“No Time to Die” ends Craig’s run with style and a solid story and action (Review)
Written by Victor DeBonis
“No Time to Die” provides a satisfying conclusion for the Daniel Craig line of Bond movies. It has a sense about how to tie up certain ends for the main characters while also providing space for building a future with whoever the next Bond may be. For those who may be unaware, I’m a huge fan of the Bond franchise. Seeing several movies from the franchise has often been a huge joy for me and my father, and I find great enjoyment from comparing which gadgets are the coolest and what each actor brings to the role and which opening sequences or villains or storylines are the best in the Bond universe. As a whole, Daniel Craig’s run as Bond has been a pretty awesome run, and this movie honors that well with good action and other ways of making you invested in the people involved at the center of the film.
Cary Joji Fukunaga directed this final entry in Craig’s time in the role. And, while I would be lying if I said that there wasn’t a part of me that wasn’t hoping to see what Sam Mendes would’ve done for this last run, since he did such phenomenal work with “Skyfall” and much of “Spectre” I do feel that Fukunaga does a solid job with helming this movie. There are several great shots in this movie, the action is well-handled, and the performances themselves are terrific all around.
Craig is, of course, great in the role, yet what’s worth noting is that his character seems to have embraced a little more of the unusual circumstances and world that surrounds him. What I mean by this is that, at the beginning, he still played the character excellently by bringing a stony grit and sense that something was very broken or wounded about him (a quality that previous interpretations of the character never had), but there were a few times when he was almost too hardened. In this final round, Craig brings a vast amount of energy and delivers some of his funnier lines with more of a grin or smirk that gives the sense that he’s become a little more used to his character facing the unusual foes or dilemmas in front of him, even if the character himself does everything in his power to avoid them. As a result, the movie is still grounded from start to finish, but it has a little more humor in certain scenes.
As always, Craig handles his action scenes like a pro. He swings with his rope and lands his driving and fight moves perfectly without any assistance, and that, by itself, deserves the highest kudos. The action scenes, in general, are great, and the camera stays focused enough on the performers to see what fight moves are delivered or allow the audience to get a solid view on where a motorcycle is speeding down.
Ana de Armas is also great in the movie. I admire how she starts off with showing a charming hint of nervousness when seeing Bond for the first time, almost similar to how a fan is viewing a rock star up close, but, when she is up against a foe, she moves with great swiftness and fires her gun with some serious skills. And, yes, she looks beautiful. Honestly, after seeing her terrific performance in “Knives Out” I’m always excited to see this actress in a movie, and it was a bit of a shame that her character wasn’t used more often in the movie.
Ralph Fiennes is once more fantastic as the person in charge of 007, and his interactions with Craig are rather humorous and reveal a likable chemistry between the two of them. Ben Whishaw is, of course, great as Q, voicing a quietness that doesn’t hold back his intense intelligence and drive for finding information and bringing all of the technical wizardry that helps define Bond’s world. Lea Seydoux plays Bond’s love interest once again from the previous movie, and her character does far more this time around in terms of how she approaches the more intense moments and what happens with her that connects her further to Bond and makes the story more interesting as a result. These new additions to the film were much appreciated, and elements with her storyline made the overall events of the movie more engaging as a result.
Lashana Lynch portrays the role of Nomi, someone who is 007 when Craig’s character doesn’t perform his duties anymore. She moves with great discipline in her action scenes, and she shares a good balance of direct assertiveness and decent comedic chops when delivering certain lines that makes her presence in the movie welcome. Similar to Armas’ character, however, she’s a cool one, but, while she does have more screen time, I feel that it would’ve been nice to see more of her, especially when she’s taking over for much of the agent’s duties in this movie.
The actor who plays the villain in this movie, Lyutsifer Safin, is Rami Malek. As far as Bond villains go, this one is alright. He’s not a boring one, but he is not a top tier terrifying menace as Javier Bardem is or a delightfully fun and egotistical dirtbag as Goldfinger is. Malek does have a haunting way of gazing and slowly speaking with an unsettling hatred towards his enemies, and he does possess a fascinating motivation for doing the devious deeds as well as a connection to a main character that makes the story more engaging than a standard Bond movie might do.
One element that I can say that I absolutely loved about the Craig era of Bond movies is that the scripts did so well in adding elements in the story to make us invested in learning more about who these characters are and what their struggles are. Think about how broken and desperate the villain in “Casino Royale” is and how he shows the most vulnerability out of arguably all the movies from this universe and how much it elevates how interested you are in seeing whether he’ll succeed at his plan or not. Or, consider how amazing it is to finally see the house that Craig grew up in his childhood days in “Skyfall” and finally see what his roots are after experiencing several movies that didn’t truly dive into Bond’s past in previous installments.
This movie, while not as great as “GoldenEye” or “Skyfall” is, continues the idea and adds elements to the story that are not only unexpected but give legitimate stakes that the heroes have to deal with as well as a legitimate element about the villain’s backstory that makes his fury understandable, even if one doesn’t agree with what his overall plan is.
The opening titles sequence of the movie is visually terrific with part of it paying small homage to previous Bond movies while still doing its own path and the rest of it bringing a colorful, surreal atmosphere that has made so many of these sequences as memorable and iconic as they are. (Rewatching this sequence causes me to wish all the more that more movies would try to have creative opening credits instead of leaving the more creative sequences at the very end, but that’s another discussion for another day.) The song is sung by Billie Eilish, and it’s a decent tune that, while not having a vaster energy, has a dream-like vibe to its melodies that makes it worth a listen. Since we’re talking about music, it’s worth noting that Hans Zimmer did the score for this movie, and it’s a nice score that delivers great melodies for a great vehicle chase but still leaves some quieter tunes for the more emotional scenes.
On top of all that, the movie concludes Craig’s run in very effective ways that not only sum up how much his character was willing to fight for what he believed in but also pay nice respect to the parts of his story from previous movies that led him to where he currently is. There are nice beats to the story that pay homage to who has been lost in previous movies and show who Craig cares about from his past and who he hates to possibly lose in his present.
I think that, at this point, I should also address a little elephant in the room and talk about this movie being the very first film that was pushed back, due to COVID. Back in February of the previous year, I remember when I was doing my job at the time, and a part of me was wondering if the movie was honestly pushing back, due to COVID, or if there were production troubles happening. This was before the whole world turned upside down, and the virus had even set foot in the United States, and the way that everything was hadn’t shifted to full insanity quite yet. Naturally, looking back then and seeing where things have led to now, it does leave an entirely different perspective when looking at this film.
This movie and a few others that were pushed back, over and over, but are now finally being released in theaters in this month and the next few months at the time of this review’s publishing, might be representative in their own way of something else. “No Time to Die” is most likely going to be recognized as one of the last few movies that was shot or completed in a pre-pandemic era, and, to me, there is a bit of an additional, somewhat bittersweet significance to that, even if it was obviously not what the movie or the other movies that are aforementioned was intending.
I’m not going to lie to you. Movies were in a very bad place for a long time, and the pandemic was so strong as it was that there was a point in which I didn’t know if we were even going to see this movie at all, let alone, on the big screen. So, the experience was all the more joyful when I finally found myself in the theater seat with a decent number of people in it and watching this well-done, action-packed film. Thinking about the circumstances surrounding when this film was being made and what events are now like with its final release have made “No Time to Die” even more special in its own way. True, it is incredibly sad to know what has unfortunately happened to the world during the time before it finally came to theaters (and how much people are still going to have to try to recover), but this movie and other upcoming movies that were pushed back and are now being released, are, in their own unexpected ways, a nice way of reminding all movie-lovers (heck, all people) to appreciate what they get to experience, right now, and have little last bits of memory of how things were before a different era came to be.
Setting aside this note about the movie, “No Time to Die” is a thoroughly enjoyable action film and a decent conclusion on Craig’s run in the franchise. Not every character gets as much presence as they deserve, and the villain, while decent, isn’t the most memorable in the Bond adversary gallery. Yet, the action is effectively done, the characters still work well, both by themselves and off of each other, and the story provides enough investment while also tying up loose ends that give nice homage to this era of Bond movies and leaving a satisfying trail for future films from the franchise to step upon.
Nowadays, when many people think about conclusions to something, it can be underwhelming or even downright disappointing. I experienced that with “The Rise of Skywalker” and “The Dark Knight Rises” and I think that part of the reason that those movies flopped for me was that they were trying way too hard to satisfy everybody and tried to be these giant conclusions but didn’t think first about how to do their stories decent justice. “No Time to Die” takes the smarter route by being a bigger movie but with more of a controlled ambition and knowing what risks to take that work and what to just do decently enough to satisfy showing what Craig has gone through to reach where he is.
Looking back, I find it bittersweet to see the Craig era end because it might be my favorite era of the franchise, in general. It provided some of the best movies in the franchise through “Skyfall” and “Casino Royale.” In fact, “Casino Royale” is right up there as one of my all-time favorite action movies, period, and I only find more to love about that film as time goes on.
As much as I love Connery’s version of the character and Dalton’s version and how great the other actors were in the role in their own ways, Craig brought a vulnerability and almost burnt-out nature that was lacking from the previous entries and made his take on the character more human and identifiable. The only other actor who came close to bringing that type of version was Timothy Dalton (whose Bond movies, “The Living Daylights” and especially “Licence to Kill” are severely underappreciated, by the way). And, in terms of the stories for these movies, most of the films that involved Craig took more chances in ways that expanded more of the universe and led to some great moments, including Waltz’s scene in the shadowy lair in “Spectre” and Judi Dench finally delivering some hard-hitting action as M in “Skyfall.” Much was learned about Bond’s story and his love interests and adversaries beyond simply doing an “agent trying to stop someone trying to infect or dominate the world” storyline.
Talented directors, such as Sam Mendes and Martin Campbell and, yes, Fukunaga, brought so much life to the franchise and did much to re-shape the action and story and characters that made this era of Bond movies a smarter and more grounded and involving run. The only entry from this era that didn’t work was “Quantum of Solace” but, as far as the other films went, even in the ones that were good but not great, they provided enough in terms of stakes and great writing and development with the characters that they truly helped bring this iconic hero and franchise to a different level.
This film and era of this franchise made me pretty happy as a longtime Bond fan, and I look forward to seeing who holds the gun and steps into the double-agent’s shoes in the future ahead. I wish Craig the best for his career, present and going forward, because, as this movie and era has shown, there’s no exact telling what will occur in the universe in this film and the one outside of it.
“No Time to Die” Grade: B+
Grade for late 2000’s to 2021 era of Bond: A