No Time To Die (spoilery reviews thread)

Ok, first the good stuff - the action's mostly decent, the bad guy's eeeeevil plot is suitably bonkers and genuinely world-threatening (and Malek is reasonably creepy, if a little underused ... he is also not, I can confirm, Dr No 2.0). Nomi's relationship with Bond consists mostly of one-upmanship (womanship?) bantering, I was pleased to see. De Armas is a delight, and I wish she'd been in it more. Zimmer's score is fine. This is undoubtedly Craig's 'lightest' Bond performance, he even has a few of the old-style one-liner 'groaners'.

BUT ... this is maybe the most sexless Bond had ever been. They don't even have him try it on with Lynch and get rebuffed (could've had a bit of fun with it in the dialogue '007 tries to sleep with 007 ... it's true what they say about your ego!').

And even allowing for the fact that Craig's films are their own self-contained arc and it was a bit of unused Fleming, BOND SHOULD NOT BE A PARENT.

And also (and most damning of all) HE (and Felix and Blofeld) SHOULD NOT FUCKING DIE! You're not meant to leave the cinema after Bond kinda deflated. I hung on right to the end of the credits just to ensure that the 'James Bond Will Return' credit appeared (it does), because I honestly wasn't 100% sure.

I can see how the ending might polarise some fans....but simply put, Bond did leave the service, settled down, so how is conceiving a child inconceivable?

The ending scenes were sad, there were tears streaming down my face...emotionally it pushed the right buttons, and the closing scene with Mathilde smiling as her mum is about to tell her a story about her dad is priceless.

Going again to see it.

Thing is, the 'Bond being saddled with a crotch-dropping' thing was first mooted for QOS ... it was to have been Vesper's and Bond was to have felt duly responsible for it.

Now, if you're having to recycle rejected script ideas from probably the 'messiest' entry in the franchise's history ... well. I dunno.

I'm more put off by the reported hijacking of Louis Armstrong at the end, if these reports are true. Shameless.

Lazenby. wrote:

I'm more put off by the reported hijacking of Louis Armstrong at the end, if these reports are true. Shameless.

Lazenby himself attended a screening (he's 82) and said the music was interesting....

It is! I didn't mind it at all.....

That song was written for one Bond film and one Bond couple, not for BB to lazily thieve it, cheaply using it to manipulatively aid her endless personal emo quest, with absolutely not a care in the world about forever altering the context of the song. George Lazenby's "approval" (if labelling it "interesting" can be considered such) is neither here nor there to me. What was stopping BB using (or comissioning someone to write) an original piece for the scene? Or at least a piece associated with Craig's Bond?

Bond himself tells Maddy that she has all the time in the world, just before the



It is a spoiler thread so I guess I can say it....

Lazenby. wrote:

What was stopping BB using (or comissioning someone to write) an original piece for the scene? Or at least a piece associated with Craig's Bond?

Lack of genius most likely. Sounds harsh I suppose but at one point you had Connery, Hunt, Adam, Barry all working on a film and they all had some genius in them. Really was a lightning strikes once scenario.

I hate that they are aping the old stuff while thumbing their noses at it but it is perfectly in line with the last four films so I can't say I expected different. It felt odd over the end credits but I was sort of just resigned to it, the whole film really. The end, too. It was in the cards from the minute Boyle walked and the cast/plot were announced. They already used the "get back to work" ending and the "rides off into the sunset ending" so it always made sense to me that this was going to be the outcome.

Strip out the 'daddy Bond' and death of Leiter, Blofeld and Bond stuff, simplify the plotting around Heracles, have another action sequence to combat that mid-movie 'sag' (or shorten the runtime) and replace the Mumble Queen as the theme song artist and you've probably got a pretty decent Bond movie.

I found it boring. I didn't really hate it as a movie but I didn't find anything to like and it felt like Spectre all over again. The problem is I really don't care about Madeleine, never did and this movie didn't fix that so nothing felt tragic. The same with the child, there was just no connection there and the ending should have had some tension trying to get her to safety but really felt flat.
I was OK throughout the middle part still hoping it would get better but the last 40 min or so sunk it. That's where I felt some rip roaring action could have saved it to some degree but it was some of the worst action scenes ever put on screen. Lashana Lynch was pointless as 007 and I was really hoping we would see her and Bond open a can on the baddies at the end but that didn't happen either. She was barely in the movie at all and you would think with it;s length we could have gotten at least one decent scene with her. The Poloma girl did more and it was brief.
Felix dying, Bond dying...all seemed pointless in such a flat movie.

Just saw it. My initial thoughts:

The Good:

Gorgeously shot and perhaps one of the nicer looking/edited Bond films in quite some time.

After the absolute torture of sitting through that pile of shit SPECTRE, I was concerned about the run time of NTTD. But I thought the pacing as well done. Movie felt like it breezed by.

The score is certainly better and more memorable then the last few Craig films.

Craig put in a great performance. Much lighter than his past few and a lot more territory covered.

Loved the big grand old adventure feel to it that's been missing most of the Craig era.

Loved the little nods to DN, DAD and the YOLT novel and the little other items sprinkled in.

Enjoyed M/Bond going at it.

The Bad:

It certainly is messy at points, a little too much going on but overall I thought it was a highly enjoyable experience.

Some areas that irked me a bit:

Agree with the criticisms about Safin and the lack of motivation.

Nomi is good, but not really given a chance to shine

Wish we had more Ana da Armas screen time.  (Wish they had brought Raoul back in Cuba, such a great ally - wish they had used him again after DAD! )

Obruchev seemed like he showed up to the completely wrong movie! Wish they had killed him off a lot
sooner. Shocked he made it all the way to the end. I wish he hadn't.

The Bad

Blofeld's back. Yikes again. Thankfully played a little more understated this time from Waltz. Great actor, but a terrible choice for Blofeld. The "Die, Blofeld, Die" is cool to make it into a Bond film, but kind of feels really off considering the context in which it happens. Poor way for Bond's nemesis to go, but he was handled poorly in both films.

Did not care much for the theme song. It's better than SPECTRE's but just lacked punch needed for how they amped this film up.

Wright/Craig have no chemistry whatsoever.

General Observations

Killing Felix would normally be a no from me but honestly Wright and Craig had no chemistry whatsoever in any of their films. It's a little better here, but not by much. I didn't really miss him when he was gone. With that said the franchise has butchered Leiter so often and so badly, killing him is really no worse than some of the past Leiter portrayals (John Terry....). With the Craig era reinvigorating the characters of M, Moneypenny and Q, I was disappointed they did not give Felix the same treatment and revamp him into someone a little more effective.


I'm odd man out but I loved it. Thought it was one of the better Craig films and one of the better Bond movies. Will have to see it a few more times before I settled in on a "rating" of sorts, but if I had to sum up my review of the Craig here:

HIT: CR, SF, NTTD
MISSED: QoS (not terrible, not great - a lower/middle of the back film with some okay moments
COMPLETE DISASTER: SPECTRE

Welcome back, Moore. I enjoyed reading your comments, and am somewhat buoyed by them.

I have no idea what they were thinking or aiming at. Purvis and Wade gets to go overboard on Fleming pulls, the film references are all over primarily being modern Internet faves FYEO and mostly OHMSS. The usage of OHMSS themes was torture and using We Have All the Time in the World was an insult.
It’s Spectre II but focused on emotion instead of world building. It still has Marvel-itis in a Christopher Nolan wrapping. At least the action was a bit better staged than Spectre. I think the key shift in tone comes from Fukunaga getting a writing credit and injecting that into the story.

I had avoided spoilers but heard the child rumor and hoped to hell they wouldn’t….but they did. The film tries to act like it’s OHMSS but it should be consciously referencing the YOLT novel which it doesn’t. That seems to have been the Purvis and Wade intention that got thrown off course.  Had this been Craig Bond doing the literary YOLT I could’ve understood it as a goodbye idea.

The romance is still unbelievable and unearned, Bond takes a continual backseat as if it were a team M:I film and the villain is again woefully underdeveloped, underused and the plot could be written on a table napkin.
But the killing is just…no…and Felix for no reason….and Blofeld….
I too waited for the return credit. I guess this means my personal head canon was true all along-the modern era is it’s own universe and self contained.
Thank god. Let’s get on with it. I felt free leaving the theater as if I were Dreyfus hearing Clouseau was dead.

hegottheboot wrote:

I have no idea what they were thinking or aiming at. Purvis and Wade gets to go overboard on Fleming pulls, the film references are all over primarily being modern Internet faves FYEO and mostly OHMSS. The usage of OHMSS themes was torture and using We Have All the Time in the World was an insult.
It’s Spectre II but focused on emotion instead of world building. It still has Marvel-itis in a Christopher Nolan wrapping. At least the action was a bit better staged than Spectre. I think the key shift in tone comes from Fukunaga getting a writing credit and injecting that into the story.

I had avoided spoilers but heard the child rumor and hoped to hell they wouldn’t….but they did. The film tries to act like it’s OHMSS but it should be consciously referencing the YOLT novel which it doesn’t. That seems to have been the Purvis and Wade intention that got thrown off course.  Had this been Craig Bond doing the literary YOLT I could’ve understood it as a goodbye idea.

The romance is still unbelievable and unearned, Bond takes a continual backseat as if it were a team M:I film and the villain is again woefully underdeveloped, underused and the plot could be written on a table napkin.
But the killing is just…no…and Felix for no reason….and Blofeld….
I too waited for the return credit. I guess this means my personal head canon was true all along-the modern era is it’s own universe and self contained.
Thank god. Let’s get on with it. I felt free leaving the theater as if I were Dreyfus hearing Clouseau was dead.

When you think back to Dr.No and flash forward through the entire series it's shocking just how little there is left of James Bond at all in the last outing. They say his name is Bond, his name is in the title but really that's about where it ends. KKBB has said in many threads that they stripped him of his masculinity but I would go one step further and say they stripped him of anything Bond related.
I have no idea what they were going for but for me it failed miserably. I agree with everything you wrote here, killing Felix, Bond, Spectre was all a huge mistake and really felt like it was just going for cheap shock or emotional appeal. Even if they had have pulled it off and it was an epic tragedy about family and children that ripped your heart out and left everyone in tears it still would have been a mistake for a Bond film but that failed too among the boredom and apathy you are left with watching this.
If you didn't know ahead of time it was a Bond film you would never figure it out ... Bond in name only
a total BINO

and yes, let's get on with it

Sarai, when you said they killed Bond, you do mean that metaphorically, right?

Erm ... see the last 3 lines of my post that kicked off this thread, Khanners.

An excellent article in line with my own feelings on them 'going there' by comedian/actor/presenter David Mitchell -

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/10/ah-mr-bond-i-was-expecting-you-to-entertain-me

Good article, the only part I disagree with is that it hurts the Connery era ect.


"As a result, every film, every scene, every hat landed on a hatstand, every grin at Desmond Llewelyn’s sternness, is now brutally recontextualised. When Connery wins at roulette, when Roger Moore attempts re-entry, when Pierce Brosnan merrily drives a tank through St Petersburg, they are all portraying a man destined to lie bleeding, heartbroken and alone, missing the daughter he never really knew, waiting to be blown to bits by his own country’s missiles. It’s quite the buzzkill."


disagree because I don't care and will never watch this again
It all feels unrelated and I connect it to Bond about as much as I connect The Last Jedi to The Empire Strikes Back. They totally Snoked the Spectre plot too.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Erm ... see the last 3 lines of my post that kicked off this thread, Khanners.

An excellent article in line with my own feelings on them 'going there' by comedian/actor/presenter David Mitchell -

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/10/ah-mr-bond-i-was-expecting-you-to-entertain-me

I wonder if he's all dead, or just mostly dead.

Made it ma, top of the world!

I've not read the posts above yet. So, I'm doing this bit then will scroll up.

Unlike recent reviews, this isn't blow by blow -largely as it's hard to smuggle copious alcohol and a laptop into a cinema.

So...this is my take.



Hobbling to Portsmouth's sole cinema (weird for the UK's only island city but there you go), it took some effort from the self-service to get a ticket ("you cannot have a single seat between you" or whatever), I was in.
My seventh Bond film in the cinema since those halycon days of TWINE when I was fourteen.

Twenty-five minutes in, I was seething, ready to walk and ask for money back.

But finally, the ads, trailers and lengthy no-phone messages ended.

I hope with  the new Bond that the days of trying to make the gunbarrel fancy, imaginative end. DAD started this bollocks.

Now, is this the longest PTS? I made discreet checks of my watch and estimated 30mins. Bond films are now, or have been since Skyfall, reaching a point where surely the title song is surplus to requirements? Just run the titles along the scenes like some films.

I went into NTTD discarding as best as I could my increased levels of disdain for the Craig Era (not just Craig but the whole shebang). So it bubbled along well enough. But there comes the time in the world line which made me groan involuntarily followed by the instrumental. Now, I know this was a reboot era, everything anew but somehow it didn't seem to fit. I guess to me it's so intrinsically linked to Lazenby, Rigg and OHMSS that coming in anything else is jarring.

I'll cut to the quick as far as Safin goes. Didn't engage with him at all, lacking. The film didn't seem to need a villain really. Sort of like FYEO where though you have Kristatos et al, it carries itself well enough. So even when he dies, nothing.

I did like seeing my favourite Aston shown off, though I would've taken it for the escape as surely knowing Craig's Bond, even this Vantage would have had the skis, missiles etc. But no, we take that 4x4 eventually into Jurassic Park.

Felix's death got me more. The whole what if Bond died thing has been talked about enough over the years but Felix? Sure he got mauled in LTK but somehow...this hurt.

Craig had his "this is for Ferrera" moment at least.

The whole Double-Oh bit was what it was. I wasn't sold on Lynch. Shame we didn't get more of Paloma. If anything she should've gone to the end.

The OHMSS theme midway had me leaning forward as I thought I was imagining it. The Over and Out style.

Hopefully not the end of Fiennes' M. Like Dench, I'd like to see him cross the eras. Two films as M is not enough. On that note, nice to see portraits of the previous two M's.

Also, the fact that SIS, much like the Moore-era of films, seems to have relocated back into Whitehall (specifically, what is in reality the Ministry Of Defence, originally the Air Ministry).

Good ol' HMS Dragon doing her bit -whilst in reality she was moored in the harbour nearly a mile from me. (I found it a bit strange unlike in TND, they didn't fictionalise the name but small beer, nothing huge). Then you see the way it goes.

It's the first film I've walked out of, Bondwise, quiet and not feeling a buzz. I've been pondering it in the three or so hours since I watched it. I don't think for one it needed to be so long but it passed easily enough.

I just wonder what lies beyond. Another reboot, another introduction of classic villains etc.

Using the song at the end, I don't know. The weak points for me were weirdly the more moving emotional moments. The dialogue, delivery, whatever, the car zooming into the tunnel ("I'll tell you a story" or whatever).

I give this a tentative 6.5/10. Truly feel deflated, weird.

It took me a couple of days of brooding to convince myself not to care. We'll know in a couple of years whether Bond #7 will be a reboot or a miraculous continuation - and I think I'd prefer the former, so nobody has to step directly into Craig's illustrious combat boots.

I think watching my favorite film hero die on screen has left me feeling old. I suppose I'd feel the same about Logan if I'd been a hard-core X Men / Wolverine fan from the start.

As it is, Craig was never my favorite Bond. All along I told myself "if I don't like the reboot elements in Casino Royale, I'm bound to like the next film better, as it will doubtless be a straightforward mission". Well, that never happened. SPECTRE is the one that came closest to ticking my boxes, despite the "this time it's even more personal-er" elements.

RIP Daniel. Bond Mark III is dead - long live (hopefully) Mark IV.

I still can't quite process my feelings. I did a spoiler free reaction video attempt that just turned into a ramble.

IF they wanted to go this route they should have done a closer YOLT novel adaptation and it could've worked. Heck I've already rewritten it in my head that way and it at least feels more satisfying.

Admittedly neither is the way I thought Craig's era would end. It feels like an odd fit to end these films on. I don't know which I prefer if forced to choose: NTTD or SP. NTTD is very much SP 2 with emotions and slightly better staged action.

I also can't decide if the bad parts are like bad fan fiction or a bad romance novel.


As I've been saying for days now..."No Time to Die. When I saw it felt like time to die."-Maibaum from the Criterion FRWL commentary.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Erm ... see the last 3 lines of my post that kicked off this thread, Khanners.

An excellent article in line with my own feelings on them 'going there' by comedian/actor/presenter David Mitchell -

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/10/ah-mr-bond-i-was-expecting-you-to-entertain-me

Seems to me there are two possibilities that are most likely for the future of "Bond." Possibility number one, which I think is less likely, is that we get a series of James Bond period pieces, beginning in 1953, which is the year Casino Royale was published, and ending in 1961, which was the year prior to the making of Dr. No. If Eon did one for each year, that would be nine films. I would actually be interested to see how such "prequels" would turn out.

The second possibility, which I fear is more likely, is that James Bond is simply replaced by a 00 agent that is the very opposite of Bond. This figure will have at least one of the following identity characteristics: black, female, homosexual. And, it goes without saying, this character will be a crusader for Leftist causes. It will be the ultimate action figure for Leftist fanatics, which is what I believe Babs has wanted to create for a very long time, but feared she could not do with Bond himself.

I think Bond still had Mathilde's bunny tucked in his braces for a reason - instant recognition when this battered fellow with a different face is found on the beach in #26.

I fear PK that your second possibility might be the likeliest to become fact. Seems appropriate that Bond is done by his sixtieth anniversary.