Daniel Craig's last Bond film is his best.

No Time to Die, the latest (and last) installment in the Daniel Craig Bond series, should work—but it doesn't. And it shouldn't work—but it does. Why?

Why it doesn't work:

Forget "too many cooks in the kitchen"—the newest Bond outing features far too many villains with far too little motivation. From a somewhat grating scientist to a mysterious mechanical-eyed henchman, to Christoph Waltz returning as Blofeld to Rami Malek as Safin, No Time to Die is packed to the gills with vaguely connected and poorly motivated villains. 

And while criminal masterminds are sort of Bond's whole thing, there are just too many loose bits when it comes to Blofeld and Safin's machinations—and little of the oddball flair that usually characterizes their madcap schemes. 

What panache exists is spread thin throughout the supporting cast. While Ana de Armas has a memorable turn as a giddily anxious spy in Cuba, Jeffrey Wright wields his usual easy yet rough charm, and Ben Wishaw's Q gets a fun interlude where work comes knocking in the middle of cooking dinner for a date, there are simply too many characters in No Time to Die.

That's a bold claim to make about a globe-spanning superspy blockbuster, but even the talented Cary Joji Fukunaga has his hands full with the bloated list of characters. Between the unending villain parade, the MI6 crew, the return of Léa Seydoux's Madeleine Swann, new spy Nomi, Felix, and Felix's new tagalong, Billy Magnussen's all-American Logan Ash, the pace drags, no matter how many locations Bond drags us along to. For a retired lone wolf, Bond sure has a lot of friends. 

Why it does work:

Daniel Craig. Craig's Bond has always been about the play between a kind of brash, stoic masculinity and the surprisingly young, bruised, weirdly hopeful person behind the cocksure eyes, and nowhere does that shine better than in No Time to Die. 

To maintain that strange dance, you sense that, like a shark, Bond has to keep swimming. Both Craig and the writers' great and beautiful achievement in No Time to Die is how they push Bond faster and harder than ever before, winding the mechanism and tightening the noose—and then, instead of driving him to a breaking point, you watch what happens when a man like that chooses to stop swimming. 

The great "why" of Bond's choices is the other thing that works so well about No Time to Die. From his comfortable brotherhood with Wright's Felix Leiter to his aching ties to Seydoux's Swann, Bond's relationships run through his choices like seams of precious metal. They inform his course in delicate and brutal ways, drawing him closer and closer to the increasingly inevitable climax. The beauty and drama of it make the whole film, as film writer Fran Hoepfner stated simply: "opera." 

There are other good things—the film itself is gorgeous, for example. Two-time Chazelle collaborator Linus Sandgren was Director of Photography on this outing, and lucky us. The colors are rich and sultry, and our characters are all shadow and line, close-ups and fog. 

The new theme song and title credits work beautifully, with Billie Eilish serving as the perfect chanteuse and creator for this last, theatric outing.

So sure, the villains are bland and copious. Absolutely, there are too many balls in the air, and not enough of them are near shiny enough to excuse it. And yes, it feels every bit like the 2-hour and 43-minute movie it is.

Go see it anyways. 

And please, let us know your thoughts in the comments!