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.

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.

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

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.

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.