Review of No Time to Die (2021) by Soloyt — 20 Oct 2021

At long last, after much anticipation and delay Daniel Craig's final outing as 007 agent, James Bond, has finally hit theaters in the US and across the world. Now while the fans are all over the map as to where they stand with this film and the franchise as a whole because of it, I was one of many viewers who was left satisfied with the deeper exploration into Bond and the way in which he relates to the people and the world around him. What I love about Craig's take on the womanizing, super spy, is that he is not just a womanizing super spy. This classic Bond traits are a part of an armor, if you will, that he has built around himself to protect him from pain, lose and vulnerability. He so desperately wants to shed it and be able to live in a close, intimate relationship with someone, but Everytime he does it always ends up blowing up in his face, quite literally at the beginning of this film. So because of that he reclaims this "armor" and hides himself behind it, distancing himself from those who he needs to open up to the most fearing the prospect that he had once again shown an error in judgement and opened himself up to the wrong people, or that by association he puts them in peril. He wants the house with the clean cut lawn and the white picket fence, but he can never have it. He is James Bond and someone will always come to disrupt his tiny slice of paradise. The first 20 minutes of this film display this so beautifully. Beyond that the relationship between Bond and Madeline Swan is much better here then in Spectre. Here you actually see how much she means to Bond and that she's not just yet another affair on a espionage mission. She also is given a deep connection to the villain, Safin, who is the the force preventing her from leading a normal life since in some twisted manner, he sees her as some type of close family after pulling her from the lake in the films cold open, no pun intended there. The film also gives Bond an extremely emotional, and poetic send off. All of his life his existence had our his loved ones at risk, and realizing he can't life with them, he sacrifices himself to save them.

Beyond that it the cast, and action, are firing on all cylinders and and it introduces some really cool characters in the new 007 and Paloma who can carry the franchise forward. James Bond will return...