I remember feeling quite deflated when I left the cinema after watching this. Bond films are (and perhaps this is perceived as silly) very important for me, they've been integral to my movie watching since I was 5 years old, and I felt a bit let down. It just felt like it tried to be a greatest hits album of a film, and Waltz just didn't turn up.
The only thing I can compare his performance was to was seeing JK Simmons in
Whiplash, and then in the last
Terminator. I hoped for an
Inglorious style, nasty, cutting villain, and he was all panto, in his deck shoes, playing the angry adopted brother.
Plot wise, having the whole lot (including
No Time To Die, in a small way -hopefully-) as an ongoing story arc, was tedious and tried to be too clever. The magic of previous Bonds was that each was a standalone, and there might have been recurring themes, but there wasn't the insistence of one being a sequel to the last.
The disc itself, I'll probably pickup the set, for completeness, and then binge watch the whole lot and convince myself that everything after Casino Royale wasn't really that bad
.
A firm but fair review, Cas