With fifteen years of experience and four movies already under his belt Daniel Craig returned one last time for the Bond movie of his career. Unfortunately, that film came out nine years ago with Oscar-winning Sam Mendes at the helm of Skyfall, a delightfully intense Bond film that does everything right; action, the classic sexy vibe, cinematography, suspense, and Javier Bardem was an unforgettable villain in that movie.
I wasn’t expecting another Skyfall but I was still expecting more than what I got.
No Time to Die seems to never really have an identity. In an effort to touch on the previous films, namely the disliked Spectre, the film just never found its own DNA. Rami Malek’s Safin is another Bond villain with a messed up face and an evil plan to destroy the world.
He threatens Bond with a soft, menacing tone, clearly asserting his power even though we know Bond is going to prevail…AS ALWAYS! On that note, there’s something I’d like to point out.
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!
The primary plot of this movie is stopping a chemical weapon that has the potential of killing millions. Safin (Rami Malek) wants to unleash this virus on the world (of course he does) and Bond has to stop him. They fight, it’s a bit anticlimactic, and Safin manages to crack a vial of virus onto Bond’s face.
As missiles are incoming to wipe out the factory where Safin’s evil plan was being crafted James Bond is dying. He’s literally bleeding out of his face! I felt so offended.
In the time of COVID, when over 800,000 people have perished in the US because of a deadly virus that is still spreading and wreaking havoc around the world, Bond’s method of death felt insensitive.
He ultimately took his last breath staring at a missile coming his way which we did, in fact, see blow him up so as to avoid any questions on whether he was dead or not but…I was upset. Very upset!
On another note, let’s talk about the women in this movie. Thankfully, none of them were damsels in distress.
Léa Seydoux isn’t as much a femme fatale in this one with the writers electing to make her the jelly to Bond’s PB&J. I felt like she put a lot of heart into this movie and worked harder on establishing a believable love story between her and Bond than Craig did.
And yes the age gap was painful to look at but…oh well.
Ana de Armas was okay…I guess. I don’t know why she got so much praise for what felt like an okay role.
Lashana Lynch did a good job as Nomi a.k.a 007. She was A) beautiful and B) a total bad*** but I definitely don’t see her helming her own spinoff anytime soon.
It was also nice seeing Naomie Harris’ Moneypenny return. I still wish the rest of the movies, starting with Skyfall, had committed to a highly flirtatious will-they-won’t-they dynamic between her and Bond but oh well.
All in all, No Time to Die is thirty minutes too long, quite boring, and it shot itself in the foot by connecting too hard and too long with a film that wasn’t even good; Spectre.
I’m giving this movie 85 out of 100 and 3 out of 5 stars.
I thank you for reading and I hope you have a wonderful day.
Annlyel Online 
I watched it. There were a few ties to the whole franchise, Bond falls in love, wants to settle down, bad things happen and the ladies end up dead. The change up this time that he has a daughter, and if he gets out could finally just be a normal person, except now he can’t because touching them would kill them. It wasn’t a bad Bond film, it just tied up all the loose ends so that the franchise can move forward, perhaps in a new direction.
As for him getting blown up? Well, there is dead, then there is movie dead.
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Lol. Yeah, I’d seen Casino Royale, Skyfall, and even Spectre so I saw how it was trying to connect to those movies but…it was just boring.
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It had some more memorable scenes in it than Spectre, but they were still really stuck in Dark Knight-itis long after that has worn out its welcome. Spider-Man, X-Men and Star Wars all tried to give their movies some kind of edge by “shockingly” killing off supporting or lead characters in the years after Dark Knight came out. But, as was famously admitted to on The Force Awakens, sometimes the writers just do that because they know their screenplay isn’t interesting and think they need to add shock value to it. Shock value is no substitute for a story that really works. There was really no reason to kill James Bond here other than to check a box that they did it. The story wasn’t anything so special that it felt grand enough to be his last adventure. And a story where we think the hero is going to die but he doesn’t is still more entertaining than the opposite. Then throwing up the teaser that James Bond will return really makes the whole thing feel cynical and hollow. I think this is the first time in a franchise where a hero was killed off only to have a “reboot” story promised minutes later.
As for the rest of the movie, I think it really hits a logjam when Bond goes back to see all the people in his intelligence service. What they contribute to advancing the plot is very little, things that easily could’ve been covered another way. So it just becomes fan service to get them back on the screen. Seems to me you could cut out that whole section, and just have Bond end up on the island with Ana de Armas. To lead up to his death, it makes more sense that he would be going rogue without help from his team, and therefore be more vulnerable. Getting blown up by missiles doesn’t allow for a great death scene either. It should’ve been done some other way if they had to do it.
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Oh my gosh, yes! The fan service. Seeing Moneypenny and Q was just…smh. Yeah, and that’s the thing. I’m okay with characters dying but that story definitely like one worth having such a morose ending. Like…you couldn’t just let Daniel Craig’s Bond officially-officially retire and be with his family? No, the prospect of him being happy with a family is so against the Bond code they blew him up instead after having shot and poisoned him for good measure.
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They clearly did the Force Awakens thing where his death is supposed to be shot so unambiguously that it’d be impossible to bring him back. Just seems kind of arrogant, like the director saying, I want to be the one who goes down in history as killing Bond and I won’t let anyone take that away from me. The old Death of Superman comic story line shows how you maximize the value of a hero’s death story. Make it seem convincing, then explore how the world moves on without the hero, but then use a loophole to bring him back. And if we’re going to assume you can only kill Bond one time, it certainly should’ve been more epic than this. Not just a standard Bond adventure where he happens to not get away at the end. Logan at least made it feel that it was a worthy last adventure for Wolverine. Like maybe indicate Bond has a terminal disease early on, which inspires him to take on some kind of suicide mission. So the whole movie sets out to be an epic final story rather than just throwing in a shock value death at the end.
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I think you all missed the point of the movie and the 007 franchise. It no longer will be James Bond 007. Daniel Craig is the last James Bond ever!!! and I think he did an excellent job of portraying the man the hero who has quite frankly seen all his loves and friends die leaving him all alone. Queen and country his last will and testament. The ultimate sacrifice not only for them but those he loved. Because this time he doesn’t watch them die but he saves them the country and the world by giving of himself.
IT WAS AN EXCCELENT AND FITTING ROLE AND MOVIE TO END JAMES BOND 007 BUT CREATE THE NEW FRANCHISE 007.
Now we will see not one person but different people trying to be 007 for queen and country. You can bet they will have to live up to the standards set by James Bond.
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I’m glad you liked it and thanks for your enthusiastic take.
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Problem with that theory is the end credits say James Bond will return, not 007 will return. Most people seem to think they will be rebooting and recasting Bond himself. I think even if they were going to continue it without James Bond himself, it’d be best to have his offspring take up the mantle and use the name Bond. Doesn’t seem like this story set themselves up for that though.
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