Spectre: The Newest Bond Offering

I was excited to see Spectre knowing the GOBS of hype, great cast, and solid track record from the other Daniel Craig Bond films, Quantum of Solace being excluded from the "solid" comment. This movie picks up with Bond tracking men to a hotel in Mexico City (By the way I missed the first 5 minutes, so I may have missed something important, etc. sadly). Bond hears of plans to blow up a stadium and he starts shooting guys, hitting the explosive device. After the huge scene he successfully kills everyone involved, takes off a ring with an Octopus symbol (SPECTRE's symbol) on it, and escapes in a helicopter. The attention gathered from the incident puts MI:6 and the "OO" program in serious jeopardy with Britain's new Joint Chief of Staff. Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, and Naomie Harris all come back to reprise their roles of "M", "Q", and "Moneypenny", which is great. Waltz is the new addition that I was incredibly happy about. He plays the classic role of "Blofeld", Bond's greatest enemy. Bond continues to search for SPECTRE fueled by a video recorded from Judi Dench's "M" letting him know to search out and kill Marco Sciarra. Monica Bellucci is very underused as Sciarra's widow. Bond begins to peel back layers of SPECTRE and finding out from Mr. White himself that SPECTRE is very serious and gives Bond information on the promise that Bond will protect his only daughter (insert Lea Seydoux). It's similar to most Craig-style Bond's, though Waltz is VERY underutilized as Blofeld and the primary villain. There's not enough screen time between Bond & Blofeld. This film is lacking in feeling too in my opinion. I liked Dave Bautista as the generic super-muscle. The story is stale in that it feels too similar to Skyfall. British Intelligence is compromised at the highest level, bad-guy has eyes everywhere, it's Bond vs. technology and the smarter bad guy. Bottom Line: 7.3 out of 10. I was far from impressed, but it was still a decently entertaining film. Seydoux's very good and I expect her to be around for a very long time. Hopefully she continues to do American films.