‘SPECTRE’ for true Bond fans’ eyes only

Bored. Just bored.

That's the best way to describe sitting through "SPECTRE," the butt-numbing extension of "Skyfall" that plods along ground so familiar, it's easy to see how Daniel Craig could have grown tired of playing James Bond.

Clocking in at a punishing 148 minutes, the 24th entry in the franchise continues Craig's every-other-Bond-is-bad streak that saw the riveting highs of "Casino Royale" and "Skyfall" followed by the lackluster "Quantum of Solace" and now "SPECTRE."

Things start out promisingly enough with a gorgeous tracking shot of skeleton-costumed participants in Mexico City's Dia de los Muertos celebrations.

While preventing a bombing, Bond accidentally levels a building before brawling inside, and even outside, an out-of-control helicopter as it hovers above the overflowing Zocalo plaza.

The resulting international incident couldn't have come at a worse time. Max Denbigh (Andrew Scott), the new head of the Centre for National Security, is merging MI5 and MI6 and wants to scrap the "prehistoric" Double-0 section. Since Bond was acting alone in Mexico with no authority, M (Ralph Fiennes) has no choice but to suspend him.

But despite the strides he made in "Skyfall," this Bond remains a one-man wrecking crew. So he risks the careers of gadget master Q (Ben Whishaw) and M's assistant, Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), to continue the revenge tour he kicked off in Mexico.

Traveling to Rome, Bond beds the widow (Monica Bellucci) of his Mexico City target. In Austria, he vows to protect Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux), the daughter of a dying nemesis. Both encounters lead him closer to Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz), who presides over the evil organization SPECTRE as though it were some sort of nefarious United Nations doppelganger, complete with translation headsets.

Meanwhile, Denbigh is busily uniting the world's security services and amassing their intelligence data. What could possibly go wrong?

Actually, like most of "SPECTRE," exactly what could go wrong is telegraphed early and often.

Pacing problems keep Oberhauser limited to one very brief scene, in which he's mostly obscured by darkness and shadows, during the first 105 minutes. Yet there's plenty of time for Bond and Swann, who exhibit very little chemistry, to grow closer as they meander across the North African desert by train and sit down for an elegant dinner complete with formal wear — an impressive feat for a couple on the run.

The "Skyfall" team of director Sam Mendes and writers John Logan, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, working with writer Jez Butterworth ("Black Mass"), refuses to give up on that movie's themes. Not only does the ghost of that bore Vesper Lynd still hang over the proceedings, "SPECTRE" revisits spycraft's battle for relevance in the modern age while, with some clunky exposition, Oberhauser tries to make things even more personal for Bond than they were in "Skyfall."

Adding to the absurdity, Bond and Swann loiter around the ruins of a train station while waiting to be chauffeured across the desert in a vintage Rolls Royce to Oberhauser's spectacular lair. Once there, Bond practically leaps into Oberhauser's extravagantly complicated torture chair that looks like something you'd order from the supervillain collection at Brookstone.

Worse than anything that chair could inflict, Oberhauser proceeds to deliver two of the worst non-Shyamalan-ian reveals in modern movie history, one of which undermines everything that's happened since the beginning of "Casino Royale."

Even the practical stunts, long a hallmark of the franchise, feel pedestrian — at least by Bond standards — and easily were trumped by those in this summer's "Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation."

Aside from the exotic locales and snippets of the iconic Bond theme that are woven into Thomas Newman's score, the best thing about "SPECTRE" may be its return to the classic henchman with the hulking, silent Hinx ("Guardians of the Galaxy's" Dave Bautista).

That's because so much of "SPECTRE" is so very wrongheaded, yet another reboot may be needed if Craig, who looks like he's having the living daylights bored out of him, decides the world is not enough for him to return.

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com. On Twitter: @life_onthecouch