No Time to Die

Ah, Mr Bond. We’ve been expect­ing you… Hav­ing been delayed first by Dan­ny Boyle’s depar­ture as direc­tor and then by the ongo­ing COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Daniel Craig’s last dance as a Double‑O agent has been a long, long time com­ing. The 25^th entry in the peren­ni­al spy saga final­ly emerges six years after Spec­tre; 24 months after prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy wrapped at Pinewood Stu­dios; six months after Bil­lie Eil­ish picked up a Gram­my for her epony­mous theme song, which topped the sin­gles chart 18 months ago. At a rump-numb­ing two hours and 43 min­utes, it is also by some mar­gin the longest James Bond film to date. No time to die indeed.

With Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) still banged up, we find Craig’s ex-British Intel­li­gence offi­cer enjoy­ing the qui­et life in Jamaica (where Ian Flem­ing famous­ly wrote the first draft of ​‘Casi­no Royale’) hav­ing part­ed ways with Madeleine Swann (Léa Sey­doux) five years pri­or. But Bond’s retire­ment plans are cut short when CIA fix­er Felix Leit­er (Jef­frey Wright) drops in to deliv­er a fate­ful mes­sage. A sci­en­tist with ties to SPEC­TRE named Val­do Obruchev (David Den­cik) has gone miss­ing, and with him the codes to a high-tech bio­log­i­cal weapon – code­name Project Her­a­cles – with dev­as­tat­ing capa­bil­i­ties. Just when he thought he was out, Bond is pulled back in. Shake, pour, repeat.

After hop­scotch­ing between var­i­ous far-flung locales, Bond even­tu­al­ly cross­es paths with part-time botanist/­full-time ter­ror­ist Lyut­sifer Safin (Rami Malek), who in time-hon­oured fran­chise tra­di­tion has a facial dis­fig­ure­ment to sig­ni­fy his evil nature, there­by join­ing the ranks of pre­vi­ous Bond vil­lains Blofeld, Jaws, Alec Trevelyan, Zao, Le Chiffre and Raoul Sil­va (alarm­ing­ly, three of these have come dur­ing Craig’s tenure). In a film which is not near­ly as pro­gres­sive as it thinks it is, this harm­ful trope lives to die anoth­er day.

While Safin’s ​‘Phan­tom of the Opera’ get-up (ear­ly on he wears a tra­di­tion­al Noh the­atre mask; a pos­si­ble nod to direc­tor Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Japan­ese her­itage) casts him as a mys­te­ri­ous, unknow­able adver­sary, he is ulti­mate­ly a rather text­book bad­die. You know the kind: an agent of chaos with child­hood trau­ma and a vague ide­o­log­i­cal motive, hell­bent on top­pling West­ern civil­i­sa­tion. Sean Con­nery said it best back in 1962: ​“World dom­i­na­tion. The same old dream.”

With the advent of every new Bond film, talk invari­ably turns to who will be giv­en licence to kill next time around. Before that mil­lion-dol­lar ques­tion is answered, how­ev­er, there are more press­ing con­cerns to address. Phoebe Waller-Bridge may have been brought in to punch up the script, becom­ing just the sec­ond woman after Johan­na Har­wood (whose work on Dr No and From Rus­sia with Love is bare­ly recog­nised today) to earn a Bond writ­ing cred­it, but it’s telling that Neal Purvis and Robert Wade are giv­en top screen­writ­ing billing. The pair have now penned sev­en Bond films stretch­ing back to 1999’s The World is Not Enough, and the sus­tained faith shown in them by pro­duc­ers Bar­bara Broc­coli and Michael G Wil­son goes some way to explain­ing the stag­na­tion that has set in over the past decade or so.

It’s not that No Time to Die suf­fers from a lack of cre­ative vision. This is the first Bond film to be shot using large-for­mat 65mm IMAX and Panav­i­sion cam­eras, and Fuku­na­ga and his pro­duc­tion team have deliv­ered a big screen expe­ri­ence in the truest sense of the phrase. There is one par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive ​‘sin­gle take’ set-piece that rivals the track­ing shot in the Fuku­na­ga-helmed first sea­son of True Detec­tive. Yet the spec­ta­cle is only half the sto­ry. For all its tech­ni­cal prowess, this is a con­tem­po­rary action-thriller with a dis­tinct­ly old-fash­ioned flavour; one eye on the future and both feet plant­ed in the past.

It is, to use an on-brand metaphor, an Aston Mar­tin chas­sis fit­ted with a Mor­ris Minor engine. An immac­u­late­ly pol­ished block­buster pow­ered by a lack­lus­tre plot and stock­pile char­ac­ters, most of whom con­tin­ue to be under­served and under­de­vel­oped. The likes of M (Ralph Fiennes), Q (Ben Whishaw) and Mon­eypen­ny (Naomie Har­ris) may car­ry a cer­tain nos­tal­gic val­ue, but they are start­ing to look as tired and world-weary as Bond him­self. Much like its recur­ring cast, then, this series is stuck in an all-too famil­iar hold­ing pattern.

You can update the cars, the gad­gets, the arch one-lin­ers, the prod­uct endorse­ments. But super­fi­cial changes count for very lit­tle when the basic quandary of why Bond exists – and by exten­sion, why Bond films still exist – remains the same. Where Sky­fall and to a less­er extent Spec­tre offered a sly com­men­tary on this exis­ten­tial theme, No Time to Die is not inter­est­ed in intro­spec­tion in any mean­ing­ful sense. Giv­en the cur­rent State of Things, and espe­cial­ly in the wake of Brex­it, it would sure­ly be apro­pos to inter­ro­gate the func­tion of this endur­ing sym­bol of British excep­tion­al­ism and (wan­ing) geopo­lit­i­cal influence.

After all, Bond is noth­ing if not a blunt polit­i­cal instru­ment – a staunch indi­vid­u­al­ist oper­at­ing with­in a cen­tralised sys­tem of state con­trol. More to the point, these films do not exist in a fic­tion­al vac­u­um. They have always reflect­ed real-world issues and anx­i­eties, be it to do with mass sur­veil­lance and data secu­ri­ty as in the pre­vi­ous two instal­ments, or bio­log­i­cal war­fare as in this case. And yet No Time to Die is not both­ered about the big­ger pic­ture. Rather, it is an intense­ly per­son­al, at times cloy­ing­ly earnest, film whose stakes are clos­er to home and con­se­quent­ly much high­er. Amid the teary long good­byes and all the talk of let­ting go, how­ev­er, it’s unclear who exact­ly we’re sup­posed to be hon­our­ing: Craig’s Bond or the actor himself.

Third-act fire­works notwith­stand­ing, there are a cou­ple of notable bright sparks. Ana de Armas’ rook­ie CIA oper­a­tive Palo­ma kicks all kinds of butt in her brief time on screen, stak­ing her claim as arguably Bond’s fiercest female coun­ter­part since May Day from 1985’s A View to a Kill (Grace Jones was at one stage set to make a sen­sa­tion­al return, only to pull out when she learned how small her part was). Lashana Lynch’s Nomi, hav­ing inher­it­ed Bond’s icon­ic code num­ber, wastes no time in estab­lish­ing her­self as one of MI6’s top agents. (Though it’s worth not­ing that after hav­ing dan­gled the car­rot of a Black 007, the film ends up doing Lynch’s char­ac­ter a dis­ser­vice by mak­ing her pay def­er­ence to Bond; a clum­sy, cringe-induc­ing moment that says a lot about where the fran­chise is at.)

And then there’s Swann, a thor­ough­ly mod­ern movie hero­ine – undoubt­ed­ly an upgrade on the sex­ist Bond Girls of old – whose expand­ed role in this film is under­mined by the glar­ing absence of chem­istry between Sey­doux and Craig. The sex appeal of both actors is unde­ni­able, but there is sim­ply no siz­zle to their on-screen romance. Per­haps due to the fact that Craig is 17 years his co-star’s senior, their dynam­ic feels slight­ly off, fail­ing to light up the screen in the way that, say, Craig and Eva Green did in 2006’s Casi­no Royale.

There is a lot to be said for know­ing when to call it a day. Before the release of Spec­tre, Craig stat­ed in an inter­view with Time Out mag­a­zine ​“I’d rather slash my wrists” than reprise his role for a fifth time. That ill-judged com­ment was pre­sum­ably intend­ed to be tak­en with a hefty pinch of salt, but in hind­sight it is all the more iron­ic giv­en the events of this film that he couldn’t re$i$t com­ing back for one last hur­rah. The sad thing is that where once Craig her­ald­ed an excit­ing new dawn for the series, he has since come to epit­o­mise its pro­longed stasis.

So how will the Daniel Craig era be remem­bered? As a large­ly enter­tain­ing if incon­sis­tent sequence of films that dragged Bond kick­ing and scream­ing into the 21^st cen­tu­ry? Or as a post­mod­ern echo cham­ber of moth­balled sto­ry­lines and sec­ond-hand iconog­ra­phy? It’s still too ear­ly to say. What is clear is that, what­ev­er deci­sions are tak­en from here, some­one needs to find a way to get Bond his mojo back. Maybe he could even (re)learn to light­en up a lit­tle. Because while the work­ing title ​‘Shat­ter­hand’ will nev­er not be fun­ny, in the end No Time to Die has all the atmos­phere of a funer­al procession.