And here, we arrive. At the end of an era. Five films and fifteen years. Daniel Craig’s swansong as James Bond has to see the actor go out all guns blazing and then some. But, does he?

Well. Not quite. But, mostly.

The prelude is almost an ethereal, dreamlike sequence. We see a young Madeleine Swann in her family’s home in Norway. Off in the distance across a frozen lake, there’s a masked man, armed and making his way to the house. The camera switches between the wholesome activities going in the house between young Madeleine and her mother and the progress of the masked man. Neither mother nor daughter know who’s coming until it’s too late. The man enters, kills the mother then checks the rest of the house for his intended target – The father, Mr. White; High ranking member of SPECTRE. After failing his mission, the man seeks to leave but is instead given a new target. Young Madeleine. The prelude ends with Madeleine running for her life across the frozen lake. It collapses and she falls into the icy depths, seemingly trapped. The masked man approaches, but rather than kill her. He saves her.

The film starts proper in the UNESCO town of Matera, Italy. It’s a spectactularly idyllic hill town that’s isolated from pretty much everywhere. Exactly the kind of place 007 and his new wife, Madeleine Swann (who is Mrs. Swann, not Mrs. Bond), to escape to not just for a honeymoon, but to keep their heads down and out of sight from SPECTRE, MI6, the CIA and anyone else who might want them.

There’s the standard beauty shots of the location, the classic music and the sense of class and elegance that lets us all know we are in the world of James Bond. So far, so good. Naturally, the audience is expecting things to take a turn. They’d be correct.

Just as we’ve gotten comfortable seeing Bond enjoy some semblance of normality where it looks like he’s about to settle down and leave his secret agent days behind, it all goes wrong. And, as has been the fashion with the Craig era, there’s a personal link to why his tranquil honeymoon period has gone awry.

The action begins in a somewhat delicate, emotional manner. For Bond and Swann to move on as a couple, Madeleine asks that James forgive Vesper for her betrayal. She wants there to be no secrets, regrets or resentment in their hearts. Perfectly reasonable and very healthy. Until the tomb Vesper’s buried in blows up soon after Bond puts his note of forgiveness down.

The explosive and electric action starts culminating in the, now presumably famous, climax where the DB5 does doughnuts whilst machine gunning its way out of trouble. It’s fast paced, thrilling and keeps you on your toes. When the Aston’s surrounded, we get more personal when Bond uses the situation to put Madeleine under pressure to tell the truth as to whether she leaked their location. With the bulletproof glass getting nearer breaking point from sustaining hundreds, if not thousands, of bullets, Madeleine swears to James that them being found was not her doing. Cue the doughnut.

There is a heartbreaking moment afterwards where Bond feels he has to be rid of Madeleine. Like Vesper before her, Bond feels it’s the woman who’s captured his heart that’s made him vulnerable. So, he puts her on a train and goes solo where he decides to retire to Jamaica.

Meanwhile, back at MI6, M is having a crisis of his own. His top secret project, Heracles, has gone wrong and he needs to fix it. Being top secret, he can’t tell anyone what it is which is a problem when he needs Q and new 007, Nomi, played by Lashanna Lynch, to help him fix it. The ‘fix’ being retrieving the stolen nanovirus known as ‘Heracles’.

Which, subsequently, requires the skills and expertise of the old 007. New meets old and James Bond is brought up to speed by the current 007 on what Heracles actually is. A nanovirus that can be programmed to eradicate the DNA of an individual but is transmitted harmlessly through touch until it reaches its target. All a person would have to do is infect someone in the circle of the target and wait. Of course, this being a Bond film, it turns out SPECTRE has taken the nanovirus along with its creator, Dr. Valdo Obruchev, to turn it into a weapon of mass destruction. And it happens to be Blofeld’s birthday. And the party’s in Jamaica. Handy, really.

This gives us a chance to see the criminally wasted Ana De Armas’ scatty Cuban agent, Paloma. The chemistry between her and Craig is right from Knives Out which brings a nice levity to the current situation. From here though, I think the film starts to break down. Yes, it’s a Bond film and wacky supervillain plans are what we all love, but this gets quite far-fetched. Why SPECTRE chose Jamaica to host a birthday party for their imprisoned leader is an unexplained mystery. And to get round that unexplained mystery, Blofeld is present via a bionic eye. It’s as though the writers couldn’t come up with a suitable reason for the party and a retired Bond to be in the same place at the same time so decided to distract the viewer further by using an absurd device to maintain some kind of tension as well as remind the viewer of the resentful adopted sibling relationship between Bond and Blofeld.

Of course, Bond prevails but only because the captured Dr. Obruchev has, miraculously, reversed the nanovirus back to its original purpose wherby only SPECTRE members are targeted.

After this sequence, we’re quickly off to a secret manmade installation with Bond, Lighter and Logan Ash. Paloma is left behind for unexplained reasons.

I’m now coming back to Logan Ash. The character is not only dreary, but turns out to be a double agent for the CIA and SPECTRE. Betrayal ensues resulting in the end of the well-loved Felix Lighter. I would say that the writers should have gotten rid of Logan Ash entirely and replaced him with Paloma being the double agent. Ash is too obvious with his Chad-style arrogance, naivety and cultural blindness. Paloma would have been far more convincing as a double agent given how well she got on with Bond. Replacing Logan Ash with Paloma wouldn’t have hampered the rest of the story and would have made the audience feel more disarmed whereas Logan Ash is just a stereotypical American jock. Doing this would have also given Ana De Armas a lot more screentime. Something this very talented actress could do with.

From hereonin it’s a marathon instead of a sprint to the finish. There’s an interesting but, ultimately, unneccessary scene with Blofeld which not only sees the villian reunited with his adopted brother, but it also brings Madeliene Swann back together with Bond. Swann being hired by M as a psychology expert on Blofeld despite having been a SPECTRE member. Enemy of my enemy and so on…

We’re then off to Norway where Bond and Swann have rekindled their relationship and are shacked up in the Swann family home where the ‘secret’ Blofeld eluded to was that Madeleine was pregnant. With Bond’s child. How Blofeld knew before Bond despite being locked up is another mystery the writers felt was best left unexplained. Madeleine insists the child, Mathilde, isn’t his but it’s clear to Bond, and the audience, that there’s no escaping those ice blue eyes as belonging to no one else but James Bond.

As foreshadowed in the prelude, something bad is going to happen in the Swann house. Baddies show up and the Bond-Swann family need to escape ASAP. Fortunately, the family car is a Toyota Landcruiser which, quite easily, fends off the Range Rover Sport’s and Land Rover Defender’s sent to take them down. I’m sure the producers were aware they were reinforcing the perception of the Landcruiser.

After seeing off most of the baddies, the Bond-Swann family hideout in the forest. This scene, I felt would hit fathers the most. What’s not shown in a lot of films these days is just how far a father will go to protect his family. And here, we have a clinically executed set of moves from a Papa Bear that no one would mess with on their best day. Even Logan Ash gets a silent, undignified send off which I found satisfying in a primal sort of way. Would have been more wrenching were it Paloma.

Alas, despite Papa Bond’s best efforts and Mama Swann’s attempts at not being caught, neither had enough plot armour to escape mother and daughter being kidnapped leading us to Bond having to track his family down and confront the villian.

I say villian. Rami Malek’s ridiculously named, Lyutsifer Safin, is almost non-existent. By the time he was reintroduced, I had started to forget he was in the film since the whole mid-section was related to Blofeld.

We get the usual monologue of why Safin’s doing what he’s doing, how he and Bond are not so different, etc, etc. Nothing particularly new here (we even get a secret island hideout) and Rami Malek seems to think so too since he’s asleep for most of his performance. Maybe they were going for the quiet, introverted type of evil villian, but it just looks he really couldn’t be bothered with seeing his plan through and would rather Bond kill him because it save him the effort of taking himself out of the equation.

To get on the island, however, required Bond to team up with current 007, Nomi. Despite the ‘woke’ marketing campaign, I think both characters played well together with Nomi respectfully deferring to her MI6 elder, Quite anti-woke, if anything. Same went for Q who was subtley outed by Moneypenny earlier in the film.

The third act, like the second, goes on too long. After mulling this over after having watched it, I think the film is better served by getting rid of Malek’s character altogether. Keep the story and the plot points, but swap Safin for Blofeld and you could not only streamline the story but you’d also get a more emotionally impactful end with the adopted brothers duking it out, both hellbent on killing the other not only for personal reasons but with family and the world at stake. It would have made Bond’s sacrifice all the more weighted whilst giving the studio the chance to redeem themselves after underwhelmingly bringing Blofeld into the Craig era in SPECTRE. Having him as the primary villian in this film could have cast the previous film in a different light where Blofeld was merely being ‘warmed up’ before being let loose for the final film. A missed opportunity.

I think, to a lesser extent, Felix Lighter could have been given a better end instead of being left alone at sea. We could have had Lighter join James against Blofeld. Two professional brothers against one deranged psychopathic one. The man introduced as ‘a brother from Langley’ could have gone out as one. Maybe it was in an earlier draft and someone decided that, whilst it ticked the ‘Person of Colour’ box, it didn’t tick the ‘Female’ box. Shame.

Ultimately, like many Bond films, you switch your brain off and let everything wash over you. It’s more enjoyable that way. And I did enjoy it as the first film I’d seen at the cinema in the post-lockdown period.

What frustrates me, however, is how difficult it seems to be for EON to actually get a cohesive story together despite getting Phoebe Waller Bridge to fix the script as well as sprinkle some humour. I don’t know where the sprinkle of humour went, but unless she inserted an in-joke somewhere, I found this film to be fairly humourless.

But then, humour wasn’t really needed given what was being tackled here. And since it’s the first time a Bond has actually died (well, we see him atop a cliff whilst the Royal Navy fire a barrage of missiles towards the secret island), I don’t think an excess of jokes would be appropriate. Besides, how many secret agents spend most of their time laughing everything off? What we do get is some black and dry humour. The only real levity came from Paloma and that was enough. Were she to be in the film for longer, her scattiness would have to be dialled down.

In summary, despite the technical issues I’ve highlighted, it’s a good, enjoyable film and a worthy send off to Craig’s Bond. But please, oh, please, switch your brain off before, during and after. You think about it and it’s ruined.