Spectre (2015)
★★★ — Spectre (2015)
There's a particular kind of disappointment reserved for films that do everything right on paper and still leave you cold. Spectre is that film. It arrives with all the pomp and grandeur you'd hope for from a Bond picture, the sweeping locations, the immaculate suits, the pre-title sequence that makes you sit up straight. And then, very gradually, it lets all the air out.
Daniel Craig is still doing the business. That much I'll say without hesitation. He carries the role with a bruised, weathered authority that no amount of clunky plotting can undermine. There's a weariness to his Bond that feels earned across the films, and even when the material lets him down, he doesn't. Christoph Waltz, playing Blofeld, is restrained to the point of being almost eerily calm, and there's something initially compelling about that. But the film doesn't give him enough room to breathe, and what starts as unsettling coolness eventually reads as underwritten.
The central conceit, that Blofeld has been the puppetmaster behind everything Bond has faced in the Craig era, is the sort of idea that sounds thrilling in a pitch room and lands with a thud on screen. Retroactive continuity is a tricky business at the best of times. Here it feels forced, a narrative shortcut dressed up as a grand revelation. The personal connection to Bond's past is gestured at rather than properly excavated, and the emotional stakes that should make the finale feel urgent instead feel obligatory. Compare that to Skyfall, where the personal history felt genuinely raw and the villain's obsession had real psychological texture. Spectre wants that same weight but hasn't done the groundwork to earn it.
It's not as though the film is without pleasures. The Rome car chase is slick and stylish, shot with real confidence. The secret lair, all volcanic rock and brutalist excess, is deliciously absurd in exactly the right way. These are moments that remind you Bond can still be fun when it stops straining for profundity. The problem is that the film keeps reaching for something deeper and coming up short. The surveillance state villain plan, the global conspiracy, the world in the balance, it's all oddly old-fashioned, and not in a charming throwback way. In a been-here-done-this way.
What Spectre lacks most is urgency. There's no scene that gets your pulse up the way the best action films manage. I think about something like Mad Max: Fury Road, a film from the same year that makes you feel every second of its runtime in your chest. Spectre glides past with such polished efficiency that nothing quite sticks. You admire the craftsmanship from a distance, the way you might admire a very expensive watch you'd never actually wear.
The script doesn't help. There are exchanges that feel like placeholders, scenes that exist to move pieces around the board rather than reveal anything about the people involved. The romantic subplot doesn't convince. The comic relief doesn't quite land. And the finale, for all its production value, resolves in a way that feels less like a payoff and more like a contractual obligation being fulfilled.
None of this makes Spectre a bad film exactly. It's too professionally assembled to be genuinely poor. But in the Craig era, that's almost the harshest verdict I can offer. After Casino Royale's raw reinvention and Skyfall's emotional heft, a Bond film that's merely competent and instantly forgettable feels like a real failure of nerve. Three stars from me, and even that feels generous on a day when I'm still trying to remember what actually happened in the third act.
Three stars.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2015 | Watched: 2025-08-14
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
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