Director Cary Joji Fukunaga pulls an amazing performance out of Daniel Craig for his final outing as James Bond that captures what made this version of the character the most nuanced and emotionally satisfying.
The Most Emotional Bond
When I walked out of the theater, I foolishly posted on social media that this film was going to make Bond fans cry. Many took exception to that post because of Skyfall (to be fair, I was wrapped up at the moment and hadn’t thought about the third film). Yes, people definitely cried to M’s death in the third outing. However, I will contend that this film strikes a better balance of emotional pull throughout the whole journey.
Immediately, we’re thrust into the budding relationship between Bond (Craig) and Madeline (Léa Seydoux) as they are both dealing with the shadows of their past. As much as Bond has forgiven Vesper (Eva Green) for her actions in the first film Casino Royale, he hadn’t let go of his own failures in that relationship to the point that it threatens to ruin his opportunity with Madeline. Likewise, Madeline has a secret that isn’t quite what it seems (not saying here due to spoilers). Bond’s inability to trust doesn’t allow him to properly judge the situation accurately. Throw in an untimely attack by Spectre and we have the recipe for a great relationship conflict. Now I usually dislike the idea of two characters being opposed due to a misunderstanding. In this situation, however, it’s completely based on their character’s backgrounds and issues. Based on everything we know from this version of Bond, he was always going to have a hard time lowering his guard and any threat to that process would set him back. For Madeline, her deceased father being an agent of Spectre makes any hiding or reluctance to speak immediately set off red-flags.
The brilliance here is that what I described happens in the opening minutes. It’s a showcase of how wisely Fukunaga used and executed the weight built over 4 previous films for a very satisfying opening, and it continued to pay dividends through the conclusion. Whereas Skyfall culminates in an emotionally impactful third act, No Time To Die delivers that in spades wrapping plenty of threads and ideas from the first four Craig films.
Bond Girls Are Nowhere to Be Found
While the Daniel Craig-era Bond films have always walked this interesting line when it comes to Bond girls, this film definitely pushes the idea into relegation. Ana de Armas seemed poised to be just another Bond girl that served a simple purpose, and the film goads you temporarily into believing that until it firmly pulls the rugs out from under you. De Armas’ portrayal of Paloma is super simple and quickly here and gone before you know it, but it’s impactful for the way it plays with the previous stereotype and misogyny of the previous Bonds, and says “yeah, we’re really not interested in doing that anymore.”
What hammers home that point is how Lashana Lynch’s 007 is introduced. While it’s no secret from promos and trailers that she would be playing a rival double 0, her introduction actually comes before de Armas on-screen, teasing the idea that the women in this film are characters to be reckoned with, not idly cast aside or simply used as a means to an end.
Then Lynch delivers several fantastic moments opposed to Bond, and later together once the smoke has cleared, that shows she’s clearly earned the reputation and admiration that comes from the designation of 007.
It should be noted, that development of this particular film had been in the pipeline for a long time, as far back as 2017. That’s significant because of #MeToo and a lot of media landscape changes. At Fukunaga’s urging and recommendation, Phoebe Waller-Bridge was brought into the writer’s room as Fukunaga took over the film from previously attached director Danny Boyle. I can’t say for certain how much her contributions impacted the script, but it’s clear how well they understood previous Bond tropes in order to subvert them.
A Few Minor Gripes
M (Ralph Fiennes) has a major part in the plot this go around, as his actions in the past regarding the development of some nasty weapons come into play. However, the film sort of glosses over this and doesn’t really let him have a moment where he’s truly cognizant of what he’s allowed to happen. To be fair, the movie makes it abundantly clear that what he did was inexcusable, but the finer point gets a bit washed out.
Additionally, there are a few odd moments of playing keep-away with a particular character at the end, that make more sense in a poorly constructed Roger Moore-era Bond film than this series. It was driven by a few odd choices by the villain and protagonists and unfortunately dragged out what otherwise was a very straightforward ending.
A few more moments like that creep into the screenplay where you almost lose the plot for a moment in a scene, or like M’s past transgressions, it gets repeated ad nauseam where the plot could have moved on and saved us from hearing it again.
Finally, I’m a bit torn on the villains in this film. For starters, it was great to see Christoph Waltz again as Blofeld, however, his conversation with Bond in the jail cell was rather lackluster. It could have had the energy of Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro’s coffee shop face-off in Michael Mann’s Heat. Instead, it never delivers on the promise of those two adversaries being back in the same room. The revelation we get in that scene is fantastic, but it’s executed rather poorly.
Lastly, Rami Malek’s Safin as the primary villain will be largely forgotten in the grand scheme of things. He serves his purpose well in his interactions with Madeline. But when the narrative shifts and the script needs more interaction between himself and Bond, it simply wasn’t fleshed out enough to make the moments meaningful.
Companion Piece
This fifth and final film for Daniel Craig serves as a fantastic bookend for the franchise. We’re given the chance to have solid moments with every remaining key character, from Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) pointing Bond in the right direction to ruining Q’s (Ben Whishaw) dinner and enlisting his help, while Bond firmly pushes back against M’s lapse in judgment. While it’s bittersweet losing Craig from this series and the current outlook is uncertain, the supporting cast they assembled for this series is pretty stout and should be given a long look at continuing their roles.
Like I stated before, it’s also very affectionate to the previous films, cherishing the character development that occurred in each of them and using various bits at opportune moments. That’s really where the structure of the Craig films shines brightest, keeping these individual films a bit tighter and narratively cohesive than the previous Bond entries where barely an impact is felt from picture-to-picture.
What’s perhaps more interesting is how this film pays tribute to the previous Bond films. Fukunaga stated that he first read Ian Flemings’ book “You Only Live Twice” as recommended by longtime EON producer Barbara Broccoli (daughter of Albert Broccoli; their family has produced the rights to Bond’s film property since the beginning). However, as I kept watching, I kept thinking about how much Madeline and James’ situation reminded me of the predicament in On Her Majesty’s Service.
For context, in that film, Bond is tasked with getting information on and taking down Blofeld, while also falling in love with a Spectre agent’s daughter, preventing a biological attack, and suffering a cruel attack from Blofeld. We get some similar threads, with this series Blofeld hitting James early, a biological nanobot weapon from Safin, and Madeline taking the place as a daughter of Spectre.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Fukunaga discussed his favorite Bond films as Casino Royale and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and I thoroughly believe that after watching how well this film pays tribute to those emotional beads. The icing on the cake is composer Hans Zimmer echoing the theme of Her Majesty’s in a new track titled “Good To Have You Back”. They are clearly utilizing the intro music from the 1969 film and it works surprisingly well. That’s not the only way they pay respect to previous non-Craig Bond films, but I’ll let you find those clever nods on your own.
Conclusion
Clocking in at 2 hours and 43 minutes, I saved the movie’s runtime for the end because while it may affect ticket sales, number of available showings, and overall perception of how long the movie feels, I can assure you that you won’t be thinking about any of that while you’re watching. It’s true that there some middling parts of the script that could have been trimmed, but they ultimately don’t affect the pace of this film. Fukunaga has a very particular flow he wants to maintain and wisely keeps the training moving while delivering a fantastic, fitting tribute to Craig’s time as Bond…James Bond.
Score: 8.5 out of 10