No Time to Die Review

[Westside Steve]

No time to die

UA

PG-13.           163 min

 

Unlike Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer who got older as the novels went along Ian Fleming's James Bond is ageless, unstuck in time like Kurt Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim. (How's that for a literary opener?) The first Bond novel was 1953's CASINO ROYALE and today the legendary spy, his team, his boss and even some of the bad guys are the same age as they were then,  though the setting is modern day.    The franchise seems like it will live forever. The installments don't change a lot but there's always a huge buzz around every upcoming Bond movie. Questions that usually arise include who will be the new Bond girl, what will be the new Bond song, what kind of fancy gadgets will Q come up with, who will be the actual new Bond and how many woke turds will be added to the punch bowl.  It's hard to imagine that the most famous Bond, Sean Connery, hasn't appeared in that role for nearly 40 years and even then, it was a reprise,  a remake of THUNDERBALL the only one of the Fleming books the rights of which weren't owned by Broccoli.. Frankly especially for the last four decades or so the actual plots don’t matter as the pre release speculation. Like a lot of action films these days a crazy bad guy wants to destroy or rule the world; sometimes both, and Bond must kill him and blow up his operation.   Without any particular spoilers here's the setup. Bond has retired and the agency and the agency chose not to retire his number. The new agent bearing 007 is an African American woman,  Nomi (Lashan Lynch.)  Her actual role is pretty insignificant by the way;  basically she’s only there  for advertising purposes. It opens with a flashback where a bad guy with a funny mask murders  scientist Madeline Swans mother  because of some vague connection  with a notorious criminal organization.  Seems like the kid and the bad guy disappear for quite a few years.  The bad guy is the revenge  driven Lyutsafir Safir (Rami Malek  Looking a lot creepier than he did as Freddie Mercury)  Do you think they are both dead? Wink wink.

Cut back to Bond,  Madeline (Lea Seydoux a somewhat subdued Bond girl) and her daughter Matilda in some tropical paradise when he gets a message from his old buddy Felix Leiter with news of a mad man running an underground laboratory that makes  a substance and delivery system meant to, you guessed it, kill everybody on Earth.  Bond makes it back to headquarters picks up some information meets Nomi, stops by Q's laboratory, picks up a few gadgets and heads off into the fray.  Between that point and the finale there are some top quality chase scenes,  gunfights,   hand-to-hand combat and at least one major revelation before  the inevitable  killing of the bad guy and blowing up the fortress. I would be tempted to say that there were no surprises along the way, even though I'm not going to tell you what the surprise is, it really is a shocker.  It may not make sense to you but it reminded me of Mr. Spock. That's all I'm saying.  NO TIME TO DIE is exactly what you would expect from a Bond movie or any other top quality action film. A new cast of competent actors have taken over some very familiar roles and The foundation is solid with a couple twists.  And at over 2 and a ½ hours it doesn’t seem nearly as long as DUNE. I have enjoyed Daniel Craig’s stewardship of the role and like everyone else anxious to see who's the next man up.  But on the bell curve of the post Connery bond films I give this one a…

B-

WSS

 

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