No Time to Die (2021)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

No Time to Die (2021) – C. J. Fukunaga

Clearly, I’m not a big enough Bond fan – I had to look at my blog to figure out whether I had actually seen the previous film (Spectre, 2015) a full six years ago (I had and didn’t like it). Poor memory may have put me at a disadvantage because the current film seems to pick up where the last one left off.  Another reviewer has remarked that the Daniel Craig series features a Bond that does not exhibit chronic amnesia, he actually remembers the events of previous films. We shall see what happens next, because this 25^th “official” outing for 007 is seemingly Craig’s last. And despite my own failure to remember either Vesper (lost love) or Madeleine (current love, played by Léa Seydoux), I still enjoyed this film (perhaps splitting it across two nights helped as well). Somehow the yearning melancholic themes – everyone here has lost someone violently (including the villain played by Rami Malek) – rise above the specific details of the plot to provide an emotional impact. Mixed with these poignant moments are the expensive action sequences for which Bond films are renowned and they don’t disappoint. True, most of the characters besides Craig and Seydoux don’t have enough to do and it is hard to feel interested in them (including the villain played by Rami Malek) and this may be why some true Bond fans seem to have felt that this film is a letdown.  In fact, it is more of a downer and there’s a difference.