Spectre 4/10
I have to say, I did not enjoy it and I'd had enough by the car chase scene. On balance, as I said, I did not enjoy it and so it must therefore have less than 5/10. Why?
Style over substance. Yes, Bond should be like that, but Craig's Bond is mostly Bourne and there is no place for style when it comes to substance. Yes, there were a few giggles, nods and winks to the style that surpassed any trial as per the old films. For a Bourne-style action hero, the usual get out of any fix by having something blow up and henchmen just standing waiting to be shot was rubbish.
But that wasn't the worst of it ...
Waltz (Blofeld) was thoroughly unconvincing as the arch-villain. Heck, he was more evil as Chudnovsky in the 'Green Hornet', certainly more sinister as Landa in 'Inglorious'. Nope! In this, he was rubbish. Scant references to the line of lesser baddies that Bond had clearly had to fight through to meet this less than convincing arch-baddie were almost as if those scenes were simply cut, leaving weird continuity problems. Likewise, Scott (Max/C) was just wrong. He only really worked as Moriarti in Sherlock by virtue of Sherlock being young. His youth exuded inexperience, certainly for the calibre of player that he played. Odd, if not tenuous association with Sciarra's Mrs (Belluci), almost as if she was in the film as a favour.
No, the whole thing was just a badly strung set of action and style shots, each too long for their own good and the storyline taking a serious back seat only to dip into a mild pulse of life at Blofeld's lair, only to slip back into coma once it was clear that we were not going to get an arch-villain worth sitting up for.
Best performance was from Fiennes, whose M is both believable and watchable.
In context, I enjoyed 'Casino Royale' and rated 'Skyfall' highly. 'Skyfall' was both sign-off and sign-on as the "new" Bond. 'Spectre' made a very poor follow-up and it's not just that 'Skyfall' was truly excellent.
Poor.
