. However, that creative boondoggle aside, the 24th official Bond film does a decent job of providing Craig's Bond with a measure of closure, even allowing him, for the first time, to get the girl in the end.