No Time to Die (2021, Dir. Cary Joji Fukanaga):
It only remains to conclude this brief in memoriam by assuring his friends that Commander Bond’s last mission was one of supreme importance to the State. Although it now appears that, alas, he will not return from it, I have the authority of the highest quarters in the land to confirm that the mission proved one hundred per cent successful. It is no exaggeration to pronounce unequivocally that, through the recent valorous efforts of this one man, the Safety of the Realm has received mighty reassurance.
Ian Fleming, You Only Live Twice
Heroes are mortal; legends are not. Yet James Bond has been both hero and immortal legend, a fixed point in a mostly fixed universe, a man locked in the present with scarcely a care for past or future. Such was the character’s allure when he first hit the big screen: who wouldn’t wish for a life lived without consequences, where one could imbibe in all the danger, sex and drink one could wish for, and emerge victorious every time?
On the other hand, 007’s imperviousness to change leaves him vulnerable to stagnation. This wasn’t an issue in the franchise’s early days, when audiences were more easily impressed—one could simply recycle the same ingredients, throw in new gadgets and exotic locales, and everyone went home happy. But after numerous movies of the same-old, Bond was flirting with obsolescence while newer, more story-driven franchises stepped to the fore (hello, Marvel).
Bond creator Ian Fleming recognized the need to throw in changeups; in his books, Bond was frequently shaken and stirred, our hero’s invincibility getting chipped away with each successive adventure. You Only Live Twice, the last novel Fleming fully completed before he died, saw Bond stricken with amnesia and wandering off to Russia, unaware that he’d sired a son with a Japanese fisherwoman. One wonders how Fleming would have continued 007’s adventures had he not succumbed to cancer. Would he have put a definitive cap on the saga? Would Bond, a man without a beginning but whose life of extremes was catching up to him, have finally gotten an ending?
No Time to Die dares to imagine a finish to this eternally unchanging story—and why not? Daniel Craig’s run as the character has been differentiated by the fact that his Bond had an actual beginning in Casino Royale (something not even the book attempted), so it seems only right to give his Bond a conclusion. Of course, the previous entry SPECTRE supplied an ending too, wishy-washy as it was: Bond driving off to an uncertain future with his latest lady love Madeleine (Lea Seydoux), seemingly content to drop everything he was in favor of something more domesticated and ordinary. For Craig’s Bond, the moment felt unearned, a cop-out. After the events from his previous movies—the lost loves, the dead friends—would Bond, haunted by his failures and staunchly loyal to the job, saunter away so easily?
Perhaps the Bond producers felt that giving Craig a sunny finish was an appropriate farewell present, given Craig’s well-publicized exhaustion with the role at the time. But after SPECTRE left a sour taste in many viewers and critics’ mouths, Craig opted for one more go-round. Thus we have No Time to Die, a rarity in the Bond cinematic canon: an entry specifically engineered to allow the actor playing Bond to go out on his own terms, rather than getting unceremoniously shuffled off the stage between movies. But would such a conceit fly with audiences after 007’s lengthy absence from the cinemas, with an extra year-and-a-half delay caused by COVID?
No Time to Die begins on notes of fatalism and finality which suggest it’ll be at least a spiritual cousin to Fleming’s You Only Live Twice. In a snowy prologue set in Norway, young Madeleine (Coline Defaud) is menaced by a killer in a Noh mask, the scene simmering with artsy slasher flick tension. Cut to the present: Madeleine and Bond are on a sun-kissed holiday to Matera, Italy, swooning in each other’s arms like honeymooners, the mood more befitting the conclusion of a Bond film than the beginning. And yet, even this cozy present is haunted by the memory of the past we witnessed minutes before. Bond, trying to fool himself into believing the worst is behind them, says, “We have all the time in the world.” Just as Hans Zimmer quotes from the John Barry song of the same name on the soundtrack, we’re reminded of the last time Bond spoke those words at the conclusion of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, when a tragedy tore him and his lover apart. Even Madeleine spells it out for us: “As long as we’re looking over our shoulder, the past is not dead.”
Sure enough, the past comes calling in the form of SPECTRE agents who ambush Bond, leading to a peppy chase through Matera’s streets, but for once, the action on screen—Bond pulling off a vertigo-inducing motorcycle jump, his Aston Martin popping donuts as it guns down his assailants—is subservient to what’s happening in our hero’s head. It seems that Madeleine might be in cahoots with his attackers, and in a moment of arresting stillness, Bond simply idles and waits while the baddies attempt to blow through his car’s bulletproof windows, Madeleine panicking beside him. Craig’s ice-blue eyes speak volumes yet reveal nothing. Is he stewing in rage against Madeleine, or himself for letting his guard down? Has he resigned himself to death, or is he still undecided on the matter? For a few seconds, all of these emotions are possible and plausible, and then the Bond we all know, the elegantly efficient killer, reemerges. But this time there’s fallout to endure, as the two lovers go their separate ways, the pre-title sequence concluding on notes of defeat and melancholy.
The rest of No Time to Die can’t match the rawness of that opening, but it trots out its share of pleasures. An enemy attack on a secret MI6 chemical lab is shot with whip-crack timing, and early scenes of a now-retired Bond in Jamaica exhibit a looseness sorely missing from the past few movies. We’ve seen Bond at work, but seldom do we get to see him at rest; when CIA pal Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) comes calling, the two quaff beers and play games at a local dive bar while Bond busts his friend’s balls, as well as those of Leiter’s new gosh-golly-gee colleague Ash (Billy Magnussen). (“Where’d you find the Book of Mormon?” Bond jeers.) Leiter has a business proposition: he needs off-the-books help to retrieve kidnapped scientist Valdo (David Dencik) from Cuba. “Come on. It’ll be like old times,” he pleads. Bond, accustomed to life in tropical limbo and without a care in the world—or anyone to really care about—is ambivalent about the prospect. But his tune changes when his latest attempted conquest turns out to be double-O agent Nomi (Lashana Lynch), who’s there to warn him off the assignment. Nomi is not just a double-O but the new 007, an insult-to-injury revelation that gives Bond the kick in the ass he needs to rejoin the game.
What ensues is the movie’s most boisterous passage, an infiltration of a SPECTRE meeting in Santiago that edges towards the carnivalesque and then the grotesque: Bond becomes an unwilling guest of honor, and then a horrified witness to mass murder when SPECTRE chieftains are eaten alive by a poison virus. Fortunately Bond has CIA spook Paloma (Ana de Armas) on hand to help extricate him from hot water, even if she’s a greenhorn with only three weeks of training (“I forget things when I get nervous,” she admits). Paloma is the closest the series has had to an anime character; bubbly and overpowered, she has a showstopping moment when she’s unleashed, and de Armas invests her with spunky charm. But even this sequence of relative levity is counterbalanced by a betrayal and a shocking murder a few minutes later. The film may be titled No Time to Die, but death is omnipresent.
The movie loses some of its mojo in the brooding second act, even as the plot snaps into focus. M (a bellicose Ralph Fiennes) has commissioned a covert program called “Heracles” to develop a deadly virus that can be transmitted through touch and target specific individuals—the very same virus that Valdo has absconded with. (Look up the Heracles myth and you’ll have a decent idea of where the film is going.) It’s around this point that the soapier elements kick in: the trail to the missing virus draws Bond and Madeleine back together, and leads him to a one-on-one with arch-villian/former foster bro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz), who’s rotting most comfortably in prison while pulling strings behind the scenes. Coming off his underwhelming performance in SPECTRE, Waltz is once again underutilized, but in his single scene he emanates far more deviousness, playing havoc with Bond’s mind to the point that the usually unflappable agent physically attacks him.
If that sounds out of character, it’s an intentional choice by Craig, who cuts loose with his rangiest performance as Bond to date. He’s always taken pains to show slivers of the human behind the imposing façade, but previous films tended to bottle him up. In No Time to Die, he’s regained the sensuousness he brought to Casino Royale, and takes it several steps further. This is a more reflective and expressive Bond, capable of goofy humor (he greets M on the phone for the first time in years with a “Hello, darling, couple of things…”) as well as full disclosure. “You’ll never see me cry,” sighs Billie Eilish in the film’s theme song, but Bond is no longer shy about letting tears flow, especially when he struggles towards a rapprochement with Madeleine. “For what felt like five minutes of my life, I wanted everything with you,” he confesses. “I’m not going to leave here without you knowing that I love you.” If you can get past the unabashed sentimentality of the words, it’s as if we’ve fast-forwarded to Fleming’s last books, in which Bond finally lays his soul bare.
No Time to Die needs Craig’s towering performance; overextended and a bit undercooked, it’s the longest Bond film by far, and in its rush to wrap up threads from the other Craig movies, it’s often perfunctory, particularly when it comes to characterization. Ben Wishaw’s enjoyably tetchy Q and Naomie Harris’s redoubtable Moneypenny get moments to shine, but the same can’t be said for Harris’s Nomi. Crisp and cool, she’s a convincing foil to Bond, but gets little to do on the film’s back end besides making phone calls and ducking out of the climax at a critical moment. (It’s as if the filmmakers are over-wary about her overshadowing the original 007.) Apart from David Dencik’s gibbering Valdo (a little of his shtick goes a long way), the bad guys are a faceless lot. Henchman Primo (Dali Benssalah) is defined only by his gimmick, an electronic eye that pops out of his skull at inopportune moments. Even primary villain Safin (Rami Malek) receives short shrift. He has the trappings worthy of a big-time baddie, including a brutalist lair that recalls old-school Bond, and as he swishes about in Asiatic garments and purrs threats in a halting monotone, Malek supplies him with a creepy certitude. Too bad most of his dialogue consists of spelling out the movie’s themes (“I could be speaking to my own reflection,” he informs Bond during a late tête-à-tête, in case we didn’t get it), and his baroque quirks, like his predilection for Noh masks, remain unexplored.
Safin: I want the world to evolve, yet you want it to stay the same. Let’s face it … I’ve made you redundant.
James Bond: Not as long as there are people like you in the world.
Like Craig’s Bond, No Time to Die is mighty unruly and messy at times, but if it isn’t as deeply felt as it could have been, it’s still one of the series’ most heartfelt entries, rich in themes and subtext. Bond has always been a blunt instrument, a weapon to be wielded, a bringer of death to everything he touches, and the movie literalizes that concept when he’s infected with Safin’s virus (death is in his blood, you could say). It says something that the greatest menaces Bond encounters in the film come from his own side: the poison virus, a volley of friendly missile fire. Maverick as ever, both serving and breaking free from his own institutions, he can only triumph by relying on himself and his makeshift family of Madeleine, Q and Moneypenny.
The film is stuffed with final reckonings galore. Madeleine, daughter of a killer, romantically involved with a killer, seeks a life outside the cycle of violence. Safin has a bone to pick with SPECTRE for murdering his family and is all too willing to perpetuate the cycle, even as he claims Madeleine, a “daughter of SPECTRE,” as his prize. Bond, more aware than ever of how he’s inextricably tied to his own “history of violence,” arrives at the opposite conclusion: to regain hold of his humanity, he must let go of everything, including possibly his own life. The need for change is driven home when he’s introduced to Madeleine’s daughter Mathilde (Lisa-Dorah Sonnet). “She’s not yours,” Madeleine insists, and even though we (and Bond) see through the lie immediately, she’s not wrong either; the girl’s best chance at life is a life without a father who’s an assassin. Those who prefer their Bonds stirring and not shaken may very well roll their eyes at this point, but although the unveiling of a daughter could have gone down like a lead balloon, Craig plays his reaction just right: amused, bemused and somehow as enigmatic as ever.
For the most part, No Time to Die is more meditative than exciting, but it knows how to bring the bluster when it truly counts. The finale is professionally stage-managed by Fukanaga, capped off with a thrilling passage in which Bond battles his way up a stairwell through dozens of thugs in a last-ditch effort to save the day, the symbolism strikingly apropos. Whereas previous entries depicted Bond sinking or falling into the depths of being a killer (bashing his way down a staircase in Casino Royale, plummeting into a river in Skyfall), here he’s on an upward trajectory, straining to redeem himself. Forget Heracles; he’s Atlas, bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders with hard-nosed aplomb.
[Warning: major spoilers ahead.]
Much will be said about the movie’s conclusion, in which Bond proves that there is indeed a time to die. Those married to the idea of an untouchable, undefeatable 007 will see it as a betrayal of the character; others will see it as a cheap grab for our emotions similar to Tony Stark’s end in Avengers: Endgame. But such is the goodwill that’s been engendered by Craig’s portrayal that just this once, such a finish seems fitting, even generous. His Bond may have been a man destined to live and die in the shadows (“An anonymous star on a memorial board at MI6,” as one character puts it in an earlier film), but No Time to Die bestows on him a legacy both familial and legendary, capped with a final line out of a fairy tale, a mother telling her daughter a story “about a man named Bond…”
For all its flaws, No Time to Die ends in rousing fashion, as Craig, the most vulnerable and paradoxically the most indomitable Bond of them all, faces his endgame with grace and serenity. “You have all the time in the world,” is his final sign-off to his loved ones, the line carrying the weight of abdication, freedom and regeneration, closing off a circle and leaving a blank canvas, as if he’s saying to his successor: Over to you, kid. Where Bond goes next is anyone’s guess. Having kicked out all the stops on the conceit of a Bond with a complete story, will the filmmakers continue to plow personal territory, or will 007 return to his former invincible lightness of being? Such considerations are for another day; after all, tomorrow never dies, as Bond might say. For now, we’re left with Craig’s exit, and an appreciation of what he brought to the role, even if his movies never quite fulfilled the promise of his game-changing approach. The man may be gone, but the myth remains immortal. Or as the end credits remind us, as always: James Bond Will Return. ■
