No Time to Die finds 007 retired from MI6 and living in Jamaica. He is recruited by the CIA to find a kidnapped scientist which leads to a showdown with a powerful adversary. The plot revolves around Project Heracles; a bioweapon that is coded to an individual’s DNA and infects like a virus upon touch. It’s lethal to the target, but harmless to others. The weapon had noble purposes for mankind at the outset, but could cause immeasurable death and chaos in the wrong hands.
Lea Seydoux (Madeleine), Ben Whishaw (Q), Naomi Harris (Moneypenny), Ralph Fiennes (M), Jeffrey Wright (Felix), and Christoph Waltz (Blofeld) reprise their earlier roles, while Lashana Lynch (the new 007), Ana de Armas (Paloma) and Rami Malek (main villain, Safin) add new characters to the mix. Christoph Waltz is shockingly underused, while Ana de Armas provides some flirty flair taking on a bunch of bad guys with James in her cocktail dress and high heels. Viva la Cuba!
The movie continues the franchise’s longstanding tradition with another wild ride of an opening sequence, this time with James and Madeleine racing through the stony streets of Matera, Italy in an Aston Martin, of course. Then it jumps ahead five years to a jaw-dropping Spiderman-like kidnapping in a tall building. Other cinematography highlights include a spooky, foggy forest setting and a coastal highway chase in Norway that resembles a Hot Wheels track (The Antlanterhausveien, known in Norway as the “Construction of the Century.”)
It’s the 25th film in the James Bond series. There’s all the iconic Bond themes we have come to expect and enjoy: techno gadgets, “shaken, not stirred” martinis, beautiful women, tuxedos, the scar-faced villain, and that iconic music which immediately lets us know the world we are in. The complicated and intertwined plot between good and evil is also common in many Bond movies. So, No Time to Die is a best-of Bond in many ways. It is mostly situations we’ve seen before. But is that so bad, particularly in the 5th and final performance by Daniel Craig? Those definitive Bond-isms are the comfort food, while the fantastic visuals, exotic locales, and fast pace keeps us continually engaged for the entire 2:43 (yes, the longest Bond movie ever, but I didn’t see much, if anything, to cut). I didn’t keep track, but the body count has got to be a Bond record, as well. While maybe the most violent of Bond films, dare I say that it’s also one of the more emotional? It’s the end of a Bond era. The movie makes that very clear.
D2 Rating ◼◼◼◼☐
Trivia ?s – (Can’t have just one trivia ? with this topic.) How many men have played James Bond? Bonus points for naming them all.
Answer: Six – Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig
Trivia ? – Where did the name James Bond come from?
Answer: The name came from American ornithologist, James Bond, a Caribbean bird expert. Bond creator, Ian Fleming, was an avid birdwatcher and had a copy of Bond’s Caribbean birds field guide. He thought it was the perfect name for the character he was creating.