He’s convinced M knows more about the new threat than he’s letting on (of course, he does), but at least Bond’s still got Q ( Ben Whishaw) and Moneypenny ( Naomie Harris) helping him behind the scenes. He’s been replaced at MI6 by a new 007 named Nomi ( Lashana Lynch) and James doesn’t really trust M ( Ralph Fiennes). The deadly theft of a weaponized virus that can target a specific person’s DNA brings Bond back to the fold, although he’s first aligned with the CIA via Felix Leiter (a wonderfully laid-back Jeffrey Wright) and a new face named Logan Ash ( Billy Magnussen). (It totally had me pre-credits.)īond blames Swann for what happened in Italy, convinced she betrayed him, and it leads to a repeat of the “ Skyfall” arc with James off the grid five years after the prologue. Is this a hint that the creators of “No Time to Die” are going to blow up their foundation and give Bond new definition? Not really, although the extended chase/shoot-out sequence that follows is one of the film’s best.
You don’t really have to have seen the previous four films, but it will be almost impossible to appreciate this one if you haven’t (especially “Spectre,” to which this is a very direct sequel).Īnd so, of course, we start with Vesper, the love of Bond’s life from “Casino Royale.” After a very clever and taut opening flashback scene for Madeleine Swann ( Léa Seydoux), the film catches up with James and Madeleine in Italy, where he’s finally been convinced to go see the grave of the woman who continues to haunt him. “No Time to Die” seems cut more from the Marvel Cinematic Universe model of pulling from previous entries to create the impression that everything that happens here was planned all along. Long gone are the days when a new Bond movie felt like it restarted the character and his universe as a standalone action film. Even as it’s closing character arcs that started years ago, it feels like a film with too little at stake, a movie produced by a machine that was fed the previous 24 flicks and programmed to spit out a greatest hits package. All of the boxes that need to be checked seem to drag down “No Time to Die,” which comes to life in fits and starts, usually through some robust direction of quick action beats from director Cary Joji Fukunaga, but ultimately plays it too safe and too familiar from first frame to last. It would also help a bit to clean up some of the mess left by “ Spectre,” a film widely considered a disappointment.
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Everyone knows that this is Daniel Craig’s last film as Bond, and so “No Time to Die” needs to entertain on its own terms, provide a sense of finality for this chapter of the character, and even hint at the future of the spy with a license to kill. Sometimes it’s a relief when the clock ticks down to zero.After months of delays, the 25 th official James Bond film is finally here in “No Time to Die,” an epic (163 minutes!) action film that presents 007 with one of his toughest missions: End the era that most people agree gave new life to one of the most iconic film characters of all time.
And though there’s a vaguely socialist theme of wealth redistribution running through the film, it’s never clear what the final goal is for the two time bandits in love: Are they looking to abolish the time-is-money system altogether, or just eke out a few more years for the downtrodden? By the end of this stiff, plodding movie, I was no longer engaged enough to care. This vision of the future as an extended jeans commercial could have been the starting point for a critique of our culture’s fear of aging, but we never learn why the invisible powers-that-be first decided to institute this cruel form of time-based capitalism. There’s an occasional child here and there, but no gray hair, no wrinkled foreheads, not even any schlumpy clothes-apparently even in the hardscrabble time-ghettos of the future, everyone can afford to spend their hard-earned minutes at Diesel. Maybe part of this movie’s essential flimsiness has to do with the fact that everyone in sight is not just 25 years old but as slim and attractive as if they’d just walked out of an L.A.
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