CRAIG BOND FOUR: SPECTRE

year: 2015 cast: Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux director: Sam Mendes

The biggest promotion for SPECTRE, the fourth overall Daniel Craig James Bond film and the second collaboration with director Sam Mendes, was the casting of Quentin Tarantino stock exposition-spouting Christoph Waltz... Going back further, it was QT who wanted to remake Ian Fleming's first book, CASINO ROYALE, into a genuine, high-octane adaptation starring the last Bond actor now seeming long, long gone... For our "New Bond" Daniel Craig has really taken over at this point, and the older he gets, the smoother he glides from scene to scene, without having to continuously narrow his blue eyes, purse his lips, jut his muscular chest, and try making up for not being, you know, typical-pretty. By now he's an old, calloused leather shoe that really fits, and is still relatively young.

That's a Bingo

Meanwhile, the irony of Waltz's dream casting, and the question of is or isn't he the actual Bloefeld, hardly amounts to anything. In fact even the title, SPECTRE, named after this man's nefarious world-dominating operation, is rather misleading. As are the dark, morbid promotional trailers, teasing that our hero gets into something deeper and spookier than even he can handle.

What actually occurs is an old school, Roger Moore style handing-off of nail biting action sequences that don't cease... for very long. When they do, the main "Bond Girl", who has resilient self defense all her own, provides effective chemistry leading to more of what the movie actually is: adrenaline-pumping adventure (including a few gadgets that actually work and a monstrous hit man) over twisty espionage, and not so mindless. In fact, a lot of what's unexplained and/or difficult to understand during the talky 11th hour doesn't really matter. And if that amounts to what's already being described as 007 Eye Candy by certain disgruntled fans, oh well. The only saccharine element is the ponderous theme song that follows (and is truly saved by) one of the coolest pre-opening-credit sequences to date, of any Bond vehicle.

RATING: ****
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