Some things are worth the wait.
“No Time to Die” — the fifth and final movie with Daniel Craig portraying hard-to-kill British superspy James Bond — was the first big movie release to get pushed due to concerns over the novel coronavirus’ impact on the global box office. The film’s release already had been moved back after original director Danny Boyle left the project, and another pandemic-related delay was to come.
The 25th film built around Agent 007 finally lands in U.S. theaters this week and goes down like a finely made martini — shaken, not stirred, of course.
Craig’s Bond is not altogether like his predecessors, who existed in largely self-contained stories. Introduced in 2006’s strong “Casino Royale,” this more emotionally grounded 007 has fought his way through a love-and-betrayal-filled saga that continued with “Quantum of Solace” (2008), “Skyfall” (2012) and “Spectre” (2015).
After a prologue set years earlier in and around a home isolated in a snow-covered forest and seemingly inspired by horror films, “No Time to Die” cuts to James and his lady love from “Spectre,” Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux, “The Grand Budapest Hotel”). We soon find them traveling a mountainside roadway in his Aston Martin DB5, on the way to a romantic getaway in Matera, a rocky, hilltop city perched atop Southern Italy.
“Can you go faster,” Madeleine asks him?
“We have all the time in the world,” he assures her.
If only that were true, Mr. Bond.
Although he has left the United Kingdom’s Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6, the dangerous world of high-stakes espionage is not finished with him. When the forces of global criminal outfit Spectre descend upon him, he blames Madeleine, the daughter of a Spectre assassin.
“Why would I betray you?” she asks.
“We all have our secrets,” he says coldly. “We just didn’t get to yours yet.”
This ambush sends James back to London, where he reconnects with old colleagues M (Ralph Fiennes, “Quiz Show”), Moneypenny (Naomie Harris, “Moonlight”), Q (Ben Whishaw, “Cloud Atlas”) and Tanner (Rory Kinnear, “The Imitation Game”). By this time, he already has made the acquaintance of Nomi (Lashana Lynch, “Captain Marvel”), a fresh 00 agent with whom he reluctantly must collaborate.
He also works with some Americans: old CIA pal Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright, HBO’s “Westworld”) and his all-smiles associate, Logan Ash (Billy Magnussen, “The Many Saints of Newark”), the butt of a “Book of Morman” joke from James.
At the request of Felix, James soon teams up with a green-but-capable operative, Paloma, (Ana de Armas) for a mission that proves to be highly deadly. (The way the actress, who also shared the screen with Craig in 2019’s “Knives Out,” is shoehorned into this movie — for one lengthy sequence in which her character flashes her skills — has us and others wondering if she’s being positioned for some kind of spin-off in this content-crazed world.)
While James also re-encounters the villain from “Spectre,” Blofeld (Christoph Waltz, “Inglourious Basterds”), the big bad of this film is Rami Malek’s Safin. We won’t say much more than Safin possesses some rather twisted ideas about how to make the world a better place — and that Malek, who was incredible in “Mr. Robot” and “Bohemian Rhapsody,” isn’t likely to be remembered as having provided one of the greatest Bond villains.
When Boyle exited the film, producers tapped Cary Joji Fukunaga — whose film credits include the 2011 adaptation of “Jane Eyre” and who made quite an impression directing every episode of HBO’s strong first season of “True Detective” — to helm the affair. The first American to direct a Bond film, he is a fan of the franchise dating to when he saw 1985’s Roger Moore-starring “A View to a Kill” in the theater.
“No Time to Die” is penned by Fukunaga, along with Neal Purvis and Robert Wade — a tandem who’ve co-written the last seven films, dating to 1999’s “The World Is Not Enough” — as well as the brilliant and hilarious Phoebe Waller-Bridge (“Fleabag”). Although this impressively talented foursome has crafted a Bond adventure with a bit too much padding — it certainly needed not have stretched beyond the two-hour-and-20-minute mark — it is complex but not as convoluted as many earlier entries. Most importantly, it is consistently entertaining.
Fukunaga again dazzles as a director, “No Time to Die” packing a visual punch (thanks also to cinematographer Linus Sandgren and other collaborators) and memorable servings of thrilling action.
And then there’s Craig, anchoring the goings-on inside the frame one last time. We’ll leave it to others to say where his stands among the Bonds, but we’ve long enjoyed his gifted but imperfect Bond, one more likely to be impacted more by emotional than physical wounds.
One reason “No Time to Die” feels so overdue is its namesake theme song by pop sensation and Grammy winner Billie Eilish dropped in February 2020 in advance of what then to be the movie’s April release. It is the sumptuous backdrop for the film’s stunningly artful opening-credits sequence, which, like the movie itself, comes much better late than never.
As we look forward to where the franchise goes from here, perhaps with the casting of an actor who looks a bit different in one way or another from how we’ve long pictured 007, we offer a quiet, polite, highly British round of applause for Mr. Craig.
“No Time to Die” is rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, some disturbing images, brief strong language and some suggestive material. Runtime: 2 hours, 43 minutes.
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