Spectre Review

Took in a packed screening of Spectre on Tuesday evening at my local soulless multiplex. My anticipation was high after reading several 5 star reviews, and after the great work Sam Mendes had done with Skyfall, surely Spectre would be just as impressive, what a crushing disappointment this latest Bond outing really was then.
The positives can be summed up as fairly good performances, a good fight on a train and thanks to Hoyte Van Hoytema it definitely looks pretty, but the rest is an utter shambles.
The plot makes little to no sense, that alone usually isn't a problem with Bond but it has to make up for it with the set pieces, Spectre however rehashes so many old Bond set pieces that it feels like a highlights reel of the Bond classics, and every set piece feels incredibly hollow and dull, in particular the Rome car chase. Spoilers aside, a character revelation in the final third made me vitriolic and Dave Bautista's Mr Hinx is tragically wasted.And the final most heinous crime of Spectre is the misogyny. Being cross about misogyny in Bond is like being cross about racism in 12 years a slave, Bond and terrible female characters go hand in hand. But the filmmakers never shut up about the way they've created more rounded female characters when they've actually done nothing to change it, so they cast a 50 year old as a Bond girl, hardly revolutionary when she's in the film for under 10 minutes and Bond still manages to sleep with her, and Madeline Swann has 15 minutes of screen time between her threatening to kill James and then throwing herself all over him like a bad rash. Don't know what's next for Bond, but Spectre feels like it's unravelled all the hard work of Casino Royale, must do better 007. (High 2 Stars)