No Time to Die an Imperfect Yet Fitting End for Daniel Craig
The overstuffed action spectacular continues to bring Bond into the 21st century.
The Short Take:
Long-awaited yet perhaps too distanced from its predecessors, Daniel Craig’s final turn as the more rough-and-ready version of the iconic MI6 agent provides spectacular closure for his at times rocky multi-film narrative arc. Bold choices for our hero overshadow an underdeveloped villain.
Image Credit: Variety
[Note: I’m going to try to keep this spoiler free for as long as possible. There will be fair warning when I switch over. But, oof, are there some spoilers to be had.]
The Long Take:
We’ve been waiting for this film for so long. Production was scheduled to start in 2018, then Danny Boyle (of Trainspotting fame) vacated his director chair, which delayed filming until 2019 when Cary Joji Fukanaga, the director of season one of True Detective, took over. Then the pandemic hit, which postponed the 2020 release, first to November 2020 and then to April 2021, and then again until now. I don’t want to keep you waiting, so I’ll ask and answer now: was it worth the wait? Mostly yes. No Time to Die isn’t the best Bond film. It’s not even the best Daniel Craig Bond film. But I had a great time and thought it was a good way to say farewell to Craig.
While the long and drawn out process of getting this movie made might make viewers even hungrier to see the film, too much time has passed to experience this as a continuation of a story already in progress. The last Bond film we got, Spectre, was in 2015. That’s six years ago. The good folks at The Big Picture noted this at the top of their pod and said this might negatively impact how viewers receive the film. I completely agree. If No Time to Die were a standalone film, this wouldn’t matter. But, the continuing story told across five films — what distinguishes Daniel Craig’s run from those of Bonds past — actively works against it here. I purposefully went in cold, without rewatching any of the prior Craig films, mostly because I didn’t have time but partly because I assume most other moviegoers will do the same. And while I was able to follow the action just fine, I only had a vague memory of the significance of certain characters and plot turns. There was a lot of “Oh yea…I’ve seen you before, but I don’t remember why you’re important.” I wish I had made the time to rewatch Casino Royale and Spectre. I think I would have appreciated this film as the conclusion to an epic tale much more if I had done so.
The plot, because it tries to tie up so many loose ends and clings to the waning narrative momentum, comes across as convoluted and over-reaching. This works in the film’s favor in the first act because it creates a sense of confusion that parallels Bond’s. He doesn’t know who to trust, who to turn to, and how to reinsert himself into the world of espionage after trying, and (to the surprise of no one) failing to retire. Picking up where Spectre left off, we find Bond with Madeleine Swann, the French psychiatrist and daughter of a late SPECTRE agent that Bond rescued in the previous film. They’re in love and trying to shut out the rest of the world by vacationing in Italy, but very quickly their pasts catch up with them. Meanwhile, a mysterious terrorist cell attacks a secret lab and captures a scientist that has been developing a weapon capable of targeting specific people based on their DNA. (Side bar: this part of the plot was very creative, and seemed very tuned into 2021 anxieties.) The main mission of the film begins when the CIA asks Bond for help recovering the scientist and the weapon. Everything I just said probably only explains about 30% of what’s going on. Once Bond is back in the spy game, the onslaught of plot points and characters feels like there are too many balls in the air. The film arguably has not one but three villains, and the one who seems like he should be the alpha baddie — Lyutsifer Safin, played by Rami Malek — is the least interesting.
I’m tempted to just say that Rami Malek was not very good. He speaks in a wispy monotone, with what sounds like a clenched jaw, and he maintains a steady, vague creepiness the entire time. But I think he comes across as forgettable because the writing isn’t there to support the kind of performance he’s giving. If you have a more subdued and chilling villain — quiet but off-kilter — the words he utters have to be the linguistic equivalent of fireworks. And we have to very clearly understand his motivations because there’s no bombast to distract us. By the end, I couldn’t tell you what supervillain rationale lay behind his grand machinations. The film establishes that he is the product of severe trauma, but, again, there’s nothing really specific about it that can transfer to character development. There’s no through-line from formative events to the current pursuit of global domination. That flashback helped me understand the plot as it unfolded, but never worked towards his psychological profile.
The two female agents in the film, on the other hand, are the best-written I’ve seen in a long time. Nomi, the new 00 agent who has replaced Bond, played by Lashana Lynch, is strong, powerful, cunning, capable, and salty in a way that allows her to go toe-to-toe with Bond. She and the writing of her character left me wanting more. But at least she was in most of the movie. Ana da Armas, who plays Paloma, a CIA operative who partners with Bond in Cuba, is only in one scene, and watching them together was hands down the most fun I had the whole time. Part of me, as much as I respected the emotional depth of what Bond was going through in other parts of the film, wanted to escape with him and Paloma to an entirely different movie where they’re just fighting bad guys in formalwear, knocking back cocktails, and exchanging witty banter. Ana de Armas is absolutely electric and charismatically playful while still being formidable. Amazon, you own half of this franchise now. Make me a spy thriller series starring Paloma. Better yet, make it a buddy spy thriller series with her and Lashana Lynch’s Nomi.
Image Credit: Deadline
As I mentioned earlier, though, there’s not enough time to pack in a full story for all these characters. As it is, the film is 2 hours and 43 minutes. That’s A LOT of movie. I didn’t feel like it dragged at any point; I never checked the time until the credits rolled, especially during Fukanaga’s slickly shot and staged action sequences. Two huge car chases that bookend the film and the aforementioned black tie affair in Cuba with Ana de Armas stayed with me after I left the theater. I still wish the film had tried to do more with less during all that time, though.
Unsurprisingly, considering its title, No Time To Die is a film preoccupied with time — having it, not having it, killing it, you name it. Bond repeats multiple times that he and his love, Madeline Swann, have “all the time in the world.” But for me, this theme exceeds the borders of the plot and characters and extends into a meta-narrative about the entire Bond franchise right now. Sorry, seeing franchise meta-narratives is apparently my sixth sense. I thought it was just with the MCU, but here we are. It’s both a blessing and a curse. What was glaring at me the entire film was a wrestling with aging and changing with the times.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say the franchise is struggling with how to bring Bond into the 21st century because concerted efforts have been made and, at least from a box office perspective, have been largely successful. When Daniel Craig debuted as 007 in Casino Royale, many critics and fans found the shift in tone refreshing. Compared to his much more suave and elegant predecessor, Pierce Brosnan, Craig seemed grizzled and the film was grittier, darker, and more serious than Bond had ever been. It seemed to propel the franchise into the 21st century by aligning more with 21st century appetites, similar to what Christopher Nolan did for Batman in the Dark Knight trilogy.
But since Casino Royale, a lot of Western culture has changed, far beyond the thirst for anti-heroes who are morally gray, fallible, and psychologically fraught. (All of which critics praised Craig for being, arguing that he was much closer to Ian Fleming’s original conception of the character.). As Chris Ryan says on The Big Picture, Bond as a character shouldn’t work today because his “way of interfacing with the world” — especially women and “non-English people”— is outdated. We have begun to hold misogynists and racists accountable for the harm they inflict, geopolitical power dynamics have shifted, and it seems more and more that glorifying a womanizing secret agent as he does the bidding of a paternalistic empire has no place in modern society.
To be clear, I say this with love, as a longtime fan. I grew up watching the Sean Connery films, and I had a Tomorrow Never Dies poster on my dorm room wall in college. (Shoutout to my favorite Bond girl, Michelle Yeoh.) Give me all the globetrotting locales, all the martinis, the Aston Martin car chases, the souped up gadgets, and the deranged villains. And the puns. Please never give up on those terrible puns. (There’s one here that Bond makes after he uses a weaponized watch that Q gave him, and it delighted me to no end.) But as fun as it is to watch Bond live dangerously, with privilege and without a care in the world, it’s hard now not to recognize how problematic his behavior can be.
No Time to Die shows that its writers are acutely aware of this conundrum, and makes that tension a part of the film. There are several scenes where we think that Bond is going to make a very stereotypically Bond move with a very stereotypically Bond outcome, but the film pulls the rug out from under both Bond and us. Subverting expectations like this not only provides a great wink and nod, but it also makes us aware of our own internalization and validation of questionable behavior. Bond, in these scenes, seems taken aback and befuddled in a way that shows his age. While there were many writers who worked on this film, I suspect television juggernaut and all-around baller Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag, Killing Eve) may be the one responsible for cleverly and subtly building this into the film.
[Time’s up, spoiler-free readers! Please press the ejector button on this speeding car because I can’t keep going without more spoiler-y details.]
More specifically, the scenes that introduce the two female agents I gushed over earlier play this gotcha game with us and Bond. In a nightclub meeting with CIA friend Felix Leiter, Bond passes by Nomi dressed as a local Jamaican woman going clubbing. He stops and stares at her, but keeps going. Later, they “run into each other” outside the club and when Bond discovers his car has been sabotaged, Nomi asks him if he’d like a ride on her motorbike. She takes Bond back to his place and asks where the bedroom is. Everything about how this scene has been written and shot cues us to think that Bond is about to love her and leave her in classic fashion. (Though Daniel Craig does throw in a bit of nervous energy, like he’s self-conscious about having been out of the game for a while.) But then Nomi reveals that she’s an MI6 agent and tells Bond to stay out of her way. This also plays upon the racial and ethnic stereotyping that Bond films have historically perpetuated. We assume a black woman in Jamaica must be a civilian who just wants to go on a hot date with Bond. The film catches us out for our implicit bias that prevents us from suspecting that a woman who looks like Lashana Lynch could be a highly skilled secret agent.
Similarly, when Bond meets up with Paloma, she starts undressing Bond and he goes into full seduction mode. As he moves in closer to her, he says something along the lines of, “Shouldn’t we get to know each other first?” Paloma straight up laughs in his face and, very dismissively, says that she was just trying to help him change into his undercover tux quickly. The way she delivers her lines mocks him for thinking this was an appropriate time for romantic overtures, and it’s clear that while old habits die hard, the world has moved on.
This meta-narrative, working through issues of being behind the times, taken one step further, applies to Daniel Craig as an actor as well. He originally did not want to return for this film, after sustaining several injuries and concluding that he physically couldn’t handle the role anymore. Craig was 38 in Casino Royale and is 53 years old now. So he himself might have some anxieties about his age. In this film, he does look noticeably older, especially since his love interest, played by 36-year-old Léa Seydoux, looks much younger. But I’m happy to report that he is throwing himself into the physicality of this role 100%. I never doubted his abilities for a second. As the Mike, Mike, and Oscar podcast humorously observed, he’s as cut as he’s ever been, and the film makes a point to give him many opportunities to disrobe, walk around shirtless, or just wear clothes that are too small for him. I almost felt bad for him because if he quit before and then changed his mind, he must have — I mean to say, I sincerely hope he — let himself go, at least for a bit. Craig is proof that we can fight time, with the right diet and exercise.
This idea of time passing, running out of time, and facing our own maturation and mortality permeates this film. Even the opening credit sequence conjures images of ancient history, with several marble statues in ruins, covered in moss and vines, with worms crawling out of the eyes. And this theme culminates with the most massive plot twists of all…
[HUGE SPOILER WARNING. TURN BACK NOW if you haven’t seen the film.]
James Bond has a daughter.
And James Bond is dead.
In trying to anticipate what might happen in this final Craig film, it crossed my mind that they could kill off Bond at the end. But I didn’t think they would actually do it, especially in the age of the unending franchise where beloved characters merely appear to die and always come back. On-screen deaths no longer have any teeth because most of the time they’re fake-outs or retconned later. (Yes, I’m still mad about The Rise of Skywalker.) I loved this ending because it fit the larger context of Daniel Craig’s run. He redefined this character. He took Bond places we never thought he could go. He had to consistently carry us through a larger story. It only seems fitting that we give him the finality of death so that he’s not just discarded while another actor waits in the wings, straightening his bowtie.
While the possibility of death did at least cross my mind, it never occurred to me that they might give Bond a child. Doing so, in some ways, seems entirely antithetical to Bond as an archetype. His film history has built an entire persona around not forming attachments and not being tied down. I’ll admit, I was angry at first, mostly because, as a parent, I was dreading having to watch the film drag a small child into this violent world and exploit that to manipulate our emotions. However, once Bond, despite Madeline insisting that the little girl he meets is not his, makes his daughter breakfast, I was sold on the decision.
Every moment thereafter was ineffably tragic because I can see that something in Bond clicks, largely due to Daniel Craig’s masterfully intense yet vulnerable performance. I see him start to fight for something rather just fighting because he has a license to kill. I see him trying so hard to protect his family, only to be eclipsed just as his sights close in on the finish line. The happy ending actually seemed just within his grasp, even though I, deep down, knew that such a fate was never even on the table.
Considering all the talk about time, and all the subtext about growing old, it makes sense that this Bond would meet his end by finally growing up.
Cheers, Daniel Craig. Thank you for all you have given this character. For all you have given us.