No Time to Die – Member reviews (Spoilers!)

Films No Time To Die (Spoilers)
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20. “It’s a pleasure to be here.” (SPECTRE, 2015)

Exiting a Silver Wraith upon arriving at Blofeld’s oasis in the desert, Bond engages in a polite charade with suited employees. A silver tray is extended, which Bond places his firearm on. The sequence is a serious foray into surreal escapism, evoking 1962’s Dr No. It’s fun, played straight and doesn’t feel out of place.

19. Dirty martini (Casino Royale, 2006)

Le Chiffre’s henchwoman Valenka spikes Bond’s martini, and if it weren’t for a conveniently placed defibrillator inside his Aston Martin DBS and Vesper’s intervention, Bond would be a dead man. This tense scene puts our hero in genuine peril, giving the franchise a greater sense of danger and consequence. Upon recovery, Bond again takes his seat opposite Le Chiffre and breathlessly states, “I’m sorry, that last hand, nearly killed me.”

18. Forest fight (No Time To Die, 2020)

After spending time at Madeleine’s childhood home, Bond speeds his old flame and newly discovered daughter Mathilde away from a convoy of Safin’s heavily armed men. Luring his prey to an eerie forest, Bond strategically dispatches his enemies and leaves traitor Logan Ash for last. A highly effective use of sound helps make this sequence a standout.

17. Washing away the pain (Casino Royale, 2006)

Vesper is Craig Bond’s first serious love interest, and this is one of their most important scenes together. A traumatised Vesper sits under the shower after witnessing a brutal fight between Bond and a machete wielding Obanno. Showing he is more than a heartless thug, Bond joins her under the water and soothes her troubled mind. A scene that adds considerable emotional depth to Bond’s character.

16. Changing carriages (Skyfall, 2012)

Craig may be a more rugged incarnation of 007, but he is not without a sense of style. After using a digger to cut open a train carriage, Bond jumps down into the opening and adjust his cufflinks. Pierce Brosnan’s Bond would adjust his tie, showing that the actor may change, but the character’s DNA remains the same.

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Finally saw it tonight. Not really going to “review” it or assign it some kind of arbitrary rating, as I know that my initial thoughts on Spectre are laughable to go back and read now.

Initial thought is… what in the world did I just watch?

No Time to Die is about the most mixed bag of a Bond film I can recall seeing. There’s some truly great stuff in here. And then there’s some of that stench left over from Spectre that at times makes this one a hard pill to swallow.

What I liked:

  • Ana de Armas: without question, the highlight of the film. The whole Cuba sequence was the unqestioned highlight of this, and it’s in large part to Armas’ work. That this franchise has relegated the likes of her and Gemma Arterton to extremely minor support characters is borderline criminal. Given the nature of the end of the film, I’d be down for a Nomi and Paloma team up in the next film.

  • Lea Seydoux: as usual, I thought Seydoux was fantastic. A great performance in what is further fleshed out from Spectre to be a modern day Tracy character.

  • Jeffrey Wright: his Felix is another highlight of this. He manages to make Felix as cool as Bond, something I don’t think that any actor who has portrayed the character to this point has been able to say, granted I realize that is exactly the point of the character in the first place.

  • Shoutouts to the least popular Bonds: loved the fact that Lazenby and Dalton were referenced, albeit indirectly, at the end of the film. I found it quite satisfying, and somewhat hilarious, that the Craig era ends on a shot of Madeleine driving away in Dalton’s Aston Martin while “We Have All the Time in the World” starts to play.

What I didn’t like:

  • The Story / Storytelling: this is the biggest problem going against this film. There’s not much to this story, and certainly not enough to justify a nearly three-hour run time. It all clips along at a fairly nice pace, I must give it that, so kudos to Fukunaga and the editors who put it together, but the story is just a bunch of nonsense. Perhaps I’m just fatigued by the pandemic, and I know that its not the fault of anyone at EON since this was in the can before Covid began, but watching Bond racing to try to stop a “virus” (yes, I know it’s not really a “virus”, but for all intents and purposes, it is) gives the film about as much escapism as a CNN report. There are other aspects of the story that I’ll get into in other bullet points, but I also don’t feel as though this is a story that’s told particularly well either.

  • Safin: this is essentially a Bond film without a villain. They managed to take one of the biggest problems with Spectre and double down on it, which is to give the film’s villain little to no screen time. I know that it’s certainly more than this, but it really feels like Safin only has about ten minutes of screen time in a nearly three hour film. The case can, and I think 100% correctly, that M is the real villain of this film. Safin just has too little screen time, and is almost comically non-menacing in what little time he does get.

  • Bond having a kid: the actor playing the child was fine. I’m not going to say anyting negative about her. She played the part she had quite well and should be commended for it. However, with that said, there is a reason that they left this concept on the cutting room floor for Quantum of Solace. Just saying.

  • The Stakes: intellectually, I understand what the stakes for the world are in this particular scheme that we’re witnessing. The problem is, the film never conveys this on any sort of an emotional level. Everything is on a character level, which is needed to a large degree, but in a film that is a finale, and in one in which the villain’s scheme could literally lead to human extinction, that is something that needs to be conveyed. Bond’s “if we don’t do this, there will be nothing left to save” sounds very on point in the trailer, but falls completely flat in the film. What this film really feels like is that we’re witnessing Bond, Nomi, and Felix putting their lives on the line to cover M’s ass.

  • M: they really turned this character into a joke in this film. When you really examine it, M is the real villain of No Time to Die. Take him away, and literally none of this nonsense happens. Have him arrested early in the film, then perhaps things get resolved differently, as this film is simply a story about a government figure getting caught doing something heinous and then enlisting his minions to cover it up for him. The fact that he still has a job at the end of this film is beyond astounding. He should have been sitting in a cell just like Blofeld’s. I was on board with Fiennes returning as M, as I love the idea of him as that character, but (and this is no fault of Fiennes, as he’s simply reading the words given to him) they taint his character so badly in this one that I’m not sure that he can come back in a rebooted franchise, even if it’s as a different person holding the M designation.

  • Felix’s death: it’s a perfectly fine moment in the film, but given that there’s little to no follow through later in the film on it, it feels like a shocking moment simply to have a shocking moment.

  • The Ending: I’m OK with the idea of them killing Bond. Really, I am. But, if you’re going to do it, you have to do it right, and this aint it. Bond needs to go out in a better way than this. The nano-virus thing was so silly from the outset that it never, as constructed in the film, could have earned the right to kill off Bond. If you’re going to go this route, it should be to a truly great and memorable villain, instead of Bond getting put down by this guy who is only in the film for about ten minutes and has the menace of a wet dish rag. And then to have it literally be a rocket to the face. I mean, really, come on. It’s also going to put a damper on things moving forward. If Safin could take out Bond, then Bond dying is literally on the table for every other film moving forward, as I can’t imagine that Bond will ever face a more lame villain than that ever again.

  • The Blofeld Scene: what in the world was that. Perhaps one of the worst acted scenes in the entire franchise. One of the legacies of the Craig era will be the absolutely idiotic manner in which SPECTRE is handled within the story. There were a couple of moments in the film where I felt like Craig almost forgot, or didn’t care, that he was playing James Bond and instead did something else. This was most prime example.

I will say that there are probably other positives that I can come up with. Despite the overwhelmingly negative tone of this “review”, I overall did enjoy the film, but it’s not the outright masterpiece that Casino Royale continues to stand up as. It’s a film that I feel like gets you to enjoy it to some degree because it makes you feel as though you’re watching something that’s meant to be great, but it never quite hits the heights that you want it to hit. There are quite a few good bits in the film, but it feels like they’re mostly contained to within the first half of the film. Once Safin becomes an on screen presence, it almost feels as though he sucks all of the life out of this thing completely. The one thing that I will say for certain out of this first viewing is that, unless there is some hidden genius in the performance that I’m just not getting, Safin easily goes down as the franchise’s worst villain. Had they instead framed this story around M being the proper villain of the film, then I think they would have been on to something.

This is all a bit rambling, I’m aware, but it’s late and I’m still trying to really process what it was that I just saw.

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Completely agree with the Blofeld scene. I have no idea why someone in prison can gloat at someone who isn’t, for a start. And Blofeld is finally killed in a Bond movie, and it’s quite lame, really. I’d have preferred it if they’d dropped him down a chimney stack… :wink:

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15-11 of my countdown.

15. Definitely the same desk (No Time To Die, 2020)

The most charged briefing between Bond and M in franchise history. You can feel the tension as both characters exchange barbs, resulting in Bond’s unrepentant departure from the office while tossing of his visitor badge in Moneypenny’s bin. This is the type of tour de force acting that defines the Craig era.

14. Bathroom brawl (Casino Royale, 2006)

A far cry from the days when he was mocked for wearing an inflatable buoy to his introductory press conference in 2005, Craig bashes and crashes his way through a bathroom against dirty agent Fischer, setting the tone of his era early and proving to audiences he is not one to be messed with, culminating in an unforgettable spin around gunshot that morphs into the colourful main title sequence.

13. Lighting the fuse (Skyfall, 2012)

We all know how much Bond loves his cars, so when his Aston Martin DB5 is destroyed by Silva, the gloves really come off. With nothing left to lose, Bond lights the fuse on the gas canisters that will destroy his childhood home, including the enemy forces surrounding it. “I always hated this place,” muses Bond, showing that while the past can haunt him, it does not hold him back in the present.

12. Cuba (No Time To Die, 2020)

A sequence of pure fun with Bond teaming up with rookie agent Paloma, who more than holds her own against an onslaught of attackers. Bond manages to fit in a couple of vodka martinis throughout the battle, managing to secure his target of Obruchev and also borrows his replacement 007’s plane in the process.

11. Time to get out (Quantum of Solace, 2008)

We are thrown right into the middle of arguably the best high-speed chase the Bond serieshas ever put to film. After a bumpy ride, Bond stops his Aston Martin DBS in Sienna, pops the boot and reveals his shaken passenger: Jesper Christensen’s Mr White.

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I found this scene quite odd and a bit jarring. On James Bond Radio they described the scene as feeling like Craig and Waltz were rehersing and just trying things out and I agree with that sentiment. As soon as Madeleine leaves the room it all just feels and looks… odd. Craig’s acting is hokey and feels completely different to the character he’s playing before and after the scene.
I’m afraid that I really dislike Waltz’s Blofeld. I think it’s a combination of both script and performance. His performance and character in NTTD did nothing to improve my opinion of him in Spectre and it brought all of his bad qualities from that film into NTTD. Which is why I’m not phased by his underwhelming death… it was probably all his Blofeld deserved.
And yes, unfortunately after such a wait I think the return of SPECTRE was very lacklustre. Wish they just stuck with Quantum.

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Thank you for your measured review, glad to learn you finally saw the movie.

I had reservations about it after my first viewing, too. Mostly due to what I wanted and what I got.

But I would predict that what happened to my appreciation of NTTD afterwards will happen to you, too.

This film stays with you. And you will want to see it again. And suddenly things will make more sense and probably even persuade you of its greatness.

If not, that‘s totally fine, of course. :wink:

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Having slept on it, I think the film is at its strongest in the first half. That’s where it felt truly special. It felt like a Bond film, but it still felt completely different at the same time. It had that kind of oddness to it that made it feel like something that could have come from Fleming. The bionic eye at the SPECTRE meeting being a primary example of that. My first thought was ‘what in the hell is this’, but then when you roll with it, it’s a delightfully absurd idea that somehow just works.

The whole Cuba sequence is just a masterstroke, and then the bit following it on the boat with Bond and Felix interrogating the scientist. Again, a scene that feels Bondian but something completely different at the same time. This was a moment in the film where the stakes felt appropriately high.

It’s when Safin makes his non-masked introduction that it begins to fall apart. It’s meant to be a creepy character, but that is an aspect of him falls flat. He instead comes across as a inferior Dr. No wannabe. It’s from there that the film really loses its footing. In theory, it should be a movie about saving the world, but it really comes across as just Felix and Bond having to die in order to save M’s ass. That’s really what it all boils down to, and that’s what makes his death at the end not really work. I could almost, and emphasis on almost, buy it if it were Judi Dench’s M. Maybe he’d give up his life to protect her, but I don’t buy it for Mallory. It’s also something that shouldn’t have happened against the backdrop of the silly nano-virus plot. The concept on paper is one that is indeed quite frightening, but it’s not executed well and ultimately, in the film, comes across as more silly than menacing. It’s interesting, though, that they chose to take Bond out by referencing back a bit to Greene’s confrontation with him in Quantum of Solace, that Bond must choose to sacrifice himself because, in this case quite literally, everything he touches would “wither and die”.

In short, the first half contains some brilliant stuff. Some really great stuff. The skeleton of an epically great Bond film is there. What it’s missing is a good villain (seriously, Safin is perhaps the worst we’ve gotten so far) and a more serious bent to the villain’s scheme. The film itself is serious, because it leans into the melodrama that has come to define the Craig films, but this focus on everything happening at a character level robs Safin’s scheme of its potential to be the most frightening scheme to appear in a Bond film to date. This is a film where the entire world is literally at stake, but the film itself never makes you feel that way. You can only get that if you intellectually understand what he’s trying to do and then manufacture the necessary emotional weight on your own. This is something that the film should do for the viewer, not force them to do some extra work on the side while the proceedings are still going on. We get only the slightest hint of this with the computer simulation of the virus’ spread. There needed to be more of that, more clear indication that human extinction was on the table this time around

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I agree that Safin was not the strongest of villains and could have been enhanced but the second half of the movie is less about your typical Bond tropes and more about Bond’s march toward his final destiny.

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Hey Dalton, I’m sorry you didn’t like it the first time out. Hopefully, it will grow on you. I’ve now seen it 9 times and have enjoyed it each time, always being emotionally moved by it. A couple of points you make I’ll comment on:

Madeleine Swann I’m glad you too support Lea Seydoux as she does a fantastic job with this. The more I think about it, the more I think she’s one of the better Bond women. She’s patient, smart, loving. True, she and Daniel Craig don’t have onscreen chemistry, but I don’t think that’s her fault. The way she plays with his hair in the Aston Martin, the look on her face when she nods no to Bond that it’s not her betrayal as bullets are pounding into the windows of the car, the gut wrenching scene when Bond puts her on the train. I really respect her performance and think it’s one of the best.

M Yes, he’s the villain here. But to arrest him (presumably the British government doesn’t yet know why the island was destroyed) would take the finale in a whole other direction, ala Clear and Present Danger, but NTTD is about Bond. Also, I kind of see the appeal of Heracles to Mallory. He’s seen what happened to M in Skyfall when the agent list is stolen, and wants to avoid collateral damage to his agents. But he bypasses the law to do that. If Bond had survived, opening the next with Bond’s assassination attempt on M would be a nice continuation of this story thread. Only no amnesia this time, Mallory had to face justice.

Safin I think the villain is fine, and while I think Rami Malek did a great job, Safin needs to be more physically menacing. You don’t believe he can take Bond in a fight, like Silva. He is sufficiently creepy though, and somewhat sympathetic as he lets both young Madeleine and Mathilde live. He identifies with children that have lost everything, even though he’s the one taking it from Mathilde.

Virus It was really prescient of the writers to come up with a plot that hit far closer to home than any other Bond villain plot. I think had they wrote this during or after the pandemic, there’s no way they would have chosen this storyline. But having the film in the can right before COVID hit has made NTTD linked to this time in human history more than any other Bond film. This may horribly date it over time, but then I believe the characters’ story will carry it through.

For what it’s worth, I like the Blofeld scene. We got his death, the “Die, Blofeld Die!” line, and Bond’s hands on his throat. Watching that whole scene from Madeleine spraying the perfumed virus on her wrist, why she won’t shake his hand and how he interprets that emotionally, Bond grabbing Madeleine’s wrist, to Bond’s hand on the rail, until finally he grabs his neck and we know that spells Blofeld’s doom, was chilling.

As for Bond’s child, I feel as though EON has given us Fleming from beginning to end with Craig’s run. From Casino Royale to TMWTGG/OHMSS/YOLT’s elements, even with a nod to Bond as a simple fisherman. Only the cinematic Bond knows he’s a father, and Fleming’s literary version never did, even though the mother in both bore his child without informing him of his fatherhood.

The parts of NTTD that people like–Cuba, Felix, the car chases, the lair–have been done dozens of times before in the other 24. So I like NTTD for giving us something different–Bond’s love interest returns, a new 007 and female at that, his child, his death. I think it all works. We’ve gotten the revenge flicks in LTK and QoS that DAF failed to deliver. You made a great point about the final scene honoring both Dalton and Lazenby. I really appreciate how NTTD took all the tropes of Bond, and OHMSS and LTK in particular, and inverted them.

But I’m ready for a straightforward Bond by the book adventure next.

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Good points all around.

I disagree on three:

That is entirely subjective and always just projects what one personally think.

Why? Great Bond villains in previous films did not pose a physical danger, and that made them even more creepy. The fact that Bond cannot win against Safin by physically overpowering him actually makes Safin more threatening and Bond overpowered.

Why? The virus in NTTD is nothing like Covid-19, and no similarity with real life makes any film less powerful.

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To answer your three whys, and I don’t really think we’re in disagreement here, either:

I like Madeleine better than Vesper. But Eva Green and Daniel Craig have more chemistry. Maybe it’s the banter early on, though I never bought that Bond fell for her. I just accepted it over multiple viewings. But the more time I spend with Madeleine, the more I see why Bond left the service for her.

Safin’s threat is more psychological than physical. I’ll grant you that. And perhaps that’s why CJF chose to open the PTS as a horror film.

People will interpret NTTD’s virus plot as tied to Covid whether intentional or not. Or more to the point, casual fans. I have no problem with it. In fact, I enjoy it more than the Russian villain idea Danny Boyle pitched.

I enjoy NTTD very much. It’s my favorite Bond film. I enjoy all its choices, but acknowledge other people’s differences with it.

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Like many Bond movies, the first half is the best. Same can be said of Skyfall, Moonraker, Goldfinger…

By the way, I have long thought that it’s time a Bond movie began with a more low-key PTS and actually saved the best stunts until the last 20 minutes. If the wonderful TWINE boat chase had been the end, with Bond chasing Renard, for example, and finishing off with Bond shooting the gas canisters of the hot air balloon, that would have made that movie more impressive.

There are not many Bond movies that finish with a truly exciting climax. Octopussy probably has the best final 45 minutes, and also final villain scene.

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I agree about Octopussy, also Licence to Kill has probably the best climax in the series.

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I agree about it being less about the traditional Bond tropes (but boy, did they lean hard into the Dr. No vibes there), but my feeling is that if you’re going to kill off Bond, then there has to be a formidable foe putting him in a position where he concludes that his only choice is to stay on the island. Between the silliness of the nano-virus, at least as it is presented in the film, and the almost complete lack of a villain in the film, I don’t think that anything is present in the second half of the film that is compelling enough to force Bond into that situation.

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No Time To Die passed $750 million global box office this weekend. I think there is still an outside chance of it reaching $800 million, but it will probably remain as the third highest grossing film of the franchise behind Spectre and Skyfall.

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I may not be following you exactly but at the end he had become his own family’s unstoppable killer. He had no choice but to off himself. He had become the villain.

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I understand why, in the context of what happens in the film, why he decided to stay on the island. My thought was that the film, through the way they had told the story, that they hadn’t come anywhere close to earning such a monumental moment in the Bond franchise.

Maybe to put it another way, after we’ve seen Bond go up against more formidable opponents, and I realize it’s a bit of a cop out to include villains from outside the Craig era in this but at the same time this is a franchise-altering moment so I think they count, it ends up being this guy Safin (one of the lamest villains in the franchise and definitely one of the least present ones) is the one that kills him. A better portrayal of the villain throughout the film and a better telling of the story they’re trying to tell, and maybe the film can earn the moment of killing off James Bond. As it stands in the film that they did make, while some of it, especially in the first half, is incredibly entertaining and amongst some of the best stuff the franchise has done, it doesn’t come anywhere close to earning its final moment.

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We probably won’t agree which is okay but Safin ends up being the MacGuffin. I understand you are wanting the traditional Bond vs Villain but NTTD throws that out the window. The “virus” is the villain. It even takes out Blofeld almost as a second thought. It’s all about Bond. Once he gets infected he becomes the antagonist.

But we don’t have to see eye to eye on it.

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Barbara Broccoli and the director have said as much. They wanted the film to have the perspective of Bond, with it coming down to him having to make a final decision. I like the way it sneaks up on Bond, even though the film itself telegraphs the moment with various death related dialogue. He did have “plenty of time”, but then suddenly he didn’t.

From a story point of view, millions of people were going to die if the buyers took possession of the nanobots. From an audience point of view, it’s a farewell to Craig as much as it is Bond. If it were a regular film taking place in the beginning or middle of a tenure, Bond would’ve escaped.

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I think we’re in agreement on the bit about Bond becoming the villain. I like that idea as a concept. It’s in reaching that point that I think the film falters. I don’t feel like, between the combination of a lame character the film puts forward as its villain in Safin, the actual villain of the film in M, and a rather sci-fi-ish “virus” that feels out of place in the more down to earth Craig films, I don’t feel like they did enough to earn the ability to put Bond in that position to be the “villain” in the final moments. I also think the final moments would have had a bit more emotional weight if the film had given us the appropriate emotional context to the fact that the entire human species faces potential extinction if this technology gets off the island. Everything happens at the character level between Bond and Madeleine, and that’s where the focus should mostly be, but some tip of the cap towards “the bigger picture”, to go back to the beginning with Casino Royale, would have helped things in that department quite dramatically. Intellectually, I feel like the viewer knows the stakes, but the film doesn’t deliver enough on the emotional stakes that such a predicament would involve.

In other words, it’s a great idea in concept. I think we’re in agreement on that. It’s the execution of the concept that is lacking, at least for me. I am glad, however, that it worked for you as well as many others. Maybe it’ll click on a second viewing, but on a first viewing, it didn’t feel earned.