No Time To Die: Craig’s James Bond may be an impossible act to follow
‘You have to get rid of old things to invite in the new,’ James Bond says in No Time To Die. The movie is one of the best Bonds yet … so how to replace the 007 who is walking away?
For a while there it seemed deliberate. A piece of marketing hype. The new Bond movie, fleeing from cinema release dates, before the global Covid wave, from February 2020 to April 2020 to November 2020 to April 2021 to now. And during this time the title No Time do Die became a synonym for delayed gratification, one that suggested that any eventual viewing of the film would be the optimal achievement for the filmgoer while smartly sidelining the more fundamental question: but is it any good? And so, is it?
It’s better than good. It’s magnificent. After a stunning opening entry (Casino Royale) and three middling instalments of water-treading inanity, a Daniel Craig Bond has finally delivered on its promise. This one is all heart, a moving portrait of an antiquated hero facing his obsolescence. “You have to get rid of old things to invite in the new,” Bond says wistfully, early on, from a screenplay by the series scribes Neal Purvis and Robert Wade that has had a “polish” from Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge and which asks the audience to play a giddy game of “Oh, that’s definitely a Phoebe”.
The film is a huge thundering epic (163 minutes long) expertly directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga (of True Detective) and features a couple of audacious stylistic flourishes, including a “match-cut” that spans a 20-year time frame and a surreal party scene that revolves around a talking, all-seeing eyeball on a presentation pillow (it’ll make sense).
The mostly back-to-basics narrative, after a gobsmacking opener in the southern Italian city of Matera, yanks our beloved bruiser out of retirement for one final mission to hunt down a lethal world-threatening bioweapon. What joy! Gone is the nonsense obsession with shadowy crime syndicates that neutered the previous instalments (Quantum of Solace and Spectre especially), and instead we’re back to a charmingly old-fashioned homicidal megalomaniac called Lyutsifer Safin (played with bug-eyed intensity by Rami Malek). His interest in bioweapons is timely too, and the movie’s treatment of characters dressed in PPE, the terrifying spread of infection and the power of the microscopic enemy now seems prescient for a project that was completed pre-pandemic.
It’s visually astonishing too. Filmed by the Swedish cinematographer Linus Sandgren (La La Land), it is easily the best-looking Bond to date, with each set piece an excuse to frame gorgeous compositions with richly covered lighting: green-lit Jamaican streets, blue-lit Cuban nightclubs, red-lit interiors.
The supporting cast are flawless, with special mention for the comedy chops of Ana de Armas, playing a novice agent, Paloma, and for Ben Whishaw’s gadget man Q (who gets the best quip: “A nanobot’s not just for Christmas"). In one of the most innovative and long-awaited scenes in the entire series, Paloma responds to a “cheeky” come-on from Bond with revulsion and a scrunched-up face of disgust, silently mouthing: “Ewwwwww.” Why, the film asks, finally – after nearly six decades of formulaic Bond girls – would a beautiful and talented young woman with serious skills instantly and insatiably desire a seemingly smug middle-aged sleazebag? This is definitely a Phoebe moment.
It is, nonetheless, the central chemistry between Bond and Lea Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann that gives the drama its emotional bite and makes the final act sting. This time round it’s Bond’s vulnerability and Craig’s go-for-broke performance that balance the relationship in a credible place between desire and doubt (he doesn’t trust her, she’s keeping secrets from him, the world’s in danger and it might be her fault).
Indeed, this Bond is best when he’s less superman and more superannuated man, as in the opening sequence in Matera when a bomb blast renders him temporarily deaf and he’s suddenly at sea, and so achingly sympathetic. It’s why the film is the perfect bookend with Casino Royale. It brings the character back to where he began, in bamboozled innocence and human frailty.
Craig has been a divisive figure during this five-movie stint, from his initial casting (too blond, too small) to his dour performance style to his off-screen rants about the iniquities of the gig. Yet all sins are forgiven here. He’s a towering, charismatic presence from opening frame to closing shot, and he bows out in terrific, soulful style. His, perhaps, is an impossible act to follow.
No Time to Die (163min)
Critic’s rating: 5/5
The Times
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