It’s been four years since I’ve done a movie review, but what the heck.
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Everyone is allowed to have their own opinion about the movie but I felt that the latest James Bond didn’t deserve all the panning it received. So after reading scathing reviews and general disappointment from people on my newsfeed about Spectre, I decided to write my own review of the movie.
To set the tone for this review – I’m not a James Bond fan. I don’t hate the films or anything, I just don’t love them or follow them religiously. I’ve only seen a handful of Bond movies and I even missed Skyfall. I also didn’t have any set expectations to what the movie should be beyond it being an entertaining spy flick.
The film starts off with an amazingly well-shot scene. I don’t know if it was done in one take – but the camera track from the celebration to inside the hotel to the rooftop was very impressive. It put a smile on my face – I was even going “whoa!” in the cinema. We then got an action scene which lead into the opening credits of the film and the setup of the movie’s plot.
We also learn that the spy agency, MI6, is about to be shut down to be replaced with automated systems and cameras. Hmm, I wonder who could be behind all this? Anyhow, the plot moves along predictably, with James Bond picking up clues, womanizing women, driving nice cars, while searching for the big boss of this shady organization known as SPECTRE.
I entered the cinema knowing I was going to watch a James Bond film, and that was is what I got based on the previous Bond films I’ve watched. And unless they drastically changed in the movies I missed, it’s what we’ve been getting all this while: cookie-cutter, formulaic, cinema espionage. At least this movie even had the balls to parody itself (So what do we do next?).
Compared to the recent spy film, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (one of my favorite movies this year), Spectre has a long way to go. But on its own, I thought the movie was an enjoyable, no-brainer, popcorn experience – engaging from start to finish. Which is what James Bond movies should be about, right? They were never clever, sophisticated or mind-blowing films. And for the record, I thought that Spectre was much better than that piece of shit Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (kek).
Anybody expecting Bourne Identity or Taken is bound to be disappointed. Spectre is what it is – another 007 outing in the over fifty year old franchise.
TL;DR: Spectre was a fine movie and doesn’t deserve all the hate it gets. “You’re a kite dancing in a hurricane, Mr Bond” is also one of the best movie quotes I’ve heard in a while.