All The Time in the World
Daniel Craig’s final kick at the Bond can sets up the franchise for another much needed fresh start – but enough with the Vesper Lynd guilt trip already.
no time to die
Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga • Writers: Neal Purvis & Robert Wade, Cary Joji Fukunaga, Phoebe Waller-Bridge
Starring: Daniel Craig, Rami Malek, Léa Seydoux, Lashana Lynch, Ralph Fiennes, Jeffrey Wright, Christoph Waltz, Ana de Armas
UK/USA • 2hrs 44mins
Opens Hong Kong Sep 30 • IIA
Grade: B
No Time to Die, Bond #25, certainly takes its sweet time in getting to where it’s going. Maybe that’s in order to better savour the end of an era. When Daniel Craig took up the mantle of MI6 licensed to kill Double-0 agent James Bond in 2006, the word on the street was that he was too short, too blond, and too homely to be James Bond, to hell with the source material. Well, fast forward 15 years and Craig has shot to the top of many a “Best Bond” list. More Jason Bourne that Imperial gentleman, his PTSD-ready Bond was one for the modern wired world (even though Timothy Dalton’s Bond dabbled in that arena in the late 1980s). What comes next is anyone’s guess – and there will be a next one (Bond worldwide box office earnings to date: US$7 billion) but for now, director Cary Joji Fukunaga has done the nearly impossible and sent Craig on his way in a fitting final chapter that’s likely to make certain grown men cry. Moonraker this is not.
Unlikely to be returning for Bond 26
Without giving too much away, this is most definitely Craig’s last spin as the venerable spy. No way does he rejoin MI6 after this. And you know what? Good. Craig’s been quoted about 6,377 times in the press about being done with Bond, he’s tired, he’s too old, it’s hard work etc, etc. And judging from the look on his face throughout most of the dreadful Spectre in 2015, he was over it then (though you can’t blame him considering the hot mess that was). He looks more engaged in No Time to Die, probably because he knows he’s done. The film starts with a flashback to future scientist Madeleine Swann’s youth, in which she witnesses her mother’s murder by Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek, and don’t hurt yourselves on the reach for that name) before picking up with Madeleine (Léa Seydoux) and her boyfriend Bond vacationing in a spectacular Italian hotel. While visiting former flame Vesper Lynd’s (yes, they’re still banging on about her) grave, some assassins come for Bond, and believing Madeleine sold him out, he dumps her and puts her on a train out of town. Cut to five years later, and when a different scientist working on a bioweapon is kidnapped, CIA operative Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) drags Bond out of retirement in Jamaica to help him find the guy. You guessed it: MI6 pulls Bond back into service, even though there’s a new 007, Nomi (Lashana Lynch, Captain Marvel), and M (Ralph Fiennes, always perfect) doesn’t want him around. The climax sees Bond, Madeleine and Safin face off in Safin’s lair, because these guys always have a lair. And we’ll just stop there.
See? Not all 007s are white guys. Problem solved
No Time to Die isn’t the best Bond film in terms of that magical cocktail of script, story, gadgetry, action and silliness – the best Bonds remain On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Tomorrow Never Dies and The Spy Who Loved Me (fight me!) – but it is among the most satisfying. Fukunaga, who’s still getting booked on gigs thanks to his magnificently opaque HBO series True Detective, emotionalises Bond to a degree not seen since Secret Service, and your tolerance for romantic regret will temper how much you enjoy No Time. The feels come at the expense of a truly memorable villain (it doesn’t help that Malek is reveaingl himself as a one-note actor), and short shrift made of welcome newcomer Ana de Armas’s Cuban CIA contact Paloma. Oh, the story is dumb as all get out – don’t start me on Bond’s retirement villa in Jamaica – but it’s Bond-y enough to pass muster. And really, no one’s hear for the story. We want to know how Craig is going to finish his tenure.
And one thing is sure: this Bond’s got balls, and kudos must be dealt to writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (who partnered on seven Bond pics starting with The World is Not Enough), Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag) and Fukunaga, who have effectively torn down the franchise and left redevelopment to the next guy. Of course, Lynch’s presence as a 007 allows the producers to squirm off the diversity hook they’ve found themselves on in the last few years. She’s not white. She’s not a man. What more do you want? And let’s face it, the semantics of “Bond” versus “007” can be bent to all arguments. It’s really quite pointless to try, and the next Bond is going to be someone like Toms Hiddleston or Hardy (who’s thuggish persona evidently isn’t as inappropriately “street” as Idris Elba’s, WTF?) and we’ll just have to deal with that. That’s fine. But more than anything, Fukunaga & Co. have managed something not a lot of filmmakers have in the last 15 years: Made us look forward to the next Bond. DEK
Let’s hope they keep some of the newcomers from this installment