Spectre is a 007 film that charts no new ground. Pay to view it at your own risk.

PS: The opening credits are hilarious, with implied tentacle porn. Enjoy.

If you’re a Bond fanboy, you wouldn’t care for a verdict. But even if you’re not, this one is a must-watch.

Perhaps it’s my own fatigue with the Bond franchise and the knowledge of exactly where it will go and how things will turn out that makes the old-fashioned and nicely campy Spectre not as gripping a ride as I would have wanted it to be.

There is speculation that Craig may holster his Walther pistol following this quintessential-if-unduly-lengthy outing. No matter, for aficionados will still wait with bated breath for Bond No 25. Bring it on. Soon.

For those who are going to compare it to Skyfall, this simply isn’t as good. There is neither the emotional connect nor the sweet melancholy that inhabited the last film, but it is a joyous ride nonetheless. And for what he made out of Bond, we owe this to Daniel Craig as he dons the tux for the very last time. You also owe it to the teenager inside you who loves the whirl of excitement the way only Bond can give – shaken not stirred.

…a few moans aside, Spectre’s action still shakes and stirs, leaving you loving its oak and leather, champagne – and dynamite.

SPECTRE that maintains the essence of Bond film with enough doses of gadgets, car chases, stunts, wine and women, could have featured a better title track, since Sam Smith’s ‘Writing’s On The Wall’ appears to be rather sluggish when compared to other Bond films. However SPECTRE that in essence features the return of Bond is definitely worth a watch.

The new James Bond movie adventure, directed by Sam Mendes, is as traditional as it gets. Were it not for its superior technical quality, Spectre might have been classified as a 1980s production.

Spectre has style and Craig, but lacks lustre and adrenaline — the trademark of a Bond movie. If you can digest the meandering screenplay and some flaws, you can still have fun.

What really makes “Spectre” a great movie is the way it wrapped up all the major and minor details from previous Craig’s series of Bond movies and comes out with an unexpected yet radiant conclusion.

… you can enjoy Spectre for the same reasons you generally enjoy Bond films – the sleek action, the amazing lead, the cheeky humour, the music, the gadgetry and the Bond girls. Oh wait, the kisses got censored (with awful jump cuts, mind you). Now that’s one thing that’ll ruin our toddy tapper’s visceral experience.

While not perfect, SPECTRE on the whole is better than the sum of its parts and is a marvellous addition to the franchise. If, as rumoured, this indeed proves to be Daniel Craig’s swansong, he could not have asked for a better farewell.

This dreary, and thanks to the Censor chief, sex-less film has Daniel Craig’s solemn Bond shooting up the world during a confusingly circuitous route towards the ‘SPECTRE’. That, Bond fans know, stands for Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion, a global terrorist organisation encompassing almost all Bond villains.

It’s a Bond entertainer starring Daniel Craig. Most of you are going to like it. For me, it was a rather safe, been there, done that outing. Suffice it to say, it started well, but kinda lost steam in the middle. Overall, I was neither stirred, nor shaken.

Since Mendes already dealt with humanizing Bond in Skyfall, this time the filmmaker gives us the Bond from the Roger Moore era. Which means everything that was ludicrous and over the top in Bond movies makes a grand return in Spectre.

With so much going for it, we’re pretty willing to overlook the weak moments in SPECTRE — of which there are quite a few.

Like a satisfying masala Bollywood film, Spectre is strictly escapist fun. Nothing wrong with that. It’s just that you know what they could’ve pulled off had they tried harder.

The film, in effect, appears over plotted and a little too long-drawn with a flagging middle act and a neatly executed conclusion. This Bond is akin to an ageing Romeo striving to engage in young-man games…and falling flat just a little too often to be exciting!

Spectre has at its core a James Bond. Despite all its flaws, the film is better than a lot of your average fare. The story is easy to figure out and the grey matter is sung a lullaby to, but Spectre is to be savoured. The 25th James Bond is a few years away. That should prod one to make a trip to the theatre.

Spectre promises nothing from start and hence doesn’t deliver anything either. It is neither shaken nor stirred to get you tipsy! I suggest you catch up on an old Bond film rather than suffer through this.

At 148 minutes, I’m not certain Spectre is the longest Bond film of all time, but — and here’s the rub — it certainly feels like it, and it doesn’t help that Mendes exhausts his bag of tricks very early on. The pre-credits scene, the banter with M, the Aston sequence, the villain’s reveal, the Monica Bellucci cameo… all those marvellous switches are flicked on in rapid succession, leaving barely anything for the tedious last hour of the film.

Spectre manages to keep our attention on red-alert most of the way, in spite of a subtle subdued storytelling , a background score(Thomas Newman) that refuses to over-punctuate the drama and action, cinematography (Hoyte Van Hoytema) that peers at the most exotic countries with intriguing serenity, and an arch-villain (Christoph Waltz) who has a shared family history of resentment towards Bond but is unable to draw into the drama.

Casino Royale and Skyfall suggested there were still ways left to tell a Bond story that weren’t archaic or rehashed. Spectre, though, is simply a case of middle-of-the-road big-budget franchise furthering. Studio logic might dictate that it’s time for another reboot. But how many times can something be rebooted before the batteries give up the ghost?

This 007 is neither shaken nor stirred, but simply frozen in time.

… is a dazzling film, but it lacks the lustre and adrenaline rush of a 007 film from the bygone Cold War Era. The chutzpah and the aura are missing.