Checked out Spectre, the new James Bond flick, today and it’s better than Quantum of Solace but it’s not Skyfall or Casino Royale. There’s a lot to like about the movie… but there’s a lot they either didn’t do well or did kind of slowly.

The good… well, Daniel Craig is still good and has really got down the suave-as-hell thing, especially when smoothly sliding along the rooftops of Mexico City like he was out for a Sunday stroll. The action scenes are really good… including a completely non-explosive, non-overboard car chase in Rome that doesn’t feel like it should have been exciting but is. And a fight scene on a train that’s pretty fantastic. The action is legible, credible, tense, and well shot… no shaky cam. There’s also a number of very good, very tense scenes that are engrossing. The movie looks great too and has a lot of on-location shooting around the world (derp… it’s a Bond film).

The not-so-good… well, the movie’s plot is a little unfocused and we don’t have a strong motivating factor or through-line, the pacing is kind of slow at times, the villain and Bond Girl are somewhat of a mistake, and Sam Smith shouldn’t sing Bond themes (that is all I’ll say since he’s otherwise a great singer).

This movie is two stories… a rather lengthy personal investigation from Bond (where, hey, he goes rogue – haven’t seen that in awhile, amiright?) and another regarding MI6 that you’ve seen in at least three other recent movies (no spoilers). The two stories don’t really gel except in that you know they have to gel but only when the script decides they need to. But every time they cut back to London, it was kind of a bore. But Bond’s adventure could also be a little lethargic too.

And that’s the curious thing about the movie… I don’t think its pace is a mistake. I think they were deliberately making a movie that feels like an early 60s Sean Connery Bond film. There’s a very long train sequence that reminded me completely of From Russia With Love. There’s other tension-filled scenes that seem to run longer than I would consider reasonable for a modern film. Maybe these are just examples of bad film making but they seemed intentional to me and I give them credit for that.

Also a bit of a mistake is the Bong Girl (who isn’t, despite the press, Monica Belucci). This girl is playing things a little much like an ice princess, cold and distant, and that’s intentional but it doesn’t make her interesting. And the problem is, there’s too much conversation with her for her to be such a pill. They want her to be Bond’s new Vesper Lynd (Eva Green – Casino Royale) but she just isn’t. No matter how hard the movie insists she is.

Now, the villain is played by Christoph Waltz in full on wacky-Waltz mode like he was in Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained. Now, I like Christoph Waltz in Wacky-Waltz mode, but it was the wrong tone for this movie. He’s not bad, but he’s not villainous… and kind of feels like he might have been in an Austin Powers movie. Also, he’s not in the movie nearly enough to show how villainous he really is. In fact, he spends more time telling us how much of a bad guy he is without ever showing us.

The second villain is played by wrestler and Part-Time Guardian of the Galaxy Dave Batista as a giant henchman with a hand-cannon of a gun. His character is intriguing and I wanted more from him but ultimately they kind of wasted him.

I could go on because the movie is very interesting for what it is, what it does right, what it does wrong, and what just left me unsure what they were doing. I don’t think it’s a crowd-pleaser of a film as the pacing and length (2 hrs 20 minutes or so) don’t do it any favors. But if you love your Bond, this is certainly not an embarrassment.

Score: 81