LM23 Rating: See it at the theatres, but…
I can still remember watching Daniel Craig plugging No Time To Die during a guest stint on Saturday Night Live. Hard to believe that was a year and a half ago. There’s no time to die and many other things as time really does fly!
I wouldn’t say I’m a huge Bond fan in that I can remember all of the characters and all of the different plot points throughout the franchise. I can barely remember what happened in Skyfall or Spectre. I get them all confused like it’s one movie that just continues and Daniel Craig is the North Star. But James Bond is just one of those franchises that you know will be fun and full of great action sequences and you won’t be bored. Being that it’s a long weekend, it just added to the excitement and prestige of the penultimate chapter of Daniel Craig’s James Bond.
So we just got back from the movies not too long ago and I have to admit, I didn’t like the movie. There were a lot of thrills, chills, chases, stars, and even laughs packed into this nearly 3-hour film, but the parts didn’t quite all add up. Much like the latest Furious 9, No Time To Die was definitely not boring. And let’s face it, everyone is here for Daniel Craig and as long as Craig is on screen, you’re never bored. I remember when Craig took over for Pierce Brosnan and there was so much hub bub over Craig taking over the role as he was blonde and blue-eyed and short (for a secret agent).
I’m not a James Bond aficionado, and I’ve only ever seen James Bond with Pierce Brosnan, but I would say Craig’s interpretation is more gritty and realistic as a law enforcement or security agent. Brosnan’s Bond was more about the style and slickness of being a secret agent and you couldn’t imagine him being bloodied or dirtied the way Craig’s Bond was in No Time To Die.
The plot for the last version of James Bond with Craig was…I actually still don’t don’t know what happened. The movie starts off with the origin story of Dr. Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux) and how the main bad guy in the film, Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek) arrives on the scene. I had heard that the Madeleine character betrays Bond and so I thought this was the set up and explanation for that betrayal. That she will end up being a bad guy and that’s the road we’re going down.
And sure enough, one of the most intense scenes and perhaps best scenes in the movie is right at the start when a retired Bond realizes he has been betrayed by the woman he has decided to settle down for. A gang surrounds their swanky car, which of course is bulletproof, and Bond allows them to continuously shoot at them as they sit in the car as if they were using the car as target practice. Madeleine is the only one realizing they are being shot at as Bond is trying to process his betrayal. He finally snaps out of it and then flips some switches and their swanky car unleashes some built in machine guns and then off they go.
Bond drops off Madeleine at the train station and for those who didn’t hear the rumors, there is a really quick move by Madeleine where she touches her stomach as the door closes. Because I did hear about the rumor that there would be a daughter, that to me was the tip off that she was pregnant. The parting of ways was not sappy at all with great acting from Seydoux as she runs the length of the train car, trying in vain to keep Bond in her view before he vanishes.
Five years elapse and headquarters is in need of James Bond again. Now here is where I don’t really understand what is happening. We meet the new 007, Nomi (Lashana Lynch), and some familiar faces like Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), Q (Ben Wishaw), and M (Ralph Fiennes). It appears that Bond’s services are needed again as an evil scientist and his viles of deadly virus is set to kill off the world’s population and Spectre (ruled by Blofeld, played by Christoph Waltz). I can’t quite understand the connection between Blofeld and Safin. I don’t know who is it that is behind the killer virus. I’m confused about what the actual conflict of the movie is.
Madeleine and Bond have an awkward reunion in a professional setting where both need to get a name out of Blofeld. I again missed the reason why Madeleine’s services are needed. But, she has been instructed by Safin to kill Blofeld as she owes him for saving her life back in the day. What causes a lot of the confusion is that I don’t know why Christoph Waltz’s bad guy appeared only for a few minutes before he dies from the virus which Madeleine transferred from her hands to Bond’s hands. Even after Q analyzes Bond’s fingerprint and talks about some nano thing being in his bloodstream, I didn’t understand how is it that Bond didn’t die the way Blofeld did. Does Bond have antibodies? How can someone carry the virus and not die from it, but only the person they touch?
So Blofeld then goes away and Madeleine and Bond kiss and make up. I again missed how Bond realized that Madeleine wasn’t intending to betray him. This is when the cute little girl pops up who Madeleine insists is not Bond’s (for some unknown reason) before Safin drops the truth bomb that the kid is definitely his. I’m glad the writers didn’t do the whole that’s my child! Freak out scene. Bond actually never addresses the little girl as his daughter or makes any reference to the kid as being his even after he finds out the truth.
A big weak spot for the movie is that most of the great supporting cast don’t play much into the actual plot. Paloma (Ana de Armas) shows up as a cameo and a backup agent for Bond in Cuba and that’s all. She’s a new agent who only had three weeks of training and de Armas really does a great job despite having a really limited role. I love seeing team collabs during fight scenes and this scene of the movie was really the only scene when Bond is on equal footing with a team member fighting the bad guys.
The “new” 007 played by Lashana Lynch also was pretty much just a random backup team member who really is only there to make sure Bond’s woman and child are safe. The commercial made it seem like Nomi was a new young agent who can fly supersonic planes and shoot a gun and is able to do the 007 designation proud. But Nomi doesn’t do much tag teaming with Bond in the movie and just fades away once she takes Madeline and the little girl, Mathilde, to safety in the boat.
Jeffery Wright shows up as Felix and the brother from another mother to Bond. I don’t remember this character but Felix shows up in the Caribbean to connect Bond with some random American State Department employee named Logan. Logan is a forgettable character by name and by face and by acting, but he for some reason is given a crucial plot point in the film. Logan wounds Felix who eventually succumbs to the injury. Bond doesn’t want to give up on his friend even as the water rises to their chins and both are trapped in the boat which Logan had set off a small bomb to. This was another one of the film’s best scenes and another waste of a supporting character.
Ralph Fiennes’ M was also really limited although I at first thought M was a bad guy. When the virus lab is breached, M is acting all shady and secretive even with Moneypenny. M even says goodbye to Bond and kicks him out of his office. But then I’m confused when suddenly M and Bond are connected and working together again.
Only Ben Wishaw’s Q has a more integral role, but it seems like that’s by default as Bond can’t really do his job without the backup tech support from Q.
Another weak spot in the movie are the bad guys. I keep having to call them bad guys because the bad guys were barely there as well. Rami Malek was completely wasted as he looked the part and was all creepy with his bug eye stare and pot marked face, but he didn’t have much to do. His best scene was at the start of the film and that was it.
Perhaps the Achilles heel for the film is that No Time To Die kind of falls into the typical plot tropes. Somehow No Time To Die is not about a secret agent spy and international terrorism, but it’s about a guy who loves a girl and she has his kid and they can’t ever be together because the guy ends up dying.
I really thought they should have gone down the more complicate route of having Madeleine be a bad guy and okay fine, let’s keep the cute kid in there. But, maybe it can be about Bond choosing his daughter’s life over Madeleine’s as he would have to kill her. I mean, let’s do something different. And then Bond’s really capable female crew agents including Paloma and Nomi, can be the positive and strong female characters to hold him up against the bad guys. I really wish the Madeleine character would’ve moved into the background at the start of the film, so the movie could be more about Bond and the task at hand and not about his melodramatic love life.
Despite my harsh review of No Time To Die, I would definitely still recommend you see this at the theatre. It is a movie experience and is not a boring film. It just really makes no sense and it doesn’t end the way you wish it would. I think it would have been great to have Bond return to the MI-6 office to have a farewell drink with the team and then go live happily ever after.
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