‘No Time to Die’ Review: Raise Your Shaken Martinis to The End of an Era
IN A PHENOMENAL last ENTRY to daniel craig’s 007 tenure, ‘No time to die’ DEFIES SERIES CONVENTIONS, AND TAKES BIG RISKS THAT PAY OFF BEAUTIFULLY.
An Aston Martin DB5 is surrounded by bad guys with machine guns, who are riddling the car with bullets. James Bond sits inside, protected by bulletproof glass, but the glass is beginning to fail. And yet, Bond does nothing about it, instead locked into a thousand yard stare, trapped in his mind by the realization that no part of his life is secure. He remains in this state for at least half a minute overall, before finally uttering just one word: "okay." The car's built-in miniguns proceed to do the rest of the talking for him. This is Ian Fleming's character translated more directly, more potently than a Bond film had ever done before. What Daniel Craig gets to do in this early scene from "No Time to Die", and goes on to repeat for the subsequent two and a half hours, outdoes even Timothy Dalton’s magnificent efforts to bring the literary Bond to the screen 30 years prior. The closest thing that Craig’s precursor was allotted came during “The Living Daylights,” in the wake of one of Bond’s colleagues being assassinated. “Yes, I got the message,” Dalton sneers, averting his eyes entirely from Maryam d’Abo. It’s a moment that similarly harkens back to Fleming, but is only allowed to exist for a fraction of the time, thus removing a core set of elements that made Fleming’s writing so great: patience, a pause during which Bond - and we - may take stock of the situation, a lapse of disassociation rather than instantly taking it on the chin.
“No Time to Die” is certainly not interested in being impatient. With EON Productions having to say farewell to its longest-serving Bond, they hold off the goodbye for as long as they possibly can, the film being the longest in the franchise by at least ten minutes' time. The biggest factor in the film's super-sized runtime isn't its plot - though the story is certainly "big" and has a wonderful travelogue, with the largest and most exotic set of locations in Craig's run - but instead because of the moments the film takes to breathe, even if the plot is still advancing behind the scenes. There's a certain irony in how, with Bond being years retired after the events of "SPECTRE," it's the film's addition of a replacement 007 (Lashana Lynch) that, rather than distracting, instead gives us the opportunity to have more of these moments with Bond. With 007 taking care of a side objective offscreen, for example, Bond gets to have an entire stretch of the film where he searches inward and finds his way back to Madeline Swann (Léa Seydoux).
However, when the two 007s, one of past and one of present, do get to share the screen, the results are - and in many instances quite literally - explosive. For the patience "No Time to Die" has with its story, for all the depths of Bond's soul it so often reaches into, this is a Bond film that always has its foot firmly on the gas pedal, and this is no truer than in its jaw dropping action sequences. On foot, by car, with gadget, with gun, this is not just the finest set of action set pieces ever boasted from a Bond film, they come close enough to the heights reached by "Mission: Impossible - Fallout" to buzz that gold standard of a film as it flies past. There is a oner in a stairwell that lasts at least a couple of minutes, one which must be seen to be believed, that solidifies director Cary Joji Fukunaga as an inspired choice for Bond, carrying over every ounce of the craft he displayed in "True Detective" and "Sin nombre."
But this craftsmanship is there from the first frames, in that moment where Bond finds himself in a battered vintage car with goons on all sides, in a spectacular chase all around Italy, smaller pieces of the biggest, longest cold open this series has ever known. That opening is but the first in a series of bold decisions that Fukunaga, returning Bond writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, and additional writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge make with absolute confidence and conviction. This is a Bond film with loftier ambitions than any other, and yet this team manages to fulfil every goal they set out to achieve. Whatever had to happen in the production to make this film happen, EON should look into replicating it. Waller-Bridge's work in particular leaps from the page both memorably and brilliantly, adding the right amount of levity and humor without just copy-pasting lines from past Bond films. In the process, we see all sides and layers of Bond, and unavoidably, all sides and layers of Daniel Craig.
When "Casino Royale" changed Bond movies forever in 2006, there was a serious critical push to get Craig an Oscar nomination. His work here exceeds even his debut, and consequently is the best performance any actor has given as Bond, with Craig exuding an intensity that a lesser actor would have turned into scenery-chewing ham, but also a nuance that takes all four of his previous turns in the role and builds on top of them, allowing his tenure to culminate not only with a tribute and capstone to itself, but as a benchmark for the cinematic Bond that is unlikely to be exceeded regardless of who takes the role next. Maybe it's a fools' errand to try and garner awards buzz for a franchise character, but I've never claimed not to be foolish: this deserves to be Daniel Craig’s inaugural nomination from the Academy. This is not just the James Bond of movies with a twist, this is not just a highly faithful translation of Ian Fleming from page to screen, it is a triumph of performance within a film that is more than worthy of such efforts.
Billie Eilish’s title song takes a few listens to grow on you, but Hans Zimmer’s absolutely electrifying score - one that celebrates the legacy of John Barry just as much as it keeps Bond on the modern musical palette - utilizes the song so beautifully that it means almost nothing whether or not you care for the song itself. Maybe you could still find a minute or two to trim in order to make the pace just that tiny bit smoother, but then the film would just be glossier and not true to itself. Fleming’s Bond is a fully formed man, whose life is often exposed on the page in excruciating detail, warts and all. Why should this film’s Bond get any less? No Time to Die is a monumental Bond film, an exceedingly ambitious endeavor that never truly falters, and, as one of the greatest films in the series, was more than worth the six-year wait we had to endure. It is a perfect sendoff to the perfect Bond, one who no one took seriously when he was announced, but who has since given us an unforgettable tenure in the role. James Bond will return...but Daniel Craig IS James Bond. If Ian Fleming could have seen No Time to Die, he would have wept tears of joy.