When I go to see a Bond movie I'm looking for lush music, exotic locations, evil geniuses, fast cars and/or boats and a few gadgets that aren't invisible cars. I want Bond to be swedging with villains and interacting with hot babes on a regular basis. What I don't want is Bond rabbiting on about his feelings for nearly three hours. Now, you may think I am a philistine who can't appreciate believable drama with my thrills. But the thing is that all this naval gazing which is supposed to make the character so 'real' is still co-existing with totally unrealistic action and sci-fi super-weapons. It's a case of wanting your cake and eating it too. Over-the-top action and plots don't combine at all well with constant whining. The counter argument would be if when Ken Loach made his kitchen sink drama 'Up the Junction' he had decided to include exploding helicopters and robots. If that had happened, the critics would be up in arms, saying that, while they admired the gritty presentation of working class people's lives, they were disappointed with Loach's decision to include a robot laser battle at the conclusion. Well, those self-same critics are the ones who are applauding the idea that Bond can infiltrate an evil genius's secret base, while taking time out to mope around and feel a bit sad while doing it. I'm not having it. If you can't have cyborgs in a Ken Loach drama then you sure as hell can't have a Bond with mental health issues.

Despite reservations in the kitchen sink Bond angle, I have been more-or-less on board with the Daniel Craig era films up to this point, at least to a certain extent. While I do seriously doubt I would ever re-watch any of them again before Octopussy, I did nevertheless appreciate Craig playing the part like a cold killer with a personality disorder. But the attempts to humanize him make him by making him fall in love always seemed very forced and with this final film, they have definitely jumped the shark. This probably has to go down as the worst Bond in the entire franchise. At a near 3 hours, it is ludicrously over-long, with barely a memorable character. The early stages are admittedly fairly promising, with a good pre-credits section but as the movie progresses it loses steam rapidly. The reason that the Bond films have lasted so long is that they are essentially formula films and there is nothing wrong with that. But the Craig era has essentially thrown the formula book out the window and while it was an interesting experiment in some ways, you do have to wonder if there is anywhere the franchise can go after this.

These new James Bond movies have no real connection to the original novels. Just like "Goldeneye", "Die Another Die" and "Casino Royale", "No Time to Die" is an excuse for nonstop gimmicks.

People will say that Daniel Craig's James Bond is more like how Ian Fleming envisioned the character, but seriously, hasn't the franchise overstayed its welcome mat? The original novels dealt with the Cold War, and the original movies maintained that (along with Sean Connery's coolness, of course). Never mind that the gender relations look particularly questionable in the MeToo era. But most importantly, having a license to kill amounts to executing people without trial.

My point is, stick with the Sean Connery movies and 1967's "Casino Royale".

My father was making up stories of 007 as I was falling asleep when I was a kid, so I am intimately used to the character. He is the smart and multitalented agent that saves the world from egomaniac bad guys using technology that hasn't been invented yet. He is the irresistible male who seduces any woman he wants using his charisma and physicality in exotic locations. He is the lone wolf who can move faster than the pack. Now, none of the stories in the films make much sense when you analyze them, and probably my father's stories didn't either, but No Time to Die is on a whole different level. Let's just say that from all I've said above, he only gets to save the world from technology that hasn't been invented yet.

In this film Bond is old, morose, unpleasant, haunted forever by the women he loved and lost and apparently also bulletproof and using cheat codes. His talents include having the clues come to him, him stumbling on them, killing everything he sees while being invulnerable like Jason Vorhees and, yes, controlling any device by blowing it up or pushing random buttons and then see it work. Most of the film felt like a poorly scripted video game with the load/save cycles edited out.

I have to admit that I am a bit tired of the entire franchise, but at least it kind of worked in the 80s, now it's just getting ludicrous. I don't mind that the next 007 is a black woman, but I do care about the essence of the character. You want to have 007 in current times, you have to change the formula a bit, you have to adapt things to reality, but you don't get to completely mangle the character and use plots that I would have laughed off if used as bedtime stories.

And why the hell didn't you have Ana de Armas in the film for more than 10 minutes? If I would be her, I would push for a new franchise with her working for the Spanish secret service as a superspy. I would watch 25 films with her until he gets old! In freaking Spanish. Surely they would be better than this!

Bottom line: an overly long and nonsensical blandness that ends in a "great emotional moment" that fails to work on all counts.