No Time to Die
Written by Cameron Geiser
For a movie with a runtime over two hour and a half hours in length, I must say that I never once looked at my watch or questioned where the film was going with any single story element. For me, it was thoroughly engaging and affecting for the entire runtime. With this being not only Daniel Craig’s fifth and final James Bond film, but also the twenty-fifth one in the series, that’s a feat to be sure! We begin the story by catching up with Bond as we left him in Spectre, living a life free from the spy game with his betrothed, Madeleine (Léa Seydoux). But, alas, you can quit the spy game, but for someone like Bond, the spy game can’t quit you. It isn’t long before several ongoing ramifications from the likes of Spectre rear its ugly head once again to plague the former MI6 agent.
In my humble opinion, this Bond film has everything you might want from any given movie of his. All of the staples of the film franchise are seemingly hit on at least once. The heavily visualized opening sequence set to a silky song by a popular modern artist (Billie Eilish this time around). Check! Thrilling car chases, usually involving the 1963 Aston Martin. Check! Simple looking, and usually luxurious, gadgets. Check! Tying it all together with a villain worth Bond’s time. Check indeed! The villain of this piece is Safin, played with a soothing menace by Rami Malek. He’s got an excellent introduction that’s incredibly tense and thrilling, it establishes his presence well, with great visual flair too. Which is good as he doesn’t return until late in the film. Though he does have a secret island headquarters, and that places him among good company with Bond’s past villains.
With this being the final film of Craig’s, there was a lot to tackle and it’s all solid storytelling, but I felt as though Safin didn’t get quite as much screen time as he deserved, but he used his time well. Maybe that’s the key after all, leave us wanting more, right? Since this Bond is one of the few to have an ongoing story from film to film, there was a lot to reflect on. In fact, I would highly recommend giving both Casino Royale and Spectre a rewatch before seeing this one. There are some brilliant callbacks that are utilized with a precise efficiency that I sincerely appreciated as a fan of these films and the franchise generally.
No Time to Die is a compilation of everything that made the Daniel Craig Bond years so significant.
The cast of characters around Bond were exceedingly joyful to watch as well. Ana de Armas in particular nearly steals the show with her brief reunion with her Knives Out co-star. Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw, and Ralph Fiennes all reprise their roles from Craig’s previous adventures as Moneypenny, Q, and M respectively. There’s also a new face among the MI6 agency behind the number 007, and that’s Nomi (Lashana Lynch). There’s some fun banter between her and Bond, her character and inclusion to the mythos was a lot of fun- and it also just makes practical sense, of course the agency would move on after Bond left! What’s new this time though is a fresher sense of immediacy in the way the action scenes were shot. Every gunfight, brawl, and scramble to survive felt kinetic and nail biting. In recent years I've come to enjoy the Mission Impossible movies a bit more overall than some of Craig’s Bond films, but this one completes the perfect trilogy of Bond films in the modern era with Casino Royale, Skyfall, and now No Time to Die. For a film series focused heavily on the consequences of being Bond, this film is obsessed with that theme, and it’s a hell of a good note to go out on. Consequently, this is a Bond I’ll sorely miss, but I’m glad we had him for as long as we did.
Cameron Geiser is an avid consumer of films and books about filmmakers. He'll watch any film at least once, and can usually be spotted at the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Northern Michigan. He also writes about film over at www.spacecortezwrites.com.