No Time to Die Review

After 15 years and five films, Daniel Craig’s tenure as James Bond has come to an end. His last film, No Time to Die is set to be a film that will cause debate for years to come.

No Time to Die picks up five years after Spectre left off. Bond has gone into retirement, living a quiet life in Jamacia. However, a secret MI6 laboratory has been raided by a mercenary strike team, and a scientist, Valdo Obruchev (David Dencik) has been kidnapped. Obruchev resurfaces in Cuba and Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) recruits Bond to bring him in for the CIA. Bond ends up coming in from the cold, once again.

No Time to Die wanted to evoke On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Filmmakers wanted to take the franchise into new territory and is set to be one of the most divisive films amongst the Bond fandom. Like On Her Majesty’s Secret Service it will probably take a few years for the dust to settle. One of Bond’s first lines to Madeleine (Léa Seydoux) was ‘we have all the time in the world.’ That was Bond’s final line in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service which would give any Bond fan an ominous feeling. The villain’s plot involved using biological weapons which mirrored Blofeld’s plot in 1969. Even No Time to Die’s title sequence has some similarity to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service because it featured Britannia in some form.

Craig’s run as Bond has been one that has focused on character development. Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace were about Bond’s relationship with Vesper and that affected him, whilst Skyfall and Spectre were about Bond facing his past. No Time to Die aims to bring all this together and complete the emotional arc of Daniel Craig’s Bond.

Throughout the Craig era the past was a theme. This theme was continued with Madeleine Swann because the villain, Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek) was tied to her. In Spectre Madeleine tells Bond about a man who came to her home when she was young to try and kill her father. No Time to Die used this as the thrust of the plot. No Time to Die opens with a prologue showing the incident Madeleine described. Madeleine’s past with SPECTRE also plays a major part in the film’s opening which adds to two factors involving Bond’s character, his inability to trust and Bond being unable to have a happy ending.

One of the biggest issues with Spectre was the relationship between Bond and Madeleine which felt hollow. No Time to Die aimed to remedy this by making their relationship more central to the plot. During the opening sequence their relationship falls apart and the film focused on the pair regaining trust in each other. No Time to Die had a twist that was foreshadowed early on. This twist does change the dynamic and takes Bond’s character into new territory.

This change also seems to be a response to the #MeToo movement because the Bond franchise has been criticised for its treatment of women. The director of No Time to Die, Cary Joji Fukunaga, publicly said Sean Connery’s Bond was a rapist. Bond’s treatment of Pussy Galore in Goldfinger was problematic. Even during the Craig era there were some issues because Bond seduced women in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace for his own means and some have criticised Bond’s actions with Sévérine as being close to the line. In No Time to Die Bond doesn’t hop in bed with loads of different women like he did in the old films.

No Time to Die made a point of giving its female characters more meaty roles. During a lot of the film Bond partnered with Nomi (Lashana Lynch), the new 007. She was shown to be a touch, badass spy who felt like a top 00 agent.  Madeleine seemed like she could take care of herself compared to Spectre where she was felt to be like a damsel in distress. There was also Paloma, played by the brilliant Ana de Armes. This character had a smaller role, but she was a lot of fun when she was in action.

The Craig era has been compared to Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy. Batman Begins and Casino Royale were both gritty and realistic origins stories and Skyfall had a lot of The Dark Knight in his characterisation, theming, and plot. No Time to Die can be compared to The Dark Knight Rises. Both films have their main characters come back into action after some sort of heartbreak and they have brought more outlandish elements. No Time to Die had a henchman who had a bionic eye and the Macguffin of the film was a nanobot bioweapon. It was a film that shows the Bond franchise moving towards more sci-fi territory.

An early set piece saw a group of mercenaries raiding an MI6 lab looking more like a comic book or a Fast & Furious film than a Bond film. This was a group that used mini magnets as a part of their escape plan. No Time to Die’s plot involving a deadly virus being stolen from a lab and now out in the open made this Bond seem more like Mission Impossible II and Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw. The filmmakers were trying to make Craig’s final film more like a Connery/Moore adventure with elaborate set-pieces and a villain with grand ambitions.

No Time to Die does have some terrific action sequences. This was an improvement on Spectre because No Time to Die’s action had some flavour to it. The stunt and camera teams ensure the action scenes had a sense of fluidity. The prime examples of this were an action sequence in a forest and when Bond was going up a staircase fighting bad guys. It was great for people who like single-take sequences.

The biggest issue with No Time to Die was the plotting. The story got muddled because it couldn’t balance the personal storyline involving Bond and Madeline and the wider plot involving Safin. Safin was one of the most confusing villains in the franchise’s history because the question was what was his goal? His reasons for attacking SPECTRE were understandable but after that the film kept him around just because they needed a villain. Rami Malik does his best with the role and makes the character a creepy presence, but his motivations made no sense. He was not a cunning bad guy or a dark mirror character like filmmakers and the actor have tried to make him out to be.

No Time to Die has one of the most controversial endings to a Bond film. Fans are going to be conflicted for years.

No Time to Die was a big and ambitious Bond film because of its themes, focus on characters, and some excellent action sequences. However, it suffered from a story that went all over the place with pacing issues.