No Time To Die (dir. Cary Joji Fukunaga, 2021)- Review
After winding up nearly two decades of emotional and physical battering for Daniel Craig’s Bond, No Time To Die, like its protagonist, can be forgiven for limping towards its final moments. Writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade noted dryly that there was a lot of plot to get through in this instalment- a solid mass of trauma to pack beneath the suave and sexy exterior. The hands of new collaborators, in director/co-writer Cary Joji Fukunaga and Fleabag wunderkind Phoebe Waller-Bridge, keep the film afloat on a tide of adrenaline and tasteful innuendo for much of the 160 minute runtime; as their gusto and glib recede in the final act, leaving Bond’s emotional journey to take centre stage, the film starts to sag under its own weight. Yet this is a fitting send-off for Craig’s Bond, who has successfully squired a franchise wobbling precipitously between two sides of the culture wars into the 21st century.
No Time To Die- again, like its central character- oozes a crushing sense of patriotic duty. Not only was it the canary in post-Covid coalmine for the film industry, but it came at a seminal point in 007 lore, marking Bond 25, and Craig’s final outing. Production designer Mark Tildesley compared the job to captaining the England cricket team- expressing the extent to which Bond represents the Britain of his day, through a weird commingling of strength, showmanship, patriotism, and whatever else British people would like to see in themselves.
No Time To Die has managed to achieve what the nation's politicians cannot, and present a version of Britain- using those qualities- with something for everyone. A goodly romp through the lusty heyday of classic cars and guns in garters; representation, and more importantly influence, for women, people of colour, and the LGBTQ community; the requisite reflection of the real-life terrors of the day.
And how? In a roundabout way, we have Ian Fleming’s raging misogyny to thank for 007’s adaptability- his capacity to transform, or to be transformed, into the comforting, invincible hero that his audience craves.
Daniel Craig put it bluntly in the press tour for 2015’s Spectre: Bond’s “a misogynist. That’s clear. He’s got problems. Serious fucking problems. But it’s not my job to judge him.” Comfortingly, this is not a controversial statement. British people do not like overcomplication, and lines from Ian Fleming’s books, such as the pronouncement that “all women love semi-rape” in The Spy Who Loved Me, leave little room for argument. Yet Fleming’s sadistic (really) obsession with women has paved an unexpected route to Bond’s salvation.
Since his inception, Bond’s staple fare, the yin and yang of both character and franchise, has been fruity women: specifically, thumpings doled out either by them, or over them, as a means to conquest. In No Time To Die, this age-old fixation proves more adaptable than Ian Fleming could have ever dreamed (or probably wished).
Rather than defeating rather two-dimensional bioterrorist Safin (Rami Malek), yet another in a line of interminable baddies, Bond’s real challenge is moving on from a vendetta against his deceased ‘evil ex’, Vesper Lynd; getting over the shock of his replacement by a younger and more competent agent, Nomi (Lashana Lynch) who also happens to be a Black woman; atoning for his abandonment of his love interest, Dr Madeline Swann (Lea Seydoux) and discovering the meaning of fatherhood with his surprise daughter, Mathilde (Lisa-Dorah Sonnet). As it turns out, an obsession with women is the one issue- the one motivating factor- that translates easily across not the political aisle, when they exist not as objects of lust but love. As Purvis and Wade noted, the early and secret logline for Bond 25 was “he had nothing to live for- he found something to die for”. Melodramatic as the premise and indeed the execution may be, it’s a fitting transformation for Bond’s essential flamboyance, now directed to a more productive end.
To some extent, the real question of any Bond story is not what will happen to the villain- doomed to an inevitable trouncing- but who and what the film’s women will be. Every instalment offers an elaborate guessing game over the chameleon ‘Bond Girls’, the shapeshifting bevy of trophies, nemeses, patrons and protectors who define the character just as much as the ‘big bad’ du jour. Who’s down for a quick shag? Who will betray him? And who, most importantly, will humanise him?
James Bond really is the poster boy for ‘I can fix him’. His excesses, his lapses of judgement, his brutality, are countered by a sense of uncontrollable compulsion, which, though woefully unrefined, has some sort of emotional logic. Traditionally, Bond’s violence stems from the twin flames of patriotism and horniness- Rule Britannia indeed- but these influences dovetail, surprisingly elegantly, with more modern sensibilities.
No Time To Die is most successful when it uses the traditional Bond methods- violence, sex, and the lavish military might of the British intelligence service- to pursue the various goals of different strands of society. For young women, we have a highly successful, black, female 007; for Tory grandees, we have Bond merrily shirking his duties to the British government on a plush Caribbean island. It’s a nice, and wonderfully fantastical, note of unity on which Craig can depart.
