Review of the IMAX film 'No time to die' (2021)

James Bond is a fictional secret agent. Usually working for the Secret Service of the United Kingdom along with his boss M and his companions Q and Moneypenny, he fights megalomaniac villains – for instance, Blofeld and his criminal organization Spectre. But in the light of recent news, that revealed the involvement of the United Kingdom in the Bolivian coup d’etat of 2019, it’s inevitable to wonder whether Bond is no more than a publicity stunt for a government that is, in fact, the real-life Spectre.

Bond was created by writer Ian Fleming in 1953, and then taken over by other writers in a series that currently spans 40 novels, 7 novelizations and a number of short stories. Eon Productions is the company adapting the character to the silver screen from 1962 in a series that reaches now its 25^th film.

SPOILER ALERT. In order to provide a review useful enough for the reader to decide whether to watch the film, the first three scenes need to be described. Also, revelations are told about the 2006 film ‘Casino Royale’ and the 2015 film ‘Spectre’.

‘No time to die’ continues the previous film, with the participation of Ernst Stavro Blofeld and Madeleine Swann, now respectively prisoner and psychiatrist. The background story of Swann becomes relevant soon – but without an in-film reminder you will be at a loss during the two first scenes if you, like me, spent six years since watching the previous film. This is a summary of the first three scenes:

• First scene: When Madeleine is a girl, she and her mother are attacked by masked villain Lyutsifer Safin, who kills the mother but spares Madeleine.

• Second scene: When James and Madeleine are enjoying a holiday in Italy, James visits the tomb of Vesper Lynd only to be attacked by Spectre assassins. Did Madeleine betray James?

• Third scene: Spectre commandos attack a laboratory in London, stealing bioweapon Heracles and kidnapping scientist Valdo Obruchev.

The story focus around the Heracles bioweapon and how not a single villain but two, Blofeld and Safin, try to get hold of it. Followers of Bond films have come to accept criminal organization Spectre as a given – but then, it feels odd for an unnamed, unheard of second criminal organization to appear out of the blue and rival with Spectre without so much as an introduction. While the exchange between Bond and Blofeld is witty, the exchange between Bond and Safin is boringly empty – and then the writers try to compensate by making it way too long, as it too much of a bad thing could make it good. Anyway, the script is unintelligent, falling into many absurd situations. Let’s address the possible mistakes:

Not really a mistake: James visiting Vesper Lynd’s tomb. Even though at the end of ‘Casino Royale’ he was last seen inconsiderately referring her by the words ‘the bitch is dead’ in spite of having accidentally caused her death himself (his actions caused a building to collapse, trapping her), we are used to see James as a man that hides his feelings most of the time but sometimes hints at what they are. Yes, it is credible that James harboured feelings for Vesper in spite of publicly despising her.

Small mistake: The treatment of the Cyclops character. In spite of being pivotal to the plot, we barely get to see him on camera - much less to understand his actions.

Medium mistake: All of my film reviews come with a data sheet at the end. If you jump there, you will read: ‘Genre: Romance’. Yes, you read that right. ‘No time to die’ is two films: a romance film and a spy film. But, at every turn of the story, the writers choose the developments that make sense to the romance story even though they make not sense at all to the spy story. For instance, let’s just count the ways in which the second scene is stupid. One: James Bond is always shown undisguised and using his own name everywhere. How can he ever be surprised to be found by his enemies in a public place? Two: Assassins are shooting at both James and Madeleine. How can he think that that is a proof of she betraying him? Three: Convinced of Madeleine’s betrayal, what does James choose to do? Kill her? Turn his back to her? No, he chooses to deliver her to safety. Well, if James had the intelligence of an eight-grader, it could occur to him that if she needed to be delivered to safety that was because she was under attack, and if she was under attack she quite probably didn’t call for that attack to happen.

Big mistake: The Heracles bioweapon. It is described contradictorily: it is said to be made of nanobots, kill only the programmed victims, and be ready for massive deployment by missiles; but then it is developed in biological laboratories, kills not only the programmed victims but the relatives too, it is impossible to eliminate from a host, and the alleged missiles are never shown as if the delivery is to happen through indiscriminate contagion instead. The obvious guess here is that the film, having been shot just before the CoViD-19 pandemic, had the Heracles bioweapon being just a virus, and when the pandemic begun the film was partially remade to try to eliminate the indiscriminate contagion element by calling Heracles a nanobot weapon – try and fail, for without indiscriminate contagion James’ final choice is absurd. But this ambiguous nature of the Heracles bioweapon is not the biggest problem here: the problem is that it was secretly commissioned by M himself. This is where Star Trek sweeps the floor with James Bond: where ‘Star Trek II’ brilliantly dealt with the issue of weapons of massive destruction by asking ‘whose are the right hands?’, ‘No time to die’ portraits the development of bioweapons as an ordinary, acceptable thing. It feels dirty to sit at the theatre and watch M show no regrets for his actions.

Mistakes on the side, the films script disappoints expectations. Blofeld teases Bond, creating high expectations about the secret Madeleine is holding from him – but then it is not really surprising nor important to the plot. Bond, being retired and having learnt about the Heracles bioweapon by his own means, can be expected to publicly expose M using the scientist as a witness – but then the script takes the coward’s choice and drops the guilt on the scientist, as if nobody commissioned him to create the bioweapon.

The direction by Cary Joji Fukunaga is bad. The action outdoors involving vehicles is good, but the action indoors is poor - it can just be described as ‘shoot-out in the corridors’, specially the final scene. There is even the shot where the protagonist is surprised from the back, shot at, and when the shot fails he reacts and shoots the enemy down – that’s right, the trademark shot of bad action films. Bullets appear to be made of paint, for in a couple of scenes there are characters taking several bullets and still going on. As for the music, I must excuse myself, because I failed to notice it.

This is a film with some scenes in IMAX format. The scene that really is worth to watch is the Italy scene, which is the most spectacular scene from the film and looks great on IMAX. Whether a single scene is enough to watch the film in IMAX it’s up to you to decide.

The acting is mostly bad. Léa Seydoux character is so much packed with contradictions (courageous and coward, warm and icy) that it is straight out impossible to play it right, so out of consideration for the actress her performance is to be labelled as ‘impossible to evaluate’. Rami Malek plays a quiet, socially-impaired villain with dull results. David Dencik makes a cartoonesque performance of the scientist that is devoid of any brilliance. Ana de Armas plays an American agent that is supposed to be taken as funny, but doesn’t get further than ridiculous. Jeffrey Wright lacks energy, Lashana Lynch lacks charm, and Naomie Harris and Dali Benssalaha lack containment. Ralph Fiennes’ remorseless performance reminds more of Amon Goeth than M.

On the good side, Ben Wishaw, Rory Kinnear and Billy Magnussen make good secondary characters, and Christopher Waltz is a brilliant villain.

A separate paragraph is needed to describe Daniel Craig’s way of playing Bond. Bond has always been a detached, cool, cynical character but Craig decided to make it unsophisticated, passionate and stubborn – at first, it looked like Craig was failing to play Bond, but after five films we know better than that. In an interview, Craig said ‘we had to destroy the myth’ because of the Austin Powers films. Now we can call you out on that, mister Craig – there was never a ‘we’, it was you the whole time. The writers keep supplying the same detached, cynical lines where Bond can jokingly refer the way an enemy was just killed – it is just that Craig avoids making them comical. It is not that Daniel Craig fails to play Bond, but that he refuses to. Does that make Daniel Craig’s performance a failure? Not really – after the first twenty films, the character needed some freshness and Craig provided it. How does Craig’s performance of Bond compare to the rest? Let’s just say Craig’s Bond is the angry Bond.

All in all, a bad spy film in general, a bad Bond film in particular, but still an enjoyable romance film. 2 out of 5.

Title:	No time to die
Genre:	Romance
Year:	2021
Nationality:	United Kingdom, United States
Colour:	Colour
Director:	Cary Joji Fukunaga
Writer:	Neal Purvis. Robert Wade, Cary Joji Fukunaga, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Ian Fleming
Cast:	Daniel Craig, Léa Seydoux, Rami Malek, Lashana Lynch, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Rory Kinnear, Jeffrey Wright, Billy Magnussen, Christoph Waltz, David Dencik, Ana de Armas, Dali Benssalah, Lisa-Dorah Sonnet, Coline Defaud, Mathilde Bourbin, Hugh Dennis, Priyanga Burford, Joe Grossi, Nicola Olivieri, Pio Amato, Javone Prince, Davina Moon, Mattia Lacovone, Giansalvatore Duca, Amy Morgan, Lizzie Winkler, Andrei Nova, Ernest Gromov, Gediminas Adomaitis, Andy Cheung, Brigitte Millar, Hayden Phillips, Winston Ellis, Adnan Rashed, Rae Lim, Chi Chan, Denis Khoroshko, Lourdes Faberes, Philip Philmar, Raymond Waring, Eliot Sumner, Rod Hunt, Michael Mercer, Gemmar Mcfarlane, Leighton Laing, Kimo Armstrong
Producer:	Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson
Co-producer:	Daniel Craig, Andrew Noakes, David Pope
Executive producer:	Chris Brigham
Production designer:	Mark Tildesley
Cinematographer:	Linus Sandgren
Film editor:	Tom Cross, Elliot Graham
Casting:	Debbie McWilliams, Jemima McWilliams
Art Director:	Mark Harris
Set Decorator:	Véronique Melery
Costume Designer:	Suttirat Anne Larlarb
Music:	Hans Zimmer
Running time:	163 minutes
Language:	English, French, Italian, Spanish