No Time to Die (2021)

 Score: 4 / 5

One of the first movies to be shelved after the pandemic shut everything down in early 2020, the latest Bond movie is finally on the glorious silver screen. It's also the final outing of Daniel Craig as 007. I'm not, strictly speaking, a fan of the whole James Bond thing, but I've found Craig's tenure as the character to have borne five excellent films, each of which has made me rethink my general disinterest toward the franchise. And this one is a fabulous way to end it, though it does require that viewers have seen at least the previous film to make much sense. Actually, really, it's a culmination of all the previous ones; when Casino Royale exploded onto our screens in 2006, it revitalized a franchise for younger generations who needed action and a different kind of sex appeal. While even these movies didn't add anything new to spy thrillers generally, they carved out a nice niche of intergenerational interest and wrote the most interesting chapter yet in the saga of one of the oldest franchises around.

The twenty-fifth Bond film (isn't that wild?), entitled No Time to Die and featuring a haunting song of the same name by Billie Eilish, takes its beautifully paced time to set up the finale of Craig's iteration of James Bond. Beginning with a flashback that gives us some re-introduction to Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), the film seems to center her as Bond's romantic endgame. We then cut quickly to present-day Italy, where James and Madeleine are vacationing; he briefly departs to visit the grave of his original love interest, Vesper Lynd, before coming under attack by Spectre agents. It's a thrilling opening sequence, with an extended chase and shoot-out in gorgeous Matera. Suspecting Madeleine of treachery, he sends her tearfully away, and then begins the mournful theme song.

See, I told you it requires viewing other installments. Specifically Spectre, although it's helpful to have a working knowledge of the others, too.

Bond goes off the grid into an early retirement of isolation in Jamaica, and lives there (or at least ends up there) for apparently five years. But when a bioweapon called Project Heracles -- a virus mobilized by nanobots that can be programmed to only attack certain DNA -- is stolen by terrorists, Bond is approached twice in the same day for help. First by his friend, CIA agent Felix (Jeffrey Wright) and a new guy named Logan (Billy Magnussen), then by his MI6 replacement, the new 007 named Nomi (Lashana Lynch). Bond's distrust of M (Ralph Fiennes) and his obvious secret knowledge about the new threat pushes him to team up with the Americans. It helps that Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) and Q (Ben Whishaw) are still on Bond's side and help out a lot.

The film's gorgeous cinematography by Linus Sandgren (First Man, La La Land, Battle of the Sexes) paints a beautiful canvas for all these players to thrive, and for the most part director Cary Joji Fukunaga (True Detective, 2011's Jane Eyre, Beasts of No Nation) lets each player shine in their solo scenes. Perhaps my favorite scene in the movie takes place when the team infiltrates a Spectre meeting in Cuba, a birthday celebration for Bond's incarcerated arch-nemesis Blofeld (Christoph Waltz). Bond teams up with Paloma (Ana de Armas), a CIA agent, to find the scientist who developed the virus. Her energy and style steals the entire movie, despite her extremely limited screen time, which can't have been more than 15 or 20 minutes. Also of note, Nomi is a wonderful new character, but her role as, simply, the new 007 is quite limiting; I fear that the producers and writers used her to experiment on audiences to see if people would accept a Black woman as "Bond," and now I fear that the character's un-dynamic role in this film might prevent them from experimenting any further. It feels more like lip service and fan service than about any artistic integrity. But, then, we are still talking about another James Bond movie.

Other problems I had with this one? Well, first and foremost, I was sorely disappointed by the villain. Blofeld finally meets his end, but it's a pretty miserable one that felt unsatisfying. But Rami Malek's new character (I can't remember how it's spelled, but it sounds like "Lucifer") is almost pathetic, not even really showing up until after the halfway point and then hardly doing anything afterward. He monologues through a thick accent and menaces a child and vaguely wants to destroy the world and he just feels like any other Bond villain ever. Javier Bardem's terrifying Raoul Silva in Skyfall was the exception, and Craig deserved a better villain for his final outing. Then again, perhaps Craig's self-tortured take on the character might have been such that Bond himself is ultimately his own bad guy, and in this movie the climax certainly forces him to come to terms with his own willingness to fulfill a mission and also live a happy life. My other problem with this movie is the same as with Spectre in that I don't like watching Seydoux; she is utterly vapid on screen and has no chemistry with Craig (or anyone else) at all.

My own complaints included, No Time to Die is a really good time at the movies and fittingly ends this series on a solid note. I look forward to future viewings of the five Craig 007s because each has some really fascinating and fabulous choices, even for someone like me, who had never seen a Bond movie before Casino Royale and now, frankly, doesn't feel a need to see any others.