NO TIME TO DIE : Tuesday 16th November 2021.

I saw the M Rated 'NO TIME TO DIE' at my local multiplex this week and finally, the 25th Bond film is released in Australia, as Directed and Co-Written by Cary Joji Fukunaga whose prior film making credits include 'Jane Eyre' in 2011 and 'Beasts of No Nation' in 2015. Phoebe Waller-Bridge also Co-Wrote this film with Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. The film was originally scheduled for release in November 2019, but was postponed to February 2020 and then to April 2020 after Danny Boyle's departure as Director due to creative differences. It was then postponed until a November 2020 release date due to the ongoing severity of the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide, and was pushed back again to an early April 2021 date. It was then postponed to an October 2021 release date, with the World Premier screening scheduled for London's Royal Albert Hall on 28th September. The film was released in the UK on 8th October, in the US on 15th October and in China on 29th October, with the release postponed until last week in Australia because of national lockdowns which have since been lifted. The film has so far grossed US$710M off the back of a production budget somewhere in the vicinity of US$280M, and has garnered generally positive Reviews for this, Daniel Craig's final outing as the titular British MI6 Agent James Bond.  

The film opens up with a lone gunman traipsing through the snow to an isolated house by a lake surrounded by a forest. Inside the house, a young Madeleine Swann (Coline Defaud) looks after her near comatose mother (Mathilde Bourbin) on the verge of passing out on the sofa under the influence of alcohol, cigarettes and who knows what else. As the gunman approaches and enters the house the mother has passed out, leaving the young girl terrified as the masked gunman approaches. Madeleine runs upstairs and cowers under the bed having retrieved a revolver from under the kitchen sink. The gunman says to the mother that her husband was responsible for the death of his whole family and promptly shoots the mother dead where she lays, and then walks upstairs to Madeleine's bedroom. Seeing the room seemingly empty he turns around to leave, just as the young girl pops her head over the side of the bed and fires off several shots into the gunman, sending him crashing through the wooden balustrade down into the room below, apparently dead. As the girl drags the lifeless body outside through the snow, the gunman comes around and rises up. Madeleine makes a hasty exit across the iced up lake, but once in the middle the ice begins to crack under her weight, and she falls through. The gunman rescues Madeleine. 

We then fast forward to five years ago and a now adult Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux) is in the southern Italian city of Matera with James Bond (Daniel Craig) - the pair in love. Bond is there with the intention of paying his final respects to Vesper Lynd as she is entombed there. Upon visiting the tomb he notices in a bunch of flowers a Spectre calling card, at which point the tomb explodes. 

Spectre assassins are soon hot on Bond's heels led by Primo (Dali Benssalah) but he successfully manages to evade being killed off and escapes with Madeleine in the bullet riddled yet gadget heavy Aston Martin DB5. Bond believes that Swann has betrayed him, and despite her pleas to the contrary, he packs her on a train and says that she will never see him again. 

Fast forward to the present day, and MI6 scientist Valdo Obruchev (David Dencik) is kidnapped from an MI6 off-grid laboratory, with the lab destroyed and all working operatives therein shot dead. With M's approval Obruchev had developed the top-secret Project Heracles, an exclusive bioweapon containing nanobots designed to infect like a virus upon touch that are coded to an individual's DNA, rendering it lethal to the target and their relatives, but completely harmless to anyone else. 

Bond meanwhile has retired to Jamaica, where he is enjoying the laid back relaxed lifestyle. He is contacted by his old friend from the CIA, Agent Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) and his colleague Logan Ash (Billy Magnussen), who ask for Bond's help, for old time's sake, in finding Obruchev. Bond declines, but after Nomi (Lashana Lynch), an MI6 agent and his replacement as 007, tells him about Project Heracles, Bond agrees to help Leiter, over Nomi's warnings not to get involved.

Bond sails into Cuba and meets Paloma (Ana de Armis), a CIA agent, with three weeks training allegedly, working with Leiter. They infiltrate a Spectre meeting to celebrate Blofeld's birthday to extract Obruchev. Still locked up inside Belmarsh Prison, Blofeld uses a disembodied 'bionic eye' to lead the meeting and order his members to kill Bond with a 'nanobot mist', but it kills all the Spectre members, as Obruchev had reprogrammed the nanobots to infect them all instead. It turns out that the masked gunman in the opening scene is Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek) who had given the orders to Obruchev to wipe out all of Spectre. Bond captures Obruchev and  flies out on Nomi's seaplane to meet with Leiter and Ash on a fishing trawler out at sea. Ash, however, reveals himself to be a double agent who is working for Safin. In a fight between Bond and Ash, Leiter is shot in the stomach. Ash escapes with Obruchev on the seaplane leaving Bond and Leiter locked in the engine room, as the trawler explodes in a ball of flame and gradually begins to sink. As the water rises Leiter bids his final farewell to his old friend and sinks below the water succumbing to his wound. Bond swims through the hole caused by the explosion to the surface, finds a life raft, and is picked up later the next day by a passing container ship. 

Back now in London and Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) and Q (Ben Whishaw) arrange a meeting between Bond and Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) in Belmarsh Prison to try to locate the whereabouts of Obruchev. Meanwhile, Safin visits and coerces the now psychotherapist Dr. Madeleine Swann to infect herself with a nanobot dose to kill Blofeld, as she has been in contact with him for treatment since his imprisonment. 

When Bond encounters Madeleine for the first time in five years at Belmarsh their reception is frosty to say the least. Once inside the confines of Blofeld's high security prison cell, he touches her and unknowingly infects himself before she leaves, unable to go through with Safin's plan. Blofeld confesses to Bond that he staged the explosion at Vesper Lynd's tomb to make it seem as though Madeleine had betrayed him. Bond reacts by grabbing Blofeld by the throat in a strangle hold, but M's Chief of Staff Bill Tanner (Rory Kinnear) intervenes. Moments later when the dust has settled, they both look around to see Blofeld slumped back in his chair dead, as Bond had unintentionally caused the nanobots to infect and kill him.

Bond traces Madeleine back to her childhood home in Norway and learns that she has a five-year-old daughter, Mathilde ((Lisa-Dorah Sonnet), who she claims is not his. After kissing and making-up for lost time in which Bond says his biggest regret is putting Madeleine on that train five years ago, she tells him that when Safin was a boy, his parents were murdered by her father on Blofeld's orders. Having avenged them by killing Blofeld and destroying Spectre, Safin continues his rampage with Ash and their henchmen in pursuit of Bond, Madeleine and Mathilde in a high speed chase through the mountainous Norwegian countryside and forest. Ultimately Bond kills Ash by crushing him under his upturned Range Rover from which he had just crawled out of, and the other thugs, but Safin captures Madeleine and Mathilde and makes off with them in a helicopter, leaving Bond on the ground looking on.

Q enables Bond and Nomi to infiltrate Safin's headquarters in a former WWII missile base, converted to a nanobot factory, on an island located somewhere between Japan and Russia. There Obruchev is mass-producing the Heracles technology so Safin can use it to systematically wipe out millions of people. Bond kills many of Safin's men while Nomi kills Obruchev by shoving him backwards into a huge nanobot vat. 

Madeleine escapes captivity at the hands of Primo, while Safin lets Mathilde go after she bites him on the hand, for which he has no patience. Nomi takes Madeleine and Mathilde away from the island while Bond stays behind to open the island's 1950's Russian era blast-resistant silo doors, and calls in a missile strike from HMS Dragon, as the only Royal Navy vessel in the area, to destroy the installation with M's (Ralph Fiennes) approval despite protestations from the Russian and Japanese governments and the UK's Prime Minister. Bond, while making a sharp exit encounters more of Safin's men whom he kills, including Primo.

Safin ambushes Bond as he is making his way outta there, shooting him twice and infecting him with a vial containing nanobots programmed to kill Madeleine and Mathilde. Despite his injuries, Bond kills Safin after a fight and re-opens the silos which Safin had previously closed. Speaking by radio with Madeleine, Bond tells her he loves her and encourages her to move on without him. Madeleine confirms that Mathilde is his daughter as Bond says his final farewell.

Much has been written about 'No Time To Die' and most of it positive, and as Australia is just about the last country on Earth to see 007 doing what he does best, it will come as no surprise to anyone to learn that James Bond carks it at the end of this film. This of course begs the question of the Producers and the Writers of how do they bring back James Bond for the 26th instalment in this ever popular franchise. Perhaps this episode is all just a dream and Bond will wake up next to Swann and Blofeld, Leiter and Spectre will all still be very much alive and kicking and Safin never existed! Maybe! That said, this film has all the usual touchstones that make Bond such an enjoyable watch - the big action set pieces, the exotic locations, the gadgets, the intrigue, the quips, the megalomaniacal villain and in this one the emotion too that Bond portrays in his love and regret for Swann and for ever doubting her, that ultimately costs him his life. The film has heart and soul as well as a more mature Bond who is still able to handle himself, albeit not quite as bullet proof as he once was, and deliver the one liners with aplomb whilst showing us that he is capable of real care, love and emotion. Craig gives his all in this his final performance as the titular Secret Agent and his demise is a fitting end to his legacy over the last five films. At a run time of 163 minutes it is however, just a tad on the lengthy side, albeit the film never leaves you wanting and it moves along at a swift pace, despite the mid-section dragging its heels a little. 

'No Time To Die' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-