No Time to Die
From November 2019, to April 2020, on to October 2020, April 2021, then to 30 September 2021 in Bond's homeland, and a final month and a bit agonising wait until I got to see it. But finally, No Time to Die is out. Was it worth the wait? Yes, and then some. Is it Daniel Craig's best Bond film? Perhaps not, with a somewhat murky middle act and a villain who needs a little more love and attention. But in another way it is his best Bond film - the character never more well realised, well acted, soulful and impactful. Perhaps more so than any of the films before it, No Time to Die manages to ride the line between respect for the now nearly 60 year old franchise, and remixing tropes into something new. This is made apparent from the opening salvo, the gun barrel dissolve itself given a haunting change before leading into the closest Bond has gotten to a slasher movie, with the introduction of our rasping, masked, antagonist Safin (Rami Malek). Once this pre-pre prologue is ...