Spectre (2015)
★★★ — Spectre (2015)
Few franchises carry the weight of expectation that James Bond does, and by 2015 the Daniel Craig iteration had set itself a particularly high bar. Skyfall, directed by Sam Mendes, had been met with wide critical acclaim and strong box office returns, so the announcement that Mendes would return for a follow-up was, for many, reassuring news. Spectre arrived as a co-production between Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Columbia Pictures and EON Productions, the same partnership that has kept Bond on screen for decades, and with a runtime of 148 minutes it was clearly pitching itself as an event film rather than a lean thriller. The tagline, "The Dead Are Alive," hinted at something reaching back into Bond's history, and the marketing leaned heavily on that sense of long-buried secrets finally surfacing.
Mendes came to the Bond series after a career that ranged from intimate stage productions to Oscar-winning prestige cinema, and his visual instincts were never really in question. The film follows Bond as a cryptic message from his past sets him on the trail of a shadowy organisation, while back in London a political battle threatens the very existence of the secret service. It is, on paper, a story with genuine scope. The cast assembled around Craig is, on its own terms, impressive: Christoph Waltz as the enigmatic villain Blofeld, Léa Seydoux as the principal Bond girl, Ralph Fiennes continuing as M following his introduction in the previous film, and Monica Bellucci in a role that generated considerable pre-release discussion. Craig himself was, by this point, well into his tenure, having first played Bond nearly a decade earlier (you can get a sense of just how far he has come as an actor by looking back at Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, a film in which he also appears). The production design leaned into classic Bond iconography, from European city locations to an elaborate secret lair, and composer Thomas Newman returned to score the film, with Sam Smith recording the theme song "Writing's on the Wall."
For context, 2015 was a year when action cinema was setting a fairly demanding standard. Films like Mad Max: Fury Road were demonstrating what could be done with practical-scale action and genuine narrative momentum, which made any big-budget action release that year sit under a slightly harsher light than it might otherwise have done. Whether Spectre could hold its own in that company was very much the question audiences and critics brought into the cinema with them.
Spectre arrives with all the pomp and grandeur of a classic Bond film but beneath the glossy surface, it’s surprisingly hollow. The action has scale, the cinematography is sleek, and Daniel Craig still commands the role with that trademark blend of brutality and weariness. Yet for all its ambition, the film never finds a pulse. It feels less like a chapter in a story and more like a retread of ones already told. The plot tries to tie the previous Craig films together by revealing that Blofeld (a chillingly restrained Christoph Waltz) has been manipulating events from the shadows all along. It’s a bold narrative choice, but it comes across as forced, retroactive continuity that stretches credibility. The villain’s plan is oddly old-fashioned (surveillance, control, revenge), and despite the global stakes, the tension never fully lands. Even the personal connection to Bond’s past feels undercooked, more suggested than explored. It’s not badly made, the Rome car chase is sstylish and the design of the secret lair is deliciously absurd. But Spectre lacks emotional weight, narrative urgency, and memorable set pieces. It’s competent, polished, and instantly forgettable. Another entry in the series that mistakes scale for substance. Not awful, just unremarkable. And in the Craig era, that’s the worst sin of all.
What sticks with me, going back over it, is that feeling of a film that had every resource at its disposal and somehow spent them on the wrong things. The bones of a genuinely interesting Bond story are there, the idea of a single hand behind all of Craig's adventures is one that could have carried real emotional weight if the script had done the work. Mendes has since shown, in 1917, just how much tension and personal stakes he can generate when the material is properly grounded. Spectre never gets there. It is the kind of film you finish, enjoy well enough in the moment, and then find you cannot quite reconstruct in your head a week later. For a Bond film, and for this particular run of Bond films, that feels like a real missed opportunity. Style without soul travels only so far.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2015 | Watched: 2025-08-14
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Spectre (2015) on YouTube
Where to watch
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