Film Review: James Bond Has A Glorious End In No Time To Die
If there were two gripes with Daniel Craig’s take on James Bond, it was that he was blond and sensitive, but it was also those very qualities that made his rendition so attractive and memorable. While most Bond fans love the character for being debonair, suave, and coolly unfeeling, that last part was NOT Craig’s take. He was always emotionally embattled: torn between being the “cool, unfeeling” guy and a man that wore his heart in-between his sleeve and gadgets. While in his final movie, you feel he is the “most Bond,” including puns, unique tech, and charismatic flirtations, on October 8, No Time To Die delivers the most humanist perspective on a character that feels like a force or even a “spy-god.”
Often, we hear people say, “I have no time to live,” but, for James Bond, the true saying is “No Time To Die.” All we have is time to live, but yet we never choose to… why? For Bond, the fact that he dedicated his entire life to saving the world, but never took the time to enjoy and live in it, begins to eat at him. After all, there would always be a new villain with the same goal destroy as there would also a new hero with the aim to save. He then questions his impulse to “stay in a game” that has an addictive chase but no actual prize. Cue the flashback to his greatest love, Léa Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann.
Seydoux plays Ms. Swan like a quiet, emotional earthquake with enough solidity to introduce a new Bond we have never seen: Domesticated Bond. This guy cooks breakfast, enjoys picturesque walks, and does not mind saying, “I Love You,” with his whole chest. Yet, Craig knows how to make the “vulnerable man” also the “strong one,” but no man is without weakness, and, for him, his greatest flaw is his doubt in others. In this, again, the them of No Time To Die is found: you don’t have to kill a man to make sure he does not live. Instead, make he never trusts and, in that, he will never love. While we have seen Bond protect so many, No Time To Die is where we see him open up and allow others to have his back, love him, and even share a shaken Martini.
To be honest, the film was very nostalgic, and, in perspective, feels like a “Goodbye, Love Letter” to fans that adored Bond’s ability to weep in showers and then leap into massive, exploding car chases, of which this film has some of the best in the series. Director Cary Joji Fukunaga’s ability to switch between existential crisis to a literal, nuclear one is quite smooth, and neither ever disjoints the other to make the film feel like a tale of Two Bonds. Instead, the guy that flirts with Ana De Armas’ Paloma in Cuba can also be the guy that defends humanity in the face of Rami Malek’s Lyutsifer Safin. Two latter characters that were so INTRIGUING, but get very little screen time.
Armas’ Paloma is so charming and bubbly in her 15 minutes of screentime that I would not mind seeing a spinoff on how this “baby spy” grows to become a badass. Meanwhile, Malek gives so much in physicality and even silent, tumultuous feelings that you wish you learned more about him from him rather than typical, spy-movie recaps done through pictures and one character regurgitating his history. Their presence is so felt when onscreen, and Lashana Lynch’s Nomi is equally impressive and unpacked as the “new 007:” a role I hope to see her in the future. All be it, these are three new characters, and while one is the main foe and the others are two friends, the reality is that No Time To Die only has one, true villain ….time.
Time! It is the most precious thing that we cannot buy yet feels more valuable when shared. Now, in his final installment, Daniel Craig solidifies that out of all the Bonds, he was the most emotional and, in turn, philosophical. At 2 hours and 38 minutes, this film gets deep in action sequences, shocking twists that will leave people talking, and an overall questioning over what makes life, and thus your legacy, feel impactful and worthy: is it being the secret agent that no one knows, has stopped so many “end of the world” scenarios or is it having a few people know you so deeply that they love your forever? No Time To Die comes out October 8 In Theaters.
