Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I loved that Daniel Craig re-booted the Bond franchise-- what a wallop Casino Royal (2006) was! Craig in his debut, out-shown all of the other actors who played Bond to date. He's done a marvelous job with Bond. He portrayed a man who bled, who was beat up, and a man who suffered emotionally, something never really explored before with the previous movies. Craig brought complexity to the character. Don't get me wrong, I loved the deadpan wit of Moore and the Scottish grit of Connery, but Craig's commitment to Bond made the character believable. No Time To Die (2021) was the grand finale of James Bond, and I was hoping it would be so much better. It was a let down. Do you know what the biggest let down of this movie was? The writing. Yes, not the actors, but the writing. Too much time is spent trying to develop a backstory to drive the plot forward. Then, the other actors are written around this premise as trying to use the leftover spaces as puzzle pieces jammed into the bigger picture of the script. As Bond is supposed to be at his hardest, most sinewy pinnacle, we see his soft underbelly-- his misery, his loneliness and his self-doubt. In fact, most all the male characters in this movie are written as unsure, bungling versions of their previous adaptations. I will explain -- keep reading. *** SPOILER ALERT**** Christoph Waltz (Blowfeld)-- He is a babbling, neutered version of a supervillain. What a waste of talent, not to have him tied in with the grand finale! I was hoping to find out his character was a body double in the movie, but alas. Rami Malek (Lyutsifer)-- The actual supervillain who spends most of the movie in these meandering, monotone diatribes. We get it, evil guys are psychopathic. But to distill down what should have been the ultimate foil to Bond, we experience sloppy two dimensional writing. I think Malek is a great actor as well, just written really poorly in this. His character comes across as more Dr. Evil, then terrifying madman bent on world destruction. Ralph Fiennes (M) -- I felt bad for this actor. The unsure and apologetic version of M is horrible. The staunch and unflappable M has been reduced to a bewildered and compromised head of MI6. Jeffrey Wright (Felix Leiter) -- Leiter was the epitome of CIA coolness, and in his final sendoff, he's portrayed as bald, dumpy and disheveled. To see him gut-shot and drowned, is just a big let down. It's a slap in the viewers face to have one or two men written like this, but all of them? It boils down to a simple comparison/contrast middle-school writing assignment. I'm not kidding. You don't have to look hard to see this. In order to turn up the contrast on the strong female leads (yes, I said leads) you end up turning down all the male characteristics that makes a strong male lead, strong. This is what the writers have done in this movie, and it's just a big disservice to the Bond universe. The actresses that make this movie shine (and ever so brightly) are Ana de Armas (Paloma) and Léa Seydoux (Madeleine.) They make the movie bearable. Yes, there is no "Bond Girl" which I am sure is done intentionally. These characters are written as strong, competent, and enduring. This is some decent acting and character development. However, the writers didn't have to make all of the male counterparts so underwhelming to prove this! As for Lashana Lynch (the new 007, Nomi) they wrote her all wrong. Have you ever heard the phrase "show don't tell" when it comes to character development? Ms. Lynch is a fine actress in her own right. I know most people can't discern the actor from the writing at times, but instead of coming across as strong, she is written as arrogant and disrespectful. She knows who Bond is, but is totally nonplussed by his accomplishments. In the movie, there is nothing likeable about her character. Instead of trying to imprint a male-version of Bond into a female character, they should have taken another route. Or any other route when writing for the newer 007. She's taking the 007 moniker, why not spend the backstory show us how she earned it and less of Bond's misery and heartbreak? Out of all the strong female leads in the movie, the Nomi characters comes across as a last-minute script addition, and severely underdeveloped. We are told in the movie a lot has changed in so many years and there are references to Bond being behind the times, mentioned in previous movies, ad nauseam. This has turned into a movie trope of sorts, lol. Are the writers are trying to tell us that everyone in the old-school espionage game is dying out -- good guys, villains and the rest? So, why do we have a newer 007, if they plan on nuking the spy vs. spy concept in the first place? So, I will tell you why: this James Bond movie is a watershed moment for the franchise. We get rid of all the male characters (kill them off, retire them) and replace them with woke versions of the same characters. I hope they leave well-enough alone and let James Bond rest in peace, quietly, for the franchise's sake. There are lots of things not to like about the final installment of James Bond. They could have shaved an hour off of the movie and released that to Blu-Ray or streaming for the extended version. However (lol) you'd be missing out on all of the slow-parts parts that torture the viewer for over two hours and fifty-four minutes. Old people, wear some Depends if you see this in the theater! As for the cinematography, it's not really a visually stunning movie. If this was shot in 4k, I certainly missed that in the theater. I get they wanted a dim, Instagram-like filter on some of the scenes, but none of it had a "wow" appeal. It seemed dreary in certain shots. There are other Craig Bond films that are real HD eye-poppers when it comes to visuals and lighting, but No Time To Die, falls very short in most aspects of the grandiose paradise shots that we've come to expect in past Bond movies. This movie was too bleak for me to be a Bond movie. I really wanted to love this movie, but I can't find enough 'Bond' in this final installment of Bond to like it. On a side note: Ana de Armas is such a gleaming gem in this movie. However, not much else sparkles.