No Time To Die

 

The Bond Franchise is roughly in the same position as Doctor Who: they’re both roughly from the same period and have gone through stages when they’re well liked and on a high, and then have suffered from poor notices and ridicule… and specifically with Bond it didn’t continue to be all about “attempting re-entry” and those eyebrow-raised one-liners. For me the most fun Bond was Pierce Brosnan. The Daniel Craig era was sort of a re-boot, going back to the first book and giving us a dark, thuggish Bond.

As the years went by there was talk about what would come after him, and now No Time To Die is the end of the Daniel Craig era. And the film, which was pushed back because of Covid and was (like Tenet) the test of whether people would go back to the cinema. I chose not to, which is why this is pretty late but a disc dropped through my letter-box yesterday and I held my breath and played it. Two hours and forty three minutes later, I had seen what’s possibly up there with Casino Royale. I loved the breeziness of the pre-title sequence with a shocking attack which leaves a young girl as an orphan. Years later Bond is retired and enjoying himself genuinely in love. Yeah we’ve come a long way from gold paint and the title sequence—as beautifully 70s as you could want—doesn’t have silhouetted dancing ladies. And what it means to be a Bond Girl has changed. And is that means more Ana de Armas as Paloma then Bring It On. And as James Bond’s genuine love-interest, Léa Seydoux is wonderful.

This doesn’t last of course and soon Bond is embroiled in a massive worldwide catastrophe in a particularly Bond-villain way and the big baddie is a disfigured Rami Malek with the preposterous name Lyutsifer Safin. Bond is an outsider in MI6 now, and of course they have messed up spectacularly without him and the stakes are personal—and become even more personal as the story goes on. The opening with its glorious score full of airy strings music moves to a spectacular sequence in Cuba, and then Bond is in—and in with his replacement as 007 in the personage of Nomi (Lashana Lynch). Ben Wishaw is back as Q (and he is excellent, and by far my favourite of all the Q). And Ralph Feinnes’ M spars with James Bond and seems to be adrift and missing him. And so Bond is Back. Again…

The action doesn’t really let up and the plot adds considerable stakes for James Bond… thoughts of what comes next in the real film world are hard to put aside, and I’ve never really sat there wondering what will become of the character. Daniel Craig has proven himself to be a physically immense and yet vulnerable man and this film doesn’t just trot out another film where the man drinks, drives, sleeps and fights his way to securing a victory for Queen and Country. This is a film that’s as significant as the one where Judi Dench tells Bronhom’s Bond that he’s a “sexist, misogynist dinosaur. However Bond’s Aston Martin still has rotary cannons behind the headlights and a load of other weapons. James Bond will return, and will probably have a lot of the classic ingredients as well as changing to seem like it’s contemporary. As it happens this film doesn’t feel current and doesn’t feel historical either. But it’s excellent.