Year: 2015 Director: Sam Mendes Running Time: 150 minutes

Sam Mendes Spectre is about the great 007 trying to complete his old boss’s (who died in the previous James Bond flick Skyfall) dying wish to kill an old enemy of hers. After Bond takes this man down in Mexico City he falls upon a mysterious organization called Spectre. Spectre can be described as an Illuminati type organization trying to control the world. Their method of controlling the world? Data Collection! In order to fight Spectre the great 007 must team up with a former member of Spectre’s daughter.

Before I get into my review I must first recommend watching Skyfall before watching Spectre as the movie does mention events that occurred in the previous film.

Although I loved Spectre, a couple of things fell short of my expectations. The biggest one was the opening song. Nothing can ever beat Paul McCartney’s Live and Let Die or Adele’s Skyfall but after last year’s amazing opener I expected a song more enticing and more related to the premise of the movie. Sam Smith’s Writing’s on the Wall simply didn’t do that.

Another issue with Spectre was the lack of action and cool gadgets. Unlike Skyfall, Spectre had a lack of hand-to-hand combat and gunfights. It seamed that Sam Mendes was focused more on car chases rather than the exciting fights that were included in Skyfall. What makes James Bond so iconic is all of the cool gadgets that he has. Jetpacks, exploding pens, underwater cars. None of these appeared in Spectre. In fact the only significant gadget that he had was a watch that could explode. Not very exciting.

My final issue with Spectre is that it was a bit hard to follow. One minute Bond is in England the next he is in Italy, then Austria, then Morocco, and then back in England again. It was a bit confusing why he was going to all these different places.

That being said I absolutely loved the topic of this James Bond movie. This is the first 007 movie I have seen where the storyline has to do with a modern day issue. The whole idea of governmental and corporation data collection has been an on going issue for a number of years and its nice to see a mainstream movie bring up these issues in a widely viewed movie.

By far my favorite part of the movie however, was the camera angles during the car chases. Mendes chose to use bird’s eye view and wide-angle shots during the car chases, which were pulled off wonderfully. These two types of shots gave the viewers a bigger view of the landscape surrounding the car while still being able to follow the car. Although I personally find car chases a bit boring, these angles made them more enjoyable.

Overall, Spectre was enjoyable but fell short of my expectations. I was expecting a much better song, more action, and a little more classic James Bond moments. I would still recommend people to see it but just be warned it’s no Skyfall.

Storyline: 9/10 Writing: 7/10 Soundtrack: 2/5 Scenery: 5/5 Overall: 23/30