Another round of the Bond investigation After the most interesting "Skyfall" and its dramatic denouement, it was especially interesting to see which way the pendulum of the James Bond investigation would swing. The continuation vector sends Agent 007 into the thick of events, where the Briton and the audience will finally get to know the legendary secret organization SPECTRUM, which is expected to appear, but only in the fourth series with Daniel Craig, although the seasoned viewer has long been familiar with this organization from previous James Bond films. The film, in my opinion, is good, but with serious flaws. One way or another, you compare it with the previous paintings in the series and with the future ones, which have now been viewed for a long time. And in this comparison, "Spectre" seriously lags behind its fellow films. It seems to me that it's a weak, sometimes frankly hacky script. And it seems that the team of screenwriters in the person of Neil Purvis and Robert Wade have been writing their work for the films of the franchise since 1999, giving out fairly high-quality material all this time. John Logan, the third screenwriter, had a hand in Skyfall, and Jez Butterworth, a newcomer to the franchise, had just tried his hand at this series of films. As a result, this work of the quartet turned out to be contradictory and frankly weak. And although the creators of the whole film escalate the situation, forcing them to look forward to the appearance of the main antagonist Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Christoph Waltz, who presented a new image of the villain, could not reveal his full acting potential. And the audience is well aware of the possibilities of the twice winner of the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. So the character poorly written by the screenwriters did not allow Waltz to show himself in all his glory and give exactly the kind of Bond opponent that James deserves. At the same time, the film smacks of secondhandness. We have already seen many moments in a series of films about an English spy, and some plots seem to be taken from other similar franchises (although the films were released in the same year with a difference of several months) and are easily guessed, thereby necessarily distracting from immersion in this story. But the film is still good and necessarily beautiful. You can feel the confident hand of director Sam Mendes, who has already given the world a film like Skyfall. The director's decisions are guessed in many visual solutions. He and the chief cameraman perfectly change the color tone in different locations: the golden glow of warm Mexico and Tangier, the cool shades of the Alps, the dark tones of Rome, where Bond still comes face to face with the SPECTRUM. The film continues to expand the Bond universe, focusing more and more on minor characters such as Q and Moneypenny. The guys, in my opinion, fit perfectly into the narrative, they are pleasant to look at, they are interesting to watch. The two really become part of the Bond team. Not enough M from Judi Dench. The absence of this character in the picture is quite noticeable. And if the heroine was a kind of central female character of the last film, then in the new picture this role was assigned to the heroine Lea Seydoux. The girl fit perfectly into the picture, it seems, she became the new lady of Bond's heart, who still, in my opinion, loves Vesper Lind from Casino Royale. The famous Monica Bellucci turned out to be not so bright in the assigned role of a recent widow. Her fleeting relationship with Agent 007 seemed to have no chemistry at all and looked weak. Against the background of Judi Dench's departure from the project, Ralph Fiennes, who replaced a woman in the post of M and was a kind of thorn under the nail in the last picture, continues to cause some feeling of rejection of the hero. However, this picture will allow you to trace the evolution of the character against the background of a separate arch, in which M will try to save an organization that is threatened with liquidation. The film once again presented the audience with an excellent main musical composition, which won the golden Oscar statuette for Best Song. Thanks should be given to the British singer Sam Smith and the song "Writing's on the Wall". Against the background of a not very convincing picture, the song is especially memorable. "Spectre" has been viewed by me several times over the years. It's an average painting, but like everything in this series with Daniel Craig, it's an important work. This is another puzzle that leads to the solution of all the mysteries of this separate franchise, and ahead looms the finale, whose name is "No time to die." 7 out of 10