It is easy to imagine the Bourne movies loomed large in production meetings the shaky handheld photography and frenetic cutting during some of these action scenes is lazily lifted from the Paul Greengrass playbook. An opening car chase is inert, and the CGI in a pursuit that begins around the 10-minute mark grows so cartoonish that the sequence eventually looks like it’s been lifted from Harry Potter. The latter point is the film’s lone shortcoming. Quantum of Solace was criticized at the time for a plot that is supposedly difficult to follow-the locations are, in order: Central Italy, London, Port-au-Prince, Bregenz, coastal Italy, La Paz, exurban Bolivia, and the Atacama Desert, followed by a coda where Bond travels to Kazan-and for action setpieces that are strangely staged and edited. But the best of the last five Bond movies is in fact the one that was roundly panned, to the point where its convoluted title has become shorthand for blockbuster disappointment: 2008’s Marc Forster-directed Quantum of Solace.

His debut, the 2006 remake of Casino Royale, and 2012’s Sam Mendes-directed Skyfall are widely considered to be among the best in the franchise’s nearly 60-year history. The consensus among critics and fans is that the Craig Bonds before this alternated between good and bad. No, not at the moment.”) No Time to Die is absurdly long and suffers from, in this writer’s opinion, a terrible third act-what if Rami Malek’s strangely ageless villain is actually meta-plotting to tank the film?-but for the most part does what it says on the poster, wrapping up the Craig era with the requisite violence and self-regarding gravity.

(This might qualify as a spoiler for that movie, but we’re talking about a man who once said, of whether he’d like to continue playing the secret agent, “I’d rather break this glass and slash my wrists. The release of No Time to Die marks the end of Daniel Craig’s run as James Bond.

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