300.
No Time to Die
8.5/10
I'll be as honest as possible and I'm not a massive James Bond fan. I've never got into the franchise, haven't been going out of my way to watch the Daniel Craig lead films and Pierce Brosnan is proper my favourite in the role, which says a lot. This movie was highly publicised as being Daniel Craig's last out so understandably there was a lot of hype around how he was going to bow out and what or who comes next. I also remember a stir being caused as it was confirmed that the new 007 was a black female but we'll address that is good time. I hadn't seen the movie that preceeded this one and the name almost escaped me but this is a follow on from events of Spectre. Some of the cast are back from that stroy line such as Christophe Waltz and Lea Seydoux but we also bring in Ana De Armas and Rami Malek plays our main villain. I'm going to try and cut down these reviews but not going so deep into the story but let's tackle some.
The movie begins as a flash back stage with a young Madeline witnessing her mother being killed by a guy named Safin. She fires at him and tries to escape but falls through ice and instead is saved by this masked man. The movie now comes to present time with Bond and Madeleine on a holiday together to celebrate his retirement but the quiet doesn't last as Bond is nearly killed in an assassination attempt and he believes his new lady has betrayed him.
He leaves her on a train and disappears. Five years pass and shit hits the fan with bioweapons being stolen from London which can be programmed to certain targets and therefore be harmless to everyone else. Bond is tracked down by the CIA to help but refused and the new 007 agent also tracks him to ask for help. Played by Lashana Lynch, Nomi seems to have only taken the codename 007 rather than leading the movies for the future. She seems to be a little more to the book than Bond.
The mission moves to Cuba and a birthday party for Waltz's character who is still in prison but he leads the party in an interesting way. He knows Bond is there and orders everyone to kill him with the Nanobots but instead its been programmed to kill the remaining Spectre members and Safin has made his mark once again with some double agents. Bond ends up working a little more than he wanted to and after meeting with Q, a meeting is set up with Blofield, played by Waltz, to track down who is behind the nanobot killings. In the mean time, Madeleine is in a meeting with Safin and he attaches the nanobots to her, this passes onto Bond and Blofield is killed in a roundabout way. He dies but not before admitting to the attempt on Bond's life at the beginning and doing his best to make it look like Madeleine was involved.
Bond now tracks Madeleine down to the home she grew up in from the beginning of the movie and learns that she has a daughter now. Bit weird that shes around 5 years old. We can guess where this is off, even with the bright blue eyes, there's little chance she jumped straight into bed with someone after splitting from Bond. She admits that her father killed Safin's parents when he was just a boy and he will not stop with his revenge on the world. His team are moving in to capture our new trio and after some great action scenes in a forest, the mother and daughter are caught.
Safin is hiding out on an old miltary island between Russia and Japan, because why wouldn't they be. The place is a nanobot factory and they have plans to kill millions to establish a new world order. Q send out Bond and Nomi to end the wrath and Nomi asks for Bond to be reinstated as 007, which was a nice touch. The mother and daugther are rescued and sent with Nomi whilst Bond stays behind to finish the job. He needs to open the old missle silos so that the HMS Dragon which is sailing the ocean can pepper the island with missles and end all threat. Bond has faught his way through many a guard and comes face to face with Safin. Bit of a sadistic character to say the least and Bond is shot but eventually gets the upper hand and kills Safin. The kicker is that Safin, in a last gasp effort, infects Bond with nanobots that are designed to kill Madeleine and Mathilde. Bond knows he can't leave the island and after opening the silos, heading to the edge of the island and finds a nice quiet area to speak to Madeleine who admits what we already knew, that Bond has a daughter. He tells her to move on without him and with his love she turns away as the missles hit is location in a pretty sad scene for a Bond movie.
The movie ends with our remaning M16 characters having a toast to James Bond and the mother and daughter on a road trip as Madeleine starts telling her daughter about a man named Bond.
I tell you what. This was a cracking little send off for Daniel Craig. I enjoyed watching Spectre to catch up on some of the storyline and character and glad that I gave it the chance so that I could watch this movie. The story was very well thought out and I had no idea that it would include so much from the previous movie considering the Bond movies that I had seen in the past were seemingly stand alones. It was quite a long movie looking at the run time but I have seen this movie on a flight since and wasn't put off by knowing how long I'd have to invest into the movie again. This is because the movie was full of action, twists and ultimately the end of an era which audiences want to be part of.
I hadn't been fond of Craig as Bond but this movie won me over and I don't know if once again it was due to this one being the last or everything coming together and the way that he acted out the final scene. A lot of the cast were seen in the previous movie so Rami Malek starring in this one is really the only one worth going into length about. I found it very interesting to find him cast in the role of the main villain when previously I had seen him in the total opposite character placement. This wasn't a villain who threw his weight around but instead used his powerful ideas to wreak havoc. Even as he state in silence, he had a presence in this movie that always seemed malicious and that's once again down to the good work of Malek.
I think I have now seen each Daniel Craig movie where he is playing Bond and although some were a struggle, such as Quantum of Solace and Skyfall, Casino Royale and this instalment were 100% the strongest. I went to the cinema to watch it, I watched it a couple of months later on a flight to NYC and enjoyed it just as much the second time if not more. The ending just proved that Bond is a character that they may never find happy ending for and with this being the first real death of Bond on screen it felt a much more powerful ending than any of the other movies. I wonder where they go from here. Rumour has it, Henry Cavill is in talks. That would be a larger figure of a spy than we've been used to.
