Please be warned that there are some spoilers ahead.

Spectre, the new James Bond movie, was a solid A-. It wasn’t that spectacularly good as Bond movies go, but it also wasn’t that bad either. There were a lot of problems with it if you looked closely, but overall it accomplished what it set out to be: a decent action-filled James Bond romp.

The whole plot of the story revolved James Bond’s efforts to kill the main villain and take down the main antagonist evil organization that he was leading with him. The name of the organization, Spectre, was a decent villain organization name, especially when the organization was very hard to track and was all about working in the shadows.

The symbol of the organization, an octopus, would have worked, except that it didn’t really have anything to do with the organization itself. Sure, an octopus was a staple villain symbol, but it didn’t make any sense in describing Spectre. The other big problem with the octopus was how it was incorporated into the opening credit sequence.

Ordinarily, the images playing in the background of the opening credits were interesting things that might have something to do with the movie and would prime the audience to experience the rest of the movie. This time, it was either naked Jame Bond with his back to a wall of flame surrounded by naked fawning women, or naked women flailing around as octopus tentacles, which looked a lot like Doc Octopus’ tentacles from Spider Man, wrapped around them and pulled them down towards the bottom of the screen. There was also a lot of ink dispersing underwater effects to keep with the octopus theme. It was weird and awkward, to say the least.

The other big problem was that there wasn’t a lot of chemistry between Bond and the leading lady. There were love scenes, but they didn’t convey a lot of emotion between the two, and so were awkward to sit through. The acting from the rest of the characters was serviceable: it wasn’t bad enough that you didn’t want to watch, but none of the performances were particularly memorable or really good.

As far as the plot was concerned, it was a typical action spy story. There was an evil organization that wanted to take over the world, and the main hero (along with his assorted helpers) who, of course, defeated the evil organization and saved the day. There were some parts that were a lot darker like in Skyfall, but it the themes weren’t particularly dark or deep, and were more of a token gesture meant to add some variety to the content.

Since this was a big budget action movie, there were some extravagant parts. This being Bond, there was a chase scene where Bond was racing in a completely ridiculous and just-so-the-movie-can-show-off vehicle against the kidnappers who had his girl. The other scene that I really liked was the opening scene where Bond is in the middle of this huge Dia de los Muertos celebration that set the stage for the dead-people-being-alive theme.

Overall, it was a decent movie that cleared the expectations bar as far as Bond movies go, but didn’t set any benchmarks or do anything particularly special.