NO TIME TO DIE - All the Time in the World

Ever since Dr. No landed in 1962 and launched the film franchise, James Bond has been a perpetual motion machine. 007 will always walk into M's office and accept the next mission, blow some things up, save the day, and we're told "James Bond will return" to do it all over again in a couple years. The problem being that most Bond actors run out the clock and end on a a damp squib rather than going out on a high note

But with Not Time to Die, Daniel Craig has a chance to leave as big an impression with his final round as Ian Fleming's secret agent as he did with his first.

2006's Casino Royale has proven to be the gift that keeps on giving to this era of Bond, as well as an imposingly high bar to reach for since. Because it got to be "the story of how someone could be the cold, closed-off assassin we're familiar with," it never had to square the circle of doing all the James Bond stuff without abandoning Craig's greatest strengths as the character. His incredible charisma mixed with his clear emotional vulnerability have always given his already potent action chops an extra (ahem) punch, but don't always mix well with the franchise staples that have kept things running in place. Craig's tenure as Bond has been defined both by films that struggled to come at this from various angles to varied success, as well as by movies that doggedly insisted on a stricter sense of continuity than the franchise had previously seen.

Meaning that every time a movie hits a foul, the next ones have to more directly deal with the fallout. However, director Cary Joji Fukunaga (who also worked on the script, alongside series mainstays Neil Purvis & Robert Wade, and Fleabag's Phoebe Waller-Bridge) treats this as a feature rather than a bug, crafting a bullet train of an action movie that's also a 2 hour and 45 minute curtain call for everyone that's brushed elbows with Bond along the way.

I'm not going to spend much time on the action in this film, (of which there is a lot, and all of which absolutely rules), but I do want to toss a coin to Fukunaga's absolutely banging chops in this area. No Time to Die has both of the best car chases in the entire Daniel Craig run, along with some dynamite fists and bullets business in Cuba and a stunner of a oner in the finale. But what makes the set pieces stand out is not just the series proclivity for marrying visually arresting locales with creative practical stunts, but the filmmakers' ability to add just the right character element for each one to feel vital as well as engaging. Ana de Armas in particular makes such an impression during her brief appearance that its easy to want the rest of the film to just follow her and Lashana Lynch's 00 agent instead of Bond, who's (stop me if you've heard this one before) coming out of retirement to finally lay the spectres of his past to rest.

Where Fukunaga and crew really nail what this film requires and that previous ones have struggled with, is using the franchise's staple of characters and tropes in ways that match Craig's commitment to showing the heart behind the assassin, while also chasing trends of other blockbusters (as the Bond series always has). No Time to Die cracks the nut of riffing on long-running franchises like the MCU, not by borrowing plot lines, but by peeking around the corners of characters that are easy to dismiss as cardboard cutouts to find the recognizable human behind. Part of what excuses the film's length is how much room it allows its supporting players, giving James a chance for a drinking game with Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) or Moneypenny (Naomie Harries) and Q (Ben Wishaw) a moment to banter in a kitchen, showing M (Raph Feinnes) get cornered and pissed, asking and then definitively answering obvious questions about he results of some of Bond's hallmark habits, and crafting a finale with a load of moving parts that really makes use of everyone's abilities.

How the film gets there is less universally effective. There's a lot of hand-waving and contorting that the movie has to go through, both being a direct sequel to SPECTRE and also having to set up a new Bond villain and related Bad Guy Plan / Lair etc. There's a lot of interesting threads here, especially looking at a film that deals with bio-terrorism and transmissible threats after a couple years of. . . well, you know. Unfortunately, Rami Malek's Lyutsifer Safin was mostly a wash for me. The character is introduced with some fun twists on what the obvious course for the film could be, and allows for some of the best acting that Craig does the entire film. He's also the key to how the film plays with Madeleine Swan (Lea Seydoux) and her convoluted past - and while I won't spoil anything, much of it is both predictable and fairly nonsensical, as well as leading to almost breaking character consistency completely for Safin late in the film.

However, the axiom of "a Bond film is only as good as its villain" has never been particularly true, and placing Bond as his own most effective foil (which is very clear in hindsight but isn't exactly subtle even in the opening of the film) works like gangbusters. Whatever awkward turns it takes to get there, No Time to Die does a pretty great job of taking characters defined by their professions and giving them depth and legacy greater than just their function at the agency or in the story. The film ends on three of arguably the most powerful emotional beats of the entire franchise, and uses its time to make it count.

And if it's not to everyone's liking, take solace in the inevitability that we can always roll the dice again. Because whatever new face or time we must await, 007 will return.