Review: In ‘Spectre,’ Daniel Craig Returns as James Bond

Does it mean something that James Bond drinks a dirty martini in “Spectre,” the latest in the seemingly unkillable franchise?

It’s too soon to know, though true Bondologists will be parsing this new drink’s significance shortly. As more of an amateur in all-things Bond, I had hoped a dirty bomb would go boom or that the actress Léa Seydoux would do something unspeakable to Daniel Craig, given that the pre-credit sequence features female nudes writhing alongside an octopus with busy arms. Part of the bankable pleasure of the series, after all, is that every so often, among the usual guns and girls, the unexpected happens — a bikini stops the film, a villain revs it up, Bond surprises.

There’s nothing surprising in “Spectre,” the 24th “official” title in the series, which is presumably as planned. Much as the perfect is the enemy of good, originality is often the enemy of the global box office. And so, for the fourth time, Mr. Craig has suited up to play the British spy who’s saving the world one kill at a time, with Sam Mendes occupying the director’s chair for a second turn. They’re a reasonable fit, although their joint seriousness has started to feel more reflexive than honest, especially because every Bond movie inevitably shakes off ambition to get down to the blockbuster business of hurling everything — bodies, bullets, fireballs, debris, money — at the screen.