No time to die Review

 

Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga

Running time: 2 hours and forty three minutes

No Time to Die directly follows on from the last 007 movie, Spectre. Bond is once again retired, but this time he is seemingly in love with Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux). But it's not long before past events come back into play, and Bond is forced into action again.

What follows for the duration of the runtime is just about every trope you might expect from a classic Bond movie. Gadgets, action and a disfigured villain that has a secret lair. The action scenes are thoroughly entertaining without being too overblown. A thrilling car chase through Italian city Matera was the big highlight, probably my favourite part of the movie.

If you are going into this movie having not watched any of Daniel Craig's previous 007 movies, you are going to be completely lost. Unlike his predecessors, each of the Craig era movies tie into one another and all of them have in some way led into the events of No Time to Die. Which explains why this movie feels like one long goodbye to his tenure as the MI6 Spy.

The story is fairly simple and does the job but it's let down by an underdeveloped villain. Rami Malek does a good enough job as Safin, but aside from a creepy opening scene he's very much in the background until the last twenty odd minutes. And even for a Bond villain his motivations do not really justify his wider plan.

With the story shifting to a more character narrative, this is the best Bond performance Craig has given since Casino Royale. As was the case in that movie, the stakes are far higher and more personal for the character, and we see a fragility to Bond that we have not seen since then either. Lea Seydoux is also given a meatier role here, in Spectre she was little more than a damsel in distress but in this movie her importance is central to everything.

Similar to the villain, the supporting cast don't really do much until the last third of the movie, when everything dials up to eleven. I was disappointed that Ana De Amas's screen time was reduced to little more than ten or fifteen minutes, albeit with an impressive action scene. 

No Time to Die is a fitting end to Daniel Craig's Bond, it ties up his era like a bow. But an overly long run time and weak villain left me a little numb to the whole experience. If you are looking for just under three hours of entertainment you can't really go wrong here. And I think it's better than Spectre, so I can easily recommend a cinema visit.

***

I am not a huge 007 fan but I have seen every new release at the cinema since Casino Royale (which is still by far Daniel Craig's best Bond entry), so I am not an expert on the subject. But going forward I don't think they need to make the character less serious, they just need to make him less tragic.   

Verdict: 3/5