For Daniel Craig’s final performance as James Bond, he still has his license to kill, an Aston Martin DB5, and enough weaponry to subdue countless henchmen. This 25th installment begins with a backwoods flashback of a helpless, young girl witnessing a mysterious, masked killer stalking her and her mother, determined to seek revenge for what her father did to his family.
Accompanied by Billie Eilish’s theme song, we see a retired James Bond in Jamaica. His CIA buddy Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) asks for help tracking a missing Russian scientist. Too bad Bond’s subsequent trip to Cuba is so short. That’s where he teams up with kickass CIA agent Paloma (Ana de Armas, Craig’s co-star in Knives Out).
Bond is next seen driving through an Italian hilltop town with his girlfriend Dr. Madeline Swann (Lea Seydoux), the heroine of his 2015 Spectre. When they’re ambushed, it’s obvious that neither has been totally honest about their respective pasts. Reporting back to MI6, Bond discovers that his prized 007 designation has been given to another agent, Nomi (Lashana Lynch), and she’s not about to part with it, threatening, “You get in my way, I‘ll put a bullet in your knee—the one that works.”
Apparently, M (Ralph Fiennes) oversees Heracles, a secret project creating nanobots (DNA poisons) specifically targeted at the nation's most dangerous enemies. With help from Q (Ben Whishaw) and a detour to interview villainous Blofeld (Christoph Waltz), Bond and Nomi pursue the malevolent Lyutsifer Satin (Rami Malek) to his secret, high-tech lair. Inclusively scripted by Robert Wade, Neal Purvis, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and director Cary Joji Fukunaga, it’s episodic, action-packed entertainment. Recommended.
Read our essay on the legacy of Daniel Craig's James Bond and his impact on the franchise