MOVIE REVIEW
“NO TIME TO DIE”
Rated PG-13. At AMC Boston Common, Regal Fenway, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters.
Grade: B
Daniel Craig’s swansong “No Time to Die” is a blast getting out of the gate with a Billie Eilish theme, a tremendous bit of action in a ridiculously picturesque Italian town and Vesper Lynd appearing to bat Bond with a giant ghostly hand from beyond the grave.
But the film soon turns into a marathon, revisiting old themes, old loves and the old villains of Craig’s five-film run as Bond with composer Hans Zimmer furiously riffing on John Barry. I stopped counting after the sixth gratuitous chase scene.
Cary Joji Fukunaga (“Beasts of No Nation”), the first American to direct a Bond film (replacing Danny Boyle), just piles it on American-style, and the script of this superhero-sized (163 minute) Bond outing with a deranged super-villain plotting to destroy is borderline self parody.
As none other than Lyutsifer Safin, Academy Award-winner Rami Malek delivers a deathly complected performance and is intensely weird. But you will need subtitles to understand most of what Rami’s Lyutsifer is slow-muttering.
Romantic lead Lea Seydoux sleepwalks her way through the film as Bond’s rejected love and possible minion of imprisoned Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) Madeleine Swann. You will see the twist regarding her coming a mile away.
In a tricky femme fatale turn as Cuban trainee agent Paloma, all black-clad Ana de Armas is likable and impressive. She and Craig have more chemistry, too. For his part, Craig has ably taken author Ian Fleming’s James Bond to darker (and more violent in spite of those PG-13 ratings) spaces than his predecessors.
He has also been notably the most athletic Bond of all and that tradition continues here even in his 50s (note: Craig injured his ankle on set). The IMAX-lensed film was shot in England, Italy, Norway, the Faroe Islands, Scotland and Jamaica, and looks like it cost a fortune (How much to rent a Boeing C-17?).
COVID held up its release for a long time. Perhaps, suitably, there is a lot of talk about DNA, nanobots and a sinister laboratory, and the plot and action have been carefully woke-proofed, unless you count the spectacle of Armas kicking bad guys in the yarbles in that dress and those heels.
As Felix Leiter, Jeffrey Wright is once again worth his weight in gold. A vintage Aston Martin DB5 gets shot up in Italy. In London, Bond drives a newer model. He finds that he has been retired and replaced as 007 by boss M (Ralph Fiennes), whom Bond refers to as “darling” to annoy him, with a Black woman named Nomi (Lashana Lynch, who handles the quips and physical work well).
Bond is defunct. But he nevertheless goes after Safin, who has a “poison garden” at his home, along with captured Bond loved ones, on an island between Russia and Japan, where Safin built his super-villain stronghold from which he plans to unleash a … pandemic (Prophetic in retrospect or just, oy, not that again?).
The Bond movie plot mush — provided by writers Neal Purvis (“Spectre”), Robert Wade (“Spectre”), writer-director Fukunaga (“It”) and Phoebe Waller-Bridge of the award-winning “Fleabag” — takes the notion of “beats” to the super-nanobot level.
These latest Bond films endlessly (and more expensively) recycle what we have seen before. This one is “Skyfall” meets “Dr. No” with, I think, bits of “The Spy Who Shagged Me.” Do the makers of the new “Suicide Squad” know that “No Time to Die” shares their story line? Who cares? It’s overlong, but mostly fun, and Craig is the second best Bond ever. It all ends aptly with the great Louis Armstrong singing “We Have All the Time in the World” from “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” (another Barry classic). Exit and adieu, the great craggy Craig.
(“No Time to Die” contains gun and physical violence, language, disturbing and suggestive images.)
