James Bond: No Time to Die: Daniel Craig’s furious swan song to 007

The expectations for this film were larger than life right from the start: In “James Bond: No Time to Die” Daniel Craig is supposed to save the world one last time – and the cinema year with it, perhaps even the continued existence of the cinema as an institution. Many therefore expected Craig to end his five appearances in a spectacular way. Delivering a finale with a bang that will be remembered for a long time.

The latter, so much can be revealed, was probably successful. However, different than most people probably expected.

Because this film has little of the feel of a bright, colorful farewell party. Instead, the film is immersed in a deep minor key from the first minute. There is a heavy, dark cloud hanging over the event, which will only disappear for brief moments over the course of the 163 minutes.

James Bond on a romantic vacation

At the beginning we see the secret agent on a love vacation in Italy, together with the psychologist Dr. Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), who had already aroused his interest in the previous adventure “Spectre”. But of course the happiness doesn’t last long.

Here the film goes back to 2006: In “Casino Royale”, the first of the five Craig films, the notorious loner Bond trusted a woman against his nature – and was disappointed. Which only made him more cynical.

Now he wants to forget Vesper Lynd and try love again. But the cozy togetherness is soon disrupted. Bond feels betrayed by a woman again, leaves her and goes into hiding. He remained untraceable for five years, not even the British secret service knew his whereabouts.

007 is someone else now

Eventually his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA tracks him down in Jamaica, where the former agent spends his time fishing. And reactivates him: He should save the world again, one last time. The Specter organization has stolen dangerous biological pathogens that they can use to wipe out masses of people.

It dawns on Bond that the situation is serious when MI6 employee Nomi (Lashana Lynch) shows up. In his absence, she became a double-zero agent and took over his inheritance: 007 – that’s her now.

And James Bond is a countless nobody. However, he hasn’t completely forgotten his old skills. And so it starts again: a chase across several continents in which as a viewer you don’t always immediately understand who is flying where and why and are fighting each other. The plot seems like a conscious parody of the previous 24 Bond adventures, the content of which always consisted of such breathless races around the world.

Daniel Craig’s radical reinvention of the secret agent

At a time when the climate catastrophe has caught up with humanity, James Bond also realizes that things cannot continue like this. That the old behavioral patterns and role models no longer work. Who got the planet into a mess that humanity can’t seem to get out of. In one scene, Bond and his boss M (Ralph Fiennes) stand on the banks of the Thames and discuss the motives of the latest villain, Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek). “What could he want? – What they all want.”

Seen it all, been it all before: not only in this scene does Fiennes seem tired, like the god Wotan in “Ring of the Nibelung”, who sends his creature one last time to bring salvation to the planet. Not only because of the enormous duration of this longest Bond film of all time, “No Time to Die” has parallels to Richard Wagner’s “Twilight of the Gods”. It’s the entire atmosphere: the film manages to keep the viewer in a dark, doomed mood for around three hours, which keeps delaying the longed-for redemption. The world conflagration can be averted in the end – but not every god will escape unscathed.

This may not be what hardcore fans were expecting, but it is extremely artistic and unique in its execution. Because Cary Fukunaga (director and screenplay) as well as Purvis & Wade and Phoebe Waller-Bridge (screenplay) have succeeded in two things: On the one hand, through countless references to Craig’s previous films, they manage to present his five films as a coherent work. As a total work of art, so to speak.

“No Time to Die” completes what began in 2006 with “Casino Royale”: the reinvention of the figure of the secret agent, who comes from an infinitely distant era: In 1962, the world was in the Cold War and the patriarchy was still firmly in the saddle. But the world has changed, and with it people: Daniel Craig recognized this over the course of his five films – and drew his conclusions from it. How radical they are becomes clear in this finale, which literally sees the character cross boundaries.

“No Time to Die” concludes the Craig years

“No Time to Die” not only concludes the pentalogy of the Craig years, it spans a wide arc that connects it with the history of the 25 James Bond films. The finale, for example, takes place on a remote island – a reminiscence of the first episode in “James Bond hunts Dr. No”. The only difference: Back then the danger was radioactivity – today it is biological weapons. The enemy secret organization was called then as now: Specter.

The location in the film’s history becomes even clearer with the use of Louis Armstrong’s “We Have All The Time In The World”, which is used as a motif in the soundtrack and even plays in full during the credits. Certainly not a random choice: It was the song for George Lazenby’s only mission “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” – in which the womanizer allowed himself to be tamed and married.

The transformation of Craig’s character is very similar. Love and trust – these are also his themes. Incidentally, for the first time in history, a character almost equal to James Bond is created: Madeleine Swann, played by Léa Seydoux, becomes three-dimensional. She was already introduced in “Spectre” as a strong, independent personality – now she gets her own story. Her own past, her own traumas and injuries, which make her the ideal and only conceivable partner for Bond.

The best film in the Bond series

This also means that this film moves away from previous parts of this spy series, where women served at best as a visual adornment for the viewer and as a pastime for James Bond.

“No Time to Die” will divide audiences. Daniel Craig himself considers this film to be his best in the series – a verdict with which one can unequivocally agree. On the other hand, not everyone will like how radically the actor has rebuilt the former hero.

Craig won’t care. During his first outing, “Casino Royale,” he made it clear what he thought of other people’s opinions: “Do I look like I give a damn?”

“James Bond: No Time to Die” runs on Sunday, April 7, 2024 at 8:15 p.m. on RTL