So when it comes to watching the latest James Bond 007 film, it has to be said that I didn't have my expectations that high about it. I wasn't thinking that the movie - even though probably not horrible or unwatchable - wouldn't be that well made as a whole.
After all, in my last post about the franchise (<click here>) I listed reasons why the films - even though successful at the box office have lately been lacking in quality. The franchise hasn't been doing well quality-wise and has suffered from all kinds of problems and issues.
Yet, as I last week got a chance to watch 'No Time to Die', as a rather big fan of the franchise, I couldn't help but to feel at least somewhat optimistic again. Perhaps I would be proven wrong here and that perhaps the last 007 film starring Daniel Craig would be okay after all.
So having now finally seen the film, I have to say that - as unfortunate as it is - I wasn't that impressed with Craig's last outing as James Bond. The movie, even though not completely awful, didn't manage to convince me that the franchise has still something to offer.
Premise- & and idea-wise, it has to be said that in 'No Time to Die', the producers & writers at least tried to do something different here. They knew they were in trouble and thought that perhaps they could make an entertaining film by tweaking the concept a bit.
In practice, what this meant is that Craig's final outing (no huge spoilers here), instead of being a traditional Bond movie, is more of a character piece. The emphasis in this movie is on James Bond as a character and how he feels as a (supposed) human being.
Indeed, the film that lasts more than two and a half hours (even with excluding the opening & closing credits) spends considerable time dealing with his 'family' life. There's his girlfriend from 'Spectre' who is involved and there's her 5 year old girl in the movie too.
The big challenge with this kind of concept tweak is that it requires that the film is really well written. You need to have everything well thought out and balanced, which means that your story must have well rounded characters & storylines (also protagonists & antagonists).
Unfortunately, that's not how the writers were able to pull of the script in 'No Time to Die'. Even though agent 007 is the main focus in the film (the girlfriend is the protagonist in the pre-title sequence), there's no balance here in the movie with the characters at all.
Indeed, when it comes to the antagonists in movie, as incredible as it sounds, the two main villains get roughly seven minutes of air time total. Ernst Stavro Blofeld is in the movie for like two minutes and Rami Malek's villain Safir is on screen for like five minutes.
Not that surprisingly, even though the movie does work in its first half, when it comes to the last act of the film the thing feels almost embarrassing. Pretty much nothing here makes sense and that includes the villain's angle with Bond's family, which is just pathetic.
Indeed, in the final 15 minutes and its climax, you can only wonder how the 'story' spent so much time with some other things (lots of 'team effort', Q, female 007, etc.) and not with the villain. How did the movie go for so long without developing the antagonist's motivation at all.
In that sense, when it comes to this film as a whole, it shouldn't come as a surprise that I wasn't able to enjoy it as much that I would have wanted to. It just wasn't that well made as a whole, even though the action scenes were solid and the movie looked great too.
After all, when you take into account how botched the script was (had tons of reshoots) and how the writers (hacks Purvis & Wade were involved again) didn't shine here, that wasn't a good thing. That was genuinely disappointing how the story was lacking.
Still, in the end, when it comes to this movie, I'm not saying that you shouldn't give it a chance at the some point. I'm not saying that and do recognize that we're talking about a franchise that has gone for almost 60 years and has reached its 26th movie already.
At the same time, at least when it comes to me, it's a safe bet that I won't be looking forward to watching this movie again. I won't probably give it a second shot, and instead I'll watch those older Bond films, especially those that starred Roger Moore as agent 007.
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