Kicking off with the positives, the best thing about this film is you feel it's a massive blockbuster spectacle filled with size and scope. This also feels like the blockbuster we have waited for this entire year and I kind of feel all the delays and anticipation worked in this film favour as it felt needed for the cinematic experience.
Moving right along, we've got to talk about Daniel Craigs performance and I think this is his best performance as James Bond. It's well documented Daniel Craig wasn't happy with the final result of Spectre which he originally intended to be his last film and I think you feel it in this film. He feels more committed to the role and more determined to appeal to the fans and within that, he gives his best and most versatile performance probably since Casino Royale.
The rest of the cast are really good. Rami Malek is a welcome addition to the franchise though I will have some further thoughts with his character, Lashana Lynch and Ana De Armas are also great additions to the cast and even some of the returning cast members are still as great and memorable as they were before.
As this is a james bond film, you've got to talk about the action and for me, I thought the action was fantastic and extremely versatile throughout the film. There's fights, gunfire, car chases and explosions all throughout and its great to watch. There's also a great one shot sequence during the 3rd act and that was impressive to watch. Some of the aesthetics during the action is also really well done. One scene has Bond surrounded by fog and avoiding gun shots and that scene was probably the most atmospheric sequence. Not only did you feel the tension but whilst being a wide open space, it feels very claustrophobic.
I also liked the location settings throughout the film as well. Not only are they beautiful to look at, they feel environmentally fitted for the action especially for the opening action sequence.
And for something different, I really liked some of the sound mixing for the film. An explosion happens and you hear muffled sound and ringing, you hear characters on coms with each other and you hear how distorted their voices are. It makes it more realistic for the context of the film.
There's also some nicely added humour that felt organic and never felt forced. This is probably the funniest of the Daniel Craig Bond films.
But finally what I feel is this films biggest strength is it's reliability on previous films to complete this films story and how it ties it's central theme of humanity to James Bonds character arc. By the end of the film, how Bonds arc and culmination of his series comes to an end, you feel emotion and it feels like an earned conclusion. In fact, I don't think there was any other way to end his era during this film.
However this film isn't perfect so let's move onto the mixed aspects of the film and these aren't necessarily good or bad, these are things to keep in mind. First this is a very long film, 163 minutes so if you can handle this runtime, absolutely see it in the cinema but if not, maybe wait til it's available to stream.
Second thing is despite this being a nearly 3 hour film, some characters don't appear as frequently or as much as you may like. In particular, there were at least two characters for me I would have liked to have seen more of.
Lastly is the films central villain. Now I enjoyed Rami Malek and the villain in general I felt was good but at the same time, I felt some more development was needed to make him more memorable.
Moving onto the negatives, the main thing is the pacing. After the opening sequence, the films slows to a halt and drags quite a bit during the first act so I wish they found a way to speed things up a bit.
And as a final nitpick, one minor character felt very out of place tonally within the film to the point where I found the character to be very annoying.
However despite those two negatives, I honestly loved this film and it was a complete surprise for me. I've seen it twice now and I think this is my favourite film of the year so far. That's how much I loved it.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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