Spectre Quick Movie Review

This past weekend, I went to the movie theater to see the latest entry in the James Bond franchise, Spectre, and here are my thoughts on the movie.

Spectre's plot follows James Bond, who is on a quest to discover information on a mysterious organization known as Spectre.  Said search leads him to the mysterious organization, led by Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who has a personal connection and vendetta against James Bond.  Additionally, it is revealed that his organization was secretly involved in the efforts of the previous films' villains.  While this is happening, MI6, the organization Bond works for, is facing its own problems as a new organization is seeking to shut down the 00 program and instead have MI6 rely more on technology in their efforts instead of actually using people to get their work done.

Spectre's plot is enjoyable and the biggest strength of the story is Bond's personal quest to find out who Spectre is and what involvement they had in the previous Bond movies, specifically Casino Royale.  Bond's search for Spectre leads him to finding out that one of the films' previous villains had a daughter who Bond promises to protect him.  When she is introduced, the movie does hint at a potential relationship between the two, but nothing ever concrete comes out of the relationship.  While Spectre is a lot like the previous Daniel Craig Bond movies in its tone and direction; this movie does incorporate some elements of the older Bond movies into this film.  There's a lot more humor than in the previous films and the gadgets, which were a staple of old Bond movies, do have as stronger presence in this movie as well.  There's an entertaining car chase during the movie where Bond is being chased by a henchman of Blofeld's, who I'll get to later, and Bond is driving an Aston Martin DB 10 which has a couple of gadgets he uses to throw off the henchman in the chase.

The characters are enjoyable and the actors who play them all give strong performances.  Daniel Craig, in his fourth film as James Bond, gives a great performance as always, and the girl Bond protects also gives a good performance.  My favorite performance, however, has to be Dave Bautista as Blofeld's silent but deadly henchman.  Even though his character speaks only one word in the movie, Bautista still makes the character feel like a threat, and when he and Bond have their big fight later in the movie; it's a brutal but entertaining clash.  Christoph Waltz does a good job as the villain Blofeld, but unfortunately his character is the most disappointing part of the movie.  He doesn't have much screentime and even though his scenes in the movie are great, it feels like the filmmakers are holding back on the real potential this character has in order to save him for the next Bond movie.

Despite this, Spectre was still a really enjoyable movie; it may not be as great as Casino Royale or Skyfall, but it is an entertaining movie.  Whether or not this is Daniel Craig's last movie as James Bond, we don't know, but this is still another solid entry in the long line of James Bond films.

Recommendation: See It

Now you might be wondering, a quick review of a recently released movie, what is this?  This is something I plan on doing more often next year.  For this year, though, you can expect at least one more quick review later on.