The "No Time To Die" Review

Just discovered your website…amazing job! Respect your views on No Time to Die, but beg to differ on the wisdom of killing Bond off, and how it hit me, and what it means….will post the review I wrote of the film to describe why, from my website https://westsidehecklers.wordpress.com/ if you’re interested in reading it!

“Whatever happens to James Bond in No Time to Die does not happen to the physical man, but to his nature, or, if you will, the idea of James Bond. One can glean that much from traditional assurances made at the close of concluding credits which contradict the film’s climactic end sequence. The symbolism employed is sly yet intentional, and anybody who knows Bond knows what I mean. One thing Bond fans know is that Bond always returns…thankfully…regardless of who plays him. But never has a Bond film put such an exclamation point at the end of a particular actor’s string of films, as if to say “we’ll miss you” but, “good riddance” at the same time. As the biggest Bond fan in the universe, this left me with a tingler growing on my spine, as I intuitively began to fear what this means for the character we’ve come to love and cheer over the last 60 years.
Bond, without his devil-may-care attitude and out of touch “in-touchiness” is not really Bond. Daniel Craig is considered a good Bond chiefly because he is most like the Bond in the Ian Fleming novels, a blunt instrument who uses reflexive instinct and carnal cruelty. Nobody is arguing he is not flawed, but to encumber and emasculate Bond the way No Time to Die does with relish, and strip him of his essential nature, is to do more than update the character for the times the way swapping a polyester suit for a linen one would. This film forces him to evolve in a way Bond shouldn’t have to if he is to remain effective at his job, which is kind of the point. The whole idea of Bond IS (or was) that he is effective only to the degree that his original nature is preserved. A tamed, by-the-book agent could be any old 00, but not 007. It’s not “just a number.” No number of stunt sequences or showy set pieces interspersed for fan service distracted me from the notion that Cary Fukunaga would have rather make a different kind of movie, entirely. Even Daniel Craig himself approvingly remarked that the film is about “family” and “relationships.” What??? Whomever is in the tank, future directors and producers at EON would be wise to remember that straying too far from a successful formula will inevitably cost fan loyalty to the series that far trumps that which even Bond has to martinis, or special branch. Loyalty matters most, whether it’s rendered in service of saving what’s left of the free world, or in paying to watch him do it.
I offer, not to spoil the interminable fun, that this 25th Bond film should have ended with a return to form, not sentimental concessions of love and other entangling “bondage.” After all, we already covered this terrain briefly in 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which was, at the time, a novel departure with a lesson learned. Bond further doubles down not only by making the same mistake here, but by surrendering to self-pity after learning he is infected with a nanobot virus designed to permanently break up his love-fest. His response is counterproductive and violates his thinly buried nature. If he only had more than 007 seconds left to think about it, he may have done a Halle Berry-esque swan dive off Villain Island and cut his losses. Chalk it up to memories, along with new bullet wounds, that make secret agents wiser and stronger. We could have been treated to Bond sitting poolside at the Fontainbleau in baby-blue, terrycloth bun-huggers, lamenting his newfound softness, mid-massage, and reflecting on why it is that he can’t have it both ways. Craig’s arc took him too far from the guy who “didn’t look like he gave a damn,” and I found myself missing that guy, and what Danny Boyle’s version might have been. Ultimately, Bond’s conclusion, like ours, must be that he, regardless of “the times,” is singularly built for his job. A big part of the enjoyment we can mutually share with Bond is that, despite and because of his flaws, nobody does “it” better. If somebody else does, why bring Bond back at all? “