My Review of "No Time to Die"

No Time to Die is the latest Bond film to come out in 2021. It is the swan song for the Daniel Craig era of Bond films. Of course the franchise will continue without him but he did play a pretty darn good bond. Over the last 5 films I have come to appreciate his take on the Bond character and the way that this Bond was portrayed in the franchise.

The movie starts off shortly after the events of Spectre. You may be a little lost if you haven't seen Spectre so here's a little rundown that happened in that movie. Bond found out all of his last movies were based on this secret organization that was taking over the planet. That organization was of course called Spectre.

At the heart of Spectre was their big boss Blofeld. He didn't find that out until later in that movie. Coincidentally Blofeld is actually Bond's adoptive brother. Bond was the adopted brother and he moved into Blofeld's family. Unfortunately Blofeld was extremely jealous of Bond because of his father's love for him. Blofeld would always associate Bond as a cuckoo bird. That's a bird that nests with a strange bird family and kicks the chicks of the family out of the nest to die.

Spectre ended with the capture of Blofeld and Bond learning that all of the relationships in his past were ruined because of him. With Blofeld out of the way Bond ends up in retirement with his new love Madeleine. Madeleine had told Bond a bit about the past and the events of Madeleine's mysterious past start off the movie.

We see them reenact the story of a lone gunman coming to kill her family and how Madeleine had to shoot him. The story isn't finished there though. This mysterious man apparently saved her but we don't know much more than that. It places her at odds with us as the audience. We don't know who her allegiances are for.

Obviously with Bond already an untrusting person with everyone pretty much stabbing him in the back in the end. This goes especially for his romantic interests as he's destined to never love forever.

One terrible day Bond goes over to the cemetery to make amends with his first real love Vespers (from Casino Royale). This turns out to be a huge trap and his life of tranquility is once again turned to chaos. He believes that Madeleine is in cahoots with Spectre after all and splits from her.

Years later Bond is still retired but all alone. He's living a life of tranquility but that of course has to come to an end. The American CIA agent from Casino Royale, Felix comes to let him know that Spectre isn't quite as dead as they thought. He wants to close them down for good but would like Bond to help him out. Seeing as Spectre has been the root cause of all of his life suffering he reluctantly agrees.

When they try to thwart Spectre there's a few crazy twists that come that will have you at the edge of your seat. There is a lot of fun little things that they did with this movie. As Bond is retired now they gave his 007 tag to another agent and basically the world was still revolving. Everything's changed but somehow still stay the same.

There's tons of amazing action sequences in this movie as you'd expect. I didn't detect much CGI either. I think that's a common thing throughout all of the Bond films. Most of the movie is done with practical effects and great stunt work. This is no different.

Visually it is just as beautiful as ever and doesn't really delineate from the last two movies before this. Although I wouldn't the visceral imagery could match Casino Royale. They did a lot of crazy camera work in that movie.

There's also not too many blatant advertisements with the odd exception. We see less and less of these as each following movie proceeded the next. It's like they actually got more of a budget for each film that came out.

This movie is quite fun and they added a few really cool characters in the film. One in particular that I would have loved to see more of was Paloma. She was barely in the movie but her character stole every scene that she was in.

The whole gang from the previous movie are in and this time have a bigger part as it felt more like a team effort this time around than previously. In that sense it felt more like a Mission Impossible movie. Well there are a lot more similarities than that but I won't get into that.

Overall, the whole point of the movie is to be entertaining and that's what we get in spades. It is very entertaining from start to finish however you will benefit from watching the previous movies. This way you'll get a better appreciation for the crap that Bond had to deal with as he's such a flawed character. His flaws are what makes us love this particular Bond though. I have to give this movie a 7.5 out of 10. It has been a fun marathon but I'm a little happy that it's finally done. Let's see how the franchise continues after this.