"SPECTRE" (2015) - ★★★

Sure. See Spectre. You might have been told otherwise. We’ll talk about that later. But all you need to know is that yes, I think a watch is a good ten bucks spent in the theaters.

Following up Skyfall from back in 2012 is hard, and the latest Bond film, also directed by Sam Mendes, doesn’t quite match it. Nevertheless, you can like it. It seems to fall under the shadow of the recent series highlights, but not in a way that reminds us that it’s weaker in comparison. Instead, it’s a retrospective that ties the Daniel Craig ones together. At times the connection feels forced and makes the plot seem a little more complicated than it actually is. But the movie would feel a bit shriveled on its own, and the tiny rewards we get for catching up with Bond to date, which feel pretty nice, pay off when we realize that this is the style that resurged 007 after a relatively long Pierce Brosnan slump. The new one works.

The story isn’t a deep one. After being suspended from duty for the fiftieth time for un-spy-like behavior after a rogue trip to Mexico, 007 (Craig) uses a secret message from M (Judi Dench) to track down a mysterious organization called SPECTRE (from the title), run by a boss figure known as Franz Oberhauser (played here by Christoph Waltz, about time). The guy has another identity, but I won’t be a killjoy and spoil finding out who it is. Meanwhile, James promises a former villain from another movie to protect his daughter, Madeline Swan (Lea Seydoux). She joins along in the mission. If there is one. I didn’t catch it.

We get to travel a lot in this movie, the scenery all shot very well. The opening one, set in Mexico City, starts the movie up strong, an inventive single shot technique that paves out the way for exploration. Mendes knows what to do with these stages. Little bit of the Alps, little bit of London. No Bond film is to be without some good location.

As for Craig, he’s gained our trust in the past three movies for us to feel comfortable with the role in his hands. I like Seydoux, too. Compared with Javier Bardem’s creepy, scarily effective villain in Skyfall, though, it just doesn’t seem like Waltz’s character gives his talents enough to work with. Could’ve been better. His role, although the movie tries to make it big, feels small. His dialogue with Craig, when he has it, is natural, but beyond that, there’s not a whole lot to it but surface.

No bother. It’s kind of an intentional sheen Spectre sports, even if the villain’s plot isn’t intricate enough. Or stupid enough. With a Bond movie, you could go either way. 007 has been losing his style to a more tortured persona, as much as I’ve liked the recent movies. I wouldn’t consider the change of heart to be a lukewarm one. It’s just good refresher the movie’s trying to give us so that we don’t have to worry about our spy’s adventures slipping into a dark doomsday drag.

The car chases are still fresh. The countdowns are still suspenseful. The new theme from Sam Smith is...not good, but that’s beside the point! Spectre, for (mostly) better or worse, takes us back to a time where we didn’t overanalyze Bond and his moves, where we didn’t question them and accepted that they were there just because. If only that were true now.

Despite a near completely mixed to negative wave of reviews among this movie’s critics so far, I couldn’t find anything spectacularly wrong with Spectre. Nothing made me believe that it was too dull to be a decent action movie. Anybody looking for a solid Bond outing, say, in the 60’s, with the franchise reputation yet to be developed, wouldn’t find a problem with it. Not only does it have a pleasingly satisfying retro feel, but it’s simply, dare I say it, plain good. And yet, here we have Spectre naysayers, those who fight against Mendes’s latest installment in the name of the true “Bond,” one that supposedly died with Sean Connery, and make a weak uncreation, tainted by cheap plot techniques, of the newest film.

Sorry, what were they expecting? I’ll knock a lame movie as soon as the next guy, but if you’re trying to tell me that the golden Bond era stayed pure and never borrowed from ANYTHING, you’ve likely formed a version of it in your head (one that never existed).

Am I saying that 1964’s Goldfinger isn’t a classic? Of course not, just as Spectre, as unlikely as it may be, isn’t restricted from becoming one as well. I think our job as viewers is to gauge movies, whether it be a box-office smash or a film festival sleeper, based on our raw enjoyment. If we walk into movie hoping for a pristine image of our perfect movie and whittle it down from there, of course we’re going to be underwhelmed. Our jump to criticism is mainly due to our tendency to view movies from the top rather than the bottom. I’m looking at you, expectation (Star Wars hype, anyone?). That said, you shouldn’t expect garbage, either. Just watch the movie, please.

Spectre is a prime example of a conventional movie that you are allowed to like, following in the wake of the recent Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (even better). It’s not the fact that it’s got a simple and worn plot that we should be concerned with but instead how that plot is used, interpreted, or mix and matched to make us feel like we have something new or, even more important, entertaining to watch (Tom Cruise hanging off the side of a REAL plane. C’mon). These films, the latter a gem from the list of summer blockbusters this year, are in no way original. But they’re still clever, sharp, and on point, so much that viewers may have taken those subtleties for granted and focused on how the plot was “lazy.” If the filmmakers fill in the dots for some filler, so be it. It’s stuff to make us, you know, care.

It could be worse. Take Avengers: Age of Ultron, a corporate scheme of a sequel, fishing for money solely earned from marketing. Every brittle, joyless scene feels like the last, no effort has gone into the script, and the actors are having zero fun. What is that movie? We’re being faked into believing we’re witnessing an epic battle for the good of mankind against extraordinary evil, a pursuit of peace that will test the strongest of heroes and the...boring. How is it that every single undefeatable obstacle you throw at these crusaders gets solved in an hour and a half? You’re not selling anyone in the target audience on that, Marvel (did I hate that movie? Eh. I don’t care to decide. So maybe).

Why does James Bond try to save the world? It’s his job. And that’s cool. That’ll never change, as familiar as these plots get.

The Daniel Craig-Bond age has proved to be a force to be reckoned with in its film span, and even when we can’t rationally expect another Casino Royale or Skyfall, it’s still a tad disappointing when the fully capable industry can’t churn out a really good film when we want it. But can’t we just settle with a fine one in the meantime?