It’s funny to know that this movie was intended to come out before the pandemic, because by releasing it now it might provide some unintentional food for thought for the morons who believe that a certain virus was actually conceived in a lab.
I genuinely wonder if those people will read that far into this film, I’d find it deeply amusing.
The good news is that there are definetely a lot of things this does better than Spectre.
The action is memorable and way more visceral (though it doesn’t quite surpass the Mission Impossible Fallout bar) and the characters are generally more interesting.
I loved the women in this in particular, they all have distinct personalities and they’re not flawless human beings or overpowered (e.g. Ana de Armas is bubbly and fun, but at the same time she’s inexperienced and chaotic), like some blockbusters tend to do.
At the same time, we shouldn’t pretend that this film invented strong female characters for Bond, especially after we’ve had Eva Green and Judi Dench.
Meanwhile, James Bond himself has a very satisfying arc in this film, which isn’t too dissimilar to Tony Stark’s arc in Avengers Endgame , with a bold pay off in the third act. I’m happy that this film gave us confirmation that Mads Mikkelsen didn’t end up castrating Bond during that scene in Casino Royale.
It’s paced very well, more like a traditional action film and less like a drama, which was the case for Skyfall and Spectre. Don’t let the runtime intimidate you, it doesn’t feel longer than 2 hours.
And finally, the whole thing just looks great, it’s produced excuisetely. The cinematography isn’t quite Skyfall level, but Roger Deakins is an impossible bar to clear for any cinematographer.
Unfortunately, this film really struggles with its tone, bouncing between some cartoony stuff and very dark, dramatic moments.
It wants to honor the traditional Bond stuff, but at the same time it can’t let go of the roots of the Daniel Craig iteration, which makes it feel like an uneven artistic vision, because the foundation of Craig’s Bond rests on this idea that this isn’t the traditional Bond.
It’s going for the same tone as Skyfall, meaning its pretty serious, while also incorporating some campy stuff with the plot and the villain (but never going into straight up silly territory, like Spectre).
The problem is that you could still take the villain and the plot seriously in Skyfall (Bardem is still scary despite the camp, the hacking plot feels grounded), and that isn’t the case here, the plot goes too much into sci-fi territory for that.
Also, Rami Malek didn’t leave much of an impression on me, the accent is wonky and he feels like a stock villain (very much like Waltz in the last film). There’s not really an interesting motivation there, or an interesting evil plan. It’s a campy and theatrical plan, and it feels very familiar.
Finally, this film can be fairly predictable at times (for example: Matilde being Bond’s daughter was extremely obvious, but they still try to somewhat play it as a twist. The same goes for Lea Seydoux being framed in prologue.).
So, it’s good, it pushes the creative boundaries of what a Bond movie is in some ways, which is the best stuff.
But I kinda hope they bring in someone with a fresh, fully realized artistic vision to really shake things up again for the next reboot.
7/10
Ps for the Bond producers: please, please make a spin off with Ana de Armas’ character.
They are all the ingredients to make it a classic comedy, but it just doesn't take.
The casting is amazing, that's for sure. It's full of cool ideas and nice jokes all along the way.
- the daylight time being weird
- Most of Tilda Swinton character
- The make up for the dead
- The zombies looking for chardonnay and wifi instead of brains
- Driver's character direct assumption that it's zombies
- The "Is it a wild beast ? Several wild beasts ?" bit
- Zombie Iggy Pop
- the wtf exit of Tilda Swinton
- Murray and Driver discussing the theme song or the script
- etc.
And for all this I can't count it as bad. But it just doesn't fit into a story. Between this bits it all seems long and boring. And most of them are not even exploited correctly. A 20 minutes version of it would have worked a lot better.
The daylight times being weird ? Nice, but what about it ? Nothing.
Murray and Driver talk as themselves instead of the characters could have been interesting, but it's not even correctly used. When asked how he knows it end badly, Driver answers he read the script and Murray says he only had his scenes. Well, he IS in the litteral last scene of the film, the one that ends badly... So he should have known too. It just feels like it's been added there to add a few lines and that's it, it's not been though through.
Swinton's character is good with a sword. But it's 5 scenes of her decapitating zombies behing her back. OK. Show me her fighting 50 zombies, give me something new not 5 copies of the same scene!
As for the chatacters, Bill Murray has been playing various versions of the same character since what ? Lost in Translation ? And I usually love it. It kinda works here too. But not enough.
Adam Driver is actually quite ok. So I'm starting to think it's not his fault and Kylo Ren was just an horrible miscast.
Tilda Swinton is creepy af, just as usual, and has the best character. The way she speaks, the way she walks, her makeup for the deads, her sword skills, etc. Every scene where she's in is good.
Nice to see Steve Buscemi and Danny Glover, but again, they're like the usual cinematic version of themselves here. They feel more like cameos.
And then several characters seem to have been added just as fillers. The kids in detention center ? They do nothing, do not interact with anybody, or with zombies. They just go through it. You can totally erase them and lose nothing. The Selena Gomez crew ? Same thing. Well, you lose some scenes of various guys drooling over Gomez's small shorts and yes, the great head chopping scene, ok, but it could have been done with any other character. Hermit Bob is observing as an outsider. Doesn't bring anything to the story. And Chloe Sevigny's character is just painful to watch.
I get the concept, I loved some slow movies and watching some characters that are on the side and do not bring anything to the story. But here nothing ever works. It's almost heartbreaking to see the movie try so hard, imagine what it was supposed to be and see it fail so hard.
