No Time to Die has a lot to live up to. It’s the twenty-fifth film in the James Bond franchise and it’s the last time that Daniel Craig will play the role of Bond. It was heavily anticipated for a long time amid rumours of directors and writers leaving over creative differences and others being brought in. Everything finally seemed to be in place for April 2020, and then the pandemic happened. Eighteen months later the film is now out and the big question is, was it worth the wait?
Before I move on I will make it clear that I intend to keep this review as spoiler-free as I possibly can.
The film starts with a sequence that feels as if it belongs in a horror film, with a young Madeleine Swann being chased by a masked man calling himself Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek). There’s even a jump scare when he appears right outside the Swann residence. An opening like this isn’t much of a surprise when you consider that the director, Cary Joji Fukunaga, was meant to direct the recent two-part adaptation of IT. Swann obviously escapes from Safin unharmed since she is now in a seemingly perfect relationship with Bond, who has now left MI6. The two briefly enjoy a holiday in Matera, Italy where Bond plans to visit the grave of Vesper Lynd, but the moment is ruined by explosions, gunmen and a car chase and it looks as if Madeleine has betrayed Bond to whatever remains of SPECTRE. So he puts her on a train, and now it seems the film can really begin…
Bond is enjoying a quiet life in Jamaica when Felix Leiter (Jeffery Wright) along with another American agent Logan Ash (Billy Magnussen), whom Bond doesn’t approve of, pay him a visit with news of a terrorist attack at a secret lab in London. The only survivor was an abducted scientist named Valdo Obruchev (David Dencick) who has given Safin a bioweapon that kills certain individuals on contact. Bond accepts the mission, goes to Cuba where he once again gatecrashes a SPECTRE meeting and with the help of Paloma (Ana de Armas) captures Obruchev and takes him back to Felix. And that would normally be the end of the film… but given the nearly three-hour runtime, Bond eventually returns to MI6 and meets up with M (Ralph Fiennes), Q (Ben Wishaw) and Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) and then things can really, really start to move forward.
Daniel Craig’s been playing the role of Bond since 2006 and for his last outing he plays it in much the same way that he has in the previous four films. The main difference here is that he gets to show a little more emotion than he did in Casino Royale. At the start, in retirement, he seems to be really enjoying himself and even in the face of enemies like Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) he can show a sense of humour. And his successor Nomi (Lashana Lynch) waving her 007 number in his face doesn’t seem to bother him either.
Malek as Safin was one of the main talking points for the film. There’s no doubt that he plays the role with charisma and has the poetic dialogue that’s expected of a Bond villain. But he’s far from being among the great villains. He may not be as bad as Dominic Greene (from Quantum of Solace) but he’s certainly no Raoul Silva (Skyfall). I can’t say much about Blofeld without spoiling anything, so I will just say that Waltz feels wasted once again. He does get to embrace his inner Hannibal Lecter, but that’s what everyone thinks of when someone interviews an imprisoned psychopath. All of the other returning cast members are fine and Craig has believable chemistry with most of them, especially with Lea Seydoux who comes across as someone whose relationship with Bond is different from those who have come before her. Lashana Lynch is only really noticeable for a while, and as soon as she drops any hint of animosity towards Bond she just becomes another face.
It wouldn’t be a Bond film without multiple writers. As always there’s the duo of Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, with Fukunaga himself and Phoebe Waller-Bridge (who of course is behind the BBC spy show Killing Eve). There are a lot of action scenes, dialogue-heavy scenes and humour, with a focus on making Bond more human, definitely a staple of the Daniel Craig era.
All the usual elements that go to make a Bond film can be found here, but there are one or two things that don’t do it any favours. One of which is obviously the lengthy runtime, there’s padding for sure which felt to me especially bad in the beginning with a pre-title sequence that feels like it goes on much longer than it needs to. Also, Safin’s plan feels like something that would be more at home in a Bond film from the seventies or eighties. Any sense of making Bond grounded has more or less been lost. The attempts to change Bond’s attitude to women weren’t as noticeable as I think people were expecting. After all, the audience come to see Bond for the character and action, not to add up how many people he manages to sleep with.
There are some things that don’t seem to add up: how old are Safin and Madeleine meant to be? If he was already a grown man, supposedly at least in his late teens or twenties when Madeleine was a child, then he would have to be in his fifties or even sixties by the time of the film’s main events. Being played by Malek ensures that Safin looks fortyish.
Hans Zimmer’s score has a surprising number of nods to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, mainly in the form of the melody of the song We Have All The Time In The World being played in several scenes. But he does try to come up with some emotional music in the climax which just about makes up for any lack of originality. While I’m on the subject I will say that I think the title song is just about okay, no more. But I’m not a Billie Eilish fan and I won’t pretend to be. Johnny Marr is apparently playing guitar on the song – for someone with his reputation I was expecting him to make his presence felt but I don’t think he did.
If I could sum up No Time To Die in one word I would have to say, underwhelming. It can be applauded for pulling out all the stops and taking a few unexpected turns but it didn’t have as much of an impact as I would have liked after all this anticipation. Craig has to be respected for the effort he’s put into the role of Bond over the years, but now that he’s given up the role the question now is, who will replace him? I don’t know but it’s going to be interesting when it’s announced. I just hope that whoever is chosen gets a warmer welcome than Craig did. All I can say for now is, goodbye Mr Bond.
