Rami Malek is absolutely fine as Safin but is stuck with a rather conventional Bond villain with a hideous disfigurement, thick accent and a kitchy concrete island lair that any Thunderbirds baddie would die for. He also has some impenetrable plan to do something terrible to millions of people with DNA-targetted nanobots. Why is absolutely never explained.

It’s symptomatic of a plot that moves storylines and characters around, retroactively working backwards from the operatically overblown finale, solely with the intention to give Bond lots of feelings and then make the audience feel them too.

It just doesn’t succeed and much of that lies with an uneven and undercooked script that can’t decide on pacing or tone and is too often trite. For example, the repeated use of classic Bond theme lyric “we/you have all the time in the world” is sweet the first time, becomes a bit twee and then when it is delivered at the end, is unbearably cheesy. It made me cringe at a moment when I was supposed to be feeling all the feelings in the world. 

Too many conversations, and there are many, are loaded with self-awareness of how amusing, meta or profound they are. The deeper dramas don’t hit hard enough while some of the gags  (the groantastic “it blew his mind” in particular) feel like rejects from Arnie’s Terminator school of punchlines. 

Also, yaknow, make up your mind if Bond is a grizzled warrior, mopey lover or arched-eyebrow funster.