Rating of
3/4
“Cuckoo.”
Matthew Brady - wrote on 10/03/21
Well folks, after four years of its announcement and two years of waiting, the latest Bond movie is finally here, but the journey of its arrival is long, chaotic, and excruciating. Let’s rewind the clocks back a bit, back when film director Danny Boyle was supposed to direct this movie, something I was extremely excited for, since he already dipped his toes in a James Bond like project when he directed a skit for 2012 Olympics performance of "James Bond and The Queen", but he departed from the project a few months later over creative differences with the studio. Of course, the onset problems were all public knowledge when it was spread over media. And let’s not forget the classic of misfortunes, which is the release dates constantly moving around more times than Bond’s journey to aesthetic locations. The original release date was November 2019, but got moved to February 2020 after Danny Boyle departed from the project, only for it to move to April of that year, but then COVID-19 happened, making this the first movie to be delayed because of the pandemic, shifting it to November 2020, which wasn’t permanent as the world was still not in a good state of that fall, so it was moved to April 2021, but moved again to September, this time it stayed there and now it’s finally released.
So basically, this movie was hard to make, and it was hard to release. But was it worth the wait? I would say yes.
‘No Time to Die’ is the end of an era for Daniel Craig's James Bond, the Bond of my era, and what a bittersweet finale. This may come across as overly dramatic, but I feel like a little part of my life has ended, because while an older generation may have grown with the campier Bond era, I grew up with the gritty Bond era, so the fact this has come to an end is even more sad, but I guess nothing last forever.
Daniel Craig delivers one of his finest performances since ‘Casino Royale’ and ‘Skyfall’, with so much emotion, humour, depth, and passion. Despite his attitude towards the role over the years, I still think Craig brings something unique and fresh to the character that is consistent for 15 years, which is making the most masculine ladies’ man that ever guy desires to be, into a broken man with so much pain and inner loss that it makes him visually vulnerable. Showing this on screen, especially for a male character in an action series like Bond, is often ridiculed, but it only makes him more human and it’s something I always appreciated. He echoes back to Sean Connery smoothness, George Lazenby’s loss, and Timothy Dalton’s ruthlessness. Craig is so excellent in this movie that he further makes the character defined in his own image. Ian Fleming often descried Bond as a “shadow” of a person and I think Craig really makes that transparent in the series. He is one of the best Bond's ever. Whoever takes over the lead role has some massive shoes to fill, because I can’t imagine where to take the character next.
Rami Malek as the villain Safin was good but isn't in the movie that much. However, the opening sequence with him was so menacing and visually memorable, it made for a strong opening. It was like an opening to a slasher movie and no I’m not even joking.
Léa Seydoux returns as Madeleine from ‘Spectre’ and this time has a lot more to work with here, and Seydoux also delivers a great performance. The chemistry between her and Craig is much stronger this time around, as it was more loving, passionate, and complicated that by the end I did find myself caring for the two. Nothing beats Eva Green’s Vesper from ‘Casino Royale’, but it’s second best.
All the supporting cast were well utilised, especially Naomie Harris as Moneypenny, Ben Whishaw as Q, and Jeffrey Wright as Felix, who are the only people that Bond could call friends.
Ana de Armas made a strong long-lasting impression on me despite the small screen time. But I have a feeling we will see more of her soon. She was adorable but kicked a lot of ass. Ralph Fiennes is great as always and it was humorous to see him fed up with Bond’s antics. Christoph Waltz returns briefly as Blofeld and Waltz is always good despite being typecast as the villains. I did like the obvious homage to “Hannibal Lecter” when Blofeld is brought out of his high-tech jail cell for questioning and the unnerving build up to it.
That’s the weirdest part of this movie; there’s a lot of horror elements, or on paper “horror concepts. Coming to think of it, this could also apply to the previous Craig Bond movies, it’s just that now I’m starting to notice it.
The new theme song performed by Billie Eilish is both heart-breaking and Eilish’s is so in control of her singing, starting off soft in tone, then getting louder for the gut punch. The song has been out for a year now and since then I’ve listened to it multiple times, but man, I had goosebumps when the theme song started playing in the cinema. It sounded so good with cinema speakers, but the context of the song with the previous scene made it even more devastating and fitted the movie so well. The song has more depth to it now that I’ve seen it.
The cinematography by Linus Sandgren looked so gorgeous and stunning, with a great mixture of neon colours, stylising the spy genre once again. Director Cary Joji Fukunaga, like all directors should do when it comes to a film series, is keeping it fresh and exciting and he delivers exactly that.
The action scenes were fantastic and such an improvement over the previous movies. One scene that comes to mind is an action scene where Bond makes his way up a stairway but there are henchmen in the way and Bond clears them out. A couple times he runs out of ammunition, so he quickly grabs a dead henchman’s gun just in the nick of time. Another action scene that comes to mind takes place in the woods, with the foggy damp setting, and Bond taking everyone out while protecting the ones he loves. It was surprisingly intense and well done. Gunshots and explosions haven’t been this slick in a while. One long takes, great set pieces, and awesome execution that was satisfying to watch.
Also, never in a million years would I thought I would cry watching a James Bond movie, but I was wrong. Very emotional and raw in pain. As I said before, this is an end of an era.
On the other hand, the movie is a lot campier with one liners, the villains main plan and gadgets being more absurd than ever, while also connecting the previous Craig movies in the same vein, which somehow wasn't a mess despite me cringing at times It's a long movie, 2 hours, and 43 minutes to be precise, and yet there isn’t a scene that I could think of that I would remove, because there’s so much good character scenes that it would be hard to cut around it.
The movie has got some flaws, mainly the character of Nomi played by Lashana Lynch, who by the way isn’t terrible and the character itself wasn’t as annoying that I thought she would be just judging by the trailers. It’s decent banter between her and Bond throughout the movie, the classic “dick measuring contest” type of scenario. So, the issue I have with the character is how she doesn’t really need to be in this movie and how she’s written in the scenes. I would have honestly preferred if Ana de Armas character was in her place, so she can have more screen time that she deserves. As I said earlier, some of the campy one liners, while a nice little call back to the older movies, but just how it was placed was a bit eye rolling, if I must be honest. For example:
Nomi: "Hey do you know what time it is?
Some guy: "What?"
Nomi: *turns around to face him* "Time to die."
Luckily the rest of the movie isn’t like that and the writing itself is decent. And finally, I found it kind of ridiculous the amount of times Bond manages to survive an explosion, up close as well. I know the movie is going for more extreme in terms of action set pieces rather than grounded realism, but the only outcome he got from a grenade blast up close is a ringing ear drop, with the classic 'EEEEEEEEEEEEE' sound.
Overall rating: Not flawless by any means, but right now, I'm just happy that out of the final Bond movies, this is by far the strongest. Thank you, director, Cary Joji Fukunaga and Daniel Craig.
