No Time to Die

The Daniel Craig 007 era comes to a merciful close with this punishingly overlong and predominantly ineffective entry that marks an obvious low point for the venerable series, with the hopelessly bloated narrative following James Bond (Craig) as he attempts to prevent a terrorist (Rami Malek’s Lyutsifer Safin) from unleashing a deadly bioweapon on millions of people. Filmmaker Cary Joji Fukunaga, working from a script written with Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, kicks No Time to Die off with what just might be the franchise’s weakest, least interesting pre-credits opening to date (and this is to say nothing of Billie Eilish’s thoroughly forgettable theme song), with the movie subsequently progressing into an exceedingly sluggish and uninvolving midsection that’s practically overflowing with aggressively questionable elements. (This is especially true of Lashana Lynch’s grating, needlessly caustic work as Bond’s MI6 replacement.) The far-from-enthralling vibe is compounded, to put it mildly, by Craig’s frustratingly lifeless and ambivalent portrayal of the picture’s iconic central character (ie in his hands, Bond is portrayed as absurdly sullen and melancholic), while Malek transforms what should’ve been a gleefully over-the-top supervillain into the series’ most muted and subdued antagonist (ie Safin is just boring, generally speaking). And although the film admittedly contains a small handful of engaging interludes, including an almost incongruously entertaining mid-movie car chase, No Time to Die ultimately arrives at a tedious and downright endless third act that ensures the whole thing concludes on as anticlimactic and underwhelming a note as one could’ve possibly envisioned – which, when coupled with the misguided twist that closes the proceedings, cements the movie’s place as a completely misbegotten endeavor that fails as both a Bond flick and an expensive blockbuster.

* out of ****