- Rating:PG-13 (Sequences of Violence & Action|Brief Strong Language|Some Disturbing Images|Some Suggestive Material)
- Genre:Action, Mystery & Thriller, Adventure
- Original Language:English
- Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga
- Producer: Michael G Wilson; Barbara Broccoli
- Writer: Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Cary Joji Fukunaga, Phoebe Waller Bridge, Scott Z Burns
FILM REVIEW BY FRANZ AMUSSEN
BOND fans the world over will rejoice with this week’s release of the much-delayed No Time To Die, the 25th official chapter of the British spy franchise, which began back in 1962 with Dr No.
The film was slated for a 2019 release but that, of course, was way before Covid, but what it lacks in punctuality the movie makes up for in screen time, with Daniel Craig’s swan song as 007clocking in at 2 hours and 43 minutes. Craig officially becomes the longest-tenured actor to inhabit James Bond (15 years) but this is only his fifth outing as the character. Also returning are Christoph Waltz (as SPECTRE head Blofeld) and Lèa Seydoux (as Bond girl Madeleine Swann). But Waltz is eclipsed by a new baddie, Rami Malek, as the wonderfully named Lyutsifer Safin, with Lashana Lynch making an impressive debut as the British agent who inherited the 007 number after Bond retired.
Also new to the series are director Cary Joji Fukunaga and co-screenwriter Phoebe Waller-Bridge. The incredibly talented English creator of TV’s Fleabag and Killing Eve.
The movie opens with the grisly origin story of Madeleine, before cutting to her life with Bond in idyllic retirement in Jamaica. From there, inevitably, our hero gets pulled back into the cut and thrust of international intrigue, first venturing to Italy to avenge the death of former love interest Vesper Lynd and thence into an intercontinental struggle with Safin who has hijacked an MI6 scheme involving nanobots and DNA sequencing that left me confused with the science but happy to enjoy the usual Bond landscape of beautiful islands, laboratories, secret hide-outs, fascist monologues and lots of running and shooting.
No Time To Die comes to life in fits and starts, usually through some robust direction of quick action beats from director Cary Joji Fukunaga. Waltz provides his usual compelling on-screen presence as Blofeld, but Malek feels a tad underused, his heavily-accented, scarred and monologue-prone villain seeming like nothing more than a badly stitched amalgam of the 24 others who have come before him.
At the center of the film though is Craig, who makes his final bow as the kind of world weary but lethal presence all Bond films demand. Just like the character he portays, his best years may be behind him, but he’s still leaving us wanting a little bit more.
