A cryptic message from Bond’s past sends him on a trail to uncover a sinister organisation. While M battles political forces to keep the secret service alive, Bond peels back the layers of deceit to reveal the terrible truth behind SPECTRE. In NZ cinemas on November 12.
This is reportedly the most expensive Bond movie ever. It's also the longest Bond film ever. It isn't however the best Bond movie ever - or of the Craig era either.
Like Quantum of Solace was tacked on to Craig's reinventive debut in Casino Royale, this feels like an encore to Skyfall - a looser, less serious, playing-to-longtime-fans, traditional, nostalgic and yes, cliched sort of Bond movie.
A blessed relief of sorts after the relatively grim mood and attempts at psychological depth of its predecessor.
At times, this can feel like Craig is verging on the flippancy of the Roger Moore era, which at least makes Spectre the funniest Bond film in some time and prevents those 148 minutes from being too much of a slog.
But there are moments, as it bounces from Mexico to Austria to Italy to Morocco to London and back, where Spectre's momentum stalls.
Especially in the last act, where, after a terrifically thrilling beginning, and a mostly intriguing centre, the last hour swaps nostalgic affection for old Bond lore for cliches and random plot swerves.
True, it can get a bit dull in the middle too, often when Craig is out of frame and the blokes back at MI5 and MI6 are discussing the two departments' forced upcoming merger and debating the merits of mass surveillance versus selective spying and licensed-to-kill agents versus drone strikes.
Which might be designed to prove that Spectre is hoping to emulate the real-world post-Wikileaks set-up of Skyfall, but just seems out of kilter with the rest of Spectre's aim to revert Bond back to the escapist espionage fantasy of old.
One where he's fighting a very old foe, the evil secret organisation that gives this movie its title and has as its enigmatic ruthless boss, Christoph Waltz's character who seems to have known Bond since the good old days.
Daniel Craig stars as James Bond in the action adventure film, Spectre.
Still, this has much in common with Craig's previous outings. It seems his 007 is doomed to do a couple of things in each film: Go rogue (tick), fight a losing battle against his imminent obsolescence at the hands of policy wonks in Whitehall (tick) and get tortured by a man from continental Europe (tick).
You have to wonder at that $US250 million budget, though, considering how much of this is second-hand.
There are recycled villains, vehicles, fight scenes lifted from previous movies. The spectacular one-shot opening sequence during Mexico City's Day of the Dead celebrations recalls the voodoo of Live and Let Die while you could spend a lot of time googling things such as "fight on a train" and "1948 Rolls Royce Silver Wraith" to remind where you might have seen those things before.
New, of course, are this year's Bond women. Monica Bellucci is there, briefly, as the widow of a man Bond has recently dispensed with and finds brief comfort under his protection.
She's mostly there, possibly, to answer the question: What if Sophia Loren had been a Bond Girl?
But it's Lea Seydoux's Dr Madeleine Swann who Bond falls for after his detective work leads him to her mountain-top clinic - cue amusing alpine action sequence involving Bond having his wings clipped - and whisks her away.
Christoph Waltz and Lea Seydoux in the James Bond film Spectre.
There's good chemistry between Craig and Seydoux, and Swann is her own woman resistant to 007's charms ... well, until she isn't. She's packed some great frocks too and she makes her presence felt despite having not a lot to work with.
Elsewhere, Waltz's won't go down as one of the great Bond villains, despite his character's identity.
But he does assert a cultivated cruelty and menace, especially when he finds a way to mess with Bond's mind by having a surgical machine bore into his brain.
At which some might wish Craig would quip: "Not the same old drill". But maybe only Roger Moore would have got away with it.
For a little too much of Spectre, this does feel like the same old drill. It's certainly entertaining for being just that. But a lowering of the bar after Skyfall.
Movie: Spectre Cast: Daniel Craig, Lea Seydoux, Christoph Waltz, Monica Bellucci, Ralph Fiennes Director: Sam Mendes Running Time: 148 mins Rating: M (violence) Verdict: Not the best of Craig's Bond outings but entertaining nevertheless.
