There are some individual moments that work, but this is overall a mess.
The story is hard to follow, the new characters aren’t interesting or memorable, and as many have pointed out: the editing sucks.
Just watch the airplane chase in this film and the one in Mission Impossible: Fallout back to back, and look at the difference in clarity, camera placement, choreography, creativity in the action beats; it’s a night and day difference.
Even the cinematography and music are nowhere near as good as in Casino Royale.
Daniel Craig elevates the script a lot, because without him this would mostly feel like a haphazard attempt to rip off the Bourne franchise.
Normally I’d add Judi Dench to the list of positives, but M has one of the dumbest scenes I’ve ever seen in a Bond film here.
A little context for the scene: James Bond has been a too violent and agressive, the CIA wants him, so M comes over to have Bond arrested.
What happens next? Well, James Bond knocks M’s agents out after he’s handcuffed, M and James meet again, and M’s cool with Bond because he’s “my agent, and I trust him.”
…..
I guess he wasn’t her agent 30 seconds earlier?
Moreover, why would anyone fly to the other side of the world in order to ‘arrest’ their agent, if they don’t want that to happen?
I know why: because they wanted to create a dramatic beat.
But it doesn’t feel earned, and because the movie’s full of moments like that, most viewers will at least subconsciously feel that this isn’t working on a dramatic level.
4/10
