Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga
Starring: Daniel Craig, Lea Seydoux, Rami Malek, Lashana Lynch, Ben Whishaw, Christoph Waltz, Ralph Fiennes, Jeffrey Wright, David Dencik, and Billy Magnussen
Distributor: Universal Pictures International
Runtime: 164 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2021
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan

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Rating notes: Mature themes, action violence and occasional coarse language

This 25th Bond film is the last one for Daniel Craig, who returns to action after being summoned to do battle with the villain, Safin, now armed with weaponry that threatens the world.

This British-US fictional thriller is the 25th instalment in the James Bond film series, and is the fifth movie for Daniel Craig as MI6 agent, James Bond. In the film, several actors (such as Lea Seydoux, Christoph Waltz, and Ralph Fiennes) return to reprise their original roles, while others (such as Rami Malek, Lashana Lynch, and Billy Magnussen) join the film in new roles.

No Time to Die is directed by young American director, Cary Joji Fukunaga, who directed the respected adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre in 2011. This is Fukunaga’s first James Bond film.

Craig was lured out of retirement by the invitation extended to him to act in a film that pulls together narrative threads from past Bond films, that have been acted by himself. The intent of this film is to come to an emotional conclusion for a role that Craig has played many times.

Bond’s old enemy, Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Waltz), who founded the criminal organisation, Spectre, has been captured and is now in prison under MI6’s watchful gaze. Despite being in prison, Blofeld still engages in sinister planning that affects Bond. The story begins with James Bond, retired from active service for five years, living a relatively peaceful life, and in the company of Dr Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux).

Bond’s friend, and ex-CIA officer, Felix Leiter (Wright), approaches him to ask for his help to find a missing renegade scientist, Valdo Obruchev (Dencik), who was involved in a biowarfare plan called ‘Project Heracles’ that has an association with the Head of MI6. The plot indicates that Obruchev was abducted by Safin (Malek) who is the film’s scarred arch villain. Safin kills while thinking all the time that he is behaving heroically, which makes him a special type of villain. Safin also loves Madeleine Swann, and James Bond is greatly worried by the danger that he knows Safin will bring, especially when he is armed with powerful virus weaponry, which he now has. The truth is that M has inadvertently allowed ‘Project Heracles’ to be compromised by Blofeld, who somehow works industriously in high-tech fashion from his British prison cell. Fiennes continues in the role of Bond’s Superior Officer and the Head of MI6, and Madeleine Swann helped Bond resolve his emotional conflicts from the past which demonstrated his emotional vulnerability and threatened his sense of security. Bond was devastated by the death of Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale (2006), a woman he deeply cared for. Here, Bond has to come to grips with the thought that Madeleine Swann might be betraying him.

Bond movies have the reputation of setting the gold standard for high-octane, action adventure, involving an exciting hero. In this respect, this film does not disappoint. It conveys frantic action, delivered almost impossibly, excellent stunt work, heartbreak romance, nostalgia, some humour, sinister intentions and evil acts, emotional vulnerability, and even a virus threat thrown in for good measure. Craig, 53 and carrying injuries from his stunt action in this film and in Spectre (2015), is amazingly good at looking precisely as if he is experiencing personal, psychological angst, while at the same time consistently emerging as the ultimate victor from highly unequal action skirmishes. And Bond always manages serious love attachments en route to the finishing line.

The film’s plot is complex, but the movie is highly entertaining and spectacular to look at. Craig is an excellent Bond, and is definitely saying farewell.

Projecting a strong sense of finality, this film lives up to all expectations of a quality Bond movie, though viewers will have to wait to see who will pick up when Daniel Craig, as Bond, can be no more.