Review - No Time to Die

August 14, 2025
 
No Time to Die – UK/US, 2021
 

I don’t know about you, but when someone like James Bond is almost blown up, then pursued through a seaside mountainous terrain by armed henchmen, and forced to terminate a relationship that had meant so much to him just a few hours earlier, I expect to see him storm back to his old job, demand to be reinstated, and immediately set off on a quest for revenge. What I would not expect is for him simply to relocate to a Caribbean island and just lay low for five years. And yet that’s just where we find him after the rather surprisingly long intro of Cary Joji Fukunaga's No Time to Die. Just how Bond has managed to buy such a lavish and technically advanced resort home is a mystery, but perhaps the salary of a British superspy is higher than I thought. All we know for sure is that, unlike the last time he played dead (just two films back in Skyfall), he has found a lot of time to stay in shape.
 
And this turns out to be rather fortunate, for, despite later proclamations that Bond (Daniel Craig) had disappeared and was assumed dead, his American friend Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) shows up requesting his help apprehending a corrupt scientist linked to an attack on a biochemical facility by the forces of that ridiculous conglomerate Spectre. Luckily, before logic hits you and you wonder why Leiter didn’t recruit an American spy for the job, there Bond is, disembarking in Cuba, meeting an American contact, and entering a club whose customers seem to include mostly nefarious agents of Spectre, which Bond realizes seemingly because they are all well-dress gentlemen with earpieces on. A moment later, three such men stroll to the front of the dance floor holding an electronic eye, through which, from the comforts of his solitary cell in the U.K., Ernest Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) is spouting something about how the occasion has finally brought him a chance to get revenge on Bond, who at that moment is conveniently standing in a spotlight in the middle of the dance floor. And yes, this is the second time in two films that Blofeld has delivered such a speech. Moments later, a light mist falls from the ceiling, maniacal laughter fills the room, and suddenly, all of Spectre’s agents begin dropping dead. The question now is: Has something gone wrong or right? Unfortunately, the answer is not nearly as interesting or credible as it should be.
 
Like the two most recent Mission Impossible films, No Time to Die has a villain problem – simply put, the antagonist is not credible enough. Dead Reckoning compensated this by including both the Entity, a kind of post-Singularity AI, and Gabriel for Hunt and his team to reckon with – one he can physical does battle with and the other he has to outsmart. No Time to Die, however, simply has Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek) and his scheme to implant humanity with specially-designed nanobots that can enter the human body through the slightest physical contract and kill subjects with specific DNA. First, Lyutsifer looks entirely too young to the figurehead of an international terrorist organization. For example, he could be Madeline’s classmate, yet he supposedly met her when she was no more than a teenager. Second, for Lyutsifer’s DNA attacker to work, he has to be able to get a person’s DNA, design a toxin for that particular person’s genetic code, and ensure that the toxin will be affective even if the contact is only external. That its intended targets die within seconds of making minimal contact makes this plotline even more incredulous.
 
Then there are his motives. Early Bond villains had rather lofty goals, the biggest of which was world domination, and in the Cold War world of the 1950s and 60s, this seemed credible enough. However, since the end of that conflict with the Soviet Union, Bond villains have had to have more realistic vendettas or motivations, for example, wealth or domination in a particular aspect of the government sphere. Lyutsifer is a return to the Bond villain of old, for after he successfully avenges someone who was clearly wronged, his motivation goes from personal to global, and it is unclear just what he hopes to get out a world in which everyone is carrying a virus.
 
Like many of the Bond films starring Daniel Craig, No Time to Die references Bond films which are not actually part of the current Bond’s timeline. The first such reference is to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the film in which Bond eventually married the daughter of the head of a criminal organization. To make this absolutely clear, we learn that Madeleine’s father was one of Blofeld’s assassins. The film even references Louis Armstrong’s theme song from that film when Bond tells Madeleine (Lea Seydoux) that they “have all the time in the world,” a remark that foreshadows the death of at least one important character in the Bond universe. The film’s finale appears to have been shot on the same seaside road as that film as well.
 
The second connection is to You Only Live Twice, which climaxed with a battle on a Japanese island secluded enough for Spectre to have been able to build a massive headquarters replete with removable dome. In No Way to Die, the presence of a terrorist organization on the island is explained with a remark of there having been “activity” on the island recently and to its credit, there is much of the island that looks as it did thirty years ago. (Why it still works is anyone’s guess.) I suppose these connections, in particular the use of Spectre as Bond’s foe, are intended as homages to the past or at the very least, are meant as service to Bond’s generations of fans. However, if a song makes an audience member expect tragedy and then tragedy occurs, its use demonstrates a lack of creativity, rather than nostalgia; it’s the equivalent of hitting rinse and repeat instead of holding out for that elusive original concept.
 
And this an unfortunate pattern of Daniel Craig’s time as James Bond. Too often these Bond films lacked direction. Casino Royale started the series well, but Quantum of Solace was handicapped by having to tie up its predecessor’s loose ends. It also features the uneasy sight of Bond accepting fate and waiting to die. Skyfall felt entirely too familiar, relying on the well-worn storyline involving a villain’s scheme that requires everything to go just right to be successful – similar to Loki’s in The Avengers. Then came Spectre, a film that, for all its faults, at least ended happily for Bond. He had finally found love. In a way, it was the first half of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and there is the problem. When you end a movie with a happy ending, a sequel can only undo that, and in truth, there’s not a lot of warmth in undoing what had seemed like a perfect ending for a beloved character. Alas, No Time to Die only offers further proof of this. (on DVD and Blu-ray)    
 
2 stars