I was suspicious when I heard the title.

Perhaps when you name the villain in the title, you lose the will to, die another day….well, the energy of the story. You have already popped a hole in the balloon.

There was not much left after that.

Music (sub-par, generic suspense-thump plus chase-clashing and, almost entirely forgetting the musical capital of the Bond theme), plot and storyline were average to below average. Lack of humour and wit, together with fixing a terrible yet totally boring criminal as Bond’s almost-brother, was foolish (for the future of the genre).

Had this not been a “Bond” movie I would have found it uninteresting and tedious.
Also rather lazy, was the resulting need to know previous Bond movie plots and characters to understand this one (Judi Dench’s “M” and much older Bond stories for the Blofeld connection to mention two!).

And oh, so disconnected, suddenly we see James Bond in a boat on the river Thames…we never see him get there (no jumping from the pier into a moving boat or any such active plot explanation) and in many scene to scene transitions we are forced as if suddenly seated in the neighbouring movie theatre, into the next setting.
I’ll race to see the next Bond Movie, but for the first time since the ill-fated and conveniently forgotten spoof version of Casino Royale in 1967 starring David Niven (not the “real” Casino Royale of 2006 with the first Daniel Craig interpretation of Bond), I will have some hesitation.

As any good agent knows, to be toying with 007 and hesitating…not a good idea!