No Time To Die

A Beautifully Crafted Swan Song

See it Or Skip It: See It

No Time To Die marks Daniel Craig’s 5th and final performance as James Bond. No Time To Die is a beautifully crafted swan song for Craig’s Bond. Over the course of 15 years, audiences have grown to love and admire Craig’s incredible performances. Craig is my favorite Bond because he doesn’t shy away from those cracks in the surface that are hidden beneath his armor of perfection. Craig’s Bond has always been a human being above all else and No Time To Die is a lovely and proper send-off.

Following the events of Spectre, Bond survives a bombing he has reason to believe was orchestrated by Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux), the woman who has become the great love of his life. Despite her desperate pleas, it wasn’t her, Bond leaves her. Five years later, the development of an impending global virus perpetuated by abuse of power in biotechnology is on the verge of existence, and Bond is forced to reunite with Swann who he still doesn’t trust in an attempt to stop it.

Lea Seydoux brings a silent fury to Swann. As an audience, you know she’s innocent because she just HAS to be. Her past survival is what makes her indebted to Rami Malek’s Safin, a terrorist leader planning a revenge mission against Spectre - The organization that killed his family. Swann’s father had a great role of responsibility in Spectre’s existence and sparing Swann’s life as a child is not an act of kindness he will allow her to forget. If she doesn’t cooperate with him, he’ll hurt anyone she cares about.

Bond has been trained not to care for the longest time and his portrayal of betrayal is just as desperate as Swann’s insistence she would never betray him. Betrayal is a shock to the system full of disappointment and disgust. Nothing is harder than finding out people you loved or admired were not who you thought they were. Feeling differently about people after such long histories is brutal. Even barbaric at times and that sense of utter loss make up the demons Bond must fight until the truth smugly reveals in its succession.

No Time To Die’s score and cinematography is no less than what you would expect from any of Craig’s Bond films with all its colors and intense melodies. The action sequences are choreographed to perfection for audiences’ adrenalin to feast on. No Time To Die at its core though is really all about the characters and the story. The closing of a chapter we’re not ready to close. Perhaps we would never have been ready but as Bond knows only too well, time waits for no one. There really is No Time To Die.

“Image by Universal Exports via No Time to Die Movie Poster Gallery.”