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‘NO TIME TO DIE’ Kills Off Daniel Craig’s Reign as 007 in Sullen, Disappointing Fashion 

With No Time to Die, Daniel Craig’s run as gentleman spy James Bond has reached its final stop. And it’s with a heavy heart that I tell you that Craig’s last turn as 007 is a lumbering swan song at best; a heaving disappointment all in all, lacking in wit, memorable spectacle, even semi-logical villainy, and sensical plotting. For a near-three hour capstone to the Daniel Craig era of James Bond, No Time to Die is both overly-plotted and undercooked, too short on whizzbang set pieces and long on trying to tie up all the loose continuity of his run. It is, in a phrase, more than past the moment to let this particular iteration of the character go. It is indeed time to die.

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Out in Theaters: ‘SPECTRE’

Before 2006, it might have seemed unreasonable to list a slew of gripes and grievances over the convenient scripting and utter ridiculousness of a Bond movie. This is a character who’s faced invisible cars, bagpipe flamethrowers, underwater jet-packs, cigarette rocket darts, deadly hats, and nigh unkillable nemeses. He once even fought a giant on the moon. Historically, Bond is an over-the-top super agent less grounded in reality than the WWE (emphasis on the word ‘historically’). But upon taking up the mantle in 2006, Daniel Craig has ushered in a new era of Bond; a super-serious, no-BS generation of the beloved super spy, 007. Craig’s a Bond more comfortable with a kill than a quip; an alcoholic outsider with rage issues, and yet someone who legitimately grapples with his license to kill. His Bond has been called gritty and callous, and for good reason. He’s been equal parts savior and butcher, still reeling years after the death of Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) and regularly drinking himself into moody reticence. This modern Bond is more character than caricature; a believable emblem of super-spy badass whose cloth more closely resembles Bourne than Batman. It should come as a major disappointment then that Spectre, the 24th onscreen iteration of the infamous British agent, is a monumental slip backwards into a 00-Stone-Age of yesteryear’s lackluster Bond. Read More