Kevin C. Wong

Movie - No Time to Die (2021) [+]

No Time to Die is the fifth Daniel Craig James Bond film and completes his run.

The intro scene starts James Bond (Craig) and Dr Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), the love interest in the previous film, in their happily ever after but it doesn't work out and they break up in the midst of a running car-chase-gun-fight through the narrow streets of a coastal European town.

A few years later we find Bond retired from MI6 and living on a sleepy tropical island. He's approached by Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) to do an off-the-book mission to infiltrate a Spectre party in Cuba and extract a scientist. Bond eventually agrees but he ends up tangling with the new 007, Nomi (Lashana Lynch), who is also going after same target.

After Bond is betrayed he then has to return to MI6 for help in stopping Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek), a terrorist who has stolen Heracles, MI6's bio weapon that's designed to target specific DNA sequences and once infected a carrier goes on to infect anyone they touch.

Bond and Nomi go after Safin at his HQ island but Safin has Dr Swann creating a bit of a conflict for Bond...

I didn't realize until now that the five Daniel Craig movies are an arc of James Bond from the time he receives his license to kill to his retirement. The movies follow each other and the various characters have small arcs. It's also nice to have a competent poc female 007 agent.

The movie itself is the usual exotic locations and action. Throughout the series it was great to see the production quality increase to make James Bond competitive with S-tier action films. But it's hard to see James Bond as being anything special in the action genre (contrast with the five Matt Damon Bourne films which has similar action but Bourne has a more interesting background and motivation).

In the end though I did quite enjoy watching No Time to Die.