A cathartic finale is one of the lone standouts here, along with a firecracker cameo from Bond newcomer Ana de Armas and a distinctly un-Bondian prelude. Most of all, it wants to give Daniel Craig's James Bond, arguably the best 007 of all time and certainly the most dynamic, a proper sendoff, something it achieves once it has the sense to get out of its own way. It also wants to return to the Bond franchise's most eccentric aspects island lairs, evil plots for world domination, all the things that never fit well into this era of 007. It wants to tie up the loose ends of Spectre, a task probably better left alone, but one that eats up nearly half the runtime. It wants to mine the emotion of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the first outing to give its hero a soul, as evidenced by the callbacks to that entry. The latest 007 adventure, Daniel Craig's final Bond movie, wants to do a lot in its near-three-hour runtime. Taking that into account, this one also gets a few bonus points for its Golden Gate Bridge finale, and for that bop of a theme. Christopher Walken fares better as the sadistic Zorin, and together with Grace Jones' May Day he makes up one of the most dynamic villain duos in the series. On the rare occasion he gets up to some action, whether it be a chase up the Eiffel Tower or any number of romantic couplings with younger women, the results alternate from creaky to creepy. The screenplay attempts to compensate for this, saddling him through most of the story with the distinctly un-Bondian task of snooping around ornate homes and horse race events, pretending to be a journalist named James Stock. There's the occasional oddity - a ski chase scored to the Beach Boys' "California Girls," or a woman in a jacuzzi saying, " The bubbles tickle my Tchaikovsky." Mostly though, View to a Kill, Moore's least favorite Bond, stands out for just how old its star is. Moore's tenure as 007 was mostly notable for its goofiness, but his final film as James Bond is mostly a staid-to-the-point-of-boring affair. Even a burly brawl between Craig and Dave Bautista on a train feels like a callback to a far superior sequence, in a superior film. That might all be fine if said reveal didn't follow a plodding, meandering first hour that unsuccessfully mimics Skyfall's "ruined city" existentialism about the state of MI6, itself following a plodding, meandering theme song that unsuccessfully mimics its Adele-sung predecessor. More distressingly his claim to being the " author" of Bond's pain stems from the sort of cynical pandering that would bring Emperor Palpatine back in The Rise of Skywalker. That's partly due to the uninspired casting of Christoph Waltz, who could do this type of performance in his sleep. Blofeld has been Thanos-ing long before Josh Brolin snapped his purple fingers, yet his re-emergence here feels hackneyed. George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig have all followed, each giving their own spin on the British secret agent.Īll Bond movies are reflections of the cinematic landscape in which they're released, so it's not a surprise the MCU's trend of focusing on an over-arching narrative rather than the film at hand would wind up influencing 007. No. From the moment Sean Connery introduced himself as "Bond, James Bond," a legend was born, and the Scottish actor would go on to reprise the role in five entries before launching the tradition of passing the torch to the next 007. "Cubby" Broccoli), acquired the rights to 007 and released the first film in the series, Dr. Less than a decade and exactly nine Fleming novels later, Eon Productions (owned by Harry Saltzman and Albert R. The character first appeared in Fleming's 1953 novel, Casino Royale, which became a hot property for radio and television adaptations. After a long delay James Bond is back in No Time to Die, so there's no time like the present to rank his cinematic outings from worst to best. Through six Bond actors, 60 years and 25 movies, Ian Fleming's "blunt instrument" has punched, quipped, and slept his way through a wide variety of adventures in one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time. Blaring horns, smoking guns, and martinis (shaken, not stirred) have woven themselves into the fabric of cinematic iconography, with the promise "James Bond will return" a constant for multiple generations.
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