To say that No Time to Die finishes the Daniel Craig cycle a strong third feels like faint praise. Then again, when the first two are Casino Royale and Skyfall, and the bottom two are Spectre and Quantum of Solace, third place begins to look pretty good.
Saying farewell to Craig after 15 years is a milestone not only because many would argue he’s the best Bond of all time, (I say Connery made the mold, and that’s that) but because 15 years is the longest time anyone has played the character. Roger Moore is second longest, having played Bond from 1973 to 1985.
Given all that, one wishes for Craig to go out with a great movie, and that No Time to Die isn’t quite great feels like more of a disappointment than it actually is. On balance, this is still a fine 007 adventure that gets much more right than wrong.
Much has been made of the fact that No Time to Die is the longest running Bond movie of all time, clocking in at 2 hours and 43 minutes, but for me, it mostly flew by, thanks to expert pacing by Cary Joji Fukunaga (True Detective), the first American director to tackle a Bond movie. Considering all this film has to cram in story-wise, it moves at a breathless speed, and any issues the movie has are not Fukunaga’s doing. Lushly shot by Linus Sandgren (La La Land), it’s arguably the second best-looking Bond movie after Skyfall, lensed by Roger Deakins.
No, the issues that drag this movie down began long before a single frame of it was shot. It’s a direct sequel to the wildly uneven Spectre, and one of the major problems of that movie was that Lea Seydoux simply does not have great romantic chemistry with Craig. Ever since I first saw Seydoux in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, I thought she’d be ideal for a Bond movie, but her Madeleine Swann is too often passive and reactionary, and her relationship with Bond absolutely pales in comparison to Eva Green from Casino Royale.
Heck, it even pales in comparison to Ana de Armas, who has one great scene in No Time to Die as an agent who assists Bond. The mini Knives Out reunion is absolutely delightful, and I kept wishing she had been the primary Bond girl here. Lashana Lynch also makes a strong impression as a new 00, and I hope the franchise finds a place for her going forward.
The biggest debit is that the main villain played by Rami Malek hobbles the movie. There’s simply not much to his character, which veers uncomfortably close to Dr. Evil-level self-parody, and when he comes to the fore in the last act, the movie finally begins to drag.
And yet No Time to Die still pulls off its conclusion with aplomb, making for an ending that’s genuinely moving. Yes, that’s because Craig is such a fine actor, and because we’re carrying the weight of Bond’s past with us, but the movie still manages to correct itself. Even Seydoux’s performance improves with a plot turn that gives her something stronger to play.
As every Bond film has done, it announces that James Bond will return. What form will that take? All the time in the world will tell, but for now I’m grateful that Craig says farewell with a strong if not ideal finale. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
A NOTE ON SCREENX
I saw No Time to Die while I was on vacation in California, and I wanted to make a unique experience of it. I chose to see it in ScreenX, a widescreen format not quite like any other - but it’s not fully effective either.
The idea of ScreenX is more or less to create an effect similar to that of Cinerama, the widescreen format that originated in the 1950s, using three projectors and a deeply curved screen to produce a panoramic image. The image was so wide that no matter where you sat, you had to turn your head to take in all the action. I was lucky enough to see several Cinerama screenings when they played Dayton in the 1990s.
ScreenX aims for a similar effect by using additional projectors to create images on the side panels of the theater. It does this not for the entire movie, but only for selected scenes, similar to how IMAX is used today.
In my theater, however, the side walls were not at the angles in this image. Instead, the walls were at right angles, exactly perpendicular to the main screen. I’m not sure if this is how it was supposed to look, or if this was a wonky installation, but in any event, the effect was more distracting than it was immersive. It certainly didn’t help that the theater’s illuminated exit signs were squarely in the middle of the side walls. When it comes to enveloping formats, IMAX is still the way to go.