BEFORE: An easy and obvious choice tonight, Daniel Craig carries over from "Glass Onion". It's taken me a long time to get to this film, which was supposed to be released in 2020 but got delayed until October 2021, after theaters had opened up again. Yep, I worked a screening of this one at the theater, so I know EXACTLY how long it is - I had to check on the screening every 20 minutes or so, so I saw several clips in the process. Now I have to watch the whole film, all 2 hours and 43 minutes of it, so that what I saw then can all get connected and make some kind of sense.
FOLLOW-UP TO "Spectre" (Movie #2,455)
THE PLOT: James Bond has left active service. His peace is short-lived when Felix Leiter, an old friend from the CIA, turns up asking for help, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology.
AFTER: Usually I'd issue another SPOILER ALERT, since this is a relatively recent film, but on the other hand, it's been 15 months since it came out in theaters, so if you're a real James Bond fan, you should have seen it by now - and if you haven't, well, then like me you're not a Bond super-fan, I guess.
Daniel Craig's first Bond film - "Casino Royale" - came out in 2006 so that means he's been playing the character for 15 years, five films. He's out, but jeez, what a good run. Other actors might have played Bond in more films, but not for as many years, unless you count that time that Connery came back in the 1980's in "Never Say Never Again', which was an unofficial remake of an earlier film in the franchise. So now Craig is the latest "quitter". (Kids today, no discipline.)
It's also been 6 years - or 1,868 movies - since I saw the previous J.B. film, "Spectre" - who can even remember what happened? That was the one with Dave Bautista, right? And the helicopter crash on the bridge. Jeez, I'm probably overdue for a re-watch of all the Daniel Craig Bond films in a row, maybe they'd be easier to follow if I binged them. More importantly, it's the film where Bond gets together with Madeleine Swann, a psychiatrist who was the daughter of a Spectre agent known as Mr. White. I think this is the important stuff that carries over from the previous Bond film to this one.
"No Time to Die" starts with a flashback of Madeleine's, when she was a little girl, an assassin came to her house because her father had killed that assassin's whole family, turning him into an assassin of assassins, or something. She shot him and escaped onto the Ice Road, but he followed her and fished her out of the ice. No doubt this will all be important later on - it's nearly a three-hour movie so they have to fill up the time with SOMEthing.
Years later, shortly after "Spectre" ended, she and James are on vacation in Matera, Italy, which just happens to be where his dead ex, Vesper Lynn, is buried. When her tomb blows up and knocks Bond out and he gets surrounded and chased by mercenaries, I guess Bond assumes that Madeleine is still connected to Spectre and gave up his location? Neat motorcycle stunts get him back to Vesper, and then a car rigged with guns and smoke screens gets them away. James puts Madeleine on a train, essentially breaking up with her, but is it for her safety or for his? Who, exactly is Madeleine and did she reveal his location because she's the daughter of a Spectre agent?
Fast forward five years, and Bond is retired and living in Jamaica - which, according to a tour guide when I visited Jamaica, is where ALL the James Bond films were made. Yeah, tour guides often get things wrong - I will admit that Ian Fleming lived in Jamaica and may have written most of the Bond novels there, but not all of the movies were set there, or filmed there. The CORRECT answer is three - three out of 25, and they are "Dr. No", "Live and Let Die", and now this one, "No Time to Die". I was right, the tour guide was very wrong.
Anyway, while in Jamaica, Bond is contacted by old friend and CIA agent Felix Leiter, who wants his help to extract Valdo Obruchev, an MI6 scientist who's been kidnapped by Spectre agents to work on a secret project. And they took him from a lab that studied bioweapons, so you know he can't be up to any good. Felix is working with State Department Logan Ash, a pretty boy who's always smiling so you absolutely know that he can be solidly trusted and couldn't possibly be secretly working for someone else. Bond doesn't want to get dragged back into the spy game, but then he meets a woman who turns out to be the NEW Agent 007, because they don't retire your number, this isn't baseball, and she's also on the hunt for Obruchev. Right, Bond signs up with the CIA to get him, but it's not because he's suddenly got competition, no, of course not.
The MacGuffin here is something called Project Heracles, which is some form of nanobot technology that can target and kill people based on their DNA. Ooh, so close here, if this had been a virus thing or a killer flu or something then this movie would have been CRAZY on point, nanobots still aren't a thing in the real world, this seems straight out of "Star Trek" to me, crazy future stuff, aka pure fantasy, right? Bond meets up with an agent named Paloma in Cuba and they crash a Spectre party, which is somehow run by Blofeld, remotely from his padded cell. And it seems Blofeld is all set to release his nanobots to kill Bond, only somebody pulled a fast one and re-programmed all the 'bots to only kill Spectre agents. Whoopsie.
The old 007 beats the new 007 to Obruchev, because James just can't stand competition - and takes him aboard a ship with Felix Leiter and Logan Ash. Yeah, that doesn't end well, I wonder why. I must admit I did pre-watch a few scenes here and there, both at the movie theater and again when I was dubbing this film to DVD, but really, I still had to watch the whole 2 hours and 43 minutes just to figure out how everything I saw could possibly fit together.
The only option for Bond at this point, for him to figure out how it all fits together, is to go back to work for MI6, which is a bit awkward since they had such a nasty break-up. This also puts him back in touch with Madeleine Swann, which is also a bit awkward since they had such a nasty break-up. Then he and the other 007 have to get information from Q, which is awkward because...oh, come on, you get it. (Much like Benoit Blanc, Q is revealed to be gay, but nobody seems to care, nor should they.)
Bond visiting Blofeld in prison seems to evoke those scenes in "The Silence of the Lambs" where Clarice needs to get help from Hannibal Lecter. Right? Just me? But there's a twist, because before the meeting, Bond gets infected with the nanobots, and thus he's used as a tool for our mystery opponent to strike at Blofeld. I can't tell if this is quite ironic or somehow poetic justice. Anyway, the writers seem to be killing off a lot of recurring characters from the last few movies, who's next?
Bond reconciles with Swann, and they drive off to her house - where she's got a daughter who is NOT the child of James Bond. BUT, she's five years old, which is when they...NO, NO, she is NOT the child, Bond is NOT the father. BUT, she's got piercing blue eyes - STILL, she is clearly NOT the daughter of Bond. Bond got married once, it didn't work out. Bond sleeps with a lot of women, but never impregnates them, those are the rules. So there you go, not his daughter.
This leads to a final battle on the mystery man's remote island in the Sea of Japan. There's always an island base, right? It's funny, "Glass Onion" was set on the remote island of an evil genius, and part of this film is set on the remote island of an evil genius - and I think this little plot point might turn up in the next film as well... Hmmmm....
The endgame of the film seemed to evoke a lot of elements from "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story", which was just a giant tech support nightmare. Right? Just me? We need to keep the shield doors open, we need to transmit the codes, we need to find the right drive, this extension cord isn't long enough, what are we going to do? Yeah, a lot like that, only also with guns and explosives and switches and counterweights, and missiles flying in from a nearby British vessel, a countdown clock umm, counting down, and one evil villain with a gun.
And I'm not going to say a thing about the ending, but we all know this is Craig's last film, so you figure it out. The bigger question is over where the franchise goes next, should they make another Bond film, and if so, should it be a reboot or a totally new thing, or just cast Idris Elba and say, "Whatever, Bond is black now, deal with it." That's one way to go, but what's wrong with moving forward with Lashana Lynch as the new 007? We don't know her name, OK, but she seems capable, the liberals will love it because why not a black woman as the new Bond? She can still seduce girls, right? Lesbian Bond (or whatever her name is) would be very hip and relevant.
This film won ONE Oscar, for the theme song, "No Time to Die" - and learning that Billie Eilish now has an Oscar is probably one of the only things weirder than the fact that Eminem has an Oscar.
Also starring Léa Seydoux (last seen in "The French Dispatch"), Rami Malek (last seen in "The Little Things"), Lashana Lynch (last seen in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness"), Ralph Fiennes (last seen in "Listening to Kenny G"), Ben Whishaw (last seen in "The Personal History of David Copperfield"), Naomie Harris (last seen in "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom"), Rory Kinnear (last seen in "Spectre"), Jeffrey Wright (last seen in "The Batman"), Billy Magnussen (last seen in "The Many Saints of Newark"), Christoph Waltz (also last seen in "The French Dispatch"), David Dencik (last seen in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" (2009)), Ana de Armas (last seen in "Knock Knock"), Dali Benssalah, Lisa-Dorah Sonnet, Mathilde Bourbin, Coline Defaud, Hugh Dennis, Priyanga Burford, Amy Morgan, Lizzie Winkler, Brigitte Miller, Hayden Phillips (last seen in "Jane Eyre" (2011))
RATING: 007 out of 10 bunker-busting missiles
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