The final installment of Daniel Craig’s Bond-era comes to a satisfying close with “No Time to Die.” PHOTO CREDIT: metacritic.com
“No Time To Die” is the 25th James Bond film and the final incarnation with actor Daniel Craig, which follows a retired James Bond going back into active MI6 service to prevent the villainous Safin from developing nanotechnology as a virus that can kill millions around the world.
The Cary Joji Fukunaga-directed spy film follows a good blend of the Craig-typical dramatic Bond films with a hint of over-the-top action sequences to make for an entertaining, yet messy, final adventure of this chapter of the series.
The film is trying to be a lot of different films all at once, which leads to the tone being all over the place at points. Whether it’s Bond being chased by an evil organization’s members in Italy, or him preparing to interrogate Blofeld from the previous film, “No Time To Die” constantly engages a story within its approximately 2 hour, 40-minute runtime.
While the film can be tonally inconsistent, “No Time To Die” delivers on its promise of well-filmed and consistently-interesting action sequences that always have a sense of tension to them no matter where they are in the central narrative. The only portions of the film that do feel a bit out of place is its comedy because some of the jokes feel a bit forced in their accompanying, rather dramatic, set pieces. On the other hand, Craig still proves to be a charismatic James Bond that balances a self-serious tone with some sarcastic humor as the rest of the cast give fairly good performances as well.
Lashana Lynch makes for a good complementary 007 as agent Nomi while Léa Seydoux is given a far better character arc than her initial role as Bond’s girlfriend Madeleine with a secret past.
The only slightly disappointing performance comes from Rami Maleck, who tries to be intimidating in his portrayal of the odd, yet bland, villain Safin.
What makes the film truly work is its slight sense of mystery and consistent good action sequences that make the film’s pace move pretty quickly despite many scenes of exposition in between the action sequences. While some of the editing causes a couple of scenes to feel choppy, as Bond suddenly finds a life raft out of a sinking ship, “No Time To Die” never feels boring because it is continuously working towards a suspenseful narrative. A cameo appearance from Christoph Waltz as Blofeld really takes the film to the next level, as the film does feature one twist that both deters and raises the stakes as for why James Bond has to stop Safin.
The action sequences blend the impossible nature of the plot with a nice dramatic flair due to both the good cinematography and committed performances from the cast that frequently support an update on an old James Bond plot. One of the only other disappointing factors is the lack of screentime for the main villain because Safin becomes nothing more than a source of exposition and a reason for Bond to have a final battle at the end. With its two-and-half-hour runtime, the film becomes unnecessarily complicated as Safin’s plan about expanding a virus is barely addressed.
Lastly, “No Time To Die” ends with a nice emotional moment that wraps up Daniel Craig’s tenure as Bond on a pretty good note despite the lackluster villain. Overall, “No Time To Die” is a fairly entertaining and effective spy flick with enough good action sequences and performances to make up for its convoluted plot and lackluster villain that make the film slightly messy in a narrative sense. 7/10.