NO TIME TO DIE

Daniel Craig says goodbye to 007 in predictable, surprisingly distant action movie that is hampered by a need to tie up loose ends and by one of the least menacing Bond villains in recent memory.

No Time To Die has been billed as the movie that will rescue the global box office after the pandemic woes. Whether that will actually happen remains to be seen, as the picture seems destined to divide audiences.

On the one hand No Time To Die contains enough well-executed action sequences and tongue-in-cheek humour to keep the fans happy. On the other hand the picture is over two and a half hours long and feels like it, with an abundance of sloggy exposition and an at times mystifying need to tie up every loose end since Daniel Craig first took on the 007 mantle fifteen years ago.

But it's the ending that will have tongues wagging the most, not just for its radical departure from other Bond movies, but for the not quite flattering, emotionally vapid similarities to a certain Michael Bay movie from the late nineties that is completely at odds with the realist approach Craig brought to his Bond.

So while No Time To Die is nowhere near the nadir of Craig's tenure as everyone's favourite MI-6 spy, the actor doesn't bow out on quite as high a note as many will have hoped.

release: 2021

director: Cary Fukanaga

starring: Daniel Craig, Léa Seydoux, Rami Malek, Ana de Armas