Review of Spectre (2015) by Mario C — 21 Feb 2016

After months of waiting to go to the movieplex, I sat down to watch Spectre. I can't remember the opening song but here's my take on the movie overall.

1) Thomas Newman deeply disappoints by carelessly borrowing from his own Skyfall soundtrack to fill in action scenes that should have been more interesting to compose for. Did Mr. Newman outsource these bits to second- or third-tier composers? Was Sam Mendes asleep he didn't notice?

2) The villain, played unmesmerizingly by Christoph Waltz, was a HUGE disappointment. Even Telly Savalas' evil genius looks impressive by comparison. All that grinning and claiming that he was behind all of James Bond's pain and tenacious adversaries fell flat and looked bland and convoluted.

3) All the scenes involving Mr. Waltz' character look like they were lifted from those Bond movies made in the sixties: bigger-than-life explosions?

4) The positives: Craig, Fiennes, Seydoux, Wishaw and the rest of the cast give us brilliant performances, keen humor and memorable quotes. Mr. White is a delight in acting: incisive, eye-opening. However, how he managed to modify a hotel room in Tangier so extensively is an Agatha Christie mystery in itself.

5) The opening action scene (the building explosion, the helicopter ride, etc.) is spectacular and doesn't let go of you. Mr Jinks (played very convincingly by beefcakey Dave Bautista) presents a formidable and lethal opponent to Bond, who has to run for his life for the first time in the Daniel Craig-as-Bond series of films.

Overall, it's a watchable movie with a very forgettable score. Sam Mendes' comments about this being his last Bond film, slightly irksome at the time, now sound positively disgraceful in retrospect.