Daniel Craig is clearly the best actor to have played James Bond; this is objective fact. His rugged, no-nonsense approach to the character makes for a more believable 007 than the antics of his glib, overly-handsome predecessors. That's not to say that Craig's movies are always the best of the series. As good as his Bond is, his villains have generally not been as memorable as, say Gert Frobe's Goldfinger.
The five films that make up the Craig Cycle (2006's “Casino Royale,” 2008's “Quantum of Solace,” 2012's “Skyfall,” 2015's “Spectre,” and 2021's “No Time to Die”) are worth considering as a group, now that the cycle is complete. They have an internally-consistent narrative thread that is not directly connected to any of the previous Bond productions. Actually, I'm not certain, but I think that all the Bond films made before Daniel Craig more or less maintain their own continuity. The actor would change, but the assumption was that we were moving forward with the same James Bond over the years. With Craig, screenwriters Neil Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis (“Crash”) started over with the Bond story, borrowing from Ian Fleming's first novel (Casino Royale) and depicting Bond first becoming a 00 agent. As we move through the films, Bond encounters a variety of villains, beds a variety of women, and ultimately finds that most of the baddies he has been fighting were part of a criminal organization called Spectre, working under the direction of one Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
“No Time to Die” picks up where “Spectre” left off. Having captured Blofeld, Bond retires and runs off with Madeleine (Lea Seydoux). Without giving too much away, Bond does not stay retired. He winds up doing his usual globe-trotting routine in pursuit of a shadowy figure named Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek). We also get more insight into Madeleine's past, and Bond gets a shot at having a family.
Paul Haggis dropped out after a couple of Craig Cycle films, but Neal Purvis and Robert Wade have been writers on all 5 films, collaborating with a handful of co-writers and four different directors, while the Bond franchise changed hands from one production company to another, and MGM went through a bankruptcy. For 15 years, they, along with Daniel Craig, have been the constants running through the Bond universe. To the extent that such a collaborative, big-tent franchise can be considered the work of any one creator, Purvis and Wade should perhaps be considered the authors of the Craig Cycle. With “No Time to Die,” they give us something the Bond series has never had before: a resolution.
Is it satisfying? Pretty much, although at 2 hours, 46 minutes, the film sometimes failed to keep my attention. It's as if everyone was so reluctant to end the story that they just kept on packing in additional plot twists and action sequences, many of which are highly unnecessary. Meanwhile, they forgot to give the villain a believable motivation or even any memorable lines. Bond films live and die by their villains, and Lyutsifer Safin is regrettably forgettable, not nearly as compelling as Javier Bardem's Silva (from “Skyfall”) or even Christoph Waltz's Blofeld. In the villain department, the series goes out with a whimper instead of a bang. It is the boldest film in the franchise, however, in the scope of its storytelling, and Craig is as good as ever. I wish they had tightened up the narrative to a more manageable length, but nonetheless, Purvis and Wade have given Daniel Craig something that none of the other Bond actors have had: an ending that makes it feel like the whole process meant something.
3.5 stars out of 5
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