No Time To Die
100 words or less: No Time To Die felt like a decent end to the Daniel Craig era of Bond, but it definitely is not perfect. Coming into the theater I was not expecting a ton due to the disappointment that was Spectre a few years ago, but was pleasantly surprised as it wasn’t awful. Daniel Craig is actually not the best part about this movie and actually the supporting cast lift this movie up and make it one of the more unique modern Bond films.
Full Review:
I am a Bond fan, but not a die hard fan. I haven’t seen every Bond movie, not even close. I have probably seen 5-10 of the Bond movies from prior to Daniel Craig’s tenure as the titular character, spread across all of the previous leading men. That being said, I have watched all of Daniel Craig’s Bond movies as I felt like his movies were always a little more grounded in reality as he was always getting his ass kicked in the movies rather than being squeaky clean in every fight scene.
That being said, he has had two great movies and two bad movies in his tenure prior to No Time To Die, and I believe this fits somewhere in between. The plot is interesting, following a retired bond being brought back into the world of espionage and finding out the world has moved on without him. Lashana Lynch as the new 007 is great. She brings an energy to her role and the chemistry between her and Bond as two people who do not respect each other and are trying to constantly one up each other is great. Rami Malek brings a more modern villain for the Bond universe, using the ability to kill millions remotely rather than having to personally do the killing (which is a theme among this movie, that MI6 no longer knows who the bad guys are because they can’t “get in the room” with them). Ana De Armas steals her scenes as the anti-Bond girl, at first appearing to be the stereotypical Bond girl, then subverting the stereotypes by denying Bond’s advances, and kicking ass when the action starts. My favorite of the characters in Daniel Craig’s movies has always been Felix Leiter, played by Jeffrey Wright. He is just as relaxed and funny as he is in the previous movies.
The biggest disappointment for me on this movie was some of the cheesy clichés that happen towards the end of the movie. Without spoiling anything the common action hero trope of him killing hundreds of highly trained guards with ease and then that ending just seemed like they were too old school Bond for me, I wish that the ending had been just a little less dramatic.
Overall, this is a serviceable Bond film, that is much better than Spectre, but not nearly as good as Skyfall.
Also, I feel like it isn’t a review of a Bond file without mentioning the opening credits song by Billie Eilish. It was a solid song and the opening credits as always are a beautiful feast for the eyes with fun visuals fitting the theme for the movie.
7/10 Aston Martin cars destroyed exclusively for James Bond.
