Bond 25 cuts a little too close to the bone. Where’s the fun?
Bond 25 cuts a little too close to the bone. Where’s the fun?
T he new James Bond flick No Time to Die takes place amid the prospect of a worldwide pandemic unleashed from a laboratory where scientists are specifically trying to engineer insanely dangerous biological weapons, but that’s not the only reason I found the movie a bit uncomfortable. Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, who is best known for season 1 of True Detective, Bond 25 is the least fun and most somber excursion in the entire Bond series, as well as being by far the longest 007 movie. Two hours and 43 minutes? Really?
Fukunaga, who has indicated that he finds the Bond character highly problematic and is essentially an art-house director, was an odd choice to take over the saga, which is heavy on drama and pretty much free of the cheesy, campy stuff that people tend to love most. Despite the movie’s huge budget, the action scenes are nothing special, and he mainly survives on luck and/or the incompetence of the various hired assassins chasing him.
Fukunaga discards key elements of the franchise and leans heavily into rebuilding the Bond story around emotions and relationships, particularly Bond’s love affair with psychiatrist Madeleine (Lea Seydoux), who turns out to be something of an expert killer also, and Felix (Jeffrey Wright), the CIA agent who lures Bond out of retirement to go after a missing biologist in Cuba. The scientist, Obruchev (David Dencik) is a turncoat working on a secret British bioweapon (codename: Heracles) that was specifically designed to cause maximum potential carnage under the auspices of the spy chief M (Ralph Fiennes). Obruchev seems to be yet another of those pesky SPECTRE agents who keep imperiling the world, but still: big oopsie for MI6 for creating this potential catastrophe. The viruses rely on nanobots that can be programmed to target any individual based on DNA or to wipe out any group, such as a race. I trust M’s next job will be working for the Chinese Communist Party.
Working for the CIA instead of MI6, Bond teams up with a beautiful CIA agent (Ana de Armas) for a shootout to try to capture the rogue scientist, then discovers that his old employer has replaced him with another 007. Naturally, she’s a black woman (Lashana Lynch). Bond doesn’t sleep with either of these agents, nor with Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), who is taking a break from her super-spying to do secretarial stuff, and so the movie might as well be subtitled The Spy with Whom I Had a Completely Appropriate and Professional Relationship.
Bond is still a bit hung up on Madeleine, even after their relationship status switches from “together” to “it’s complicated.” She has a key link with Blofeld (Christoph Waltz), who is in prison but up to no good whatsoever, and rules one of the best scenes in the movie, one of the few that feels like a throwback to old Bond movies. Lurking behind Blofeld is a new supervillain, Safin (Rami Malek), who is the mastermind of a terrifying island of bioweapons in the Pacific Ocean. These viruses are instantly contagious, and there is no antidote for them. So: The first major movie to be waylaid by the pandemic, way back in the spring of 2020 when No Time to Die’s release was first postponed, is about Bond’s efforts to stop a superbug from killing us all. There’s even a shot of a computer projection of how the virus might spread that looks a bit too much like something you might see on CNN these days.
All of this creates an unfortunate pall around the whole movie, a certain unshakeable glumness that runs contrary to the whimsical spirit of earlier Bond outings. And I couldn’t figure out why the damn thing runs so long. It’s not an epic, nor is it chock-a-block with exciting plot twists. It’s just really slow to get to the point, and more interested in delving into realistic drama than in devil-may-care action. The Daniel Craig movies are notably darker and more pained than the silly Pierce Brosnan batch (which I mostly hated), but in an effort to imitate the gritty feel of the Jason Bourne movies (all of which are better than any Bond flick), the series has gone too far in the direction of making us feel 007’s pain. He used to be suavely invulnerable, but these days the poor fellow does too much suffering. At this particular historical moment, I’d say we could use a funnier, less broody Bond. Pain, we’ve all had our fill of. I have no idea in what direction this series is headed — the final title after the credits reads, “James Bond will return” — but I sure hope the fun returns.
