This review is spoiler-light.

Conclusion

This film is a bloated mess.

Positives

This was by far the film that took itself the least seriously and had the most humour in the Craig-era Bond. The humour from the classic-era was throughout and it was spot-on. The early action sequences were very well made as well and fit the Bond theme. The movie does make it clear this is the end for the Daniel Craig James Bond and while some of this is forced and doesn’t flow, at least we get there in the end. Q is a poof. While we don’t get to see him having sweet manlove, we do finally have the series acknowledge what all of us knew all along.

No complaints with the cinematography, editing and sound. The movie looked the part.

Negatives

The movie is loooooooooong. Way too long for an action movie. In the old days movies had to be formatted to fit 2hr cinema timeslots, and if you delivered a movie to a cinema longer than would fit their standard timeslot they would have their projectionist physically cut out the necessary amount of film to reduce the runtime.

Bond has been replaced by another 007 agent who we literally learn nothing about. There is also a scene where the new 007 give back the number to Bond – and it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever because not only did Bond not ask for it but it doesn’t affect the plot one single bit and nor is there any motivation to justify it. But the worst part of all was that in the time Bond was re-instated as a 00 he never once uses the title. We don’t know what 00 he was he never says “I’m 004” or whatever number!

The MacGuffin didn’t make that much sense, the threat not fully explored, and the antagonist wasn’t engaging.

I was not a big fan of Spectre (2015) so I’ve never actually re-watched that film to this point. So I had forgotten parts about it which are essential to navigating yourself during this movie. This is a major problem because a moviegoer should simply be able to watch this movie as a standalone instalment and not have to have seen 24 previous films!

The movie just didn’t flow well.