And one can even see how the glass is about to give in the longer Primo shoots at it.
Bond is at a crossroads: he does not know whether Madeleine has betrayed him or not. He is angry at her and at himself, but in the end he decides to save her (and himself) because there are still enough feelings for her. But he cannot simply go on with her now. So he breaks with her, after getting her at least the chance to live.
Another question, again as someone who hasn’t seen the movie yet:
So Bond continues to privately own and operate a vehicle equipped with lethal “extras,” even as a civilian with no ties to MI6, and while abroad as a British tourist? Are there any objections from Italian law enforcement?
Yes, the whole middle part is Bond on the phone trying to get M to vouch for him, with the insurance costs completely surprising him. Later on he asks Safin to cover the costs if he does not destroy his base. Safin refuses, so…
So that’s the secret Blofeld says will be the death of him. Madeleine hasn’t been mailing in the premium checks.
Thanks, this is helpful.
The scene at the end with M, Tanner, Moneypenny and Nomi, I wish they’d had a copy of The Times on the table next to the glass with Bond’s obituary showing.
Yes, it continues on the Craig era tradition of turning Bond’s personal car, that he won left hand drive in the Bahamas in a poker game, into a very British tank.
Well Fleming did write Chitty Chitty…
This is true.
A film that had Q in it
It’s been a couple of days, but I’m still feeling a bit shell-shocked from that ending. A few plot-points had been kinda spoiled for me going in, and I was sorta expecting something akin to Bond’s fate being left ambiguous or him faking his death. So I certainly wasn’t prepared for them definitively and unambiguously killing him off…
And honestly, if you think about it, the fact that we’re all shocked and unhappy about it is the whole point of doing it. We’re meant to have that emotional reaction to the death of this icon (well, one iteration of him anyway). It shows that, love it or hate it, the film works on an emotional level. Which very few Bond films (or films in the action/thriller genre in general) effectively work at.
But I’ve been thinking about a larger point when it comes to NTTD, and why we find it so jarring or so at odds with our idea of James Bond, as a character, a franchise, and a pop-cultural phenomenon.
At it’s heart, Bond has always been a fantasy. The ultimate male fantasy in a way. He’s a handsome, charming, sophisticated man who dresses in sharp suits, travels the globe in style, and seduces beautiful women who practically throw themselves at him! He kills bad guys who deserve it and saves his country and the world time and again. He’s strong and skilled and smart in almost every possible way. He drives cool cars and gets to play with cool gadgets. And so on…
What made this fantasy all the more effective, as Kingley Amis once wrote, is the realism that Fleming sprinkled into the novels - a realism that the films had a pretty casual on-off relationship with 
The Craig era brought that realism front-and-centre, at least on a superficial level. Bond was still the ultimate male fantasy, but you now got to see some of the seams at the edge of the fantasy. When he got into fights, he still fund, but he got cut and bled. He still killed the bad guys (more than ever) but it took a toll on him. He still bedded beautiful women, but he fell in love with one who then betrayed him and killed herself, emotionally scarring him. And other women he dragged into his bed and his violent world ended up dead too. Friends and allies died, a grim reminder of the dangers of his world, even as he strode to victory as he had to, because that’s what we’re here to see.
SPECTRE, while keeping a lot of the realism intact aesthetically, took us closer to fantasy territory than we’d been in a while. Bond traveling across the world, uncovering a secret society, teaming up with a gorgeous blonde who seems to be falling in love with him, getting a chance to literally fight his evil stepbrother! And in the end, Bond saves the day, puts the evil brother in prison, gets the girl and rides off into the sunset. The end.
Or is it?
NTTD bursts the bubble of fantasy that surrounds Bond. It doesn’t just blend in a bit of realism the way the previous Craig movies did. It let’s reality crash upon Bond like a wave. Crash upon Bond, and crash upon us. In many ways, NTTD is a story about growing up beyond the adolescent and young adult fantasies that we sometimes nurture even later in life, accepting the realities of life and the world, and moving forward.
So Bond ‘got’ the girl, the way the great fantasy heroes do. But it doesn’t work out because Bond is an emotionally scarred man with severe trust issues, and it doesn’t take much for him to turn against his lover. He spent years thinking he was a great warrior for Queen and Country…but now he learns that a WMD that threatens the entire globe was created in the name of Queen and Country. He wasn’t the great indispensable legendary warrior and hero…once he left, he was easily replaced by someone else who now bears the designation he once took some degree of pride in. He spend his life bedding beautiful women in consequence-free ‘relationships’, but missed out on the chance to be with his real family, which he discovers he has with Madeline and Mathilde. And almost as soon as he ‘finds’ them, he loses them. Because the fantasy hero known as Bond can overcome the most insurmountable odds, survive anything and pull of last-second rescues from anywhere. But the reality always was that a man who took the risks he did would eventually find that his luck ran out, that there were some odds even he couldn’t win against. And NTTD is the one film that’s willing to make Bond meet reality.
That’s not to say NTTD doesn’t have a fair bit of fantasy. That’s the gateway drug to get us interested in the film. Bond gets to return to the ‘cool’ espionage-world of gadgets and cool cars and planes, and heroism, and being one of Her Majesty’s finest agents. He chugs martinis in a Cuban bar while wearing a tux and mowing down enemies with a machine gun. He takes out an entire kill-squad with a couple of guns and some nifty traps. He leads a two-person assault on the island base of his arch-nemesis of the week. Hell, he even gets back the magic number that defined so much of his life at the end! But ultimately, Bond is forced to grow up in the final moments of his life…and perhaps the message is that so do we?
Yes! Thank you for this great review!
Some stupendous commentary going on here. I’ve seen it once and am still mulling it all over in my head. Ultimately, I think it was good, sometimes very good. I think it will age well.
I have loads to say but will save it for when I have time to put it all down coherently. I’ll say this, though: it struck me today just how much death the Craig era has had: Vesper, Mathis, M, Felix, Bond. That’s… that’s a lot. I hope during the next tenure there won’t be quite so much.
Don’t forget Solange and Strawberry Fields.
Lots of other bits I wanted to include here and have now forgotten, but this was getting far too long, so here goes.
For better or for worse, I knew a lot about how NO TIME TO DIE was going to pan out before even taking my seat. I knew about the ending and the rough trajectory of the plot. With that all in mind, I was a bit concerned that I’d have blown my chance to feel any emotional impact from what unfolded. I needn’t have worried. The powerful delivery of the performances across the board, and the impressive pacing of the plot, all came together to prompt something I wasn’t expecting - the very real threat of an actual tear or two starting to swell as the finale came.
To be clear, this wasn’t sadness at the on-screen death of a fictional hero. This was sadness that this character, who had clearly come to terms and was finally proud at the idea of being a family man. would never get to live out that life. It’s incomplete love. It’s unfulfilled fatherhood.
It’s the sort of emotion that any good drama can provoke, but not territory that has been familiar to Bond. The fact that these films have broken the age-old mould in such a way still surprises me, and delights me.
For me, the Craig era has done what it set out to do, and frankly had to do, if it wanted to keep the series viable. Audiences seem more attuned to emotional journeys for their heroes. A compulsively womanising hero with borderline wisecrack humour just isn’t going to fly any more. That doesn’t make me love the older movies any less. To me, it’s just a reality of modernising a franchise to move with the times as we find ourselves in 2021.
I know and understand that many will want the Bond character to go back to the style and tropes of the 1962-2002, but whether it’s the impact of Bourne, The Dark Knight trilogy, Mission: Impossible’s reinvention or simply societal evolution, I fear that the series would have withered and died if it hadn’t moved on and found a different formula.
Clearly the producers took a risk by pumping emotion and pain into Craig’s films, and jettisoning a lot of the easier feel-good stuff. But I guess they accepted a long time ago that the appeal of the Bond franchise needs to extend beyond the likes of us who spend time frequenting this and other forums. The balancing act of pleasing the fan base and having global mass appeal has always been difficult, and seems to be getting harder.
Every film that’s been released for the past 59 years would have prompted fan outrage on forums in some regard - You Only Live Twice binning most of the novel in favour of a space adventure; the flip-flopping of distinctly different actors to portray Leiter among others; pretty much everything about Diamonds Are Forever. This is just another bold leap into the unknown, for better or for worse.
But by pulling two such enormous levers in allowing Bond to have a child and even to die, it takes the franchise over the horizon of two of the moves which most of us never thought they’d do. And, even more miraculously, I think both are credible and work in the context of the story. They do carry an emotional weight on a scale that we’ve rarely if ever seen through the franchise.
To rattle through a few specifics about the film…
I thought the acting was consistently strong and one of the best ensemble performances of the series. I found Seydoux in particular far more impactful than in SPECTRE, and given much better material to work with. The romance with Bond clearly seems rushed in many respects, but this time around, I found it far more believable. I was also pleased that Waltz got to flex a few more acting muscles this time around, albeit briefly.
I found the script was far more consistent and had fewer cringingly poor lines that stuck out. The main standout exception being Nomi’s “time to die” or whatever she said to Valdo while chucking him into the pool. Clunky, cliched, disappointing. Bond’s “die” to Blofeld also gets very dishonourable mention. Nailing the pithy line to go with a death needs a reboot within its own right.
The pacing seemed excellent. The runtime sped past for me, and very few periods seemed to truly drag. The Matera and Norway chases seemed finely tuned with not much flab on them; the Cuba party sequence was great fun. Bond and Nomi’s assault on Safin’s lair got a bit too Rambo for my liking, but we’ve not had one of those sorts of attacks for a while in the film, so I was still pleased to see it.
In terms of humour, I think it was actually pretty good. There were a lot of laughs in my cinema screening. While clearly corny and a throwback to Boris and others, the audience I was with seemed to really enjoy Valdo’s earlier contributions and Borat-esque delivery, although I also think that after 2.5 hours, everyone was ready for him to be finished off. On first viewing, I think Craig was less robotic in his comedic lines than previous films. His one-liner about Q’s cat was definitely one of my highlights.
Bond’s journey: on paper I didn’t think I would accept it, but I was wrong. I think Craig’s performance sold it, but I was surprised how easily I accepted his journey to both fatherhood and death. The grief and pain of his unfulfilled life was very real to me, and took me to a place that I never expected to reach with a Bond film.
His mouthing to himself as he came to the realisation that Madeleine and Mathilde are now “his family” was a really nice touch, coupled with the look of confusion and a half-smile beautifully delivered by Craig. But, of course all too bittersweet in retrospect.
On the negative side: Safin is a poorly fleshed out villain, which is one of the real shames and black marks against the film. I think Malek’s performance with the material he has is very good. He’s creepy, compelling but ultimately underserved by the character. To echo others before me, it’s not clear to me how or why he made the leap from settling a personal score against Mr White and SPECTRE, to mass killing on a global scale. Without that important detail, it’s all a bit unclear why we should care about what he’s doing. I was also in the dark about exactly what’s going on in those pools on the island, and what is being harvested. It felt to me that that they could have tied that all together simply with the poison garden to be a bit clearer about the significance of the island location and the pools.
I said it in another thread, but watching in real time, I struggled a bit with the supposed urgency of destroying the island base towards the end. I didn’t buy that it simply had to be obliterated before the Russian and Japanese ships appeared.
A shame not to get more impact from Moneypenny this time around, but I appreciate that with such a wide-ranging cast, it’s often going to be tricky to give everyone enough to do.
Big thumbs up to pretty much everyone else though. I’ll agree with everyone else and add my praise for Ana de Armas - what a great character and performance as Paloma. The Nomi role worked nicely. Great to see a henchman in Primo who had such a lengthy presence throughout the film. I can never get enough of Ben Whishaw’s acting, so also loved that he was so prominent. They’ve managed to flesh out Q’s character really nicely over the past three films, and I really hope they hang onto Whishaw for the next Bond. The idea of Bond staying in Q’s spare bedroom was particularly nice.
The ending: We’ve seen Bond hurt, physically and emotionally, and as others have observed, death is a pretty natural evolution for that character. It’s been telegraphed throughout the Craig years, but yes, life as an assassin means there’s a pretty good chance death will catch up with you too. Safin’s bullets striking Bond’s body so clinically and definitively as he crumpled into the pond felt raw and final. That was the point where it felt clear that there was no point of return for him.
Bond’s death doesn’t make him any less heroic to me. In fact, self-sacrifice may be the most heroic thing he’s done yet.
For the 25th time, Bond saved the world. But for the first time, Bond was not able to save himself.
It’s still a pretty good batting average, but the fact that he has been shown to be mortal opens a new frontier for what these films can be. The producers have a tall order between now and BOND 26 to determine the shape of the next iteration of Bond; but for now, they deserve to bask in the success of the Craig era. James Bond will return, and that’s largely down to a gamble which started at CASINO ROYALE and ultimately paid off.
I’m not necessarily on your side, but that’s a great review.
Thanks Chris. I don’t expect everyone to agree with it by any means, and I fully understand how many people will be upset and disappointed by the direction they’ve taken the films - but hopefully, with 25 films to choose from, we still have plenty of other good movies out there to watch even if this one has been a letdown for some. And with any luck, BOND 26 will find a middle ground that works for everyone.
Yes. The more I think on the film [my review was written within 24 hours of seeing it] the less the death bothers me, although I am disappointed. This stems more from my consideration that SP was a good place to end Craig-Bond. They really had no where else to go. It was kill Bond or kill Madeleine and send all Craig-Bond’s women to the grave. Have any of his lovers survived? What bothers me now are the the performances, the relentless gunplay and fisticuffs, the endless noise, the fact I didn’t understand what the hell Safin’s plot was, the Spectre party not explained properly, the Heracles virus being so so very sci-fi, contrivances in the scenario which lead us to where we end up. I also dislike the over-aching dark tone which has haunted Craig since his monochrome entrance… Ah, well, as you say, roll on No.26
I think this is it, right here. I’m not saying James Bond is a one-note character, but the issue, from my understanding, is that the Craigverse evolved the character to a point no other Bond ever reached. Bond’s mindset was elevated beyond superficial enjoyment, even if he would never get the opportunity to live that life himself. Thus making NTTD not just the culmination of a five film arc, but a one-off probably never to be repeated again.
I may be able to explain this: The party was actually Blofeld’s birthday party, his present supposed to be Bond’s death witnessed by life stream to his bionic eye. Safin sabotaged this by coding the virus with the DNA of Spectre’s top brass so all Blofeld got for his birthday was his organisation blown up - while Safin obviously had his own spies inside Spectre and the CIA.
More thoughts about Craig Bond’s demise:
We have seen Bond married, albeit briefly in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Bond and Tracy spoke about having children. However, in No Time To Die, that is no longer just a concept, but a reality. The James Bond lifestyle is glamour and excitement, but at the core it is existential and hollow. An encapsulation of this would be sitting alone in a dark room, drinking a martini. Craig’s Bond now had a real alternative to his existence. But he still couldn’t have it, even if alive.
What other Bond has reached the point of not being able to go on physically or emotionally? That’s a first. And like On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the dream of a happy end remains that. A dream. It doesn’t happen for him, whether he’s living a solitary life in Jamaica or killed in a blaze of glory saving the world. That’s what makes Craig’s Bond so different to the rest, but still thematically true in spirit.
Just another quick thought I had: the Matera hotel manager refers to Madeleine as Bond’s wife. Was it ever spelled out or implied that it was just a mistake from the manager, or is there a chance they had already got married?