No Time to Die (2021) review

 

Since 1962, six actors have officially portrayed author Ian Fleming’s suave secret agent James Bond AKA 007 in Eon Productions’ long-running franchise of films based on Fleming’s work, with each of them bringing their own unique spin to the title role. Up until this year, however, arguably the one thing that most of them had in common was that, unfortunately, their tenures in the role didn’t exactly end on a good note as their final films tended to be some of the franchise’s worst-received installments, sometimes for reasons that extend beyond the film’s quality. Sean Connery, for example, may have been the first and quite arguably most iconic James Bond, but his run ended in a rather bizarre way where he temporarily left the franchise after 1967’s You Only Live Twice, returned for 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever, then left again, and then proceeded to star in an unofficial Bond film, 1983’s Never Say Never Again, which was just a remake of his fourth Bond film, 1964’s Thunderball. During Connery’s temporary hiatus, George Lazenby took up the role, and while 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is often seen as one of the franchise’s best films, Lazenby infamously stepped away from the role after just a single film on the advice of his agent. Thus, Roger Moore ended up becoming the first ‘proper’ successor to Connery and notably appeared in a franchise-record 7 films. However, many felt that he had stayed in the role for too long to the point where, by the time that he had starred in 1985’s A View to a Kill at the age of 57, he was older than lead Bond Girl Tanya Roberts’ mother.

After Moore’s departure, Timothy Dalton was cast; like Lazenby, his tenure was another notoriously short one although, in his defense, this was mainly because the series ended up in some major legal issues after only his second film, 1989’s Licence to Kill. After that, Pierce Brosnan helped revive the franchise in the mid-’90s, with his final film, Die Another Day, notably being released in 2002, which coincided with the series’ 40^th anniversary… it also ended up being one of its worst-received outings. Thus, we now cut to Daniel Craig, the man who successfully managed to defy his biggest critics who heavily crucified his casting in 2005 because they felt that he didn’t fit the character’s long-standing image as it was both described in the books and portrayed by his five predecessors. And yet, once his first film, 2006’s Casino Royale, hit theaters, he quickly became a fan-favorite amongst critics and audiences as the series effectively rebooted itself, eschewing many of its campier elements to be more in line with the grounded spy thrillers of recent years such as the Jason Bourne franchise. In the years since, Craig has arguably maintained one of the most consistent runs of any of the Bond leads to date. Sure, his first four films were an even mix of critically-acclaimed outings (Casino Royale and 2012’s Skyfall) and incredibly polarizing affairs (2008’s Quantum of Solace and 2015’s Spectre), but overall, Craig has managed to muster a strongly positive reputation amongst Bond fans. However, by the time that Spectre was released, it was unclear if Craig was going to return for another film, especially after an infamous comment that he had made during an interview where he noted that he’d rather “slash his wrists” than do another one. Granted, he did later admit that this was simply a poor way of responding to the question in the immediate wake of Spectre’s production, but nevertheless, it did cause a bit of a scandal. Ultimately, though, Craig confirmed that he would return for one more film which, as you’ll see, ended up going through quite a lot.

After it was confirmed that Skyfall and Spectre director Sam Mendes would not return to direct a third Bond film, it was announced that visionary director Danny Boyle was tapped to direct Eon’s 25^th official Bond film with a screenplay that he had co-written with his longtime collaborator John Hodge. Had this gone through, Boyle would’ve quite arguably been the most prominent director to ever be attached to the franchise given Eon’s tendency to not rely on big-name directors, having notably turned down the likes of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson in the past. Unfortunately, Boyle ended up dropping out of the project in August 2018 due to creative differences over his and Hodge’s script. Luckily for Eon, the search for a new director didn’t end up taking too long as they ultimately hired Cary Joji Fukunaga. Over the past few years, Fukunaga has made quite a name for himself as a director thanks to his work on the likes of the 2015 Netflix film Beasts of No Nation and the first season of HBO’s True Detective. With his hiring, Fukunaga notably became the first American-born director to helm a Bond film as well as the first to also have a writing credit on the film, which he shares with series regulars Neal Purvis and Robert Wade and, by Daniel Craig’s own request, Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge. And apart from an ankle injury that Craig sustained during filming, everything seemed to be going well for what would eventually be titled No Time to Die as the film was primed for an April 2020 domestic release… and then the COVID-19 pandemic happened.

With theaters closing around the world due to the impact of the pandemic, MGM and Eon promptly decided to push No Time to Die’s release date back, effectively making it the first film that had to bow to the pressure of a COVID-forced delay. And sure enough, other big-name blockbusters like F9, Black Widow, and Wonder Woman 1984 were forced to move back to a later date as well. As for No Time to Die, it was clear that this was for the best to ensure a strong financial performance at the worldwide box office as it was estimated that the film would’ve lost about $300 million had it stayed in its April 2020 slot. First poised for a November 2020 release, it was then pushed back again to April 2021, a full year after its initially planned release, when it was clear that theaters wouldn’t be back in full operation by that time. But when the new year rolled around, it was pushed back again to October 2021; thankfully, though, that release date was officially locked in back in August, and thus, more than one and a half years after it was originally set to hit theaters, the grand finale to Daniel Craig’s tenure as James Bond is finally here. Obviously, this one’s been a long time coming, but thanks to Cary Joji Fukunaga’s brilliant direction and its many moments of powerful emotional poignancy, No Time to Die achieves a genuine first in franchise history by giving its lead actor the send-off that he damn well deserves.

In the wake of MI6’s successful capture of Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz), the leader of the sinister criminal organization known as Spectre, James Bond AKA Agent 007 (Daniel Craig) has begun to settle down with his lover, psychiatrist Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux). However, their peaceful lives are tragically upended when a run-in with Spectre agents leaves Bond to believe that Madeleine has betrayed him, thus resulting in him abandoning her and retiring from MI6. Five years later, Bond is approached by his old friend, CIA agent Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright), who requests his help in locating a kidnapped scientist, Valdo Obruchev (David Dencik). Bond soon discovers that Obruchev has been working with MI6 on an advanced nanobot bioweapon known as ‘Project Heracles’ that can eliminate any target by coding itself to their DNA. This immediately compels Bond to return to active duty, where he finds himself reuniting with his old MI6 associates (MI6 head Gareth Mallory AKA M (Ralph Fiennes), his secretary Eve Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), chief of staff Bill Tanner (Rory Kinnear), and Quartermaster Q (Ben Whishaw)) while also meeting his successor as 007, Nomi (Lashana Lynch). Eventually, Bond comes face to face with the true perpetrator behind Obruchev’s kidnapping, terrorist Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek), who happens to have a notable connection to Madeleine due to a previous encounter with her when she was younger. Thus, Bond finds himself having to reunite with Madeleine for the first time in years as he and MI6 work to stop Safin before he can unleash ‘Project Heracles’ upon the world and cause the deaths of millions.

As of 2021, No Time to Die is, officially, the longest film of the franchise with a near 3-hour runtime of 163 minutes. Admittedly, there are a few instances where you do feel the brunt of that hefty run-time, like when the film reaches its finale and it’s clear that there’s at least a half-hour left to go. Still, that doesn’t mean that the film is a slog or anything as the main plot is solidly engaging as far as premises from this franchise are concerned. And just like how Daniel Craig’s previous odd-numbered Bond films did a great job of recontextualizing the Bond franchise for the times in which they were released, No Time to Die wholly succeeds at being another attempt at modernizing James Bond. In this instance, being that this was the first Bond film released in the wake of the #MeToo movement, it goes above and beyond to combat the series’ long-standing habit of objectifying its female characters, mainly by giving them some of the most significant roles that any ‘Bond Girl’ has ever had in these films. And while I know that there are some old-school fans out there who are viciously decrying this film for being ‘too woke’, this is all just very much in line with how Daniel Craig’s Bond films have been handled. It has also helped to give them some of the most emotional narrative moments in the history of the franchise, and sure enough, No Time to Die is arguably the most emotionally driven Bond film to date, which is a fitting development seeing how it does, indeed, serve as the end of an era.

Given how many actors have portrayed James Bond over the years, there’s been plenty of debate over the question of which of Eon’s 6 official leads is the ‘best’ of the bunch. And while many Bond fans usually tend to give Sean Connery that honor due to him being the first and most iconic Bond, it could be argued that Daniel Craig has managed to legitimately challenge Connery’s spot for that vaunted position. Regardless of the quality of his films, Craig has arguably been the best ‘acted’ James Bond as each of his five Bond films has done a great job of highlighting his deeply raw and emotionally vulnerable take on Bond, with his more recent outings also allowing him the opportunity to flex his comedic talents via Bond’s trademark quips. And as I noted earlier, No Time to Die pairs him with some of the franchise’s best female leads which, of course, all starts with a returning Léa Seydoux in a significantly improved turn as Madeleine Swann. Madeleine’s role (and, for that matter, Seydoux’s performance) in Spectre was one of the more polarizing aspects of what was quite frankly the franchise’s most polarizing installment in recent memory, with several critics and fans feeling that her chemistry with Craig was mediocre and that the romantic relationship between Bond and Madeleine wasn’t exactly developed properly. It’s a much different story here as Seydoux’s chemistry with Craig is much stronger and their relationship is far more pivotal to the plot, thus making it a nice bookend to Craig’s tenure as Bond as it matches up nicely with a lot of the big narrative beats that defined Bond’s similarly strong yet ultimately tragic relationship with Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale.

As for the film’s other Bond girls (a term that, full disclosure, isn’t exactly a fitting way of describing these characters nowadays), despite some initial fears of her potentially being underutilized, Lashana Lynch’s Nomi is properly established as Bond’s equal as his successor for the position of 007. It also helps that Lynch has a terrific back-and-forth camaraderie with Craig whenever they’re on-screen together. And while she only appears in a single sequence in this nearly three-hour film, Ana de Armas is, as has been the case with a lot of her recent work, a major standout as Bond’s CIA ally Paloma. Then, of course, you have all the Bond franchise’s regulars, from Bond’s MI6 allies (Ralph Fiennes’ dry-witted M, Ben Whishaw’s lovably dorky Q, Naomie Harris’ spunky Moneypenny, etc.) to Jeffrey Wright’s first appearance as Felix Leiter since Quantum of Solace. Finally, we come to the latest main antagonist of the Bond series, Rami Malek’s Safin, whose role in the story has been one of the more polarizing elements of the film. From what I can tell, this is mainly because some feel that he isn’t in it that much which, admittedly, has sort of been a recent trend with Bond villains as both Javier Bardem’s Silva and even Christoph Waltz’s Blofeld had rather limited screentime in Skyfall and Spectre, respectively. For what it’s worth, though, Malek does succeed in making Safin a legitimately sinister antagonist, especially thanks to the appropriately oft-kilter vibe that Malek gives him.

For the longest time, none of the actors who have played James Bond have ever had a great final film… with No Time to Die, Daniel Craig officially breaks that curse. Aside from just being another great example of this franchise’s penchant for top-notch action set-pieces and thrilling globe-trotting adventures, No Time to Die also does a beautiful job of maintaining one of the strongest elements of the Craig-era Bond films, their strong sense of emotional poignancy. While this era of the franchise may have started with James Bond being subjected to all the character beats that made him… well, James Bond, this Bond has also undergone a noticeable evolution for a character who was once described by Judi Dench’s M (albeit back in the Brosnan era, but the point still stands) as a “sexist, misogynist dinosaur” and a “relic of the Cold War”. In other words, regardless of how much it will inevitably piss off longtime fans of the franchise, No Time to Die effectively updates its main protagonist for the current cinematic landscape, thus resulting in a James Bond that no longer beds every single woman that he comes across but is still very much the coolest guy in the room. And since the Craig era was the first time in franchise history where subsequent follow-ups were true direct sequels, this allows No Time to Die the chance to effectively tie up any loose ends from the previous four films which, as a result, gives Daniel Craig’s Bond the best kind of send-off that any cinematic protagonist could possibly get.

Rating: 5/5!

Blade Runner 2049 (2017) review

In 1982, director Ridley Scott released the second big science fiction film of his career, Blade Runner. An adaptation of author Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the film starred Harrison Ford in the role of Rick Deckard, a Los Angeles police officer tasked with hunting down humanoid robots known as Replicants in the year 2019. Upon release, the film didn’t do so well at the box-office and received a generally polarizing response from critics. A few years later, however, it started to attract a cult following that was paired with the release of different cuts of the film, which helped to provide new context to the narrative after the theatrical cut had been severely shuttered by studio-mandated cuts. Thus, this initially polarizing film has gone on to become one of the landmark entries in the sci-fi genre, and now, 35 years after the original, we finally return to the world of humans and Replicants with Blade Runner 2049. And as that long gap in time between these two films’ release dates suggest, this sequel was in development for many, many years. For a while, it seemed unclear if it would ever get made or if Scott and Ford would even be involved with it at all. But, ultimately, both are back for this highly-anticipated sequel, as Ford returns to the role of Deckard while Scott serves as the film’s executive producer. In the director’s chair this time around is Denis Villeneuve, who’s made quite a name for himself these past few years thanks to critically-acclaimed hits like 2015’s Sicario and 2016’s Arrival. And thanks to solid direction from Villeneuve, along with several of the things that made the original such a classic, fans of the original Blade Runner should be extremely satisfied with this long-awaited follow-up.

It’s admittedly rather hard to talk about this film’s plot as some of its elements delve into spoiler territory. Villeneuve even made a request to those who reviewed the film prior to its release to not reveal anything from the plot, and while this ‘embargo’ has technically been lifted now that it’s out, I’m still going to try and keep plot spoilers to a minimum in this synopsis. As the title suggests, this film takes place 30 years after the original Blade Runner in the year 2049. While the development of human-like robots known as Replicants has blossomed in the past few decades, several older models are still on the loose, requiring the continued need of special police officers known as Blade Runners to hunt them down and ‘retire’ them. One such officer is K (Ryan Gosling) who, after retiring a Replicant that’s been hiding out on a farm, stumbles across a fascinating discovery; the remains of a female Replicant who was pregnant despite it being theoretically impossible. Thus, K now finds himself on the search for this elusive child of the Replicant mother, who turns out to be none other than the former assistant of the original Replicant creator Dr. Eldon Tyrell, Rachael. This, of course, then leads to K crossing paths with Rachael’s lover, former Blade Runner Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), who’s been missing for several years. And soon, the two find themselves hunted by the current leader in Replicant development, manufacturer Niander Wallace (Jared Leto), who seeks to use the child to further advance the process of creating Replicants.

Just like the original Blade Runner, one of the first things to stand out in this film is its impressive visual/production design. While visual effects have obviously come a long way since the original film, which had been made back when the art of CGI wasn’t fully realized yet, this film still manages to maintain the great atmospheric feel of the original while also utilizing its larger effects budget to its full potential. That and the always fantastic cinematography from the legendary Roger Deakins, along with the completely mesmerizing score by Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch, help as well when it comes to fully immersing you within this futuristic world. As for the main plot of this film, it manages to be a natural follow-up to its predecessor without ever feeling like it’s just a direct carbon copy of it. With that said, though, as was the case with the original Blade Runner, this film does maintain a slow and methodical pace throughout with a sparse amount of action sequences. This may once again prove to be problematic for some audiences, especially given that this film boasts a far heftier runtime compared to its predecessor at nearly three hours long (I think it’s safe to say that we won’t need a Director’s Cut for this one, unlike the original). And while I do think that the film is perhaps just a tad bit overlong, it still benefits from having a generally engaging story based around a solid cast of characters.

While the film does see the return of Harrison Ford in the role of Rick Deckard, it should be noted that he doesn’t actually appear in it until after the halfway point. Still, the character is well-utilized in his limited amount of screen-time and Ford once again does an excellent job as the gruff but emotionally conflicted former police officer. Ultimately, the film mainly belongs to Ryan Gosling in the role of K, who embarks on a very similar emotional journey compared to Deckard’s that yields equally fascinating results. But as for the film’s biggest standouts, that honor goes to its two main female leads. As Joi, K’s loving A.I. companion, Ana de Armas brings much warmth to this generally somber sci-fi story. Plus, she has great chemistry with Gosling and is arguably the most interesting character in the entire film given their relationship, which is ultimately the main source of the film’s emotional depth. Sylvia Hoeks, who plays Niander Wallace’s Replicant assistant Luv, is also great in a role that blurs the line between diligent assistant and a stone-cold killer. But as for Wallace, played by Jared Leto, he’s, unfortunately, one of the weaker parts of the film. And for the record, no, it’s not because of Leto’s trademark eccentric performance which, for many people, would’ve been a situation similar to his recent turn as the Joker in Suicide Squad. Instead, it’s more because he’s not in the film all that much… which, ironically, was also the case with Suicide Squad. While he does get to have a few effectively unsettling moments whenever he’s on-screen, the character feels vastly underdeveloped. I promise that I’m not spoiling anything when I say that there is absolutely no resolution for the character whatsoever.

Well, like the original Blade Runner, there’s not much else that I need to say about this film, and that’s because most of the internet has already done that for me. Also, I’m not going to be delving into any sort of diatribe about mainstream audiences’ apparent rejection of this film given its rather lackluster opening weekend at the box-office. If it just wasn’t their cup of tea, then that’s perfectly fine. And besides, the exact same thing happened to the original back in 1982… and look how that one turned out. At the end of the day, I bet that this film will go on to have the same kind of legacy that its predecessor has when all is said and done, and that is because Blade Runner 2049 is very much one of the best films of the year. Director Denis Villeneuve does an excellent job in giving us a film that serves as a fitting follow-up to its predecessor without losing any of the stuff that made the original such a classic in the first place. And while it is just as much as an undeniably slow burn as its predecessor, it also has its same great sense of visual/production design, strong storytelling, and layered characters that help to make it all worthwhile. In short, if you were a fan of the original Blade Runner, then you’ll be pleased to know that this film did manage to live up to most of the hype surrounding it.

Rating: 5/5!