Spectre, released in 2015, is the 24th James Bond movie and the fourth with Daniel Craig in the role of Bond. It stars Craig, Lea Seydoux, Christoph Waltz, Monica Bellucci, and Ralph Fiennes. Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Dave Bautista, and Andrew Scott have supporting roles. The film begins in Mexico City, where Bond, acting on a posthumous message from M (Judi Dench's version of M), is attempting to thwart a terrorist plot. He discovers that the plot involves an organization called Spectre, led by Ernst Blofeld (played by Christoph Waltz), who has been responsible for many of the tragedies in Bond's life. I will not go too much more into the plot, but the movie has ties to the other Craig installments. That said, it mostly stands on its own, and you can follow what is happening even if you have not seen Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall.
The 4k set is a two-disc set containing a UHD disc and a standard blu-ray disc. The A/V quality is outstanding, and the movie looks and sounds great in the UHD format. The UHD disc contains only the film itself, while the regular Blu-ray disc includes the extras. The bonus content includes a featurette on the opening sequence (the longest of the extras at 20 minutes) and a series of video blogs, a photo gallery, and trailers for the movie. Although it's not a ton of bonus material, what's included is good.
Overall, the movie is good, but not great. It does have a good mix of action and suspense, but I felt that it was not as good as the prior films, especially Casino Royale. I know Bond aficionados found it underwhelming, given that Blofeld was the "big bad" that ties all of the movies together, and found his reveal to be less menacing than it "should have been." I am very much a casual fan of Bond, so the fact that Craig's movies departed from the way the other movies were set up was not a big deal to me, and thus, the big reveal of the villain was not a letdown for me. I would say that if you are generally a fan of the Craig films, you will probably like this movie. If you have been lukewarm to them in general, then this movie is unlikely to convert you into a fan.
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