Review: “No time to die” and the future of James Bond.

Farewell, Commander Craig.

*SPOILER ALERT: YOU KNOW THE DRILL. IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN “NO TIME TO DIE” STOP READING NOW!

OK? Right, we’ll continue.

I really enjoyed “No time to die”, despite some things that annoyed me. But first, the positives:

  1. This is Craig’s best performance as Bond. He comes across as a human being, and the realization that he is a father affects him. It’s also the movie where Bond has actual friends who genuinely care about him. When he and Moneypenny turn up at Q’s house, their comfort with each other (and Q casually outing himself to the audience) has a hint of Scooby Doo to it. Even M’s response on hearing they’ve been secretly working with Bond “Oh for fuck’s sake!” is more “I knew it!” than anger.
  2. There’s genuine humour in the movie of the non-clunky variety. I can’t help thinking Phoebe Waller-Bridge played a role in that. In particular the “I have something to show you.” “Is it another child?”
  3. The nods to previous movies were beautifully done. The portrait of Judy Dench evoked an “aww!” in the cinema I was in. Lesser noticed, but equally relevant, was the portrait of Robert Brown who had played M in the 1980s. The use of music from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was a nice touch, as well as speeding on a road in homage to the final tragic scene in OHMSS (where Blofeld murders Bond’s wife Tracy). Portentous, as we all realize later. One other thing: the scene when Bond kills Felix Leiter’s murderer Ash by crushing him with a car harks back to a scene in Roger Moore’s 007 days in “For your eyes only” where he cold bloodily kills an assassin by kicking his precariously balanced car off a cliff.
  4. Lashana Lynch does a solid job as the new 007, even getting the prized Use The Movie Title In The Movie scene, but the real and unexpected breakout star is Ana de Armas as Paloma, Bond’s CIA contact in Cuba, who deftly mixes dizzy almost goofball comedy (“I did three weeks training!”) with superb action scenes. The producers should use both characters again.
  5. The scenery and the stunts are superb. I personally find car chases quite boring but the ones in this are genuinely thrilling, especially the one with a bike Bond steals and pretty much drives up a wall. I almost puked.

As for the negatives:

  1. The Billie Eilish song did nothing for me. Overall, whilst I really liked Adele’s “Skyfall”, my favourite Craig song remains the late Chris Cornell’s brassy “You know my name”.
  2. Rami Malek is a fabulous actor, but his character is just a McGuffin here. Even the bio superweapon is under-utilised as to what it could do. How or why he’s doing what he’s doing is very much of the “Will that do?” variety. I was always waiting for him to look into the camera. Also, his character is given that awful thing that appears in many modern thrillers of having these long ponderous scenes where he just talks meaningless psychobabble to make the character seem deep? The film to too long, and you could edit a lot of this out without ruining anything plot-wise.

And finally, we have to address the Octopussy in the room…

There were people crying in the cinema at Bond dying, and even I got something in my eye at that exact moment. The audience was in shock, keeping waiting for him to return, to pop out of the water, to do a Sherlock and peer from behind a tree, but he didn’t. He’s dead, and the closing scene of Madeleine driving and telling her daughter about her father to Louis Armstrong’s “we have all the time in the world” left rubbing my eyes. A beautiful ending.

There’s a lovely option here for the next Comic Relief of M welcoming Bond to Heaven with a “For fuck’s sake Bond. It’s all drama with you. We could have put you in a space suit and used an electromagnetic pulse to kill the nanobots.” And Felix having a Martini ready for him…

And the future for 007? You can’t just ignore that ending and reset at the next movie, ignoring Bond’s death. It’s true that “No time to die” is mostly set five years after “Spectre”, so there is a window to set a film there, although it would be a bit weird having a different Bond chronologically (although not for the first time). Alternatively, the producers could either reboot back to the 1960s with a new actor. Check out the French OSS-117 comedies starring Jean Dujardin to see what that could look like. Or go for the old fan theory favourite and have M decide that Britain needs a James Bond (as a sort of one-man Trident deterrent) and so recruits a replacement to literally take his place. It’s not as preposterous an idea as it seems, in fact, it was sort of the plot of the 1967 comedy Bond “Casino Royale”. Personally, I think it is an interesting idea. Especially if “James Bond” is essentially a distraction to allow other agents work in the background.

Of course, then you’re into the plot for….eh…”Remington Steele”…

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