Wow they really went there. They killed Bond. We can now see the Craig era has been a distillation of the Bond mythos into one linear story from his coming into his own as a 00, to his humanization, to his sacrifice. As much Bond nostalgia is woven into this film, and it's recent predecessors, these films will stand out as a completely different section of the Bond world than the rest. Whether that experiment in story telling is successful or not will have to face the test of time. It has produced some of the best Bond films ever and none of the worst.
No Time To Die is generally a very satisfying conclusion to the ongoing story. It is action packed and emotionally charged. It gives its lead a chance to truly act and play a character, not something most previous Bond actors were given the chance to do. Director Fukunaga has made an exquisitely visual movie from its incredible action sequences to the visceral responses it pulls from its audiences. He blends action with sweeping epic with a dash of horror. The film is long but never feels long. He was swept us up into his Bond myth making expertly.
But the film itself may not be as great as the sum of its parts. The plot is befuddled with a lot of loose strings attempting to be tied together that don't necessarily hold. There is just so much here and it doesn't all fit well. When thought through rationally it doesn't hold up. The villain's plan feels right out of an Austin Powers movie. But rationality is not what this is about, it's never been what Bond is about, no matter how much Casino Royale tried to push the story in that direction, Bond is Bond and what we want from Bond isn't sense.
So if you can get over some of the over-the-top-ness about this cumbersome and overstuffed film, it is a wonderful ride. You'll cheer, you'll cry, you'll sit on the edge of your seat for the full 2 hours and 40 minutes. This is big glorious cinematic escape and it gives us enough meat to chew on to make it far more than the kind of disposable instalment of the latest action franchise.
Craig truly is great here. To be fair he's been the strongest actor to play Bond in the series showing us, again in Casino Royale, that this Bond was complicated and would not just exist but be a fully realized human. This arc excels at giving him this stage. Sometimes I feel like the film just has him work through vignettes with different characters to give him a send off with each which is a plotting problem but it doesn't stand in the way of Craig giving a tour de force.
Fukunaga captures so much of what made this Bond work but also what we love about Bond back to the beginning. Zimmer's score incorporates not only Eilish's new beautiful theme but one of the most beautiful from the past to evoke that sense of where we've been, or at least the best of it. It is an attempt to be an end and while it offers us much in doing it might also get bogged down it a lot of that too.
So yes No Time To Die is worth the wait (the COVID pandemic paused it's release for 19 months) and is a fitting ending to a great run. It isn't the strongest of the run or the series but it captures what I had hoped and is a great film to see on the big screen.
Every Bond film ends with a line in the credits saying "James Bond Will Be Back." In light of this story I wanted to see if this one did too. It did.
I guess we'll see what's next...
No Time To Die
Starring: Daniel Craig, Rami Malek, Lea Seydoux, Lashana Lynch, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Christoph Waltz, Ralph Fiennes, Ana de Armas, Rory Kinnear, Billy Magnussen
Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga
Writers: Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Neil Purvis, Robert Wade, Cary Joji Fukunaga
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