It’s Finally Time For ‘No Time to Die’
Starring Daniel Craig, Léa Seydoux, Rami Malek, Lashana Lynch, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Rory Kinnear, Jeffrey Wright, Billy Magnussen, Christoph Waltz, Ana de Armas
Rated PG-13
Action, thriller
Run time: 2 hrs, 43 min
Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga
In theaters October 8, 2021
For literal decades, there have been a handful of things synonymous with the name James Bond: young and beautiful women, martinis that are shaken and not stirred, sleek cars and an attractive man in a tuxedo. Oh, and really cool opening sequences. In respects to the checklist that must exist somewhere on a Hollywood CEO’s computer titled “How To Make A Bond Movie,” No Time To Die has all of things and more - including attempts at interjecting a bit more emotion and humanity into this larger than life fictional MI6 agent. While we in the real world know that Daniel Craig is definitely over his role as Bond, James Bond, somehow even this slightly outdated character manages to have some kind of staying power that few fictional properties have achieved.
Bond (Craig) is attempting to enjoy his retirement in various gorgeous locations - and unsurprisingly with an equally gorgeous woman, Madeleine (Seydoux) - but, naturally, things go sour pretty quickly and Bond is forced back into the game. As he unravels a mystery, possibly including a betrayal from his beloved Madeleine - who actually seems to be more to him than a flavor of the week, he pulls in a few friends. We get to see Q (Whishaw), Moneypenny (Harris), Felix (Wright) and M (Fiennes) once again in various aspects of these plots and schemes. The organization we met known as Spectre is back in the forefront of everyone’s mind, along with a new bio-weapon that could change the world as everyone knows it. Oh, and to make things even more interesting, there’s a new 007 in town, and she’s kind of a badass (Lynch).
Just like in every Bond flick, there are some highs and some lows. One surprising, and delightful, high was Paloma, played by Ana de Armas, a truly stunning, but seemingly twitchy woman who turns out to be one hell of a partner to have Bond’s 6 in a weird and dangerous situation. And as I feared, going into it, the biggest low was Rami Malek’s villain. Every word that came out of his mouth seemed like an auto-text fill in from a bot that has absorbed every aspect of a previous Bond bad guy speech and spits out a transcript. We’re simultaneously given too much and not enough information about him to make us care even a little bit as to why he’s there and what his plan is. We’re spoon-fed things that other movies would have assumed the audience was smart enough to figure out, and it starts to sound stilted and forced, which was surprising, especially considering Phoebe Waller-Bridge did a bit of a punch-up on the script. Her writing skills are obvious on some of the most well-rounded women we’ve gotten to see, but the big bad falls a bit too short.
The good thing is that everyone’s favorite things about Bond are still there. There is a truly stunning scene early on in the movie that highlights the best a tricked-out Bond vehicle has to offer, some incredible stunt fights and vaguely sinister henchmen (including one with a very evil fake eye). Seydoux’s take on the Bond girl is one with both beauty and brains, and the personality that was actually able to truly steal the famed spy’s heart. The film is far too long and could have done with some editing, but overall, it’s a fast-paced whirlwind of an action movie that’s still a great time, even if some lines still felt a little too “textbook spy film dialogue” by the time you get to the end.